The National Federation of Democratic Labor Unions (NFDL) launched a two-week general strike on March 3, local time, under the slogan of "urging the Yoon Seok-hyeol regime to step down".
Why are these people striking?
The cause of the strike isn't complicated: the South Korean government's knee-jerk licking of Japan has led it to lick the wounds of ordinary people, and the economic downturn, coupled with a plummeting real estate market, has led South Koreans to point the finger of blame at Japan's nuclear wastewater discharges. There are many demands from the South Korean people, but they are summarized as follows: stopping Japan from discharging nuclear wastewater, protecting the interests of domestic fishermen, raising the minimum wage, expanding public ****ing health care, abolishing the 69-hour workday, preventing deaths from overwork, and so on.
Yonhap News Agency said the goals of the strike by the Democratic Labor Federation (DLF) include preventing the government from cracking down on labor unions and amending the labor union law, stopping the discharge of nuclear-contaminated water into the sea from Japan, raising the minimum wage and guaranteeing a living wage, abolishing privatization and raising the cost of public ****, reinforcing the government's responsibility, expanding the benefits of public **** medical treatment and care, preventing the deaths of workers due to overwork, and increasing the penalties for companies in major disasters, as well as guaranteeing the freedom of speech and assembly, and so on. Freedom of speech and demonstration, etc.
Judging from these slogans, the purpose of the strike in South Korea is highly targeted at Yun Seok-yul. The current South Korean economy is in the doldrums, many ordinary people's lives are not guaranteed, and China has always been South Korea's largest trade partner, but with Yin Seok-yue bent on falling back to the United States, the policy on China has declined sharply, seriously affecting the trade cooperation between the two countries. In addition. On the country of Japan, in order to curry favor with Japan, Yoon Seok-yue took experts to Japan's Fukushima nuclear power plant field survey, to clear the obstacles for Japan's nuclear wastewater discharge plan to the sea.
The strike was so loud that it caused a huge controversy.
The general strike by the Korean General Workers' Union (KGWU) affected a number of industries, especially manufacturing and services. Unions in many key sectors participated in the strike, causing disruptions to business production and hardship to the economy. Factory shutdowns, transportation disruptions and work stoppages at hospitals and service organizations have had a serious impact on people's lives and economic activities.
Korean police are standing by. In view of the Democratic Labor Federation will be held from 6 to 15 this month in the Seoul metropolitan area 4 times more than 10,000 people to participate in large-scale rallies, it was decided to put about 9,300 police force to deal with a strict response. Seoul police on the 3rd banned some of the Democratic Labor Federation's rallies and marches from 5-8 p.m. that day, citing the need to minimize inconvenience to the public. Seoul police said it will take a strict approach to respond to violations such as violence, occupying roads and malicious noise-making.
It may seem like a plain and simple demand from the working class, but the South Korean government is presumably incapable of doing any of it.
Let's start with the matter of Japan's nuclear wastewater discharge into the sea. In fact, since 2011, the second month of the Fukushima nuclear leak, Japan's TEPCO has been discharging it surreptitiously into the Pacific Ocean. Tens of thousands of tons of nuclear wastewater, the first to find out was South Korea. They noted that the radioactive elements in the nuclear wastewater exceeded the standard by an average of several hundred times, and that the radiation levels in certain test samples even exceeded the safety standard by tens of thousands of times. For a while, South Korean experts led the media to beat up on Japan, and then-President Moon Jae-in cited the interlude, firmly opposed to Japan's sewage discharge, and even had to settle this old score of the Japanese war period, when men were captured to dig for coal and women were dragged away for comfort. Since then, Japan low-profile a lot, but sneaky sewage behavior is not a moment to stop, a conservative estimate of at least five discharges of nuclear wastewater, each time by the South Korean media scolded is a dog's blood.
The change came with the rise of the Yoon Seok-yul administration. In March of this year, South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol announced that he would pay back the war reparations of World War II on behalf of Japan, and was also openly bowing to the Japanese flag. Yoon Seok-yeol's action directly cleared Japan's name, and the Japanese government not only didn't have to apologize to the Korean people, but didn't even have to pay for the reparations.
Then he agreed to allow Japanese sewage into the sea despite domestic pressure, which galvanized some Koreans' national sentiments. Some people took to the streets at the time to demand that Yoon Seok-yul step down, except that most people were not yet affected, so the protests had a very limited effect. But with the completion of the sewage undersea tunnel, the Korean people finally could not sit still, they began to frantically rush to buy salt and seafood, only seven days to push up the price of sea salt by more than 27%, with the actual action of the interpretation of the psychological fear of the biochemical crisis.
Yoon Seok-yul's government has been politically unwise since it came to power, offending all the neighbors around it.
In order to target China, several high-ranking South Korean officials even physically attacked the Chinese ambassador. Earlier, when our ambassador to South Korea met with Lee Jae-myung, head of South Korea's *** Tongdemocratic Party, he said:
Thirty years ago there were people who sang China's praises and threw out the so-called theory of China's collapse, and 30 years later, China proved those people's mistakes with real achievements, and those who are betting on China's loss now will surely regret it in the future.
The original intention was to hope that the South Korean government can be free from outside interference in dealing with China, the United States is trying its best to suppress China, South Korea should take a good look at the situation, but in the eyes of South Korean officials turned out to be in the distortion of the facts. Subsequently, including South Korean President Yun Seok-hyeol, South Korean Prime Minister Han Deok-joo and the South Korean foreign minister issued a strong condemnation, and even some South Korean lawmakers claimed that they want to expel the Chinese ambassador from the country, which are all ridiculous moves Yun Seok-hyeol made in order to curry favor with Biden.
Is it really possible for Yoon Seok-yuet to sit on the presidential throne by pushing China-South Korea relations into harm's way despite public opinion? What's even more ironic is that Yoon Seok-yul, who did a bad job himself, actually criticized the previous president, Moon Jae-in, in public. Just as 400,000 people were pushing for the palace, Moon Jae-in took the opportunity to strike back smoothly, sending out an article stating his policy on the peninsula, and he added that peace at the moment is the most needed situation on the peninsula at the moment, implicitly criticizing Yoon Seok-hyup's policies without naming him, which has posed a hidden danger to both South Korea's economy and national security. Looking at the current state of the South Korean public, it seems that this wave of Moon Jae-in has won again.
Yoon Seok-yul's pro-U.S. and anti-China policies have had their own consequences, and South Korea's GDP has been pushed out of the top ten.
"South Korea is one of the world's top 10 economic powers" is a favorite label of top South Korean government officials and experts. Unfortunately, South Korea is now getting farther and farther away from the "top 10". 12, the Bank of Korea announced the country's nominal gross domestic product (GDP) and other data. According to the market exchange rate on that day, South Korea's GDP in 2022 will be 1.67 trillion U.S. dollars, slipping three places from the previous 10th place to 13th in the world.
Some analysts say the strike issue may be just the first problem facing the Yoon Seok-yul government, which may face an even bigger crisis as it blindly follows U.S. policy without regard for national interests and the rights of the people are completely disregarded.