Networking for East Asian Union

Last week(Feb 8, 2007), Kim Youngkon and Kim Donghae (husband and wife couple), visited Hong Kong to network with local worker organizations for consolidating East Asian workers solidarity.

I had not prepared for the chat as I had not heard of Mr and Mrs Kim's visit before and I had little background about their trip. After learning their critique of labour movement and their proposal for East Asia labour Union, I decided to develop the informal chat into this interview.

Kim Youngkon is now a lecturer in University. In 1972, he left his study and became an air conditioner worker (underground labour activist) until 1987, when the military government had given way to civil government. Since then, he worked in labour organization as activist for 10 years.

In 1997, he started a book project: History of Korea Workers and its Future. He spent 8 years for the 1,840 pages book. In 2005, he became a lecturer in Korea University.

Kim Donghae is also a labour activist. She is now an irregular lecturer in University and devotes most of her time organizing irregular University workers fighting for proper labour protection under the higher education law.

Kim Youngkon has a personal website (he calls it cafe), in which he explains: Korean government set up free trade zone in Korea and East Asian FTA will come soon, so to investigate the Korean, Japanese, Chinese and other nation's migrant worker's working condition and solidarity is urgent work. For this job, I open this Cafe in Seoul. At this Cafe, We can use Korean, Japanese, Chinese and English.

Indeed, a major objective of Kim's visit to Hong Kong was to vitalize the Asian Pacific Workers Solidarity Links (APWSL). It was founded in 1981 with the support from the Asian Cultural Forum on Development (ACFOD) and became independent in 1996. The organization has a labour information sharing platform at labourasia.net. It is a multi-lingual site, where labour organizations from different countries can upload news and information in their own language and share with others in English.

There are 16 countries from the Asia Pacific in the network. However, apart from Korea and Japan, most of the network members, including Hong Kong, have become inactive. The latest article from Hong Kong was dated in Aug 2006.

Kim Youngkon speaks some English, and Kim Donghae speaks some Putonghua. Our communication went slowly, shifting between English and Chinese, with Kim Youngkon's English handout. Sometimes we have to write and draw. I explained the RSS function and the potentials for interlocals and laborasia.net to get connected. Mr. Kim explained about his East Asia Union concept.

He hoped that I could link up with workers' websites in Hong Kong as he believed that popular citizen media can help to connect social concerns with labour agenda. "A major set back of labour movement is that it has abandoned social reform agenda. In Western Europe, since the 1969 May revolution, the workers' movement lost its social dimension. For South Korea, we have given up social agenda since 1995. Our concerns are now mainly on workers' welfare, neglecting migrants and irregular workers who are not unionized." According to Kim's paper outline, the Korean total workforce in 2005 consisted of 55% and their wage is 70% of regular workers. And only 30% of irregular workers enjoy basic labour protection, such as health insurance.

Even though I agreed with his analysis, I explained to him that it is very difficult to work with labour organizations because they have already developed their own routinely concerns. Kim Youngkon insisted that it was a matter of articulation, issues like education, environment, living (food, cloth, and housing), etc. connected with workers. Kim Donghae also explained that university teachers and students had to help making the connection. Of course, I understand that and agree with that... I still have a "but" in my mind.

Another momentum for Mr. Kim to network with East Asian workers organizations is related to the development of Transnational Corporation. Both Japan and Korea want to help solving the TNC problems (especially in the area of industrial safety, working hours and minimum wage) in Asia, in particular China.

In Hong Kong, we tend to think within the framework of what is possible and impossible, rather than what is right or wrong to do. Such kind of pragmatism has not only frame our government, also, to a large extend, our social and political movement. Looking at the grey hair couple, walking through the most tedious part of the Korean history, still having energy to overcome the distance and language barriers for doing what they believe in, more and more I believe that we have to unlearn the "possible-impossible" rationale through our praxis.