Korea-U.S. FTA
‘Not about trade, fairness’
When labor activist Hye-won Chong talks about her opposition to the Bush administration’s so-called free-trade agreement between Korea and the United States, she speaks with a passion based on harsh experience.
Chong knows demonstrators who were beaten by military riot police.
She knows hundreds of Korean unionists are jailed each year for exercising their basic worker rights.
And she knows the tragic story of Heo Sewook, a union taxi driver who, in an anti-FTA protest, doused his body with gasoline and set himself on fire. He later died.
“From our standpoint, the Korea-U.S. FTA is the biggest threat to Asian trade since NAFTA, and it will open the floodgates in the U.S. as well,” said Chong, international director of the Korean Metalworkers Union (KMWU), who joined a delegation of trade unionists from South Korea visiting Solidarity House, the UAW’s headquarters in Detroit, in May. “KORUS-FTA is not about trade, and it’s not about fairness.”
Chong said KORUS-FTA would not only hurt Korea, but also the United States because “it brings forth a model of economic growth based on the destruction of employment.”
Despite House Democratic leaders’ success in getting the Bush administration to agree in May to add worker rights and environmental protections to the FTA deal, the position of the UAW and the KMWU remains unchanged: The agreement will harm workers in both countries.
Here in the United States, KORUS-FTA poses a huge, direct threat to auto production and will destroy jobs and undermine the standard of living of working families. The trade deal would eliminate the U.S. tariff on autos and auto parts imported from Korea, and phase out over 10 years our 25 percent tariff on imported pickups.
This would result in a surge of auto imports from Korea that would threaten tens of thousands of U.S. jobs.
“The addition of worker rights by House Democrats satisfies only one of the key objectives the UAW and other unions have long demanded,” said UAW President Ron Gettelfinger, “and these same Democratic leaders have made it clear they continue to have major problems with the Korea trade deal.”
On May 1 the UAW and KMWU issued a joint declaration in strong opposition to the proposed trade agreement.
Korea and the United States reached the one-sided trade deal in April after 10 months of negotiations. Expected to be signed by the end of June, it must be ratified by South Korea's National Assembly and the U.S. Congress.
Korea is the fifth-largest producer and third-largest exporter of vehicles in the world. In 2006 Korea exported 554,000 vehicles to the United States, while the United States was allowed to export only about 4,000 vehicles to Korea.
As a result, the U.S.-auto trade deficit with Korea is $11.6 billion.
“If KORUS-FTA passes, good jobs in both countries will be destroyed through restructuring, driving up poverty and widening the gap between the haves and have-nots. This will benefit the rich, and the middle class will vanish,” said Chong, a Harvard University graduate.
Chong believes FTA passage will erode union power in South Korea and promote political injustices, cementing what she termed “the rightward way of politics” like the current White House. “It’s a polarizing issue,” she added.
President Roh Moo Hyun of South Korea lives in the Blue House, as it’s known to the 48 million who live in a country the size of Indiana. Presidential elections are this December, but he’s not running again. South Korea’s national assembly members, similar to the U.S. Congress, are up for re-election next April.
In the last year, Chong said workers have held numerous general strikes against FTA, with the participation of nonunion (or what they call “irregular”) workers as well.
According to Chong, about 60 union activists are in prison for so-called “illegal activity” at anti-FTA demonstrations. She said a KMWU member was recently released after being held more than a year.
“There’s a Korean law called ‘obstruction of business’ that is used discretionarily,” she said, “meaning the government gets to decide which strikes are legitimate and which are illegal.”
Chong hopes UAW activists and other U.S. labor unions publicize their opposition to KORUS-FTA.
Meanwhile, at press time, KMWU members were planning some mobilization of their own at the end of June: another general strike against the FTA — just before their union opens national negotiations in July.
