That's small comfort for people like Kim Jung Mi, 30, who was fired without notice last June l. In a country where women still occupy few positions in the top levels of business, they have often been the first to get the axe when "restructuring" starts. A saleswoman in a small bookstore, Kim had held her job for five years. But her boss refused to give even a month's notice. As a never-married mother, she already had a tough life--Kim's family shunned her when she decided to keep her child seven years ago. But nothing had prepared her for the sudden dismissal. "I felt so betrayed," says Kim. "The shock was too big for me."
So big it triggered an emotional breakdown. Kim stopped eating for days at a time and slipped into depression. A friend had to care for her son. Eventually Kim sought help, and friends found her a psychiatrist willing to provide free therapy and medication. Since January she has been working as a clerk in a government-sponsored public-works program. That will provide enough money to pay for food and the tiny unheated basement apartment she has moved into. But Kim hasn't found a job yet. She doesn't know what she and her son will do when the money runs out.
The crisis has brought anguish for countless others as well. Suicide, alcoholism, divorce and crime have jumped in the past year. Shelters for out-of-work businessmen have sprouted in Seoul and other cities. There are more orphans, as fathers and even mothers abandon children they don't think they can feed. The government is trying to build a social safety net from scratch. Spending on job training and support for the unemployed is set to rise 36%, to $1.6 billion, this year. But it is not clear how long the government can contain the resentment of those who don't have the skills to "shift gears."
Labor leaders complain that workers are bearing the brunt of restructuring, while big companies get off easy. Korea's cantankerous unions kept a lid on protests last year, fearful of a backlash from the public. But last month they showed their patience was wearing thin when a militant union walked out of a three-party committee--representing labor, government and companies--set up last year to navigate the crisis. The radical Korean Confederation of Trade Unions accused the government of ignoring workers' demands and not doing enough to prevent unemployment. Companies promised to use every possible means to avoid layoffs, says Lee Kap Young, head of the confederation, an umbrella group of unions that claims 550,000 members. Instead, Lee says, they are taking advantage of the crisis to shed workers. Vowing an "all-out" fight this month, the union fired the first volley with last month's rally in Seoul. The muscle-flexing remains low-key for now, but if Seoul doesn't get the message, the union promises to escalate its confrontation with government. Another major union has threatened to pull out of the three-party committee if the government doesn't change its hard-nosed stance on layoffs. "We trusted the President," says Lee, who complains that union members feel betrayed by Kim. Now "we are going to show we will no longer tolerate being the only ones to bear the pain."
But even Korea's unions have lost some of their old fire. "We understand that times are changing and so values are changing, too," concedes Lee. For the Chungs, that has certainly eased the burden of learning to live with less. It's not just the growing acceptance among friends and customers. When Chung "threw away his face," he and his wife worried they would be scorned by their three children. But the kids surprised them. The Chungs' teenage son helps his father with deliveries. When Mrs. Chung fretted about their drop in status, the teenager reminded his mother of a story she had told him as a child about how the local cleaning man wasn't born a cleaning man but was just playing the hand fate dealt him. The Chungs' 20-year-old daughter, now a sophomore attending Yonsei University in Seoul, comes by to help her mother dish out bowls of steaming white rice to go with the hot pots. "My daughter said what we're doing is admirable," Mrs. Chung recalls. "We both cried when our children told us how proud they were." As the Chungs are discovering, sometimes less is more.
With reporting by Stella Kim/Seoul
PAGE 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5
|
|
|
