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214 S H I P B U I L D I N G F O R T H E W O R L D M A R K E T The democratization of the union did not come easily, however, with a single strike. The newly elected union leadership, led by Yi T’aedŭk, took a conciliatory stance toward the company, ignoring the rank-and-file demand for reinstatement of Kim Chinsuk and two other workers fired in 1986. Activist workers organized a small group, known as the Evergreen Society, and worked hard to gain the trust of their fellow workers. Pak Ch’angsu, a member of the Evergreen Society, recalled that he had felt betrayed by the union when he heard union officers loudly discussing what to eat for lunch while he and others were staging a hunger strike near the union office in April 1988 to demand the reinstatement of fired workers.52 Finally, in July 1990, Pak Ch’angsu won the union presidency with overwhelming support, garnering 90.85 percent of the vote.53 Following what has become known as the Great Workers’ Struggle of 1987, shipbuilding workers came to occupy a central place in the newly empowered autonomous union movement. The Hanjin Heavy Industries (formerly the KSEC) Union under Pak Ch’angsu, along with Hyundai and Daewoo shipbuilding unions, emerged as a leading force in this movement. The Hanjin Union actively participated in organizing the Alliance of Large-Firm Trade Unions (the Taegiŏp Yŏndae Hoeŭi; hereafter, the Yŏndae Hoeŭi) and the National Congress of Trade Unions (the Chŏn’guk Nodong Chohap Hyŏbŭihoe; hereafter, the Chŏnnohyŏp or the NCTU), a precursor to the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) as the national center for the anti-FKTU, “democratic” (minju) unions. On February 11, 1991, Pak was arrested with two other union officials after attending a meeting of the Yŏndae Hoeŭi on the strike being waged by Daewoo shipyard workers.54 The charge was that they violated the notorious article inserted in the revised labor laws of 1980 against intervention in labor disputes by a “third-party” that was not involved directly in the dispute between a union and its company. The law aimed at preventing the possibility of solidarity strikes that might paralyze industries and sought to stifle the growth of anti-FKTU organizational efforts.55 Pak’s crime, in other words, was that he had acted in support of another union’s collective action. After about three months of incarceration and interrogation, Pak was suddenly moved to a hospital on May 4, 1991, and died there two days later. The union launched a sit-in strike in protest, and thousands of workers, citizens, and students held protest rallies throughout May and June. Twenty thousand people attended an “All-Korean Workers’ Funeral” held for him in Pusan on June 30. The Roh Tae Woo government’s claim that Pak’s death was caused by a suicide attempt when Pak jumped out of the window in his hospital room did not find a sympathetic audience. Many labor activists believed that he was tortured to S H I P B U I L D I N G F O R T H E W O R L D M A R K E T 215 death by the KCIA, whose agents were at the time pressuring him to withdraw from the NCTU. His name was added to a long list of victims of “suspicious death” at the hands of the KCIA, the police, and the military.56 Among Hanjin Heavy Industries (KSEC) unionists, Pak is often called “our eternal president.” His legacy of commitment to labor solidarity and democracy deeply etched its place on the Hanjin unionists’ collective memory. The union has kept the memory of his sacrifice alive, and the union’s reputation as being one of the most militant and democratic unions in the post-1987 union movement in South Korea remains strong today. THE LEGACY OF THE 1960S KSEC UNION MOVEMENT How much did the KSEC union movement of the 1960s contribute to the rise of the new militant union movement in the 1980s? Given the rapid turnover at the KSEC yard in the 1970s and 1980s, and the limited nature of the sources available to investigators at this time, it is difficult to establish direct links between the KSEC union movement of the late 1960s and the labor mobilization of the mid1980s...

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