On May 1, People’s Democracy Party and World Federation of Trade Union South Corean Office (WFTU SCO) held a rally “Down with Yoon, oppressing labor and maneuvering war! Win the people’s power!”, celebrating International Workers’ Day.
After the rally, the participants attended the protest organized by the Korean Confederation of Trade Union (KCTU) and Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU), celebrating the International Workers’ Day.
The members of the PDP put up posters that said, “End Yoon, skyrocketing prices, committing all kinds of discrimination and suppressing workers!” around the place where the protest was held.
They were holding the banners saying “Keep the spirit of May Day, Overthrow Yoon!” “People’s lives disrupting, War maneuvering, Overthrow Yoon!”
Before the rally began, participants gave silence in honor of those who were killed in the struggle for national reunification and democracy, and then sang the ‘March for the beloved’.
The emcee pointed out that “the lives of workers are becoming more difficult due to low wages, job insecurity, poor working conditions, and even unprecedentedly high prices, but Yoon Suk-yeol, the main culprit of the economic crisis, is violating workers’ right to survival by intensifying labor repression, let alone fundamental labor rights.”
“He also provokes a war of aggression against the North, pushing it into a vortex of war. The only way to win the fundamental rights of the working people is to overthrow Yoon Suk-yeol.”, he added.
The worker from the WFTU SCO said, “Amid inflation, workers feel that they are being consumed as a part of the components rather than growing as they work”, “There is no solution and no future to worker in this regime”.
He stressed that “the WFTU SCO will stand the front of the struggle to expand workers’ legitimate rights against Yoon’s anti-labor policies and stand in solidarity with workers around the world who are struggling against imperialism.”
The secretary of Seoul Committee of the PDP remarked that “today, 134 years after May Day, the reality of workers in South Korea is disastrous, as revealed by the number one in industrial accidents, the number one in suicides, and the number one in non-regular workers”, and that “this regime, which succeeded the anti-people forces, is showing the ignorance of labor and people’s lives, paralyzing the 52-hour workweek and minimum wage system that workers had created through struggle, and choking the breath of workers by wielding prosecutorial power and indiscriminate and unreasonable detention investigations against workers.”
He highlighted that “Workers’ and people’s political power can only be won through struggle, not elections. Even if the people’s will was revealed in the general election, the bourgeois election in this country is only an unfair game structured so that the 1% of the rich take 99% of the seats.”
Finally, the joint statement “Let’s end the anti-labor, anti-people Yoon Suk-yeol and advance the people’s world!” was read, and participants sang “The International”.
