Police fired tear gas and water cannons on Saturday to disperse about 70,000 people allied with labor, civic and farmers’ groups. “It’s hard to figure out exactly how many people participated as multiple rallies happened at once”.
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Demonstrators, many of them wearing masks and carrying banners, occupied a major downtown street and began marching between tight perimeters created by police buses and portable walls, meant to block them from entering large roads leading to the presidential Blue House. Riot police officers armed with plastic shields also guarded the roofs of the vehicles, repelling protesters, a few wielding steel pipes and bamboo sticks as they approached the buses.
Ahead of the rally, labour unionists scuffled with scores of plainclothes policemen to prevent the arrest of the head of the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), who showed up for a press conference near the protest site.
“The government must immediately cease worsening labor conditions”, Han told the crowd, before scurrying away to avoid being caught by the police.
Conservative critics argue that now the authors are too left-wing, but liberal opponents accuse the government of reverting to a policy used by past authoritarian regimes in South Korea including that of late president Park Chung Hee, father of the current president.
While heavy-handed policing was reminiscent of an anti-government May Day rally earlier this year, the gathering marked the country’s biggest protest since 2008 – when public uproar due to concerns over mad cow disease and American beef imports brought Koreans onto the streets.
Unions have denounced government attempts to change labour laws to allow larger freedom for companies in laying off workers, which policy-makers say would be critical in improving a bleak job market for young people.
Eight men who had been held as slaves at South Korean salt farms for several years took the government to court on Friday for alleged negligence and police inaction they say largely caused and prolonged their ordeal.
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Park called on Abe to decide on the issue to cure the pains of history as agreed upon between the two leaders during their first one-on-one meeting in Seoul on November 2 to speed up talks on the comfort women, or the Korean women forced to serve in the Imperial Japan’s military brothels during World War II.
