BY IGGY KIM
SEOUL — Delegates attending the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions' 19th congress met at the Olympic Park wrestling stadium here on January 18 to elect a new leadership. While KCTU congresses meet each year, a new leadership is elected every third year.
In 1998, the "centre" candidates, Dan Byung-ho and Ee Soo-ho, won the positions of chairperson and general secretary, the most important positions in the confederation. Since then, the KCTU has faced its greatest tests in its five-year history, as the Kim Dae-jung regime has combined its harsh neoliberal economic offensive with a strategy of worker-management cooperation. Carrots have been selectively dangled and the stick applied more discriminatingly than under any previous regime.
The KCTU under the reformist Dan leadership has been marked by vacillations, inaction and confusion. It presided over a series of ineffectual and poorly mobilised struggles. In the last six months, the Dan leadership has been severely criticised by the mass of rank and file workers and come under great pressure.
This was reflected in the votes for the KCTU leadership. In the primary vote, the Dan candidates for chairperson and general secretary gained a mere 31.3%, while 42.4% of delegates' votes went to the nationalist candidates. The rank and file slate, which had the support of the left, won 25.8%.
With no clear majority for any team, a second round was necessary. At this point, the number of delegates voting was reduced to 742, as 41 left-wing delegates withdrew. Of the remaining 161 left votes, 117 gave their second vote to the Dan ticket to prevent the nationalists — regarded as the right-wing — from winning.
While the Dan team beat the nationalists with 362 votes to 357, it again failed to win an absolute majority. In the third round vote, after 108 nationalist delegates withdrew, the Dan candidates were elected with the support of 363 votes from the 634 that were available. The Dan team was reelected on the preference votes of the left delegates.
In the election for the seven KCTU vice-chairpersons, the nationalists won three positions, while the left and centre won one each. The remainder went to independents.
The failure of the rank and file team does not tell the full story. According to Park Seong-In, general secretary of the revolutionary socialist Power of the Working Class, there was a leftward shift by all three teams of candidates.
"Facing mass criticism, which is based on the intensification of the neoliberal offensive, all the candidates sensed a crisis", Park told Green Left Weekly. "We are likely to see the leadership organise real struggles in the short term. Beyond that, the social democratic character of the centrists will more clearly come into play. Nevertheless, there could be a collision between what they are forced to do in the short term and what they'd like to do in the mid- to long-term. A lot depends on the outcome of the struggles this year."
The KCTU remains South Korea's single most organised and mobilised mass movement organisation. It is a direct product of the mass upsurge of the late 1980s.
"The task for the left now is to unite with all the trends and the mass of workers for the struggles that will unfold in the immediate future. it must also concentrate on organising at the workplace level, especially in the main large plants and among the casual workers", said Park. "There is an election for the Hyundai Motors union leadership on February 13, the outcome of which could affect the direction of the wider struggle."