Soft Cover:
ISBN: 962-7160-31-8
Dimensions: 384 pp 228 x 142 mm
16 pp B/W Photos, map, index, bibliography
Price: HK$195/US$25

Hard Cover:
ISBN: 962-7160-30-X
Dimensions: 384 pp 235 x 150 mm
16 pp B/W Photos, map, index, bibliography
Price: HK$280/US$36

On the basis of scores of interviews with members of the Hyundai family, from founder Chung Ju Yung to vice presidents, managers, clerks and assembly-line workers, Kirk traces the rise of Chung, his family, and Hyundai from a sidestreet garage to international giant in more than 40 areas of industry and finance. The story ranges from wartime construction, to the factories and labor strife of "Hyundai City," Ulsan, to the scene of controversial new Hyundai enterprises in electronics and motor vehicles in California, to Chung's attempt to win a political position commensurate with his economic power in the 1992 presidential elections.

Critics Comments

"A wealth of detail and anecdote."

South China Morning Post

"Full of fascinating anecdotes related in a lively style by journalist and Korea-watcher Donald Kirk....Blow-by-blow accounts of high-stakes gambits that show Hyundai epitomizing both the positive and stultifying features of Korean entrepreneurship."

Far Eastern Economic Review

"A must read for business people and students of business and the social sciences learning about the socio-economics of Asia. While much has been noted (though little understood) about Sumitomo, Mitsubishi, Mitsui, Dai Ichi, Sanwa, Sony, Toyota, Toshiba, NEC, Matsushita, et al. – the huge commercial engines that run Japan's economic machine – there has been relatively little in-depth analysis of the great Korean chaebol – the architects of South Korea's economic miracle....Kirk takes us on an impressive journey through this unexplored territory, exposing with meticulous detail the inner workings of a Korean conglomerate, the unique character of Korean business and how it interacts with its government and with foreigners, and the glaring and subtle differences between doing business with Korea and Japan."

Business Book Review

"Although the so-called South Korean miracle has attracted much attention, there have not been many books that deal with this subject, certainly nowhere near as many as those on Japan's business structure and practices. That alone makes this book a valuable contribution toward redressing the imbalance."

Asiaweek

"I enjoyed reading the book, and I would strongly recommend it to any persons interested in learning about business in Korea and/or doing business with Korean firms."

Journal of Asian Business

"An interesting and informative book and I would recommend it above virtually all other English-language books on South Korean business....[The book] offers a wealth of information that should be reckoned with by all serious students of contemporary South Korean economy and society."

Pacific Affairs

"Mr. Kirk's thorough and well researched account plots Hyundai's astonishing trajectory, and how it leapt boldly into new products and markets wherever there was business to be had....Anyone with an interest in Korean business should read Mr. Kirk's book."

Asian Wall Street Journal

"This is an excellent book to assign in courses on contemporary Korean history and politics. [It] offers an outstanding introduction to how South Korea became rich and some of the cultural problems that accompanied the process and that can be expected to continue in the future."

Chalmers Johnson
The Journal of Asian Studies

"A unique contribution...a story that has cried out for telling. Hardly anything has been said about the huge Korean chaebol which are a kind of hybrid between pre-war Japanese zaibatsu and the current keiretsu."

Frank Gibney
author, The Pacific Century and Korea's Quiet Revolution

"Don Kirk tells you what Korean business is about and how it interacts with its own government and foreigners as no one else has. He differentiates clearly between doing business with Korea and Japan. A must read for business people and students learning about business in Asia."

Jackson Huddleston Jr
author, Gaijin Kaisha

"Account of Korea's largest chaebol, told in the context of Korea's rise from a Third World to a world-class economic power....Recommended for executives, scholars and students of business and the social sciences."

Library Journal

Readers Comments

"A must read for foreign business people and students learning
about doing business in Asia."

Jackson N. Huddleston, Jr., University of Washington

REVOLT IN THE WORKPLACE – The Battles of Ulsan
XVIII. Kidnapped

The governments of Park Chung Hee and Chun Doo Hwan did not believe in the right of workers to organize independent unions, much less to strike. The history of the labor movement for the generation after the Korean War was one of subterranean struggle in which workers were routinely arrested, tortured and sentenced to prison terms for organizing resistance to the excesses of management and their collaborators in company "unions." The police under Park and Chun were so harsh that they could – and did – smash any sign of worker revolt as soon as it appeared. Hyundai epitomized this attitude. The group, from Chung Ju Yung down to the lowliest manager, was repressive even by Korean standards. Chung at heart believed factory workers should obey blindly as did day laborers in the construction industry, where anyone bold enough to talk back, much less complain, was fired on the spot.

It was not until the five years of democracy under Roh Tae Woo that workers were physically capable of staging open, mass demonstrations similar to the shows put on by radical students in Seoul and other cities every spring for years. Several factors contributed to the dramatic rise in overt labor unrest under Roh – a circumscribed freedom, the new affluence of Korean industry and a bursting of long-repressed tension among workers who knew the owners of their companies were enriching themselves at their expense. The confrontations at Hyundai were the most visible and violent of any during this period. To Chung Ju Yung, the proper answer to force was force. Chung was not alone among chaebol chairmen in this response. Conditions could also be rough in other groups – especially in small and medium-sized industries able to isolate and crush dissent without so much publicity. Still, Hyundai, with more blue-collar workers in one place than any other organization, seemed the most vulnerable to large explosions.

Suppression of workers, to be sure, was not always a matter of naked greed and cruelty. It also reflected the deep belief of Korean leaders and planners in the virtues of unremitting hard work for the sake of enterprises whose every victory against foreign competition was a triumph for the nation. Hyundai and Samsung resolved to stamp out dissident union activity. Samsung succeeded, mingling pressure with incentives to prevent unions from organizing despite strikes and sit-downs. Hyundai failed as a result of strategic blunders as well as the concentration of so many of its workers from so many companies in one community. Hyundai in the pre-democracy period did all it could to wipe out worker dissent, forming a militia at Hyundai Heavy Industries along with "save-the-company squads" made up of loyalist workers, hired goons and security guards. The company alternated between extremes, one day beating dissidents, the next day bribing them.

Hyundai and other companies acted with the confidence that the law was on their side. The Federation of Korean Trade Unions, the umbrella group to which many of the company unions belonged, was closely linked to the government. Workers could not legally organize as long as another union was duly registered to represent them. There was no effective machinery for negotiating disputes. The government, if it wished, could bring the national security law to bear against workers, just as it did against students. Several weeks after Park's assassination in October 1979 a worker at HHI was arrested after loaning a friend a book about the rise of the American labor movement. A court found him not guilty, but HHI forced him to resign. This episode, according to Kwon Yong Mok, the first radical organizer at HHI, the "Walesa of the Ulsan shipyard," marked "the beginning of the labor union at Hyundai."

The kind of offenses that HHI committed against its workers during that era could not have happened in an advanced capitalist country. Nor could they have happened in Korea much after 1990. Kwon, who was to spend four years in prison for trying to organize a union at HHI, offered some of the history in a series of articles. Hyundai Electrical Engineering, he wrote, had decided in 1986 that workers would only be paid for up to 50 hours a week no matter how many hours they actually worked. Those who objected were transferred to Seoul. Then, when the company failed to explain why some workers got an annual bonus of 500% of one month's pay while others got only 150%, dissidents put up posters demanding the resignation of Chung Ju Yung, who had dreamed up the idea as an incentive scheme. "We did not have any success," said Kwon, "but we showed our fellow workers what the united movement could do."

The realization that Hyundai was earning tremendous profits in an era of unparalleled prosperity for Korea contributed to the movement. "The annual growth of Hyundai was 30%, but our raise was always around 3% or 4%," according to Kwon. "We concluded that we should request a 15% raise." Hyundai Electrical Engineering executives replied by claiming that "Hyundai seemed to be making profits but actually was barely making ends meet." The workers, getting nowhere, sang radical songs at lunchtime soccer games two days in a row and then returned to duty 30 minutes late each time. Activists decided the time had come to form a union and make formal demands ranging from special payment for pollution to summer vacation pay. "Since Chung Ju Yung's policy was never give permission for a labor union," Kwon wrote, "we thought of the strike and demonstration as our only solution."

The organizers believed they had a better chance of recognition by the company after Roh ushered in democratic reform on June 29, 1987, ending days of violent demonstrations in Seoul and other large cities. More than 100 workers met in a wedding hall in downtown Ulsan several days later, held a ceremony and filed papers at Ulsan City Hall. Hyundai Electrical Engineering accepted the union on July 14 after the workers staged a series of rallies. The workers' struggle in Ulsan was on the threshold of a new era, but executives at other much larger Hyundai companies were not about to accept the union movement so easily. They tried to block the registration of the union at Mipo Dockyard, stealing the paperwork and blocking meetings before eventually yielding.

Kwon's next goal was to form a union at HHI, the big one, with more than 20,000 workers. The battle for HHI really began on July 28 when Kwon led his dissident workers into the compound shouting, "Down with the company labor union, choose the democratic union." After a four-day strike, management agreed on a number of concessions and an election for a new chairman on August 14. The radicals' candidate, Lee Hyung Gon, won easily – "a perfect victory," said Kwon, "for what the managers called `uneducated and rude laborers.'" If HHI managers never publicly used such words, the quote revealed the sense of inferiority imbued among workers by the company's attitude – as much a factor as anything else in inciting them to a revolutionary zeal reflecting severe class differences as well as disparities in income and privilege., part two, July 25, 1988.

Kwon's moves to organize workers at the HHI compound, beginning with Hyundai Electrical Engineering, paralleled a similar drive at Hyundai Motor, which had about as many workers as HHI at the time. "As soon as we heard that a labor union was formed at Hyundai Engineering, we were firmly assured that we could form our own union," wrote Lee Sang Bum, who formed the HMC union on July 24. The mood at HMC turned ugly when word spread that management had formed its own company union first. "About 20,000 laborers gathered by lunch," said Lee. "We set up a mike and told them how the Hyundai Motor Company had set up the company union." HMC executives fell back on talk about "legitimate process" when confronted by Lee. "As time passed by without any solid answers," he said, "the laborers who had gathered got angrier and began to break the windows of cars nearby."

After 12 tense hours, however, HMC managers had the good sense to agree on the resignations of the stooges they had installed as leaders of the HMC union and allow an election. The new union leaders quickly got management to agree on lesser points – providing paid vacation time, abolishing forced overtime, running the assembly lines at proper speeds instead of revving them up to increase production. There was even agreement that workers did not have to adhere to the short hairstyle the managers demanded of the troops. Lee was not deterred by the failure of demonstrations to bring about a pay raise too. "We showed that we workers could unite together and fight for victory," he wrote.

At the neighboring Hyundai Precision compound, pandemonium broke out when the managers failed to show up to talk to representatives of a new union. "Angry workers occupied the streets and blocked them, and the national police began to shoot teargas," wrote Kwon. "A lot of workers were wounded, and later three of them were arrested." Kwon saw the violence as "understandable considering that Precision had the worst labor conditions" and "workers there had to handle polluted substances with the lowest wages." Workers around the same time formed unions at Keumkang Development, owner of the Diamond Hotel and Hyundai Department Store, both across from HHI, and Korea Flange, the company of Chung Ju Yung's brother-in-law.

Although workers in Ulsan managed to form their own unions with a minimum of obstruction in the summer of 1987, Hyundai still had not fully accepted reality. When workers organized a federation of unions to counter the power of the Hyundai group, real trouble broke out – a foretaste of the bitterness of the next few years. Managers refused to meet with representatives of the new federation, and six Hyundai companies closed their doors. Thousands of workers demonstrated outside the HHI compound, the gates blocked by concrete and a 1,000-ton chunk of a ship's hull lifted into place by a crane. The ranks of the demonstrators swelled to about 40,000 the next day for a march to the stadium, where the workers staged a rally at which union leaders agreed with a deputy labor minister on negotiations by September 1. Chung Ju Yung, recognizing the federation at last, assented to the same deadline in talks with demonstrators at Hyundai headquarters in Seoul.

The old man displayed his grip over his family as well as Hyundai when HHI staged a press conference on August 19 to publicize the agreement. There was sixth son Chung Mong Joon seated on a chair in front next to union chief Lee Hyung Gon while his father watched from the second row. Mong Joon hesitated in answering questions, however, since he had come home from graduate study only a few days earlier to assume his newly given job of HHI chairman. Whenever he couldn't answer, his father spoke up, said Kwon, showing he was "still the superior leader in Hyundai." The elder Chung's replies did not inspire confidence. Somehow the agreement "planted a strong distrust in the leaders of the union" – thus having "a strong impact on the strike against HHI in September."

An air of excitement permeated Kwon's writing as he talked about the demonstrations that summer of '87. "Although later we realized how worthless a written compromise was, at that time it was our victory" to form real unions and get Hyundai to recognize the federation too. It was a victory "achieved not by a few union members but by the efforts of all the laborers and the support of their families," he wrote, heady with the memory of his triumphs. "They were not afraid to sacrifice themselves." He recalled fondly "the line of workers which extended 16 kilometers" from HHI to the stadium. The display proved "what they really wanted – it was all possible because we were united into one, and we had won our first symbolic battle for laborers."

The glory days were brief. One by one negotiations either broke down or resulted in agreements not acceptable to a majority of workers. Negotiations at HHI were doomed when Lee Heun Tae, Chung Ju Yung's hard-as-nails money man in Seoul, was named to represent HHI in all-night talks. Fighting broke out after management refused to make its offer of a pay increase retroactive to March. HHI was suspected of hiring goons to break windows and destroy facilities at the stadium during a rally. "They stirred people to be violent," said Kwon. "When the laborers got suspicious, they caught five of them and found out that they were not Hyundai laborers. After questioning, they were sent to the police only to be released immediately" – the usual story of collusion between authorities and owners.

The atmosphere quickly worsened. "By now the issue was no more the wage increase but the release of all arrested workers," said Kwon. HHI this time not only shut down the factory but cut off water and electricity and closed the cafeteria. Kwon saw hope for the future when "family members helped the laborers both mentally and physically, and each different family helped the other family who was in trouble." Euphorically, he perceived "a significant event as the family not only participated but led the way in a struggle for survival." Then when police moved in on a crowd, arresting a number of demonstrators, "they were questioned for five days without any sleep or food," said Kwon. "They were ordered to sign a statement that they were the ones who set cars on fire, but the laborers rejected all this." It got worse. "Police were arresting anyone who spoke harshly or violently." There were "suicides by laborers who were sought by the police" – but some suspected the police killed them.

For Kwon, the worst was yet to come. He was arrested in April 1988, shortly before the first of his articles on the drama of the previous year was published. The police grabbed him in a round-up of union leaders after a scuffle inside the HHI gates, and a court sentenced him to four years in prison. "He was a very honest man," said Phee Jung Sun, a labor organizer in Seoul. "That was why he got widespread support from Hyundai workers." For Hyundai bosses, every challenge, every demand put forward by workers had to be a confrontation. Most of their campaigning against the unions was clandestine, veiled by cover-ups and bribes, but sometimes the group was embarrassed by exposure that showed why the workers had to fight as hard as they did. One of the most revealing episodes occurred not in Ulsan but in Seoul, not to a blue-collar worker but to a white-collar organizer right in Hyundai headquarters. His story, as a result of the publicity it received, also marked a turning point in Hyundai's relations with its employees.

The time was 10:30 p.m. on a balmy spring evening, May 6, 1988. The place was Seoul's Kangnam district, a relatively new area of fashionable apartment blocks and office buildings, nightclubs and restaurants, south of the Han River – several miles from the central City Hall square, the ancient palaces, the downtown hotels and soaring business complexes and the Hyundai headquarters building, all in the overcrowded wards north of the river. Suh Jung Eui, a 10-year veteran at Hyundai, an economics graduate of Pusan University, now relegated to clerical work in the Hyundai group headquarters building, was standing outside a bar. "My seniors suggested I have a drink with them," said Suh.

It was not an invitation a clerk was likely to decline. It promised not only an evening of wining and dining on the expense account but also a chance at ironing out some "misunderstandings" resulting from Suh's role as founder and president of the Hyundai Engineering and Construction Workers' Union, the first Hyundai union made up of office workers, not hardhats in factories or on construction sites. "I disliked the authoritarian administration," Suh told me much later. "Our employers were taskmasters. Our company chairman, Lee Myung Bak, was a specialist in management, but he didn't follow regular rules on labor. I did not like that." Naturally, "When I tried to establish a trade union, the company tried to make me give up the idea."

Anticipating some quiet backstage palaver, Suh was only a little surprised when he got to the rendezvous point to see six men whom he did not recognize. They looked more like thugs from another part of town. Assuming his "seniors" would be coming right along, Suh was still more surprised when the thugs shoved fists and fingers into his back and elbows and ordered him into a waiting luxury car – a black Royal Salon made by Hyundai rival Daewoo. "They put me on the floor with their feet on top of me. I got a scar on my body" – a point he illustrated by revealing a bluish bruise on his left leg that he said was caused "by friction between the seats." For five hours he remained in that position as the car plied the expressways to the southwestern port city of Mokpo, by coincidence the birthplace of radical opposition leader Kim Dae Jung.

When he got to Mokpo, Suh found himself "in a small room in a private house" where "at first they tried to make me eat food with a blindfold on." When he refused the food, "they took off the blindfold, and I ate a very little, just two spoonfuls and no more." His captors remained silent while he ate, after which one of them announced "they would kill me with knives." That said, Suh was held for four days, at which point "they urged me to write my resignation letter to the company. I had to write such a letter. They threatened to kill me."

Next, "I was pushed into a big suitcase," Suh talked on. "I refused to get in, but one of them said they would not lock the suitcase so I agreed." The leader of the group then went out in search of a bigger and better suitcase – apparently deemed a handy way to move Suh and not create too much attention – and left him with the others in the room. "Without their leader, the others kept silent," he said. "I felt the threat of killing." Understandably enough, "I also felt dread." Finally, the leader returned without a suitcase but with the much happier idea of drinking some soju, the traditional Korean wine.

"After he was drunk, he said they would release me in a remote place," said Suh. "I told them my life story." He also did some proselytizing on behalf of the labor movement and the union. He was not, he observed, the first union member to be kidnapped. Indeed, he was luckier than some who had been severely beaten, endured threats to their families or been "disappeared" entirely. "I persuaded one of the hoodlums to request their leader not to do any more kidnapping," said Suh. At the same time, he spread some propaganda on behalf of the labor movement – and believed he had convinced the hoodlums of its value to their friends working in factories.

"I told them the trade union helped workers," said Suh. "Without the union, the workers would suffer." His kidnappers, drinking whiskey, moved him to a yogwan, an inn of the sort where men stayed while traveling. Apparently they were deciding it was time to abandon their mission – whatever, exactly, it was. Could it be that whoever hired them in the first place was dictating their every move? Probably so, but Suh barely grasped what was happening. "I woke up in the early morning of May 11, but I didn't know where I was."

Discovering he was alone, Suh left the inn and hired a taxi to take him all the way to Seoul without calling or contacting local authorities. "I went straight home," he said. The reason the kidnappers decided to let him go was clear as soon as he got there. "The police were in front of my home. I was surprised to see them there. They were looking for me. They said they set up a special squad to search for me during the kidnapping period." Were the police about to close in on the kidnappers when Suh was freed? Was their investigation so rudimentary as to cover only a stake-out at his house and routine questioning at Hyundai?

These questions, like those in many other cases, raised the deeper issue of the relationship between the police and the authorities. What made the story of Suh Jung Eui so incredible was not so much what happened to him as who he was – a white-collar worker, a college graduate decked out in conventional white shirt, striped tie, gray slacks and, not so typically for a Korean "salaryman," tweed jacket. Suh believed that Lee Myung Bak, Chung Ju Yung's right-hand man, was "directing that operation" against him, but how could he be certain?

All Suh knew for sure was that a member of the board of Hyundai Engineering and Construction, Choi Jae Dong, and the director of its general affairs department, Kang Myong Ku, were arrested for ordering the kidnapping, paying the six hoodlums the equivalent of about $27,000, and later sentenced to a year apiece in jail. As for the hoodlums, they got off amazingly well. As hired hands who had done no bodily harm to their victim, they were given suspended sentences and put on probation. Choi, as an elderly man in semi-retirement, got out early, leaving only Kang in jail. Then Kang too was released on medical grounds amid reports that he had threatened to go back on the Mafia-like undying loyalty that had bound him to Hyundai, and expose the roles of his top bosses in the plot if they did not help him get out.

"So the company got Kang released," said Suh, even though Chung Ju Yung "announced he fired him." The story, though, was not quite over. Chairman Lee Myung Bak and his personnel director, Chon Yong Sup, were convicted of unfair labor practices for having suppressed Suh's union – an offense that sounds quite serious except that the penalties were laughably low. Chairman Lee had to pay a fine of five million won or about $7,100 while Chon was fined two million won or $2,850. Those figures would not match the cost of a night at one of the posh little hostess clubs south of the Han River catering to executive "members-only" crowds.

Suh looked back proudly on the lessons he believed his experience had taught some of the top people at Hyundai: "Management is trying not to have a union, but after this incident, their attitude changed a lot." Like so many of the salarymen in the Hyundai group headquarters, he reflected pride in Hyundai as he reviewed the consequences of the episode. "I expect many developments in labor policy. They have changed their views on trade unions since the kidnapping." He admitted having told his bosses he now had "a terrible feeling against management" but now said he "will not say anything further against them." What had turned Suh around? Hyundai at the top level had apparently decided a show of understanding, maybe contrition, would keep him from becoming a hero – and spreading discontent through the ranks.

"Embarrassing," was the word a Hyundai spokesman offered, maintaining that "managers and workers are all Hyundai family" and calling the imbroglio "a tragedy." Hyundai papered over the episode with newspaper advertisements proclaiming the personal "apology" of Construction President Chung Hoon Mok – but not the legally "guilty" Chairman M.B. Lee – before the nation. In philosophical vein, the spokesman said "the existence of unions will benefit the companies in the long run." The comment, if sincere, represented a surprising change of heart for a group with a record of doing all it could to keep unions from forming or functioning effectively a year after the government had relaxed its rigid controls on their activities.

"After finding out the facts," Suh believed, "Chung Ju Yung tried to settle everything" – a decision that meant his personal ordeal "has been a turning point." While there had not been "a total shift" in the group attitude toward labor, he conceded, "a major part has changed." He professed to have sensed some changes while negotiating with management on a new contract. By the time the contract was signed, a year and a half after he was kidnapped, "we got around a 20% increase in wages plus some new benefits" to satisfy the demands of his white-collar following. Among them: "some educational fees for workers" and "the right to be present at board meetings."

Suh tried to leave word with Chung and Lee Myung Bak that he would "restructure the union" to better serve the interests of everyone, workers as well as managers. Chung, however, wanted nothing to do with this troublesome office worker who was causing him and his people so much embarrassment and loss of face. "I couldn't meet Chung personally," said Suh, "but I told his secretary." One dividend from all the publicity, the court cases and the negotiations: in June 1989 "we got an office for the labor union" in the Hyundai headquarters building.

In the face of superficial change, the Hyundai view remained that workers, like managers, owners and their children and heirs, should be ready and willing to invest a minimum of 50 hours a week in the job, to work on holidays and to cooperate gladly on any assignment for the good of the company. Chairman Chung Se Yung extended this theory by degrees. "When the country is better off," he told me, "they work 10 hours a day, but when it is advanced they say eight hours a day with two days a week off." Korean executives, however, did not think their country was at either the "better off" or "advanced" level. S.Y. spoke for his peers at the top of both government and industry when he said, "We are not at that stage." Hence, he believed a work week of more than 50 hours with no vacations was still necessary.

Chung Se Yung betrayed an opaque lack of understanding of the pressures and needs of workers caught in an industrial treadmill that prevented them from sharing fully in the "economic miracle" that had so enriched an entire class of Korean society, including all members of the Chung family. The workers "can take 20 days off by law, but it is not practiced," said S.Y. At Hyundai "they get official holidays, and they work those 20 days. They get paid double." He realized that "management and unions have not experienced well," as he put it in his somewhat awkward English acquired during his three years' study in the United States. Still, he said pleasantly, "my brother is very open, not very authoritarian" and suggested that the presidents of Hyundai entities "have more right to talk" to unions than current policy gave them.

While the case of the kidnapped clerk might not have changed underlying attitudes, it did make some executives more aware of the dangers of flagrant violations of the law in dealing with office workers in the headquarters. The reality was that Hyundai still believed in strongarm tactics – and might follow them whenever, wherever its managers were convinced they had to do so in order to resist the demands of workers while meeting those of the owners. Stories like that of Suh were common – though the censors had kept them out of the papers before the rush to democratic reform. Beatings and kidnappings of workers had happened with unnerving frequency in the generation in which the chaebol had risen to greatness. If Hyundai had learned to mind its manners in Seoul, the group still reigned supreme in Ulsan, the city it had helped to build. Industrial sites and production facilities were the scenes of the major battles between workers and bosses.

No sooner had prosecutors begun interrogating Suh's kidnappers in Seoul than more than 3,000 workers struck against two plants of Hyundai Precision and Industry in Ulsan. The strike got rough when workers, on May 27, 1988, seized one of the factories while the company chairman, Chung Mong Ku, Chung Ju Yung's second son and the most powerful man in the group after the old man, was still at his desk. Mong Ku was held for five days along with ten other top bosses before the workers relented under threat of an attack by policemen outside the compound. Next door at Hyundai Motor, more than 20,000 workers walked out on May 30 demanding a 48% pay increase. Hyundai turned the walkout into a lockout, shutting its doors to everyone including those who wanted to report for work. Chung himself appeared in danger when workers at HHI hurled dirt at him as a phalanx of his managers hustled him into an office building. The workers, however, had a strategic edge – they knew the company needed to feed the American market while the government fretted over the negative impact of labor disputes in the run-up to the Olympic Games in September.

Workers began showing up again at both HMC and Precision when HMC opened its doors after 22 days. The chairman of the Hyundai Motor union, Lee Yong Bok, virtually apologized for the strike. "It is regrettable to me to have caused inconvenience and economic loss in the course of negotiations," he said, promising "an all-out effort for settlement of the dispute as soon as possible." The workers, however, were not in the mood for apologies. The strike lasted another three days before the union settled for a 28% raise but no pay for the 26 days they were on strike. "The settlement is not 100% satisfactory," said Lee, "but I am sure most workers would understand what we have achieved." Hyundai put the cost of the strike at $490 million in lost sales of nearly 70,000 cars, 40,000 for export.

The settlement spared company and country much embarrassment amid the outpouring of national pride surrounding the Olympics. Radicals, however, walked out of a rally staged by union leaders – a portent of much worse to come. The strikes of spring 1988, like the case of Suh Jung Eui, were over, but the story went on. Both the strikes and the kidnapping epitomized a much larger conflict between owners and workers. Management still could not get over the conviction that excising the trouble-makers would get rid of the cancer. Owners, managers and workers, in the spirit of patriotism, suppressed their hostility through the Games before warming up for more confrontations – decisive for the future of this newly industrialized country.

Copyright © Donald Kirk

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