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The follwing piece is last Friday's editorial in Kyunghyang Shinmun:

Kim Jin-suk and Korea’s Citizens Create Hope

The complete conclusion of the Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction (HHIC) affair, which had come to be symbolized by Kim Jin-suk and the “Bus of Hope” movement, 11 months after it first began, deserves recording as the first example of a successful ending to a redundancy problem in a single workplace that expanded into a political and social issue.

This incident has also left us with the lesson that the use of redundancy by firms, which has come to be regarded as something natural since the foreign exchange crisis, must inevitably be reined in when it diverges from rational standards and social common sense.

Having several times urged HHIC chairman Cho Nam-ho and ruling and opposition politicians to solve the problem, we welcome this labor-management agreement and hope that the industrial peace that was achieved with such difficulty will last.

HHIC workforce and management produced an agreement that essentially consisted of re-employing 94 fired workers within one year of an agreed date, and supporting their living costs in the meantime, in accordance with a recommendation from the National Assembly’s Environment and Labor Committee.

The workforce and management also dropped all legal cases they had filed against each other, while agreeing to minimize civil damages cases.

Accordingly, Kim Jin-suk, Direction Committee member of the Busan branch of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), who had occupied the top of a crane in protest for 309 days to demand the reversal of the redundancies, finally came down and put her feet back on the ground.

Her simple and tear-jerking desire to “warm [her] body in a Korean sauna and eat instant noodles” can now effectively become reality. Her devoted struggle has awoken the majority of people in Korean society, who had totally forgotten about it or done their best not to think about it, to precious values such as the dignity of human beings, the nobleness of labor, and the beauty of solidarity.

We once again express our respect for Kim’s strong will and her moving comradeship, and pray that the mental and physical pain she has suffered will rapidly heal.

Kim Jin-suk was not the only leading character in the “HHIC crane drama” that went on for 11 months. The nameless citizens from across Korea that traveled to HHIC’s shipyard in Busan during the five “Bus of Hope” trips, can also be regarded as stars just as important as Kim.

These ordinary citizens, who were neither professional activists nor famous people, shared the pain of the fired workers and sent up precious and beautiful fireworks of solidarity.

The awareness and practical action of these citizens, who took the pain of Kim Jin-suk and workers as their own, moved ruling party and opposition politicians alike, resulting in Cho Nam-ho’s appearance at a hearing before the Environment and Labor committee and a recommended plan from the National Assembly.

These citizens totally refused to bow in the face of ideological attacks from far-right conservative forces, who sarcastically dubbed the Bus of Hope the “Bus of Disturbance” and the “Bus of Despair,” and talked repeatedly of “left-wing protesters.” They stayed firm in the face of indiscriminate suppression by the police, and won.

Even if they were due to overwhelming public opinion, the serious efforts of politicians, who provided an important step toward resolution of the problem by holding a hearing and producing an arbitration plan, deserve appreciation. Prominent intellectuals in and outside Korea also supported Kim and the Bus of Hope movement.

Kim Jin-suk has ended her protest and this case is over, but what really counts is that the labor-management agreement that was produced after so many vicissitudes is faithfully implemented.

In particular, HHIC’s management team, which has gone back on agreements with its labor union several times in the past, must keep this at the forefront of its mind. The company management must be aware that if it overturns this agreement, which contains the blood, sweat and passion of numerous people, it will be entirely responsible for any unfortunate incidents that occur as a result.

The government and politicians, too, must hurry to revise laws and systems in order to prevent the excessive of inhumane redundancy. Let us hope that the strength in solidarity that was demonstrated by Kim Jin-suk and the “Bus of Hope” spread out to become hope that can project warmth into every corner of our society.

http://english.khan.co.kr/khan_art_view.html?artid=201111111352537&code=790101