Protest against martial law in South Korea surrounds a military armoured truck
Protests have erupted in South Korea against the right wing president’s coup.
Yoon Suk Yeol declared martial law on Tuesday night in a vicious crackdown on the left, labour movements and “anti-state elements”. He announced the measure under the guise of attacking “shameless pro-North Korean” elements.
South Korea’s national assembly swiftly voted to block the declaration of martial law, setting up a confrontation between MPs and the head of state. According to the country’s constitution, a parliamentary vote can reverse such a presidential move.
But the defence ministry swiftly declared that only the the president could lift martial law.
Thousands of protesters have gathered outside of parliament, and at times tried to enter the parliamentary building, only to be stopped by riot police. They chanted, “Lift martial law, protest democracy,” and, “Impeach president Yoon Suk Yeol.”
One person on the protest told Socialist Worker, “It’s 2am here—the emergency protest is ongoing for about 3hrs and it’s getting bigger and bigger.
“The army’s armoured truck came to the National Assembly, but the protesters surrounded it and blocked it so it can’t move an inch.”
Worker’ Solidarity, a revolutionary socialist organisation in South Korea, posted on social media, “Yoon-Seok-Yeol declares martial law. Let’s overthrow Yoon Seok-Yeol.
“The KCTU, the Korean trade union federation, should immediately order a general strike.”
The martial law declaration bans “all political activities, including those of the National Assembly, local councils, political parties” and demonstrations.
It adds that “all media and publications will be subject to the control of the Martial Law Command”. It also prohibits any strikes, work stoppages and protests that “incite social unrest” and demanded that media workers on strike have 48 hours to return to work or face punishment.
The move is a political gambit by the president to try and rally right wing forces behind him at a time when he is under attack from the left.
Since the Democratic Alliance won the general election, Yoon Suk Yeol has struggled to pass any of his legislative agenda. Instead, he’s been reduced to desperately vetoing any bills that the opposition had been passing. He and the opposition have been stuck in a battle over the budget.
And Yoon Suk Yeol has been hit by a number of scandals recently, including a corruption scandal with his wife.
Just last week, the opposition voted to cut almost £2 billion from his proposed 2025 budget and moved to impeach cabinet members for failing to investigate the corruption around the president.
In parliament, with 190 of its 300 MPs present, all 190 voted through a motion requiring the martial law to be lifted.
In justifying the martial law declaration, Yoon Suk Yeol claimed, “Our national assembly has become a haven for criminals, a den of legislative dictatorship that seeks to paralyse the judicial and administrative systems and overturn our liberal democratic order.”
He went on to label the opposition as “anti-state forces intent on overthrowing the regime”. He is mobilising Cold War language to try and bolster his authority and carry out attacks on the left.
The left must respond—trade unions should call strikes and working class people take to the streets. And they shouldn’t be reigned in by the Democratic Party, the social liberal party that dominates the opposition.
Instead, the moment should be used as an explosion of resistance against the broken system that Yoon Suk Yeol embodies.
The limits of Labour’s Employment Rights Bill
Labour’s Employment Rights Bill isn’t on the side of workers (Photo: flickr/Keir Starmer)
Labour’s Employment Rights Bill, which is currently making its way through parliament, is fairly extensive and should make employment lawyers busier than they’ve been for a while. But it isn’t necessarily comprehensive.
A number of measures are also welcome, especially after the attacks of the Tory years. Top of this list is the repealing of one of the the biggest barriers the Tories put in the way of effective industrial action—the Trade Union Act of 2016.
Here, the Bill proposes that a simple majority will be enough for a valid yes vote in a strike ballot, instead of the 50 percent turnout threshold required by the Tory rules.
The Bill will make union recognition easier in several ways. It could strengthen measures aimed at stopping bosses undermining workers figthing for union recognition. This includes bosses using large-scale recruitment to scupper recognition campaigns.
That’s what Amazon did when it brought in 1,300 new workers to dilute the GMB union’s membership, ending any recognition bid for the moment.
Other elements of the Bill aim to make it harder for employers to impose zero hours contracts. And a new requirement for bosses to draw up Equality Action Plans, showing how they intend to reduce gender and other pay gaps, also seems promising.
But much of the Bill brings to mind what the great Irish satirist Jonathan Swift said about the law— or, more precisely, the loopholes in the law.
“Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let hornets and wasps break through,” he wrote.
The Bill’s main weaknesses lie here—and in what it doesn’t cover. A widely trailed promise to introduce electronic balloting is missing. Instead the government has promised a “round table” with various experts.
But this sounds like kicking it into the long grass, presumably for fear that it would actually make organising industrial action easier.
The Bill also includes concessions to bosses. In particular, Labour has weakened a move to make unfair dismissal a “right from day one” rather than the present two years.
Instead, the Bill includes a “light touch” procedure for dismissals during an “initial period” which could be as long as nine months.
Socialists see unions places where workers can learn to fight for a better world. In contrast, Labour regards the main role of unions as “negotiation and dispute resolution”—in the words of an accompanying document to the bill.
Tellingly, the government makes clear that it isn’t repealing legislation limiting unofficial industrial action because it fears more would take place. But this is how the campaign for union recognition at Amazon began, with an unofficial walkout over pay in August 2022.
Unofficial and solidarity action—when workers strike in solidarity with another group—was the sort of activity that built the trade union movement in the first place. And strong shopfloor organisation made Britain a slightly more equal place in the 1970s, before the Tories began their assault on organised labour.
The Employment Rights Bill ends some of the worst restrictions on workers’ organisation imposed by the Tories, but it also shows the limits of Labour’s vision.
It doesn’t go far enough.
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