In the nighttime, Rumi is woken up by a noise outdoors. Dozens of ‘errand men’ in blue vests and white helmets begin smashing the window of her fried hen restaurant with steel pipes. In no time, they spoil inside and drag her out. She resists fiercely. Meanwhile, Rumi’s mom, livid, receives right into a vehicle and charges at the men but fails to hit them. As they yank her out of the car, she hits her head on the ground and loses cognizance. She dies some hours later.
Psychokinesis, a tragicomedy released on Jan. 31, depicts privately employed safety guards using violence against regular citizens and the normally invisible arms directing the guards. The movie is primarily based on Seoul’s notorious Yongsan Incident. In 2009, creation businesses running on ‘redeveloping’ parts of the town’s Yongsan district hired personal security firms to evict citizens and shopkeepers forcefully. In a war of words among citizens, guards, and police, the transient structure wherein residents were conserving a sit-down-in protest caught a fireplace, killing six humans.
In South Korea, privately hired protection guards, or yongyeok (‘errand men’), had been normally used to power out residents and business tenants from regions marked for redevelopment. They raid protest websites without warning, often masking their faces with masks to hide their identities. Their common violence has prompted a few to label them ‘outsourced gangsters.’
Yongyeok is also often visible at exertion strikes. Compared to workers in Japan and Taiwan, those in South Korea have relied extra heavily on strikes to address specific grievances from employers. In recent days, such protests by irregular employees have been on the rise.
Irregular workers on fixed-time period contracts, regularly without an activity safety or union club, have been forming unions on their own, which corporations regularly refuse to recognize. In the past, the employees have taken to holding sit-ins as a remaining lodge.
For employers, Yong Yeon has emerged as a smooth way to deal with protesting employees. Hired guys no longer forcefully smash strikes; instead, they provide temporary hard work to make up for employee shortages. Over the last decades, big agencies like GM Korea, E-land, and SK Hynix have all deployed Yongyeok in reaction to moves.
Perhaps the highest-quality-acknowledged instance is that of Ssangyong Motors. In 2009, the organization dismissed around 1,000 everyday personnel as part of its restructuring plan. Fired people occupied a manufacturing unit for 76 days inside Pyeongtaek, a ninety-minute pressure from Seoul, and traumatic reinstatement. Management locked the protesters inside, and an army of yongyeok prevented outsiders from passing in meals and water. NGOs and civic corporations criticized the company for violating workers’ human rights.
“They don’t deal with us as people. They stamped on us and beat us with clubs,” a union member told In-depth 60 Minutes, a South Korean TV display that makes a specialty of investigative journalism. Companies can effortlessly deflect blame byby describing the moves as illegal and justifying using force, such as using yongyeok as a form of self-defense. In some cases, Yong Yeon may also goad protesters into using violence.
“We initiate the protestors first. If they fight returned after being crushed up, we take the video as proof and pass it on to management,” a nameless yongyeok instructed in In-intensity. Government figures have frequently condoned the use of violence through Yongyeok, who is a part of forces with police to control belongings disputes, trespass claims, and hard work strikes.
Under Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) and Park Geun-Hye (2013-2017), Conservative administrations saw moves as threats to commercial enterprise stability and took strong measures to subdue them. Under the Park management, labor activists were automatically arrested and punished. Yongyeok has been visible as an important government associate in dealing with disobedient workers.
Yongyeok has emerged as recurring enough to spawn its enterprise with many businesses. According to a one-kind with the aid of the day-by-day newspaper Kyunghyang, in 2009, security groups that dispatched yongyeok to interrupt protests staged in opposition to Ssangyong vehicles respectively earned 6.2 billion won ($5.8 million) and a pair of. One billion ($1.9 million) was received in less than six months.
An easy search on Naver, South Korea’s largest search engine, yields some effects about exclusive yongyeok offerings. Recently, the authorities have started taking steps to slash aggressive yongyeok conduct. The Moon Jae-in management that came to strength last May assured the public that the government would not arbitrarily intrude in peaceful protests.
Moon, a human rights legal professional from the center-left Minjoo Party, appears more sympathetic to labor rights than the past two presidents. He has raised the minimum salary by 16.4 percentage points, while most working hours are due to be reduced to 52 per week from the current limit of 68.
