Pen/Insular_Notes

No Ordinary Sun brings us exclusive pictures of the May Day rally in Tokyo:

(I do like the way that Japanese activists manage to use cute cartoon characters even on their union banners.)

While Pressian was on the scene for today’s events in Seoul:

(It’s interesting to note the difference between the events held by the two Korean union federations on May Day - while the more radical KCTU held a big rally against the privatisation and pro-conglomerate policies of the Lee Myung-bak government and promoted the rights of the casual workers who now make up the majority of the South Korean workforce, the conservative FKTU organised a May Day marathon… which will surely do much to promote the rights and livelihoods of its members.)

Meanwhile, here in London we just went to vote with heavy hearts… Not even the anarchists managed one of their attempted riots.

This certainly sounds like a racist attack to me:

A group of young men wielding pipes and sticks attacked a group of North Korean laborers in the Moscow region, leaving four of the migrant workers hospitalized, authorities said Tuesday.

The attackers, all in their early 20s, ransacked the building where the North Koreans live at around 8:30 p.m. Sunday in the town of Volokolamsk, 130 kilometers northwest of Moscow, said Pyotr Ustimenko, deputy head of the Volokolamsk administration.

There were around 20 attackers, and 17 of the 39 North Koreans in the camp at the time were treated for injuries, Ustimenko said. Four were hospitalized.

It is interesting to know that there are North Korean labourers working not only in the Russian Far East as lumberjacks, but also in the Moscow area as construction workers. While South Koreans went abroad to find work in the1960s and 70s it is now North Koreans who are trying their luck in foreign lands. One big difference of course, is that these workers are not exactly free agents pursuing the ‘Russian Dream’ but closer to indentured labourers, often strictly controlled by the North’s Labour Security Service.

In a talk last week North Korea expert Leonid Petrov suggested that there might be much unrealised potential for the North Korean economy as a labour exporter, where it could play the same role it has for many developing countries in acquiring foreign currency via remittances. In fact, it seems North Korean workers could already be forming part of what I would call the ‘Eurasian labour displacement chain’ (for want of a better term). As the UK and other rich EU countries relentlessly suck in workers from Eastern Europe, whole areas of Poland and other countries are becoming depopulated and suffering severe labour shortages. This in turn has led to the import of labour from Russia, Ukraine and other former Soviet countries to pick fruit and fill other manual jobs in Poland. I’ve heard that Chinese workers are now arriving in Ukraine to fill the gaps in the labour market being created there, but could it be that North Koreans are another group who are beginning to make up for labour shortages in Russia and Ukraine?

Perhaps we could call this the labour version of the ‘Butterfly Effect’ - when someone in Hampstead needs a reliable cheap plumber it could mean that a North Korean gets a job on a Moscow building site.

I seem to have been on one of my unplanned blogging holidays for the last month. Actually I’m in Korea now trying to accustom myself to the humidity, but enjoying the heat after the miserable British summer weather this year.

While I’ve been busy with other things, my new pals at No Ordinary Sun have been keeping the flag flying with a brief report on this year’s Marxism conference and some excellent recent articles in Socialist Worker on East Asian matters - one on Abe’s recent crushing defeat in the Japanese upper house elections and another by activists from Ta Hamkke on the Korean hostages kidnapped in Afghanistan.

Meanwhile, on the labour front, Jamie at Two Koreas and Judy at Otherwise have been providing some good coverage of the E-Land/New Core disputes involving casualised (women) workers. The second major occupation of a supermarket owned by E-Land was broken up by riot police a couple of days ago and apparently along with unionists a large number of Ta Hamkke members were also arrested. Fortunately, they have been released this morning. There’s more on the dispute here in English.