In light of the accelerating relocation of the U.S. Forces Korea’s Seoul base, its Korean workers staged a large-scale protest Saturday, demanding that military officials guarantee their job security.
Members of the USFK Korean Employees Union gathered in front of the War Memorial of Korea in Yongsan, central Seoul, and demanded the USFK create a response team to ensure the Korean workers are not laid off or switched to nonguaranteed contracts in light of the move.
USFK Korean Employees Union holds a rally calling for their job security in front of the War Memorial of Korea in Yongsan, Seoul, Saturday. (USFK Korean Employees Union)
The USFK is slated to shift its forces from Seoul and the northern Gyeonggi Province to Camp Humphreys in Pyeongtaek, 70 kilometers south of the capital. South Korea’s Defense Ministry said Thursday the U.S. Eighth Army Command, one of the key command facilities of the U.S. military stationed here, has started its move.
But the Korean workers’ union contends that the relocation and consolidation of troops will lead to reduced number of jobs at the new base.
“(South Korea) currently pays about 1 trillion won ($840 million) of taxpayers’ money for defense cost-sharing (for the USFK), yet it (the government) says nothing about the rights of citizens,” the union said in a statement. According to a renewed accord in 2014 by the allies, Seoul is to pay 920 billion won each year until 2018.
The union said that the government should renegotiate the U.S.-South Korea Status of Forces Agreement to incorporate their demands.
Gen. Vincent Brooks, commander of the USFK, said that the South Korean employees will remain “an integral part of USFK’s workforce.”
“We are fully committed to taking care of our civilian workforce, just like they’ve taken care of us,” he said in a press release.
The USFK said that its senior leadership is engaged in a series of monthly town hall meetings that will also discuss plans for relocation of Korean workers.
An official from the USFK Korean Employees Union, however, said that the U.S. military has repeated similar rhetoric over the past decade, but fired and hired Korean employees based on its budget.
The union estimated that 3,000 members attended the protest, while police tallied the participants to be around 2,200.
Lawmakers Rep. Yi Wan-young of the ruling Saenuri Party and Moon Hee-sang of The Minjoo Party of Korea also took part, along with Federation of Korean Trade Unions chief Kim Dong-man.
This was not the first bump in the road for the relocation process. Some civic groups have raised allegations that the relocation was the result of an unfair deal, with a WikiLeaks document indicating that the Seoul government had downplayed the costs it would shoulder.
By Yoon Min-sik (
minsikyoon@heraldcorp.com)