A South Korean Hyundai Motor worker set himself afire Sunday after management responded to his request to slow the pace of production by stepping up discipline. The 44-year-old unionist, Shin Sung-hun, is in critical condition.
After 309 days sitting in on top of a 115-foot shipyard crane, a South Korean welder has won an agreement that her multinational employer will rehire 94 laid-off workers.
As the U.S. ‘occupy’ movement struggles to hold its ground, protesters are connecting to South Korean activists who see their fight against out-of-control corporate power as tapping the same vein of frustration and outrage.
About 15,000 rallied in the South Korean port city of Busan last weekend to support a woman welder whose lone sit-in atop a shipyard crane has lasted 208 days.
Nine thousand college students, labor activists, and human rights advocates from across South Korea gathered Saturday to support a woman welder who has been staging a lone sit-in since January on top of a 115-foot shipyard crane. But on Tuesday Kim Jin-suk tweeted that security guards had begun to deploy a safety net around her crane, the usual sign of a plan to take her out by force, and yesterday they cut off her food supplies.
