South Korea Out on the Street

From smoggy Seoul to the bustling port of Pusan, usually industrious South Koreans last week simply refused to do any more work. Strikers shut down the country's showcase automobile industry as well as textile factories and chemical plants. Taxi drivers and bus operators in Seoul and Kwangju declined to accept passengers. In all, some 200,000 workers were idled by job actions. A striker in Pusan expressed the pent-up frustrations of many: "It is our turn to receive humane treatment. We have the right to a decent living."

The strikers were doubtless encouraged by the success of the militant students, who, after months of periodic rioting, finally won major political concessions from the government. South Korea's 10 million workers, on the other hand, have gained comparatively little from their country's vaunted 20- year-old economic miracle. While industrialists have reaped huge profits, little of the wealth has trickled down to those manning the factories. South Koreans last year put in the longest workweek in the industrialized world -- 54.4 hours. Yet they earned an average of only $1.55 an hour in manufacturing jobs, compared with $7 for their Japanese counterparts and $13 for those in the U.S.

Under the government of Chun Doo Hwan, striking for better pay has been almost unheard of. Walkouts were virtually banned, and unions were strictly under the thumb of Seoul. But since June, when Chun capitulated to popular demands for democratic reform, both the government and the opposition have expressed sympathy for the workers' plight. "It is true that the government has sided with management in the past out of the need for growth and stability," said Roh Tae Woo, who heads the ruling Democratic Justice Party, "but it must now side with labor to compensate for sacrifices made for the nation's economic development."

Independent labor organizers took advantage of the new atmosphere to spark a series of work stoppages that reached new peaks last week. Assembly lines ground to a halt at the electronics giants, Samsung and Lucky-Goldstar. Earlier, Hyundai Motor Co., producer of the popular subcompact Excel, lost $24 million after it failed to ship 6,000 cars. Though the government is leaving the search for solutions to labor and management, it began to move against the violence prone, arresting two workers for destroying an auto-parts factory and three fishermen for wrecking equipment in a Pusan market. Warned Labor Minister Lee Hun Ki: "If the current disputes are further aggravated to threaten the national economy and the security of our society, the government will take tough actions."