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Since last weekend the S. Korean labor movement is recalling with various events(*) the 40th anniversary of Jeon Tae-il's suicide by burning himself to death at the age of 22 in protest of the poor working conditions in South Korean factories. His death brought attention to the substandard labor conditions and helped the formation of labor union movement in S.K.

Today's key issue in the S.Korean ('left-liberal') daily newspaper Hankyoreh is Jeon Tae-il's struggle for basic labor rights in S.K.:

From 1970 to 2010: an unrelenting

call for improved labor conditions

 
Chun Tae-il’s self-immolation was a turning point in the movement to recognize the rights of laborors

At around 1:30 p.m. on Nov. 13, 1970, Chun Tae-il(Jeon Tae-il), a young fabric cutter at Seoul’s Pyeonghwa Market, set fire to himself in a call for improvements in labor conditions. He was demanding adherence to the Labor Standards Act and time off on Sundays. “We are not machines,” he cried at the time. For Korean intellectuals, who were caught up in the movement for political democratization under the brutal rule of the military administration, Chun’s self-immolation was a tremendous shock. His act was an arrow directed at the conscience of Korean society.

Jeon was born in 1948 in Daegu, North Gyeongsang Province, to poor dressmaker Chun Sang-su and Lee So-seon. Economic deprivation and hunger were constant companions throughout his life. In 1964, when he was sixteen, he went to Seoul in search of his mother, who had gone to earn money. After scraping out a difficult living selling newspapers and shining shoes, he began work the next year as a sewing machine helper at a sewing factory in Pyounghwa Market by the Cheonggyecheon stream.

A garment factory in Pyeonghwa Market(Seoul's Dongdaemun District) in the 1960's

 
The harsh working conditions lit a fire in Chun’s heart. Young women in their teens worked fifteen-hour days in a loft where they could not stand up straight, yet it was impossible even to eat on their monthly pay. After their long hours of exhausting work, they developed a variety of eye problems, stomach ailments, and neuralgia. Health examinations were perfunctory. Two or three of the factory’s thirty workers received checkups, but the X-ray machine they stood before did not have any film loaded in it.

The labor laws prescribing eight-hour working days and regular health examinations were little more than scraps of paper. The labor supervisor from the labor office was a figurehead. Chun, who had not completed an elementary school education, began teaching himself about the Labor Standards Act, but he had difficulty reading words that were written in Chinese characters. His plaintive wish that he might have a university student friend by his side would pierce the hearts of countless university students after his death.

Together with other cutters, Chun formed the “Fools’ Association” and “Samdong Friendship Association” to investigate labor conditions. At the same time, he worked to let the labor office and press know the truth and sought methods of improvement. Unable to accomplish this due to the insincere efforts of the labor office and the interference of detectives from the police intelligence department, Chun died through self-immolation on Nov. 13, crying, “Don’t let my death be in vain.”...

http://english.hani.co.kr/arti/english_edition/e_national/446549.html

Related report:

☞ Decades later, faces change while poor conditions linger... (Hankyoreh, 11.01)

* For more info (in Korean) please check out:

☞ 전태일, 2010!

Cartoon in today's Hankyoreh:

Weapons evolved, injustice remains

In the foreground, a key union member of KEC, a maker of mobile phone parts, attempts self-immolation, resisting a surprise arrest by the police in a KEC factory.
Behind the KEC building, a riot police officer uses a club to beat a Ssangyong Union member occupying a factory in protest against a mass dismissal plan by Ssangyong management for selling the company.
A tenant living and struggling against eviction in a Yongsan redevelopment area becomes engulfed in flames on a makeshift watchtower that caught fire during a raid involving scores of riot police officers.
Beside them stand heavily armored riot police armed with sound cannons, tasers, water cannons and shields.
Late laborer Chun Tae-il who died from self-immolation in protest of inhumane labor conditions, looks on, saying, “Though 40 years have passed... the only thing that has improved is the riot police weaponry.”
The KEC union member who attempted self-immolation was taken to the hospital and suffered third-degree burns to his face, chest and right hand. Some 170 union members went on strike following the rupture of negotiations with the management, and occupied the Gumi factory for eleven days.