South Korean Politics and Elections

Lee Myung-bak’s cancellation of meeting with labor organization causes uproar

Labor groups face growing anxiety over president-elect’s potential disregard for labor community

Hankyoreh, January 29, 2008

President-elect Lee Myung-bak has unilaterally scrapped a plan to meet with representatives of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, one of the nation’s two major umbrella labor organizations. The president-elect’s spokesman says the reason for the cancellation is tied to a disagreement between the president-elect’s transition team and the KCTU about a police investigation of the KCTU leader, saying that it is a matter of “law and order.” The move is seen by many as being typical of Lee’s desire to conduct labor-politics relations based on power, rather than gathering opinions from the labor community or trying to form peaceful labor-management relations. Meanwhile, labor groups and civic organizations are facing growing anxiety over possible conflicts and distrust between the labor community and the incoming administration.

On January 28, Joo Ho-young, Lee’s spokesman, said, “A planned meting with the KCTU was postponed indefinitely because of a disagreement about a police investigation of the KCTU leader.” Ahead of the meeting, Lee’s transition team had requested that Lee Seok-haeng, the leader of the KCTU, be called in for questioning by police about demonstrations that took place last year in protest against free trade negotiations with the United States. “More consultations with the KCTU are needed so that law and order can be maintained in labor-management relations,” Joo added.

A transition team official said, “If Lee, the KCTU leader, agrees to be questioned by the police, the meeting will be arranged again.”

The meeting was scheduled to take place on January 29 at the KCTU’s main office. At the meeting, the KCTU was planning to raise a number of issues, including discrimination against non-regular workers, social polarization and opposition to the incoming administration’s plans to privatize public companies.

In a hastily arranged press conference on January 28, the KCTU leader strongly criticized the president-elect for having canceled the meeting, saying, “The meeting was scrapped after discussions about protocol were completed. This indicates that the incoming administration is aiming to return to the authoritarian rule of the past in which workers’ rights were disregarded. It is unfortunate that the KCTU isn’t treated with as much importance as the alumni association of Korea University,” the leader said. The President-elect is a graduate of Korea University and has frequently participated in alumni association meetings. “We will take hostile countermeasures against this attempt to dismiss the KCTU,” the KCTU leader said.

According to a document outlining the planned meeting between the president-elect and the KCTU, written by the transition team and disclosed by the labor organization, discussion on a set of procedures for how the meeting was to be conducted was deadlocked on January 25, when the transition team demanded that the KCTU leader respond to a police summons.

Woo Moon-sook, a spokesperson for KCTU, said, “Simply summoning the KCTU leader to the police station for questioning is just an excuse, when the president-elect himself has not responded to a summons by special prosecutors. It’s an unacceptable attitude,” Woo said. The president-elect has been under investigation by specially-appointed independent counsel over allegations that he was involved in stock price manipulation in collaboration with his former business partner, as well as a number of other charges.

Meanwhile, the Federation of Korean Trade Unions, a more conservative umbrella labor organization, expressed concern over the cancellation, calling it “unfortunate.” A statement released by the FKTU said: “Given the new administration’s initiatives to revitalize the economy, it is inappropriate for the incoming administration to refuse to hold discussions with the labor community.”

Park Won-seok, an official from the People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, an advocacy group, said, “While President-elect Lee has criticized the peer-to-peer politics of the participatory government (of President Roh Moo-hyun), this cancellation clarifies his will to run the nation solely for the benefit of his supporters.”

In a statement, the Korea Progressive Alliance said: “This is an unfair act because (President-elect Lee) has raised questions about the activities of the KCTU leader, who supported irregular workers at E-Land, while pledging to keep in touch with chaebol owners who have committed crimes.” The E-land dispute occurred last summer before a new labor law was to take effect. The impending implementation of the law, which the government said had been designed to protect temporary workers and provide them with permanent employment after a period of two years, spurred companies to instead lay off thousands of workers in advance of the implementation of the new law on July 1. KCTU was involved in supporting the striking workers, most whom were employed as cashiers.

Kim Dong-won, a professor of business at Korea University, said, “The cancellation may represent the president-elect’s desire to press or dismiss the hard-line KCTU, while embracing the (more moderate) FKTU, which has formed a policy alliance with the transition team. If he sticks with this attitude, harsh confrontations with the labor community will be inevitable.”

Lee Ji-ahn, a deputy spokesperson for the Democratic Labor Party, said, “There are no laborers in the President-elect’s ‘business-friendly’ policies. The administrator of national policy is inciting a labor-management dispute, rather than resolving it.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]

Former Blue House aide offered bribe by Samsung Group

New allegations provide proof of how far conglomerate’s bribery operation went, civic groups say

Hankyoreh, November 20, 2007

A former presidential aide for legal affairs revealed that Samsung Group gave him 5 million won (US$5,400) in cash in January 2004, when he was working for Cheong Wa Dae, or the presidential office otherwise known as the Blue House, but he disclosed that he returned the money to Samsung immediately.

The press conference, in which former presidential aide Lee Yong-chul, 47, launched the latest allegations against Samsung Group, was organized by a coalition of some 60 civic organizations under the name “National Movement to Find Irregularities of Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee.” The coalition includes Lawyers for a Democratic Society and People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, which filed a criminal lawsuit last week against Samsung Chairman Lee and other high-ranking Samsung executives for maintaining slush funds and bribing prosecutors, judges and senior government officials.

Lee’s revelation is gaining attention because it provides additional evidence to support allegations by Kim Yong-cheol, a former chief attorney at Samsung who accused the nation’s largest conglomerate and its chairman of bribing senior prosecutors, politicians and government officials with 5 million to 20 million won each.

In a statement to the coalition, the former presidential aide said, “After I became an aide for legal affairs at Cheong Wa Dae in late 2003 or early 2004, Lee Kyung-hoon, a lawyer from Samsung Electronics’ legal department telephoned me. A little later, I had lunch with him because I had already made his acquaintance. When I met him, Lee asked me whether it would be alright for his company to send me a gift for the Lunar New Year holiday season. I answered ‘okay’ because I thought that it would just be an ordinary gift.”

Lee explained that he came to know Lee Kyung-hoon after he met him in 1996, when he served as a lawyer for the residents of Samsung Apartments in Changdong in the northern part of Seoul. The residents had filed suit for noise and shaking against Samsung Corporation, the builder of a building under construction near the apartment complex. Lee Kyung-hoon worked for Samsung Corporation as a defense lawyer.

On January 16, 2004, Lee Yong-chul was notified by the law firm where he had worked prior to his appointment to the Blue House legal team that a present had arrived. On January 26, the present was delivered to his home. When he opened the gift box, which was packed like a book, he found cash.

“I decided to return the money after taking pictures of it as evidence, because if I had revealed the case at that time, it would have hidden Samsung’s trace of bribery,” Lee said. Lee confessed that he had no courage to fight Samsung alone at the time.

At the press conference, the coalition unveiled the photos of the gift box, which depict five bundles of cash worth one million won each and a document showing who delivered the gift and when. The photos also show that Lee Kyung-hoon’s Samsung Electronics business card was affixed to the box and that there was a Post-it note with the words, “Lee Yong-chul (5),” attached to the wrapping covering the stack of cash.

“In late January, I told Lee Kyung-hoon that I would return the money. And Lee Kyung-hoon said he had no idea that the company would send cash for a gift. Lee Kyung-hoon apologized for several times,” the former presidential aide said.

Lee Yong-chul served as a special legal advisor for then presidential candidate Roh Moo-hyun in November 2002. After Roh was elected, Lee was appointed presidential secretary for public affairs between September and December 2003 and presidential secretary for legal affairs between December 2003 and January 2005. Lee served his final public post as deputy chief of the Defense Acquisition Program Administration until November 2006.

The coalition said, “The revelation by Lee is another piece of solid proof that Kim Yong-cheol’s confession of conscience was not just a claim, but a fact. It also shows that Samsung’s control has reached beyond the prosecution to the center of government power.

“In order to conduct a thorough investigation, we again appeal to lawmakers to enact a law instituting an independent counsel before the regular parliamentary session ends,” they said.

A high-ranking executive at Samsung Group said, “Lee Kyung-hoon, the lawyer who was said to have given money to Lee, the former presidential aide, retired from the company in June 2004 and is now in the U.S.” He added, “At present, we can’t know the exact facts because we don’t have contact with Lee Kyung-hoon.”

In addition, Samsung Electronics said, “After our internal investigation, we have concluded that the company did not make such order.”

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]