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LEAFLET: KOREA IS THE WORLD!
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Leaflet: Korea is the world!
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Leaflet: Korea is the world!
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This is the text of a leaflet distributed by our Italian comrades at the time of the long, fighting struggle of the South Korean workers:

Korea is the world!

For more than two weeks, starting with Dec.26th, 1996, some 200,000 South Korean workers downed their tools, in an all-out strike, with blockade of production, daily demos, violent clashes with police. They ask for a repeal of a law passed by the Seoul Parliament, which gives free way to the bosses to sack whenever, however and whomever they like. Face to the early difficulties of a recession which starts to bite the «Eastern dragons» as welt the watchword becomes everywhere: «mobility! flexibility!»: as in Italy, in France, in Germany, in the US., in Latin America, as everywhere.

Face to this watchword of international capital, the 200,000 striking South Korean workers, in a fighting front going well beyond trades and places, showed the way to the workers of the whole world, exactly as, some weeks ago, the French teamsters did: an all-out struggle, which does not accept to be interrupted while negotiations are being held. It is exactly in such occasions that it becomes self-apparent that «class solidarity and brotherhood» are not empty, rhetorical phrases, but real, necessary and urgent perspectives!

The 200,000 South Korean strikers showed in fact what does the immense proletarian force mean when it gets started, solid and resolute, almost instinctively catching up again the contents and forms of struggles which are the classic ones of international proletariat in all its long heroic history.

While we write, we still don't know what the outcome will be of this splendid fight of our South Korean brothers. Should the determination and compactness of which they gave proof in these first weeks go on, it is possible that this trial of strength be favourable to them and the law be repealed Should on the contrary the workers be defeated, the signal will remain, strong and unequivocable, that still another sector of the international working class reclaimed to the whole world its own presence, its own pugnacity, its own decision to battle with heroism against an economic system which is the same in the old Europe as well as in the new Asia.

Be they victorious or defeated, the fact remains that the same determination will have to be used in order both to defend the possible victory and to resume the fight in case of defeat All is ephemeral and provisional in the system of capital: only its final overturning will allow to come out of the ever-recurring tragedy of hunger, misery, exploitation, destructive wars, devastation of whole areas of the planet The struggle for one 's own living and working conditions must thus become the first step of a more generalised, political struggle. And, in order to lead such a struggle, in Korea as in Italy as in France, in Germany, in the US., in Latin America, everywhere, the revolutionary party will have to be reorganised anew, as the only force capable to join together the international struggles and lead them ahead, on the road to revolution.

Let's thus salute with enthusiasm our South Korean brothers and learn from them. It will be the best way to help them and ourselves, as part of the same international working class. That is why Korea is the world!

Jan. 15th, 1997

International Communist Party

Source: «Internationalist Papers», n. 6, May 1997

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