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Last Friday, Korean riot police entered the Homever hypermarket at Seoul's World Cup Stadium and the New Core and Kim's Club shopping complex in central Seoul. The predominantly young women workers were dragged away and bussed to various police stations in the Korean capital.

This afternoon Korean time, Jan Furstenborg of UNI Commerce was able to visit E.Land union president Kim Kyung-wook at a police station in Seoul, where he is detained since Friday. The government accuses him of having 'disrupted business activities'. It is quite obvious that Kim is being kept at this police station in order to weaken the union's positions in the ongoing negotiations. Kim, who is in good physical condition, is very much worried about the fate of his fellow workers. The young unionist and father, who negotiated the recognition deal and collective agreement with Carrefour before the French multinational left Korea last year, said that he had tears in his eyes when he saw the riot police tearing out the young crying shop workers from the stores they were picketing, to the waiting police buses.

After questioning, thirteen unionists remained under arrest, until a judge threw out the authorities' case for twelve of them. Against loud protests from the Korean employers' association, the police was forced to release them, but kept E.Land union president Kim Kyung-wook detained at Seoul's Mapo police station.

Together with the president of the Korean Federation of Private Services Workers Unions KFSU Kim Hyung-Geun and UNI's Korea representative Jay Choi, Jan Furstenborg of UNI Commerce today visited Kim Kyung-wook at the detention centre. The union leader was in good condition, but very much concerned about the fate of his members, who saw their employment contracts terminated in June.

Kim Kyung-wook confirmed that negotiations between his union and E.Land were actually going on when the government sent riot police to break up the pickets. Apparently, this was done in a misguided action to 'clean' Seoul's World Cup Stadium before Manchester United played its much advertised game there last Friday night.

Kim also told the UNI representatives that both he and his union are still looking for a negotiated solution. Against this background it seems rather strange that the government continues to keep the union president imprisoned, loudly cheered by Korean employers.

KFSU President Kim Hyung-Geun addressed the hundreds of shop workers who had gathered to an evening rally in central Seoul today, saying that neither his union federation nor KCTU, their trade union confederation, will give up. He characterised E.Land's mass dismissals as immoral and unjust and demanded that the company union's president Kim Kyung-wook be immediately released.

Later tonight, the dismissed workers and their union federation KFSU staged a rally in central Seoul, protesting against the government's use of force. Many speakers questioned the impartiality of the authorities who had failed to look into the case of the employer using a false copy of the collective agreement originally signed by French multinational Carrefour, in an attempt to make its mass dismissals look legal.

UNI Commerce has been able to confirm that a major difference actually exists between the real agreement which Carrefour representatives confirm that they have signed, and a Korean language version used by E.Land at earlier stages of dealing with the mass dismissal issues. Judging from media reports, the employers' story has tended to change along the way, apparently reflecting the growing public disgust with E.Land's behaviour.

For more stories and pictures on the E.Land workers' struggle, go to the dedicated UNI Commerce webpage:

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