Brace Yourself for Labor Unrest (Unless You Own Slaves)

The strike season is starting.

While still living in Korea, I had the inspiration for a new business model, “Demo Land.”  Your entrance fee of just W30,000 would cover equipment rental (signs, drums, headbands, riot shields, tear gas, fire bombs), bail, and E.R. treatment.  Great fun for those who mainly do it for the entertainment of it all, which seems to be most, with an occasional legitimate grievance to be found in there somewhere.  I’d put it somewhere near Yangjae, for easy subway access.
Oddly enough, though, actual slave labor isn’t on this year’s agenda and, South Korea’s corporate establishment is even fielding candidates to support the policies behind it.  Labor and management may fight to the bitter end over temporary workers, the FTA, and demands for pay hikes, but the entire establishment speaks with one voice on outsourcing South Korea’s manufacturing jobs to a high-tech forced-labor camp: “Arbeit Macht Frei.”  As if that were some kind of justification.
Someone tell the United Nations!