IMF forcing evictions from Korea's lifeboat (fwd)

[Robert Weissman <rob@essential.org>]

The National Post 				Monday, November 16, 1998

WHERE IMF STANDS FOR 'I'M FIRED'

	In South Korea, where being unemployed is considered a total 
	disgrace, and a social safety net does not exist, 8,000 people are 
	losing their jobs daily. Many of them deny their misfortune, others 
	are completely devastated, and some are fighting back. In the third 
	of a series on the crisis in Asia, Peter Goodspeed reports

	Peter Goodspeed

	Choi Jong-In has stared down bandits in Libya and looked war in 
the face at home, but nothing has scared him more than being unemployed. 
	After 22 years as a construction worker for Hyundai Heavy 
Machinery, the mild-mannered, 44-year-old Mr. Choi is suddenly without a 
job, a victim of Asia's international economic turmoil. 
	He doesn't understand what is happening to him or why. But he 
knows he is threatened. The modest middle-class lifestyle he earned for his 
family is fast disappearing along with his life savings. His image as a 
husband and father and head of a family has been irreparably damaged and 
he is being whipsawed by the powerful social and economic forces that are 
totally transforming South Korea. 
	"I was absolutely unprepared for this," Mr. Choi says. "I feel 
cheated. I gave my heart and soul to my job, day and night, for 20 years. 
And this is all I get? I'm dumbfounded. I'm angry. I'm lost." His voice 
quivers with emotion and he squints to hide his pain. 
	Eight thousand people a day are losing their jobs in South Korea. 
And up to 25 of those are committing suicide each day as a result. 
	South Korea's social safety net is paper thin or non-existent. The 
newly unemployed have to rely on their relatives or their savings. When 
those run out there is nothing but homelessness and the odd soup kitchen. 
	In a society built on Confucian principles of self-reliance and hard 
work, unemployment is the ultimate failure and is frequently regarded as a 
total disgrace. "It means you can't care for your family," says Mr. Choi. "It 
means you aren't a good father. It means you are a failure as a man." 
	"Neighbours don't talk about it," he explains. "It's a matter of pride. 
I won't ever talk about it with them. They may think the less of me."
	Yet Asia's great recession has meant an end to South Korea's 
legacy of lifetime employment. 
	When the International Monetary Fund bailed out South Korea last 
December with a $58-billion emergency aid package to prevent the entire 
country from sliding into bankruptcy, it did so at a cost. 
	Demands that Korea reform its economy, refinance its banking 
system, and open its markets are resulting in the most dramatic 
transformation of the country since the end of the Korean War. 
	Unemployment, pay cuts, and a dramatic drop in the standard of 
living of most South Koreans have been the initial impacts of Asia's great 
recession. 
	An economy that boomed for three decades has imploded and will 
shrink by 8% this year. 
	Fourteen of South Korea's merchant banks have failed and been 
closed; five commercial banks have been forcibly merged with other 
institutions; public companies are being privatized and major industries are 
preparing for massive layoffs. 
	In the process, the IMF has become a byword for disaster, in 
Korea. People talk of "the IMF crisis" and measure time as "before IMF" 
or after. 
	Early on in Korea's crisis, as businessmen desperately rushed to 
unload their inventories in order to reduce their debt, they held "IMF 
sales." 
	And with a touch of dark humour that is typical here, some Koreans 
now insist IMF actually stands for "I'm Fired." 
	Unemployment has already reached a record high 7.6% and is 
expected to soar to as much as 12% by early next year, as South Korea's 
leading chaebols or private conglomerates begin to restructure and re-
invent themselves and shed thousands of workers. 
	For decades South Korea's unemployment rate hovered around 2%. 
	Right now, official jobless statistics are suspect because they 
exclude anyone who has worked even just one hour in the week and don't 
count people who have stopped looking for work. 
	On top of that, there are tens of thousands of men across Korea 
who simply refuse to admit they have been laid off. They won't apply for 
their four months worth of unemployment benefits and they try to deceive 
their family, friends, and neighbours by pretending to go to work as usual. 
	In Seoul, many of these "ghost workers" spend the day walking 
wilderness trails in nearby mountains or sitting in city parks drinking rice 
wine. 
	Those who ultimately descend to the ranks of the truly destitute, 
end up at the Seoul railway station, which has become a gathering place for 
about 2,000 jobless, homeless men. 
	"There's nothing worse than having to live in Seoul Station," says 
28-year-old former auto worker Cho Il-young. 
	He knows because that's where he lived for 100 days this spring and 
summer after the small auto parts plant where he worked went bankrupt 
and he ran out of money. 
	"I just had nowhere else to go," he says, explaining that he lost his 
entire life savings at the same time he lost his job, when a friend's
restaurant 
that he had invested in went bankrupt. 
	But Mr. Cho has worked ever since he was 13. When he was 
young, his father died in a car accident and his mother remarried and 
deserted him and a younger brother. 
	Mr. Cho dropped out of school, got a series of factory jobs, and 
cared for his brother. He put the younger man through university as an 
engineer. Now, Mr. Cho is on his own with little hope of finding work. His 
brother has just got work as a work trainee and can't afford to help. 
	After nearly four months of living in and around Seoul Station and 
eating in soup kitchens, Mr. Cho has joined a union and become an activist 
for the unemployed. 
	"In Korea," says Mr. Cho, "if you lose your job, you have only two 
options -- to commit suicide or become a criminal. If you don't have the 
guts to do either, you end up in Seoul Station. That has to change." 
	Under the pressure of Asia's recession Korea's middle class is 
beginning to evaporate like the steam on a cup of hot noodles. Hyundai, 
South Korea's largest and most diversified company has already announced 
plans to lay off at least 20% of its staff. 
	"Korea is a boat in a rough ocean," Chung Mong Gyu, the chairman 
of Hyundai said recently. "There are 10 people on board. But all the people 
cannot survive. We have to throw two people out. 
	"The short-term pain, as difficult as it will be, is a necessary 
precondition if Korean business firms are to restructure and become more 
efficient in the future," Mr. Chung said. 
	But for construction worker Mr. Choi, with a wife, a son in high 
school, his mother and his mother-in-law to care for, being evicted from 
South Korea's lifeboat is a devastating experience. 
	Most Koreans rely on their employers to provide them with 
everything from housing to health insurance, vacation packages, and 
college tuition for their children. 
	Companies are paternalistic and touch every aspect of an employees 
life. 
	When introduced, adult Koreans are likely to mention where they 
work as part of the personal identification process. 
	Before Asia's crisis there was a sense of an unwritten social 
contract between employer and employee in South Korea, one that carried 
certain obligations and responsibilities. 
	So to lose one's job is, in many ways, to lose one's life and most of 
one's social ties. 
	"The idea that your company is part of your family is being 
destroyed," laments Mr. Choi. "When I first joined this company, they said 
this was my lifetime employment and I have done my best and worked my 
hardest for the company because I was going to get my reward in the end. 
Now, I feel betrayed." 
	Mr. Choi joined Hyundai Heavy Machinery immediately after he 
finished his military service. 
	In his 20 years with the company, he spent almost six working 
overseas on oil refinery projects in the United Arab Emirates and Libya. 
And when he worked in Korea, he was frequently away from his small 
four-room apartment on the outskirts of Seoul and was able to get home 
for only two nights each month. 
	Last July, Hyundai announced it was closing its heavy machinery 
company in a bid to restructure its operations and concentrate on its core 
businesses. 
	Mr. Choi and 650 of his colleagues suddenly found themselves out 
of work at a time when unemployment in the South Korean construction 
industry hovers around 80%. 
	But Mr. Choi really has been hit twice, since Korea's economy is 
also going through a massive shift away from heavy industries towards a 
service sector economy with stress being laid on finance and information 
technologies. 
	He has only an elementary education. Still, Mr. Choi is determined 
to fight on. He says he has no choice. Every day he takes the train into the 
centre of Seoul to join 250 of his former fellow employees picketing 
Hyundai's headquarters and the home of its founder Chung Ju-yung. 
	Mr. Choi and his union want Hyundai to find jobs for the heavy 
machinery workers in one of the conglomerate's other construction 
companies. "Everyday, when I travel to the city, I see other men going to 
work," Mr. Choi says. "I see them talking and laughing and I am 
overwhelmed with envy."