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Jeon Gyo Jo) in Seoul’s Yeougdeungpo district July 3 following a raid designed to prevent further statements critical of the government like the one released last week.

Police have nakedly begun to put pressure on the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union, which had been preparing to issue a second statement criticizing President Lee Myung-bak, with riot police raiding their headquarters.

Seoul Yeongdeungpo Police Station raided the KTEWU’s headquarters in Yeongdeungpo-dong at around 5:10am Friday. At the same time, Seoul Dongjak Police Station raided the union’s Seoul chapter office in Sadang-dong. In the raid, police confiscated documents related to the teachers’ statement and computer servers that included the union’s organizational communication network.

That the police raided the offices right after their investigation of charges made against the union is believed to be, above all else, in order to pressure the union into stopping plans to release a second statement condemning the government in the middle of the month. One KTEWU official said it seems the police launched an unreasonably heavy investigation out of concern of a greater stir from the upcoming statement, with the participation of more teachers than expected. The union believes that with the list of items to be seized on the warrant presented by police including a list of teachers participating in the statement, which was not even a subject of investigation, the police intended to shrink the number of teachers participating in the statement through the raid.

It also appears this was a warning to the Korean Government Employees’ Union, which is also moving towards issuing a statement.

The KTEWU began a signature campaign to issue a second statement right after the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology announced plans to punish the teachers who participated in the first statement and press charges. The draft of the second statement, entitled “Teachers’ Declaration to Protect Democracy” and released Thursday, includes demands to guarantee freedom of the press and expression and to withdraw the punishments against the teachers who participated in the first statement. The union plans to release the list of participating teachers through its union organ “Education Hope,” after collecting teacher signatures nationwide through the middle of the month.

About this, the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology says that like it did with the first statement, it will sternly deal with participants if the union pushes ahead with a second statement. Lee Seong-hee, head of the ministry’s school autonomy bureau, said the ministry needs to get legal advice concerning the content of the second statement, but at least initially, there would be no change in the ministry’s plan to deal sternly with the statement in accordance with the law and principle. It appears the police’s quick raid is in line with the government’s hardline current. In particular, it was confirmed that with the exception of the Gyeonggi-do Office of Education, all city and provincial offices of education filed charges against city and regional officials of the KTEWU on orders from the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, so more raids on the union are expected.

The KTEWU, meanwhile, is on guard against the possibility that the public security organs may use this investigation for other purposes, too. This means police and prosecutors may use the materials obtained in indiscriminate searches to manufacture a “security incident” aimed at the union. Eom Min-yong, a union lawyer, said they cannot exclude the possibility that the police and prosecutors, when they cannot discover anything illegal about the statement, might make a public security victim of the union by rummaging through all the internal union materials they seized and manufacturing a pretext.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]