hankyoreh

North Gyeongsang Province

When Cha Gwang-ho, 45, a dismissed worker at Star Chemical, decided to end his 408-day-long aerial protest atop a smokestack, it was an arrest warrant from the police that awaited him.

As workers asking for time to greet their coworker who had endured such a bitter struggle squabbled with police officers who insisted on serving the arrest warrant, Cha was unable to descend the smokestack at the appointed time.

Cha Gwang-ho is arrested by plainclothes police

At 2 pm on July 8, around 600 workers gathered at the parking lot in front of the entrance to Star Chemical in Chilgok County, North Gyeongsang Province. There was a light drizzle, but everyone stayed in their places, wearing gray and light blue raincoats.

2 pm that day was when Cha was supposed to come down from the 45-meter-high smokestack at the Star Chemical factory. He had climbed the smokestack and begun his aerial protest on May 27, 2014, asking for his job back.

408 days had passed since Cha had climbed the smokestack. No one had ever done an aerial protest longer than that - not in South Korea or anywhere else in the world. People said that it was a depressing record to set.

“What I’m the happiest about is that Cha returned to the ground in good health. I think that it turned out well because the 11 of us didn’t split up but stayed together to fight,” said Hong Gi-tak, 42, another dismissed worker at Star Chemical.

“Considering how hard it is for workers to get any results from labor action, I‘m glad that all eleven of the workers received a guarantee of employment. But it’s still sad that workers have to carry on the fight for more than year in order to enjoy their basic rights,” said Seo Chang-ho, 42, a full-time activist with Human Rights Movement Solidarity.

July 8. (by Lee Jong-geun

But even after 2 pm passed, Cha did not come down from the smokestack. The workers who were waiting asked the police for a chance to greet him when he came down, but the police refused.

Then the workers said they would need to take Cha to the hospital in an ambulance to make sure he was in good health, but the police countered that since his arrest warrant had been issued, they would just take him to the hospital in the police van.

An arrest warrant had been issued on charges that Cha had obstructed business and trespassed in a private building.

“The police are more interested in serving their arrest warrant than in making sure that Cha made it safely to the ground. We have no intention of preventing the police from serving the warrant or of getting in a clash with them. We hope that Cha will be allowed to reach the ground safely and meet his coworkers,” said Yun Jong-seon, organizational chief of the Korean Metal Workers’ Union.

The dismissed Star Chemical workers used to be employees of Korea Synthetic Fiber. When that company went under, the factory was acquired in 2010 by Star Chemical, which in turn prepared to shut down and liquidate its assets at the beginning of last year.

Cha and the other workers objected to this plan and have been pursuing labor action ever since. On July 6, Starflex, the parent company of Star Chemical, reached an agreement with the committee of dismissed workers, promising to restore all of them to their jobs. Both sides also agreed to withdraw all of the lawsuits and complaints that they had filed in the meantime.

staff photographer)

By Kim Il-woo, Daegu correspondent

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