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We guess that this is not the vision that E.Land has of the Who.A.U. stores, soon to open in the United States. Today's reality at the company's Homever, NewCore and Kim's Club shops in central Seoul is very much different from the 'California lifestyle' that the Korean retailer wants to create in its American fashion chain. There will not be riot police lines in US shopping malls, but surely many other reasons for customers not to pass through the Who.A.U. doors.

E.Land trade union president Kim Kyung-wook has now been detained at Seoul's Mapo police station for more than two months. And what has he been charged with? Disrupting business activities.

This tells much about the Korean political situation. Although the economy has developed fast, other elements of a modern industrialised society lag far behind. When the employers call for help, the government readily gives them a hand. Or sends in the riot police, as they did against the young women at E.Land who sat down at work to defend their jobs.

Including the Director General of the International Labour Organisation, global working life organisations have called for the release of the jailed E.Land workers. At present, ten of them are behind bars for disrupting business activities - that is, for exercising their legitimate trade union rights.

Pressure on the young women at E.Land is continuing. They are threatened with huge personal fines if they continue their sit-in strikes. Union members have been picked out at several E.Land stores and locked out from work.

In the mean-time, in the United States, E.Land is preparing to launch its Who.A.U. fashion store chain. It will target teenage girls and young women, inspired by a 'California lifestyle', as the retailer explains to US media.

- We say to teens or college students, 'You are the bright future, go challenge whatever you're facing.' This is what Daniel Pang, executive vice president of U.S. operations for company, says to Women's Wear Daily.

No wonder that E.Land says nothing about its notion of Korean lifestyle. It says nothing about the young E.Land workers who sit in Seoul's police cells because they dared to demand their right to work.

So the American teenage customers might begin to ask E.Land the same question: Who.A.U.?

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