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KTU leader Kwon Jung-oh (left) celebrates with union members a Supreme Court ruling giving the KTU official recognition as a labor union on Sept. 3. (Baek So-ah, staff photographer)

The Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union (KTU) has finally regained official recognition as a labor union, seven years after losing that status during the presidency of Park Geun-hye. When the KTU first sued the Ministry of Employment and Labor (MOEL), claiming that the removal of its legal status had been illegal, a district court ruled against the KTU. But on Sept. 3, the full bench of the Supreme Court, under Chief Justice Kim Myeong-soo, overruled that district court and remanded the case to the Seoul High Court.

The KTU’s loss of its legal status was part of a crackdown against the union by the Park administration. In October 2013, MOEL decided that the KTU was not a labor union under the law because nine dismissed teachers were on its rolls. MOEL’s decision was based on passages in the Act on the Establishment and Operation of Teachers’ Unions and that act’s enforcement decree stating that labor unions that permit the membership of non-workers and refuse to change that policy cannot receive official recognition as unions.

Then Minister of Employment and Labor Bang Ha-nam went so far as to send Park a personal letter pointing out that the number of dismissed workers in the union was negligible and expressing concerns that removing the KTU’s legal status, which it had enjoyed since 1999, would create legal instability, but his effort proved futile. Park’s administration also disregarded the recommendation of the International Labour Organization (ILO) to amend the relevant passages of labor legislation, which didn’t conform to international standards.

Abruptly labeled as an illegal organization, the KTU turned to the judicial system, petitioning the courts to issue an injunction against MOEL and suing to have MOEL’s decision overruled, but it faced an uphill battle. Two judges on the Seoul High Court — Min Jung-gi (current head of the Seoul Central District Court) and Kim Myeong-soo (current chief justice of the Supreme Court) — recommended suspending the revocation of the KTU’s legal status and reviewing the constitutionality of the legal passages in question in 2014-2015, but no further progress was made.

In the KTU’s lawsuit, both the district court and the high court ruled in favor of MOEL, affirming the legality of its decision. Then in May 2015, the Constitutional Court upheld the constitutionality of the Act on the Establishment and Operation of Teachers’ Unions, which had provided the legal grounds for stripping the KTU of its status. Eight justices on the bench signed the ruling, with only one, Kim Yi-su, dissenting.

An investigation into systematic judicial misconduct has uncovered evidence of National Court Administration (NCA) involvement in the trial. A document titled “A Consideration of the Suspension of the Validity of the KTU Non-Legal Union Status Notification” drafted by the NCA in December 2014 after the Seoul High Court recognized the measure’s suspension referred to “reports that the BH [Blue House] was very upset after the [Seoul High Court’s suspension] recognition decision.”

The same document also described the situation as one in which “cooperation and support from all areas, including the BH, is essential for the pursuit of appellate court legislation that is the Supreme Court’s chief concern at present.” Suggesting that it would be “preferable to take time in handling” the case, the document went on to refer to the “strong likelihood of the judge in question being replaced during regular court appointments.” Indeed, after the replacement of the judge in the second trial, an appellate court ruled against the KTU in January 2016.

Four years and eight months later, the Supreme Court decided by a 10-to-2 full bench ruling on Sept. 3 that the notification declaring KTU a non-legally recognized union was itself illegal. “The enforcement decree containing the non-legally recognized union notification provision was in essential violation of the three labor rights and is therefore null and void,” the court concluded.

If the ruling is upheld by the Seoul High Court in its rehearing of the case, the KTU will regain its status as a legally recognized union.

“Finally, we have shed the shackles of non-legally recognized union status,” the KTU said on Sept. 3, urging the administration and judiciary to “sincerely apologize to the KTU as the victims of abuse by the state and take prompt follow-up measures to restore what has been lost.”

MOEL said that it would “promptly implement procedures to overturn the ‘non-union’ notification in accordance with the substance of the Supreme Court’s ruling.”

By Jang Pil-su, staff reporter

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