What Was Removed from the Agenda and What Did Not Disappear
Yesterday I wrote that city bus workers would stop from the first bus on the 16th. That was overturned. The negotiation was settled at 1:25 a.m., they agreed to a 3.2 percent wage increase for 2026, and the union withdrew the strike. The first bus runs normally. Let us put the numbers precisely. The union's initial demand was 7.85 percent, and the outcome of last January's strike was 2.9 percent. In eight months, they gained 0.3 percentage points more. And the real issue — the standard for calculating ordinary wages, whether 176 hours or 230 hours — was not concluded. It was pushed to the end of the year. Being pushed back and being resolved are different. The standard by which a worker determines their own hourly rate has not yet been set, and that unresolved state itself becomes the starting point of the next negotiation. If what was gained after a 12-hour overnight session is 3.2 percent, then the workers this time did not fail to stop — they could have stopped but chose not to. The basis for that choice was in the union's hands, but the conditions of the choice were not.
During the same period, the Hormuz deployment situation moved. On the 17th, the deployment was dropped from the agenda of the NSC Standing Committee. The government had initially planned to discuss the deployment issue without reaching a conclusion, but changed its policy to not even put it on the agenda, considering the trend of domestic public opinion and the schedule of the South Korea-U.S. foreign ministers' meeting. The Blue House only replied that it could not specifically confirm matters related to the NSC. But there is more than one way to read this change. One reading is that the government slowed down out of awareness of public opinion. Another is that it did not postpone the decision but moved the timing of the decision. President Lee Jae-myung's press conference is scheduled for the 18th, and on the same day Foreign Minister Cho Hyun will meet Secretary of State Rubio in Washington. And the 18th is also the point at which the announcement of South Korea's first U.S. investment project is expected. Look at the order. The president first states his position on the deployment, the foreign minister conveys that position to the United States, and then government discussions continue. In this order, the deployment was not removed from the agenda; rather, the president's statement and the minister's negotiations with the U.S. were placed ahead of the public procedures of the National Assembly and the NSC. The procedure did not disappear; the entrance to the procedure changed.
There is one more number that defines this situation. The positive evaluation of state affairs fell to 33.8 percent, declining for nine consecutive weeks and hitting a new low, while the negative evaluation is 63.3 percent. Party approval ratings flipped, with the Democratic Party at 36.1 percent and the People Power Party at 42.1 percent. Among those aged 18 to 29, positive evaluation fell from 28.8 percent to 18.6 percent, a drop of 10.2 percentage points in a single week. We cannot simply pass over the fact that this number coincides with the withdrawal of the deployment agenda item. Deployment is a matter of young people offering their bodies, and U.S. investment is a matter of young people's wages and jobs being pledged as collateral against the future. The fact that the approval rating collapsed first precisely in that youth bracket tells us that the decision to drop the deployment agenda item was not a retreat before public opinion but a retreat at the point where public opinion was collapsing. What the government protected was not anti-deployment public opinion but its own political base. That should not be called a voluntary concession.
And above all of this is the oil price. Brent crude is at 108 dollars, West Texas at around 104. The won-dollar exchange rate rose from around 1,340 won to 1,364 won during this period, and went as high as 1,372 won intraday. I am not writing these numbers as investment records. I am writing how this chain descends upon workers. When crude oil rises, bus companies' fuel costs rise, and when the exchange rate rises, the cost of energy and raw materials bought in dollars rises further in won terms. That increase moves the subsidy standard in the semi-public management settlement, and that standard in turn returns as pressure in the next wage negotiation. Between the point where bus workers pushed the ordinary wage standard to the end of the year, the point where ships take aim in Hormuz, and the point where the exchange rate stands at 1,364 won, there is only one rule. The rule that when costs rise, the cost is deducted from wages. While workers received 3.2 percent and passed ordinary wages to the end of the year, the cost of the world they live in rose faster than that.
There is a principle I gained from the card news work during this period. If you put the rebuttal first, it becomes a sermon; if you put the language of the ruling power first, the reader judges for themselves. So next to the Blue House statement that "nothing has been decided," I placed side by side the same institution's statement calling the dispatch of an investigation team "part of the review process." Same time, same institution, two sentences. If nothing has been decided, what did they send people to confirm? The enemy's language comes from the enemy's mouth, and merely placing it side by side reveals the contradiction. What I revised many times in this work was not the style but the arrangement. Do not put abstract nouns as the subject; put people as the subject. Not "the chaebol's monopoly segments the labor market" but "a person earning 2 million won a month and a person earning 6 million won a month work at the same company." Do not assert the connection first; accumulate scenes. A name attaches to an experience the reader has already lived, not before the experience.
In this conversation, the language problem revealed itself on two levels. One is anti-monopoly, the other is class. Anti-monopoly is a word not yet translated. You just need to show workers how chaebol reform connects to their wages. But class does not work that way. That word has already been contaminated twice. Once by anti-communism, becoming North Korea, and once more by depoliticization, becoming ideology. It was not disappeared; it was forbidden. So in the card news we decided not to use that word. Not even on a single card. Instead we decided to use the sentences workers actually say. "We are different from those people," "We are not people of the same company as the prime contractor's employees," "No matter how long I work, I can never get to that position." All of these sentences are sentences of class relations. Only the word is missing. The relation is alive. A word being forbidden and a relation being absent are different. And the reason this distinction matters is that the moment you acknowledge this asymmetry is a product of the division system, the problem of reclaiming the language becomes the same as the problem of dealing with the division system. Western European workers use that word comfortably. South Korean workers cannot. This asymmetry is a product of the division system, and the National Security Act is its enforcement apparatus.
Here the heaviest judgment of this period came out. In the last card of the card news, I corrected the sentence I had first placed — "We have a name for this" — as a trap. If you actually confront that name, it can be translated in the prosecution's hands as sympathy for North Korea. I read the case law directly. The 2006 Seoul Central District Court ruling did not take issue with the defendant's statements themselves. It took issue with the fact that statements such as "withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea" and "the United States is an aggressor" overlapped in wording with what North Korea put forward as a precondition for its own unification plan. In other words, what Article 7 of the National Security Act actually examines is not the truth of the expression but how much that expression overlaps with North Korea's official position. So expressions that overlap with the wording North Korea uses to define South Korea are dangerous. The moment the wording overlaps, it becomes subject to examination. On the other hand, the sentence "A relationship you cannot refuse is not an alliance" is different. This refutes, within the government's own language, the logical conditions of what the government itself calls an alliance. It overlaps with no North Korean document. If freedom of expression is examined by whether wording matches, then abolishing that law and reclaiming in our language the wording that law forbade are the same task. Right now in this land, certain slogans become pro-North the moment you say them. The day those slogans become our words is after abolition.
Let me make one thing clear about my position. What I confirmed from source texts during this period is the strike withdrawal and 3.2 percent, the deferral of ordinary wages to the end of the year, the exclusion of deployment from the NSC agenda on the 17th, the investigation team's return on September 10, the two schedules on the 18th, the Realmeter figures, and oil prices and the exchange rate. I read and cited the case law from the source text. What I could not confirm, I left as unconfirmed. The Blue House neither officially denied nor confirmed the NSC agenda, and the report of the agenda's exclusion was conveyed as "it is known." Removing something from the agenda and canceling the bill are different. Deployment awaits the procedure of National Assembly consent, the U.S. investment is expected to be announced on the 18th, and ordinary wages have been pushed to the end of the year. What disappeared during this period is not the demand but the order in which the demand arrives. Changing the order is not a technique for eliminating the demand but a technique for digesting it. So what we must ask now is not whether deployment happened or not. It is whether, when the three arrive at once, we can read those three as a single bill.
During the same period, the Hormuz deployment situation moved. On the 17th, the deployment was dropped from the agenda of the NSC Standing Committee. The government had initially planned to discuss the deployment issue without reaching a conclusion, but changed its policy to not even put it on the agenda, considering the trend of domestic public opinion and the schedule of the South Korea-U.S. foreign ministers' meeting. The Blue House only replied that it could not specifically confirm matters related to the NSC. But there is more than one way to read this change. One reading is that the government slowed down out of awareness of public opinion. Another is that it did not postpone the decision but moved the timing of the decision. President Lee Jae-myung's press conference is scheduled for the 18th, and on the same day Foreign Minister Cho Hyun will meet Secretary of State Rubio in Washington. And the 18th is also the point at which the announcement of South Korea's first U.S. investment project is expected. Look at the order. The president first states his position on the deployment, the foreign minister conveys that position to the United States, and then government discussions continue. In this order, the deployment was not removed from the agenda; rather, the president's statement and the minister's negotiations with the U.S. were placed ahead of the public procedures of the National Assembly and the NSC. The procedure did not disappear; the entrance to the procedure changed.
There is one more number that defines this situation. The positive evaluation of state affairs fell to 33.8 percent, declining for nine consecutive weeks and hitting a new low, while the negative evaluation is 63.3 percent. Party approval ratings flipped, with the Democratic Party at 36.1 percent and the People Power Party at 42.1 percent. Among those aged 18 to 29, positive evaluation fell from 28.8 percent to 18.6 percent, a drop of 10.2 percentage points in a single week. We cannot simply pass over the fact that this number coincides with the withdrawal of the deployment agenda item. Deployment is a matter of young people offering their bodies, and U.S. investment is a matter of young people's wages and jobs being pledged as collateral against the future. The fact that the approval rating collapsed first precisely in that youth bracket tells us that the decision to drop the deployment agenda item was not a retreat before public opinion but a retreat at the point where public opinion was collapsing. What the government protected was not anti-deployment public opinion but its own political base. That should not be called a voluntary concession.
And above all of this is the oil price. Brent crude is at 108 dollars, West Texas at around 104. The won-dollar exchange rate rose from around 1,340 won to 1,364 won during this period, and went as high as 1,372 won intraday. I am not writing these numbers as investment records. I am writing how this chain descends upon workers. When crude oil rises, bus companies' fuel costs rise, and when the exchange rate rises, the cost of energy and raw materials bought in dollars rises further in won terms. That increase moves the subsidy standard in the semi-public management settlement, and that standard in turn returns as pressure in the next wage negotiation. Between the point where bus workers pushed the ordinary wage standard to the end of the year, the point where ships take aim in Hormuz, and the point where the exchange rate stands at 1,364 won, there is only one rule. The rule that when costs rise, the cost is deducted from wages. While workers received 3.2 percent and passed ordinary wages to the end of the year, the cost of the world they live in rose faster than that.
There is a principle I gained from the card news work during this period. If you put the rebuttal first, it becomes a sermon; if you put the language of the ruling power first, the reader judges for themselves. So next to the Blue House statement that "nothing has been decided," I placed side by side the same institution's statement calling the dispatch of an investigation team "part of the review process." Same time, same institution, two sentences. If nothing has been decided, what did they send people to confirm? The enemy's language comes from the enemy's mouth, and merely placing it side by side reveals the contradiction. What I revised many times in this work was not the style but the arrangement. Do not put abstract nouns as the subject; put people as the subject. Not "the chaebol's monopoly segments the labor market" but "a person earning 2 million won a month and a person earning 6 million won a month work at the same company." Do not assert the connection first; accumulate scenes. A name attaches to an experience the reader has already lived, not before the experience.
In this conversation, the language problem revealed itself on two levels. One is anti-monopoly, the other is class. Anti-monopoly is a word not yet translated. You just need to show workers how chaebol reform connects to their wages. But class does not work that way. That word has already been contaminated twice. Once by anti-communism, becoming North Korea, and once more by depoliticization, becoming ideology. It was not disappeared; it was forbidden. So in the card news we decided not to use that word. Not even on a single card. Instead we decided to use the sentences workers actually say. "We are different from those people," "We are not people of the same company as the prime contractor's employees," "No matter how long I work, I can never get to that position." All of these sentences are sentences of class relations. Only the word is missing. The relation is alive. A word being forbidden and a relation being absent are different. And the reason this distinction matters is that the moment you acknowledge this asymmetry is a product of the division system, the problem of reclaiming the language becomes the same as the problem of dealing with the division system. Western European workers use that word comfortably. South Korean workers cannot. This asymmetry is a product of the division system, and the National Security Act is its enforcement apparatus.
Here the heaviest judgment of this period came out. In the last card of the card news, I corrected the sentence I had first placed — "We have a name for this" — as a trap. If you actually confront that name, it can be translated in the prosecution's hands as sympathy for North Korea. I read the case law directly. The 2006 Seoul Central District Court ruling did not take issue with the defendant's statements themselves. It took issue with the fact that statements such as "withdrawal of U.S. troops from South Korea" and "the United States is an aggressor" overlapped in wording with what North Korea put forward as a precondition for its own unification plan. In other words, what Article 7 of the National Security Act actually examines is not the truth of the expression but how much that expression overlaps with North Korea's official position. So expressions that overlap with the wording North Korea uses to define South Korea are dangerous. The moment the wording overlaps, it becomes subject to examination. On the other hand, the sentence "A relationship you cannot refuse is not an alliance" is different. This refutes, within the government's own language, the logical conditions of what the government itself calls an alliance. It overlaps with no North Korean document. If freedom of expression is examined by whether wording matches, then abolishing that law and reclaiming in our language the wording that law forbade are the same task. Right now in this land, certain slogans become pro-North the moment you say them. The day those slogans become our words is after abolition.
Let me make one thing clear about my position. What I confirmed from source texts during this period is the strike withdrawal and 3.2 percent, the deferral of ordinary wages to the end of the year, the exclusion of deployment from the NSC agenda on the 17th, the investigation team's return on September 10, the two schedules on the 18th, the Realmeter figures, and oil prices and the exchange rate. I read and cited the case law from the source text. What I could not confirm, I left as unconfirmed. The Blue House neither officially denied nor confirmed the NSC agenda, and the report of the agenda's exclusion was conveyed as "it is known." Removing something from the agenda and canceling the bill are different. Deployment awaits the procedure of National Assembly consent, the U.S. investment is expected to be announced on the 18th, and ordinary wages have been pushed to the end of the year. What disappeared during this period is not the demand but the order in which the demand arrives. Changing the order is not a technique for eliminating the demand but a technique for digesting it. So what we must ask now is not whether deployment happened or not. It is whether, when the three arrive at once, we can read those three as a single bill.