ANTI GOVERNMENT AND ANTI WAR STRUGGLE
Anti-war and anti-government struggle
Anti-war pro-peace organizations of south Korea including the People for Peace and Reunification and the Citizens’ Measure Committee against the Expansion of the Mugeonri Training Field held the 99th rally for peace and disarmament in front of the building of the puppet defense ministry on March 30. Speakers there disclosed that the US army has stockpiled enormous amount of killing weapons as war reverse supplies in south Korea. They highlighted the dangerousness of the weapons of mass destruction stockpiled by the US for a war of aggression against the north and condemned the crimes of the US which unreservedly used napalm and germ bombs during the past Korean War. The Youth and Students Solidarity for Implementing the June 15 Joint Declaration published a resolution on March 27 under the title “Let us bring earlier the era of the national prosperity by realizing peace and judging the dictatorship”. Noting that the south Korean society is groaning under the dictatorship of the current regime, the resolution deplored that the people's living is ruined and the freedom of idea, conscience and expression are violated owing to its anti-people misrule. It also indicated that because of the anti-reunification forces’ moves the inter-Korean cooperation and exchange are interrupted and the pain of national division is not ceased yet. It called upon all progressive forces to get united to achieve the victory without fail in the upcoming local elections, asserting that the shortcut to the peace and reunification is to judge the current regime. On March 20, the “National Public Employees Trade Union” was officially inaugurated as the result of the protracted painstaking efforts. However, the south Korean authorities defined its formation “illegal”, and ordered to dismiss 18 members of the union and sternly punish 400 others. In this regard, the south Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, the Solidarity for Progress, the Participatory Democracy and other organizations denounced the authorities’ suppression of the “National Public Employees Trade Union” as a fascist crime, illegal and lawbreaking, aimed at liquidating the progressive forces. Where there are dictatorship and repression there is inevitably a resistance. However the south Korean authorities are wielding power hell-bent on the suppression of the people, they can never stop the just struggle of the south Korean people for independence, democracy and reunification.
Struggle to Gain the Fundamental Rights of Labor
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions with its 10 000 affiliated unionists attending held in Seoul on March 27a rally to announce all-out struggle against the anti-popular misrule of the present regime. Speakers there denounced that all ministries and agencies of the current regime were reduced to a stronghold which tramples down and suppresses the right to existence of workers and other people. While paying lip service to job measures, the government authorities massively dismiss workers, enforce low wages and get hell-bent on repressing the trade unions including the unions of railway workers, construction workers, public employees and teachers, they said. Criticizing that the current regime regards the trade unions as a target of suppression and the people as the object to be randomly trodden down, they asserted that they could not coexist with such ruffians any longer. They stressed that if they hesitate to struggle against the wretched reality of today there could be neither hope for the people nor future of the children. They called on the workers, peasants, youth and students and religionists to judge the current regime without fail. A resolution read out at the rally indicated that the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions declared its launch of an all-out struggle to shatter the regime’s moves of annihilating the trade unions and to gain the fundamental rights of labor. The resolution stressed that the confederation would wage a powerful struggle including a general strike late in April to frustrate the intensive on-going dismissal, oppose the anti-people misrule of the authorities and gain the right to existence. It emphasized that it would turn the upcoming June local elections to an occasion to judge the current regime and win victory without fail in firm solidarity with all anti-government forces.
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