CINA

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Since y'day the S.K. (bourgeois) media is reporting about Seoul's plan to fingerprint foreign "suspects" from August (K. Times, 4.04) as a regulatory action to intensify 

the pre-G20(summit) state terror...

Here's what today's (reactionary) JoongAng Ilbo has to say:

Foreign travelers to be fingerprinted

 
Korea will install a fingerprint authentication system in major airports and seaports with the aim of keeping dangerous foreigners from entering the country, the Justice Ministry said yesterday.

The announcement comes as Seoul continues its preparations for the G-20 Summit.

“For a safe G-20 Summit, foreigners who are suspected to have criminal backgrounds will need to go through fingerprint identification,” said an official at the Justice Ministry.

The news also comes as the nation is on full alert over foreigner identification following reports last week that two Pakistani men suspected of being members of the Taliban snuck past the port authority in Gunsan, North Jeolla.

The Justice Ministry has submitted a bill to the National Assembly that will make it mandatory for all foreign adults coming into Korea to register their fingerprints with the government...

However, the ministry does not need the Assembly’s approval to install a fingerprint identification system, which links to a National Police Agency database that keeps records on foreigners who have committed crimes in or been deported from Korea...

If the system identifies a foreigner with a dangerous criminal past, he or she will be handed over to the police for further investigation.

The ministry said that the fingerprint authentication system must be installed at key places, including Incheon International Airport, by August in order to have it fully operational by the G-20 Summit in November.

http://joongangdaily.joins.com/article/view.asp?aid=2918769

Related:
☞ G20 security (Korea Herald, 4.05)

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Source: 용산철거민참사대책위

Related stuff:
☞ [3.22] 전철연 연대밤 (2008)

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Enjoy(??) the weekend reading!!

North Korea on the Road to Ruin
By Aidan Foster-Carter

Last year saw two spectacular own goals. Missile and nuclear tests were a weird way to greet a new US president ready to reach out to old foes. The predictable outcome was condemnation by the UN Security Council, plus sanctions on arms exports that are biting.

Domestic policy is just as disastrous. December’s currency ‘reform’ beggars belief. Did Kim Jong-il really not grasp that redenomination would not cure inflation, but worsen it? Or that brazenly stealing people’s savings – beyond a paltry minimum, citizens only got 10 per cent of their money back – would finally goad his long-suffering subjects into anger and rioting? Forced to retreat, officials even apologised. One scapegoat was sacked – and possibly shot.

By his own admission Kim does not do economics. In a speech in 1996, when famine was starting to bite, the Dear Leader whined defensively that his late father, Kim Il-sung, had told him ‘not to get involved in economic work, but just concentrate on the military and the party.’

That awful advice explains much. Incredibly, North Korea was once richer than the South. In today’s world, this is the contest that counts. ‘It’s the economy, stupid’ is no mere slogan but a law of social science.

Having taken an early lead, Kim senior threw it all away. He built the world’s fourth largest army, crippling an economy which he refused to reform, viewing liberalisation as betrayal. His own personality cult was and is a literally monumental weight of unproductive spending.

Used to milking Moscow and Beijing, in the 1970s North Korea borrowed from Western banks – and promptly defaulted. That was not smart; it has had to pay cash up front ever since.

Pyongyang also resorts to less orthodox financing. In 1976 the Nordic nations expelled a dozen DPRK diplomats for trafficking cigarettes and booze. In December, a Swedish court jailed two for smuggling cigarettes. More than 100 busts worldwide over 30 years, of everything from ivory and heroin to ‘supernotes’ (fake US$100 bills), leave scant doubt that this is policy.

Yet morality aside, it is stupid policy. Pariahs stay poor. North Korea could earn far more by going straight. The Kaesong Industrial Complex (KIC), where South Korean SMEs employ  Northern workers to make a range of goods, shows that win-win can work. Yet Pyongyang keeps harassing it: imposing arbitrary border restrictions and demanding absurd wage hikes.

Now it threatens to seize US$370 million of South Korean assets at Mount Kumgang, a tourist zone idle since a Southern tourist was shot dead in 2008 and the North refused a proper investigation. Even before that, Pyongyang’s greed in extorting inflated fees from Hyundai ensured that no other chaebol has ventured North. Contrast how China has gained Taiwanese investment.

In this catalogue of crassness, the nadir came in 1991 when the dying Soviet Union abruptly pulled the plug on its clients. All suffered, but most adapted. Cuba went for tourism; Vietnam tried cautious reform; Mongolia sold minerals. Only North Korea, bizarrely, did nothing – except  watch its old system crumble. GDP plunged by half, and hunger killed up to a million. Now famine again stalks the land. The state cannot provide, yet still it seeks to suppress markets.

All this is as puzzling as it is terrible. China and Vietnam show how Asian communist states can morph towards capitalism and thrive. Kim Jong-il may fear the fate of the Soviet Union if he follows suit. True, his regime has survived – even if many of its people did not. Yet the path he is on is patently a dead end. Kim’s own ill-health, and a belated opaque bid to install his unknown third son as dauphin, only heighten uncertainty. Militant mendicancy over the nuclear issue – demanding to be paid for every tiny step towards a distant disarmament, then backsliding and trying the same trick again – will no longer wash. North Korea has run out of road; the game is finally up.

What now? A soft landing, with Kim Jong-il embracing peace abroad and reform at home, remains the best outcome. But if Kim obdurately refuses change, we need a plan B. The US and South Korea have contingency plans for the North’s collapse. So does China, separately. Tacit coordination is urgent, lest future chaos be compounded by a clash of rival powers – as in the 1890s. Koreans have a rueful proverb: when whales fight, the shrimp’s back is broken.

But Beijing will not let it come to that. China is quietly moving into North Korea, buying up mines and ports. Some in Seoul cry colonialism, but it was they who created this vacuum by short-sightedly ditching the past decade’s ‘sunshine’ policy of patient outreach. President Lee Myung-bak may have gained the G-20 chairmanship, but he has lost North Korea.

Nor will Kim Jong-il nuzzle docile under China’s wing, though his son might. As ever North Korea will take others’ money and do its own thing. In early 2010 new fake ‘super-yuan’ of high quality, very hard to detect, started appearing in China. They wouldn’t, would they?

http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2010/04/01/north-korea-on-the-road-to-ruin

Related articles:
☞ The trap of drawing a picture of N.Korea (Hankyoreh, 4.02)

☞ Chinese Financial Support of N. Korea Questioned (VoA, 3.31) 

☞ North Korea Strains Under New Pressures (WSJ, 3.30) 

☞ N. Korea faces likelihood of widespread upheaval (HonululuAdvertiser, 3.28)

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KCTU's "Directives for 2010" (the English version was published just y'day):

The KCTU will be at the forefront to stop labor oppression and protect democracy

  
Labor rights are essential for democracy

Korea’s Ministry of Labor denied the registration of the Korean Government Employees' Union on March 6, for the third time in three month. Not just for KGEU, the ministry ordered the Korean Construction Workers’ Union (KCWU) to revise their union establishment report, and the Korean Transport Workers’ Union (KTWU) and Korean Teachers and Education Workers' Union (KTU) got such orders, too. Almost half the members of the KCTU are about to be illegalized.    

Labor rights constitute the essence of democracy. The Korean government’s plot to destroy labor unions is, therefore, an attempt to tramp the democratic constitution. In this sense, the KCTU’s struggle is not just for protecting union members’ rights but also for reviving the suffocated democracy throughout the society.

               
We will struggle and negotiate at the same time

The KCTU set 2010 major action plans and directives in a recent the Central Executive Committee meeting. The KCTU has set maximizing negotiating power through powerful struggle as the main objective for 2010. That explains why it has decided to participate in the Time-off System Deliberation Council, while the Korean Railway Workers Union, the Korea Cargo Transport Workers' Union, the Korean Construction Workers’ Union and other major organizations determined to unfold an all-out struggle, which includes a general strike. The Korea Metal Workers’ Union has also decided to mobilize support in specific periods.    

The government, ruling and opposition parties, and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions agreed to revise the Trade Union and Labor Relation Adjustment Act in a back-door negotiation last December to prohibit companies from paying full-time union officials and allow multiple unions at the workplace-level with many restrictions posed on their right to bargain. The KCTU Central Executive Committee remains firm against the revision and committed to its re-amendment. The Committee has reaffirmed that its participation in the Deliberation Council was aimed at maximizing negotiating power and rescinding the revised laws. The powerful massive struggle will back up the negotiation processes.

The KCTU will hold a rally that will be attended by about 10,000 unionists on March 27. By April 20, the Federation plans to complete its preparation for a general strike, which is scheduled to take place in late April. Moreover, beyond fighting for wage increase of union members, the KCTU will unfold a nation-wide wage struggle for a minimum wage increase and other measures so that all people can secure basic rights to live.

 
We will judge the Lee gov't and the ruling GNP at the local election in June

Across the nation, people aspire to judge the current government and the ruling party. The coming local election in June will be the judgment day. The KCTU will focus our resource to meet the nation-wide aspiration. We strongly believe that it is our mission to deal a blow to the ruling party in the election. In that sense, we will play a central role in gathering all democratic, progressive forces through solidarity, coalition, unity and integration.

 
We will organize People’s Action to counteract G20 in November

The Seoul G20 Summit in November should be a stage for people and workers around the world to express their indignation about the unfairness of globalization, not a ceremony to celebrate governments’ achievements. G20 is an antiquated attempt to return to neo-liberalism in an era of crisis it has brought about. Koreans refuse to be spectators to this ceremony. During the G20 period, the KCTU will do everything in our power to stage a massive anti-neo liberalism struggle that will gain attention of people and workers around the globe. To this end, we will prepare to hold People’s Action and be a leader of a great transformation.

 
Government turnover in 2012 is an important mission to KCTU

Lame-duck effects have already started for the Lee government and the June local election will prove that. In 2012, when the next prudential election is scheduled to take place, we should revive democracy by defeating the current powers. The KCTU will be at the forefront to protect democratic society against unilateral politics of the current government and the ruling party. In that process, we will show our union members and Koreans how the KCTU can meet their aspirations.

http://kctu.org/6680

Insha'Allah!!!(^^)