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| Members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) condemn the prosecution for delaying investigations on labor disputes in KB AutoTech and Yoosung Enterprise, at a press conference held in front of the Supreme Prosecutors' Office, Seocho District, Seoul, in this July file photo. Yonhap |
By Jung Da-min
North Korea's party mouthpiece Rodong Sinmun ran a series of articles on South Korea's political situation in its Monday edition, suggesting social rights of the disadvantaged, including workers and disabled, are being neglected in the South. The articles cited South Korean media's recent reports.
Out of the six articles about South Korea in the newspaper's page for foreign affairs, one article highlighted a South Korean civic group's recent press conference that denounced Yoosung Enterprise for destroying trade unions.
The conflicts between the workers and the management started in 2011 when the company established a separate trade union to overcome workers' requests to reduce working hours. Although the Supreme Court sentenced a Chairman Yoo Shi-young to 14 months' jail last December, workers have continued to demand direct negotiations with management.
At another press conference in Monday morning in front of the National Human Rights Commission of Korea, Seoul, the workers said Yoosung Enterprise's discrimination against workers, including wage reductions, was continuing.
The article in Rodong had been released a day earlier in the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
Rodong's Monday edition also ran two other articles from KCNA ― one from a Saturday report on an assault at a special education school for the disabled in Seoul; the other from a Wednesday report on the South's minor progressive Minjung Party's separate organization of "the poor," newly formed on Oct. 12 to fight for rights of underprivileged.
While North Korean media highlights the minor progressive party's recent activity suggesting the North's support for "anti-capitalism" campaigns in the South, they continued to slam the South's conservatives, especially the main opposition Liberty Korea Party (LKP).
Rodong's Monday edition ran an editorial titled "Anti-unification groups' unedifying complaints" to condemn the LKP for disrupting the progress of the Panmunjeom Declaration that came after the April 27 inter-Korean summit.
Meanwhile, the newspaper also ran articles on the South's Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union's fight to be recognized as a legitimate organization, as well as on the South's organizations' "anti-U.S." rallies condemning the U.S. for infringing on the South's sovereignty by intervening in inter-Korean affairs.
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