Don’t Confuse Political Neutrality With Restriction on Rights

Most countries, including Korea, demand their public servants to maintain political neutrality to ensure their unbiased services to all taxpayers.

In this regard, the prosecution's announcement Tuesday that some members of public workers' unions, including schoolteachers, are suspected of joining the Democratic Labor Party (DLP) or providing financial help to it requires close attention.

If the prosecutors' allegations prove to be true, the union members involved in these illegal activities will likely face stern punishment.

There are some doubtful points, however, with respect to the timing of the law enforcement authorities' launch of investigations, as it came right after a court ruling that acquitted five unionists from charges of breaching the National Security Law by issuing an antigovernment statement in July.

The union leaders refute that they have never encouraged members to join the DLP or donate to it, while accusing the prosecution of trying to reverse the not-guilty verdict at higher courts by proving the statement had been masterminded by the progressive party. The organized labor's suspicions deserve some credibility, but what matters most in this case is not the prosecutors' motivation behind the hardly coincidental probe but whether the unionists have violated the law or not, either collectively or individually.

Aside from the purely legal aspect of this episode, however, it is regrettable that law enforcement officers appear set to crack down on the two public workers' unions of teachers and other government employees using whatever means available.

It is one thing that the public servants should remain neutral politically, but it is another that the government is trying to restrict even their basic political freedom and labor rights. Korea is probably the only country in the world to have sacked 1,600 teachers and disciplined 3,000 government employees for no other reason than trying to form their labor unions. A case in point is the statement in question, which called for the Lee Myung-bak administration to correct its self-righteous conduct of national affairs, saying it is also anti-peace and non-environmental. One can hardly understand why this criticism of the incumbent government should be regarded as hurting national security, as the prosecutors have charged.

True, government employees here, like their counterparts elsewhere, have been criticized for their inefficiency and corruption, summed up as sticking to an ``iron bowl" mentality. Of course, this evaluation runs the risk of generalizing the whole officialdom by a partial phenomenon, but even if true as a whole, that should not prohibit these public workers from expressing their political opinions freely and calling for a more democratic, peaceful and environment-friendly state administration.

Critics of the unions may have every right to call for public workers to pay attention first to enhancing work efficiency and driving out corruption. However, this smacks of allowing the status quo in exchange for remaining silent on social issues. Instead, they should call for the self-reform of public officialdom by guaranteeing their basic rights. The Lee administration and governing Grand National Party should heed whispers among political analysts that all this has something to do with the local elections in June in the medium term, and eliminating room for further expansion of progressive political forces in the longer term.

Korea should no longer let its tortuous modern history ― marked by colonization, national division, fratricidal war over ideological differences and military dictatorship ― make it an ideological one-eyed country.