South Korea: Intelligence Agency Raids Top Union Confederation│South Korea: Intelligence Agency Raids Top Union Confederation

Kap Seol

January 24, 2023

Translated by Guanyu Zhu

On January 8 (2023), South Korean intelligence agencies raided the country's largest independent trade union organization, the Korean National Federation of Democratic Labor Unions (KCTU, hereinafter referred to as the Democratic Labor Federation) and a subsidiary office.

The high-profile raids were allegedly linked to four former and current union officials allegedly having ties to North Korean agents. The move has raised concerns that the conservative government is reverting to authoritarian-era ways of attacking labor by confusing organizing with a threat to national security.

The move comes alongside policies pushed by the conservative government led by President Yoon Seok-yue. The government is trying to roll back restrictions on long hours and reduce pension payouts while increasing workers' regular contributions. Yin Xiyue was elected last March on an openly anti-union platform.

First raid on spy agency

In the raid, 30 agents from South Korea's National Intelligence Service (NIS, hereinafter referred to as the NIS) executed a search warrant on the headquarters of the Democratic Labor Federation. They clashed with CTU staff for hours and did not leave until the union's lawyers arrived.

Democratic Labor is a trade union network that has grown to more than 1 million members in the world's tenth largest economy. DBL members work in everything from automobiles and shipbuilding to emerging fields like healthcare and software engineering.

Since its founding in 1995 (seven years after the end of the country's military dictatorship), the DKL has been routinely suppressed by the government, both conservative and liberal, during which time all ten DKL chairmen have served at least their terms Was imprisoned once. But this is the first time that the Democratic Labor Federation has been directly raided by the National Intelligence Service, which is equivalent to the two-in-one of the CIA and the FBI.

While the search warrant was issued over a Democratic Labor chief's alleged ties to North Korea's spy agency, 1,000 riot police and firefighters surrounded the building in what appeared to be a public relations stunt. That was double the initial police deployment at a Halloween party in Seoul where lack of crowd control left 158 young people trampled to death.

Surprisingly, the NIS did not arrest the alleged national security threat official. Instead, agents seized his phone and computer data and left.

A similar situation emerged at the Korea Health and Medical Workers Union (KHMWU) affiliated with the CDT and at two other sites, where the NIS executed simultaneous search warrants against three other former and current CDT officials. The NIS and the police created a spectacular scene, and then left after downloading data from the electronic devices of the persons being searched.

South Korea National Security Law

The NIS said in a statement: "The agency has been conducting undercover investigations (of the four individuals) in violation of the National Security Law (hereinafter referred to as the National Security Law) for many years. They have obtained evidence linking these individuals to North Korea. , which resulted in the (NIS) obtaining a search warrant."

The national security law prohibits unauthorized travel to North Korea and contact with its people. After the raids, some conservative news outlets cited anonymous NIS sources as saying the Democratic Labor chief had received orders and money from North Korea.

The national security law was enacted in early 1948, months before South Korea's founding constitution, when South Korea declared the Republic of Korea under U.S. guidance, facing opposition from a powerful domestic left and a rising rival in the northern part of the peninsula, a communist republic. Since then, the law has been used as an excuse to suppress domestic opposition and labor organizations under the pretext of military threats.

The law remained in place even after South Korea began democratizing in the late 1980s and mass protests ended three decades of military rule. Even liberal presidents have routinely turned to the law and its main enforcer, the NIS, to stifle organized labor.

In 1998, the international human rights organization Amnesty International protested against then-president Kim Dae-jung (2000 Nobel Peace Prize winner) for arresting 25 students and labor activists in the name of "pro-North Korea organizations" and accusing them of violating the national security law.

Amnesty International said, "The apparent attempt to link union unrest to so-called 'pro-North Korea' activities is disturbing, signaling a return to authoritarian methods of repressing dissent in South Korea." This coincided with threats by government ministers to crack down on strikers."

truck drivers strike

The latest raids come on the heels of a failed national strike by independent truck drivers.

When 25,000 truck drivers went on strike in November, some saw it as the start of a belated "winter of discontent" against Yin's anti-worker policies. Among them, a member of the Democratic Labor Federation, Owner Drivers, called for the minimum wage to be extended to all truck drivers and made permanent. Striking truckers say the minimum wages set by a joint committee of truckers, contractors and the government help reduce road accidents and injuries because they reduce speed and overwork.

The 16-day strike ended in failure. Larger unions have not joined the action, and Yin's government has put pressure on truckers with a series of orders requiring them to return to work. After six years of growth, Democratic Labor finds itself still on the defensive. In stark contrast, support for Yoon's government rose 9 percent as the crackdown on truck drivers became the basis for a conservative side that backed him.

There was a bipartisan consensus on an anti-strike stance. On Dec. 8, a day before truckers voted to end the strike, the Liberal Democrats, which hold a slim majority in the National Assembly, urged strikers to accept the government's proposed expansion of the limited three-year minimum wage. The government still has yet to roll out plans for the expansion.

Liberals have also been silent on the NIS raids. In a 15-minute television interview the night after the raid, opposition leader Lee Jae-myung made no mention of the NIS or the Democratic Labor Congress.

At the same time, the NIS is trying to extend its ubiquitous tentacles to every corner of the country again. In December, the agency was granted the authority to "investigate and collect" human resources information on senior government officials. NIS surveillance of civilians was banned in 2020 after investigations revealed serious abuses of power.

The new guidelines do not specify the scope of the information collection, effectively allowing the agency to expand with warrantless and arbitrary surveillance. The NIS has also been trying to roll back a new law that would remove its investigative powers within South Korea by the end of the year. The legislation was sparked by a 2013 scandal that revealed the agency tampered with evidence and tortured the sister of a Chinese defector from the North to identify the defector as a North Korean agent.

anti labor agenda

Police raided the offices of two national construction unions a day after the NIS raid on the Democratic Labor Federation. The unions have a reputation for aggressiveness but have also come under fire for rumors of corruption.

In a televised New Year's speech on Jan. 3, Yin's government portrayed all organized labor as a self-interested elite who are privileged relative to unorganized workers. His government may try to intensify its crackdown on workers by pitting them against each other and by branding some leaders as corrupt and privileged.

In the process, it will become increasingly difficult for the Yoon government to push anti-labor laws, and he will have fewer and fewer options but to use force and authoritarian machines like the NIS. In the legislature, the opposition Democratic Party will block his anti-labor agenda, but only because the party does not want the Yoon government to succeed, not because it is a reliable ally of labor.

The raid on the DTU shows the challenges facing labor in many countries as unions face a resurgence of authoritarian and repressive measures amid ongoing attacks on living standards, wages and pensions. These global problems require global solidarity.

Kap Seol is a writer and researcher based in New York. His work has appeared in Labor Notes, Jacobin , Progressive Magazine, In These Times , and others.

Original link: https://labornotes.org/2023/01/south-korea-intelligence-agency-raids-top-union-confederation