Kim Rahn is the managing editor of The Korea Times. Since joining the company in 2003, she has covered various beats including the presidential office, Seoul city government, the Bank of Korea and the tourism industry. In 2014, she won the Society of Publishers in Asia (SOPA) award for her coverage of the ordeals of migrant women in Korea.
Actresss support draws public attention to female laborers fight
By Kim Rahn
Actress Kim Yoh-jin’s open support of a female labor activist is drawing fresh public attention on the otherwise unnoticed struggle the laborer stages on a 35-meter-high crane in a shipyard in the southeastern part of the country.
Kim’s appeal for the union member is pitting netizens and civic groups against the police and management of the company.
The 39-year-old actress is making headlines almost daily as she is not only actively expressing her opinions through Twitter on a number of sensitive social issues but by actually visiting strike locations where various struggles are taking place as well.
“Can you see me? I’m across the street from the main gate of the shipyard. I wish you and I can have a chat.”
“You guys are cool. I feel good that you’re here with me.”
These are text messages exchanged between Kim and the female labor activist when the former visited the latter’s sit-in protest. Late at night on June 11, Kim entered the shipyard in Busan where unionists of Hanjin Heavy Industries and Construction were holding a strike to demand the company scrap its plan to lay off workers.
She climbed up the high-rise ship-building crane to halfway where laborer Kim Jin-suk, a member of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, has been staging a sit-in for 160 days.
On the same day she went to the dockyard together with some 400 other activists to take part in the rally and was apprehended the next morning while exiting the shipyard. She was soon released after police confirmed her identity.