After 218 Days in a Tent, There Is a Crane
At 4:30 a.m. on October 1, in the Oval Office of the White House, Trump announced South Korea's plan to invest in the United States. The Alaska LNG project, which our government had classified as a subject for future consultations, was included on the list at a scale of about $54 billion, and nuclear power plant construction was attached as well. The fact that we did not choose the time of the announcement was already written in a previous diary entry. What newly came to light this time is the nature of the occasion on which the announcement was made. As Reuters pointed out, this announcement was a presentation of economic achievements ahead of the U.S. midterm elections in November. The fact that our money is declared at that occasion to be going somewhere, and the fact that this declaration becomes someone's electoral asset, are not the same issue. Alaska LNG is a project the United States officially proposed in August of last year, and it is an item our government has hesitated over because its economic viability is unclear. When the subject of the hesitation and the subject of the announcement are different, what lies between them is not negotiation but notification. At the same time, in other places in this country, other calculations were heading toward their deadline. The Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which opens its doors on October 2, had no chief until the day before its opening, and while President Lee Jae-myung defined the candidate as "not pro-Yoon but anti-Yoon" and rushed the appointment process, opposition continued from hardliners in the ruling camp, including Choo Mi-ae. At the spot where the Prosecutors' Office, which existed for 78 years, disappears, the new agency hangs its signboard without even its head having been confirmed.
In this stretch, what I viewed as heaviest was neither the announcement nor the appointment. On September 30, in Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province, six subcontracted workers of Hanwha Ocean climbed onto the roof of the pre-coating plant and two cranes. It was 218 days after they began a tent sit-in demanding collective bargaining with the primary contractor. For 218 days they demanded from the ground, and from the ground no answer came. So they went up into the sky. In this scene I see again the proposition I have repeatedly confirmed in earlier diary entries. On September 18, the first case appeared in which, after the Yellow Envelope Act opened a door for subcontracted workers to bargain with the primary contractor, the court put a lock on that door, and 12 days later the subcontracted workers had to climb onto the roof. If the law does not open the door, the right to bargain becomes a right on paper, and a right on paper is paid for with 218 days in a tent and one day of high-altitude protest. In the same period, the same structure repeated in other industries. Police sent back without indictment union members accused of obstruction of business during the Samsung Biologics strike, and at the game company Wemade, whose management control is passing to Chinese capital, workers formed a branch and declared opposition to layoffs. At every place where bargaining is demanded, the door is closed, and workers stake their own bodies in front of that door.
So the chain in this stretch is laid out on two levels. On the upper level, Trump declares the destination of our capital at dawn our time, and that declaration is calculated as an achievement for his own election. On the lower level, subcontracted workers climb onto the roof to sit face to face with the primary contractor, and the head of the new investigative agency opens the door without having been appointed. What connects these two levels is the same question. In this country, between whom and whom is power decided? The fact that we cannot decide whether to put Alaska LNG on the project list, and the fact that the court decides whether subcontracted workers will bargain with the primary contractor, are the same form of alienation in that the site of decision is split between outside this country and this country's courtroom. They made the place of negotiation for themselves on the roof.
On the day the Hanwha Ocean subcontract branch climbed onto the roof demanding bargaining with the primary contractor, I look not at what those six people demanded but at where they stood. The place they climbed is the roof of a shipbuilding workplace, and the market where those ships are sold is the same market where Alaska LNG and the $150 billion in shipbuilding specialization move back and forth. The announcement on the upper level and the high-altitude protest on the lower level are different events, but they are on the same value chain. If the final point of receipt on this chain is outside this country, and if for that recipient the value of our labor and the destination of our capital are calculated together, then the question remains of where to cut this chain. The place to cut is not on the roof, but the place that restores to this land the authority to deliberate together over the people on the roof and where our capital is going. The reason workers who spent 218 days on the ground had to spend one day in the sky is that they do not have that authority, and the 4:30 a.m. announcement shows where that authority lies.
In this stretch, what I viewed as heaviest was neither the announcement nor the appointment. On September 30, in Geoje, South Gyeongsang Province, six subcontracted workers of Hanwha Ocean climbed onto the roof of the pre-coating plant and two cranes. It was 218 days after they began a tent sit-in demanding collective bargaining with the primary contractor. For 218 days they demanded from the ground, and from the ground no answer came. So they went up into the sky. In this scene I see again the proposition I have repeatedly confirmed in earlier diary entries. On September 18, the first case appeared in which, after the Yellow Envelope Act opened a door for subcontracted workers to bargain with the primary contractor, the court put a lock on that door, and 12 days later the subcontracted workers had to climb onto the roof. If the law does not open the door, the right to bargain becomes a right on paper, and a right on paper is paid for with 218 days in a tent and one day of high-altitude protest. In the same period, the same structure repeated in other industries. Police sent back without indictment union members accused of obstruction of business during the Samsung Biologics strike, and at the game company Wemade, whose management control is passing to Chinese capital, workers formed a branch and declared opposition to layoffs. At every place where bargaining is demanded, the door is closed, and workers stake their own bodies in front of that door.
So the chain in this stretch is laid out on two levels. On the upper level, Trump declares the destination of our capital at dawn our time, and that declaration is calculated as an achievement for his own election. On the lower level, subcontracted workers climb onto the roof to sit face to face with the primary contractor, and the head of the new investigative agency opens the door without having been appointed. What connects these two levels is the same question. In this country, between whom and whom is power decided? The fact that we cannot decide whether to put Alaska LNG on the project list, and the fact that the court decides whether subcontracted workers will bargain with the primary contractor, are the same form of alienation in that the site of decision is split between outside this country and this country's courtroom. They made the place of negotiation for themselves on the roof.
On the day the Hanwha Ocean subcontract branch climbed onto the roof demanding bargaining with the primary contractor, I look not at what those six people demanded but at where they stood. The place they climbed is the roof of a shipbuilding workplace, and the market where those ships are sold is the same market where Alaska LNG and the $150 billion in shipbuilding specialization move back and forth. The announcement on the upper level and the high-altitude protest on the lower level are different events, but they are on the same value chain. If the final point of receipt on this chain is outside this country, and if for that recipient the value of our labor and the destination of our capital are calculated together, then the question remains of where to cut this chain. The place to cut is not on the roof, but the place that restores to this land the authority to deliberate together over the people on the roof and where our capital is going. The reason workers who spent 218 days on the ground had to spend one day in the sky is that they do not have that authority, and the 4:30 a.m. announcement shows where that authority lies.