Kim Jin-sook, the last dismissal of Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction’s Yeongdo Shipyard, <한겨레>She is posing before giving a direct interview with her. During the hopeless march, Commissioner Kim was called the’Debt Fairy’. What was written’Properly punishment law for companies in serious disaster’ was changed to’Where did the labor respect society go?’ By Baek So-ah, staff reporter [email protected]
The blue coverall was repaired. It was loose and could not be worn as it is. It was a perfect fit when I climbed the tower crane 10 years ago. The clothes weren’t stretched. Two times, he suffered from cancer and suffered a loss of body. On December 30, 2020, he went a long way in shortened work clothes. I couldn’t just be doing treatment. The retirement age “set by the company” was one day left. In front of the Blue House, there was an ulchureum or homeless hunger. The distance to the destination was beyond measure with the sense of the body.
I walked 430 km from Busan and arrived in front of the Blue House on February 7. I couldn’t see my body dying, but the swelling party looked like a temple. At the time of departure, there were 3 and more than 700 at the time of arrival. By embracing those who are fasting, the sympathetic fasting, which has been demanding his reinstatement, ended in 48 days. Precarious bodies were taken to the hospital. I couldn’t fulfill the request, but that didn’t mean it was over. In the first place, the company could not decide the end of the declaration that there is no retirement age.
On the 5th, I met Kim Jin-sook (Kim Ji-won), a leader of the Korean Federation of Trade Unions, who was dismissed for 36 years. It was just after walking a dozen kilometers that day. Even before the final destination, negotiations were still in place, but it seemed to be unconcerned. The company’s craziness wasn’t even yesterday and today. The reporter’s heart was urgent, hoping that this interview would be a phrase in a few days. Two days later, the speech in front of the Blue House ended like this. “Laughing/ Until the end/ Together/ Struggle!” It was the slogan that Crane screamed countless times in 2011.
―Why was it walking?
“There was no other way to choose. It’s not a condition for fasting. First I decided to walk. Last year, when my friend Park Moon-jin (former health care union leader) reinstated at Yeungnam University Medical Center in Daegu, he went to Busan for a week on foot. I did practice while increasing the distance a few months ago.” Ji-ji Kim has difficulty walking. When I was a field worker, I was electrocuted during welding and suffered an industrial accident where both legs were broken. Even now, in winter, my right ankle is sore and numb.
―Just walking doesn’t go somewhere with the Kim map image. What was the most intense physical struggle in your life as a labor activist?
“Well, because I have never struggled with physical power… . I am still walking with a fan like this. (He heard a debt with phrases such as’Hanjin Heavy Industries, Opposition to Sales Without Employment’, and’Where did the’Respect for Labor’ go?’ throughout the march.) There are many people who know me as a strong and stubborn person. I get hurt well. I don’t know if it looks so because I couldn’t compromise on something unfair.”
―I walked for over a month. How do you compare before and now?
“When the first three people started, if they walked and fell, they could go to the hospital, but as the number of people marching increased, they became more responsible and thought about the severity of the march. I’m not walking alone, it’s not my fight alone. It was nice to walk because I was so connected, communicated, and bonded. It’s harder to sit down for an interview now.”
―How about Comrade Gil?
“Daewoo Bus and Korea Gates (Daegu auto parts company) layoffs, and KORAIL Networks workers on strike have been with us all the time. There were a lot more people coming and going for each section. Like the disabled, LGBTQ, and dismissed people who took the’Hope Bus’ 10 years ago, there were many people who came and walked with each other with painful stories. I think that pain then meets and flows in a long wave. Most of the people whose stories are unknown. The most memorable are female special high school (special employment) workers who have been fired from car dealers and have been struggling for reinstatement for as long as 7 years.”
―I asked for confirmation. What exactly did you ask for?
“It means to get back to work every day and let me walk out with my feet. 36 years ago, he was put on a furoshiki for turning the handouts, was taken to the office of the Supreme Court, tortured, and fired for that road. We cannot accept the’re-employment’ presented by the company. Of course, we also require wages and severance pay for reinstatement. By entrusting it to the metals union, the amount is unknown. However, even if it is not up to 36 years, it should be a legitimate wage, not a comfort payment.” The company insists that Kim Ji-do’s dismissal was justified in the 1980s, so reinstating his job and paying compensation for wages would result in a crime of malpractice. It is post-context, post-historical, and historical negation. In 2009, the Deliberation Committee on Honor Recovery and Compensation for People Related to the Democratization Movement recognized Kim Ji-won’s fight as a democratization movement and recommended reinstatement. Recently, the National Human Rights Commissioner Choi Young-ae defined the dismissal of Kim as “national violence”.
On the day of the 23rd of last month, Kim Jin-sook, a leader of the Busan Headquarters of the Federation of Trade Unions, is walking toward Daejeon Station from the Gunbuk-myeon office in Okcheon-gun, Chungcheongbuk-do. By Okcheon/Baek Soah, staff reporters [email protected]
―Written by Kim Map <소금꽃 나무>If you look at, pellets come out of the lunch box provided by the company, and there is a story of rolling rice with industrial water. In one interview, it is said that after seeing workers dying from industrial accidents, they were desperate and tried to climb Jirisan Mountain to die. Are you tired of work and labor? Why is reinstatement so desperate?
“I was actually going to die. I bury my ID card in the ground and climb the mountain. The world is so beautiful, I wonder why my life is so miserable and I don’t know when that life will end. I feel so sad and desperate because I am young. As I barely came down from the mountain to get to know the labor union, to know Jeon Tae-il, to know that there is a means to change reality, the attitude of life changed. Why is reinstatement so desperate… .” The story goes back 40 years. “The victims of the’shit incident’ that I also encountered only with articles and books, and those fired workers of Dongil Textile, which are legends of the 70s, held a press conference to support my reinstatement. Imitate Wonpung, control data and fired workers. You say something like this. ‘We haven’t been able to return to work until 40 years have passed. Kim Jin-suk hopes that he will solve the problem.’ They are all over seventy already. All the workplaces where I was working are disappearing. Even so, they still eagerly want to return to work.” Soon I moved on to a question-type answer. “What is reinstatement to them? I knew their hearts very well. Reinstatement is the most desperate wish of my life, but it’s not my own reinstatement, the times when they had to fight with shit, to declare that such an unfair and unjust era is over and that it is no longer acceptable, I think that’s their and my reinstatement. I do.”
―All of the fired workers in the 70s you mentioned are women. So is Kim Map.
“Is it a coincidence? When all but me were reinstated in 2003, a statement came out criticizing women’s organizations as’discrimination against women’. It was unfamiliar and I read it again and again. Because I am a woman, I don’t have a family, I’m not the head of a family, I think there was a side that neglected my existence even in the union. Male comrades, who were union leaders at the time, are telling me their regrets and feelings of debt these days.”
―I have suffered industrial accidents several times, and I have seen many miserable deaths at work. When it comes to industrial accidents, I think the times have changed.
“It was a few days ago. The mother of the late Tae-gyu Kim, who died in a construction site in 2019, comes to her and gives her a money bag. No matter how many times I refused, I received countless times, saying,’Is it because I have little money?’, but it was written on the envelope like this. ‘The late Kim Tae-gyu’s mother’. How would a mother feel when she puts a’go’ character in front of her son’s name. Today, I see Yong-gyun Kim’s mother, and she was too thin.”
―At the beginning of Kim’s walk, they hungered at the National Assembly to enact the severe disaster corporate punishment law.
“You have to fast like that to make even such a rag bill. Moreover, even in the National Assembly, where the Democratic Party occupies an absolute majority, the reality is sad that the breath of capital works like that. Shipyards have many electric shock accidents. I’ve been hit too, but I thought it was fate because I worked with electricity. After being fired, it turned out that if you install a lightning arrester on the welding machine, you will not get an electric shock. It costs 2 million won per unit. It means that the cost of a worker’s death was less than 2 million won. Even today, there was a fatal accident at Hyundai Heavy Industries. Because the cost of workers’ lives is cheap, even now, the absurd and ridiculous deaths do not end.” He had two former and current presidents’comrades’. The relationship was formed by the relationship between the late former President Roh Moo-hyun and President Moon Jae-in, who studied labor law together in Busan, and when he and his colleagues went to prison for free. When former President Roh died in 2009, he recalled in an article entitled,’Dreaming Roh Moo-hyun’s’comrade’,’I was a comrade for a long time, and it was a short time’. In the same article, when two workers of Hanjin Heavy Industries, Kim Joo-ik and Kwak Jae-gyu died in 2003, the words of former President Roh that “the era in which death becomes a means of struggle has passed” was also inscribed with deep regret.
Kim Jin-sook, a leader of the Busan Headquarters of the KCTU (left), arrives in front of the Blue House fountain in Jongno-gu, Seoul on the afternoon of the 7th and demands the reinstatement and honor of the leader Kim, and meets and hugs the deacon who has been fasting for 47 days. Joint coverage photo
―This time, I am walking to ask President Moon Jae-in to reinstate his office. (Jiji Kim exclaimed in front of the Blue House on the 7th, “President Jae-in Moon, can you see me?”) Why does the relationship change each time?
“Actually, I don’t know. So it’s stuffy. I wonder if it’s the person I knew, and why would I go there if I go there. If the power of capital is so strong, and when it rises to a higher position, it will reduce its power, yield to it, self-rationalize it, and it will become an sophistry, and then people will change. I remember saying on Twitter after President Moon was elected,’I hope that even if workers no longer starve, climb to high places, and die, we hope that our will be delivered peacefully and that our voice can be heard.’”
―Can it be said that the President is directly responsible for reinstatement? Moreover, Hanjin Heavy Industries is under court management.
“I think the practical and practical responsibility lies with the chairman of the Korea Development Bank, a creditor bank. However, the largest shareholder of Korea Development Bank is the government. If so, then President Moon Jae-in has the ultimate responsibility.”
―I heard that the chairman of the Korea Development Bank demands that the workers share the pain for reinstatement and wage compensation.
“The current management crisis is 100% of the fault of Chairman Nam-ho Cho and the management who made a mistake in investing in the Subic Shipyard in the Philippines. (In management) Is it correct to ask innocent workers to share the pain without asking any responsibility if you shake your hand? Does it make sense to say that it is a labor-respecting government, and to sell it to speculative capital without asking a single word to workers?”
― Still, isn’t it that companies can keep their jobs when they live?
“At least, the workers of Hanjin Heavy Industries & Construction have sufficient technical skills. There is no shipyard that is capable of making special ships and warships as competent as we are. The LNG ship was also the first place to start. I don’t just focus on cutting people, but I think that it can become a sustainable company as long as the right management comes in.”
Kim’s march is over. When asked at the time of the interview,’What would you do if there was no change in the attitudes of the company and the KDB side,’ he replied, “I will make a different plan and continue with anything.” He said his dream after reinstatement was’cultivating a garden.’
“A while ago, when I said’I like sweet potatoes’ on a live internet broadcast, sweet potatoes came from all over the country. Yesterday’s broadcast said, “I like real estate.” Will there be my garden all over the country soon?”
If he reinstates and retires and is able to work in the garden, would it be a sign that he is taking a big step toward an era in which workers are not unfairly fired, workers’ lives are not cheaper than machines, and working hours are reduced so that anyone can work in the garden? .
Editorial Writer Ahn Young-chun [email protected]