From: "Curtis Price" <cansv-AT-igc.apc.org>
Date:          Mon, 13 Jan 1997 07:12:53 +0000
Subject:       (Fwd) [66] STRIKING KOREAN WORKER SETS HIMSELF ABLAZE


------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date:          Fri, 10 Jan 1997 18:14:40 -0500
From:          NewsHound-AT-sjmercury.com (NewsHound)

Subject:       [66] STRIKING KOREAN WORKER SETS HIMSELF ABLAZE

Selected by your NewsHound profile entitled "RIOTS". The selectivity score was 
66 out of 100.

Striking Korean worker sets himself ablaze
BY SANG-HUN CHOE

Associated Press

SEOUL, South Korea -- A striking auto worker set himself on fire today in an 
apparent suicide attempt, as courts approved arrest warrants for the leaders of 
the nationwide labor protest.

The government vowed to end the 16-day-old strike, and prosecutors planned to 
send police to arrest union leaders holed up in a Seoul cathedral and factories 
in three provincial cities.

Supporting the government's hard-line policy, Hyundai Motors Co., the nation's 
No. 1 carmaker, said today that it had shut its plant indefinitely and would 
block union workers from entering it.

The outlawed labor group leading the protests has already warned that such 
actions would trigger more strikes, hiefs to show support. Hundreds of riot 
police later guided the marching protesters around the building. No clashes or 
arrests were reported.

Kwon Young-gil, a former journalist now leading the strikes, said he would 
resist any police attempt to arrest him. He and six other union leaders are 
staging a sit-in in a plastic tent on the grounds of Seoul's Roman Catholic 
Myongdong Cathedral.

Thirteen other leaders representing auto, metal and hospital unions barricaded 
themselves in their work sites. Past police attempts to arrest union leaders 
often resulted in violent clashes.

``If authorities dare use law enforcement forces to crush union leadership, we 
will launch full-blown general strikes with all our resources,'' said Kwon, 55, 
chairman of the Confederation of Trade Unions, which claims to have 500,000 
members, many in the nation's major export plants.

Thousands of militant workers guarded the cathedral in preparation for a 
possible police raid. The red-brick building often provided sanctuary for 
dissidents during the nation's past military rule.

Workers started the strikes Dec. 26, when President Kim Young-sam's ruling party
 pushed a new labor law through Parliament in a secretive session.

They demand that Kim rescind the law, which gives management greater freedom to 
lay off employees, lengthen working hours and hire substitutes.

The government ran newspaper ads defending the law, saying it would help pull 
the economy out of its worst downturn in years.

The Labor Ministry said only 53,400 workers were on strike Thursday. But union 
leaders said 200,000 workers were still striking and thousands would join next 
week.


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