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The first organized Myeong-dong sit-in struggle group/collective (now, since Monday morning they're united with almost all the other affected tenants in the area)  released recently the following statement about their struggle, objectives and the background:
 

"Redevelopment", the Death-knell of the Tenants

We will fight to the end for the people’s fundamental rights

and against unjust "redevelopment" laws!

Hello dear neighbors, Seoul citizens and foreign visitors,

We are business people and merchants installed for the past few years in the Meok-ja alley in front of the Seoul Myeong-dong cathedral.

However Seoul city has plans for the redevelopment of our area of trade into a financial district. As such we are now engaged in a fight for our lives, under pressure of forced eviction.

The Myeong-dong district is divided into four separate districts. In the early hours of the 8th of April and the 4th of June last, with no passersby as witnesses, some 400 privately hired thugs came down upon us and forcibly evicted people from 11 different houses. In this process several tenant fainted and had to be hospitalized; there were also reports of sexual assault. It was made known that 16 houses in the 4th district would be forcibly taken over, as well as several houses in the 2nd district. These moves, claiming to draw legitimacy from ownership of the properties in question, fly in the face of the laws set up to protect tenants.

In the face of this danger, we tenants have banded together to fight this injustice. However the district government and the police are simply ploughing through, with on their side the money and the hired thugs. The Lee Myungbak administration has made the violent treatment of people in our situation all the more possible. It has also ‘streamlined’ safety policies, contributing to more exposure to carcinogenic materials for the laborers in Myeong-dong.

With the situation as it is, Seoul city and the Chung-gu local authorities, hand-in-hand in their desire to proceed with the reconstruction, are getting antsy. They have been quick to give approval to the project, without providing any measures for the tenants and without getting proper approval of the original building owners. They have not intervened even as we were subject to illegal expulsion attempts, and have done nothing to prevent our very livelihoods being taken away from us. How are we to stand this horrible situation?

And for what, for whom are we being trampled upon? For what is our right to survival being infringed upon? For who is this ‘development’? Why are we being stepped over and dragged out of our homes and businesses?

Behind the outlaw thugs are hidden IBK Bank, Daewoo Construction, and the BK Bank, driven primarily by IBK Bank. But IBK Bank is a government-run bank, meaning that the government itself is controlling this project.

They tell the people to save, they tell them to invest, and then they take that money and step all over us! This redevelopment plan shows how desperate they are to deprive tenants of their civil rights.

We remember the Yongsan incident. Thinking of those who burned in the makeshift watchtower brings tears to our eyes. So many tenants went down before the violence of the hired thugs and mercenaries, a phenomenon that started in the 1980s. We can hear even now the echoes of those who stood against the injustices in this society, who decried its fundamental double standard.

This is not just in Seoul. In the whole country, be it the ‘Four Rivers Project’, the ‘new town’ phenomenon or the old-fashioned ‘redevelopment’, the rights of tenants and the rights to housing are being flagrantly infringed. The weak and the marginalized are not mere insects to be trampled upon! People such as us will not allow our hopes to be shattered with the sway of the fork crane or the rumble of the bulldozer. If these inhumane and ruthlessly greedy practices keep on, there will be a second, and a third Yongsan!

We must absolutely win against those who would take away our civil rights and infringe upon the law, and keep alive our struggle until our rights as tenants and as humans are respected. We, the tenants of Myeong-dong, ask for your help and support in our struggle!