hankyoreh

By Lee Jung-gook, staff reporter

Guy Ryder, Director-General of the International Labour Organization (ILO), issued a warning to South Korea for not ratifying four of eight core conventions.

“South Korea is being closely watched,” Ryder said on June 12.

Representatives of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) attending an ILO conference that began on June 5 in Geneva, Switzerland, quoted Ryder as saying in a meeting with them that he would be “urging the new administration in Seoul to quickly ratify key ILO conventions.”

Ryder also reportedly affirmed the goal of having all member states ratify the conventions by 2015 and saying South Korea was a “focus of particular attention because it has not ratified them all.”

He also hinted the ILO would be ratcheting up its pressure on the administration.

Noting that South Korea has not followed an ILO Freedom of Association Committee recommendation to guarantee union establishment rights to public servants at Level 5 and more junior, Ryder reportedly said the tone of the demands “would increase with each new recommendation.”

When South Korean joined the ILO in 1991, the government pledged to ratify Conventions No. 87 and No. 98, which protect workers’ right to organize and collective bargaining and Conventions No. 29 and No. 105 banning forced labor. But it has failed to honor the pledge since then.

To date, South Korea has ratified 28 of the 189 conventions, ranking it 120th among the 185 member countries.

The KCTU staged a press conference on June 12 in front of the Central Government Complex on Seoul’s Sejong thoroughfare, where it urged the government to “ratify the conventions without delay and amend related laws accordingly.”

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