Welder Kim takes labour protest to new heights

South Korean activist Kim Jin-suk has made crane number 85 at Busan shipyard her platform to demand her rights as an employee and force a local shipbuilder to reverse its decision to lay off around 400 workers.

Her case has become a cause clbre in South Korea where there is growing anger among the middle and working classes towards the government's pro-business policies and the failure of workers to share in their profitability.

Ms Kim and 700 others had gone on strike against the layoffs. An agreement to go back to work was reached last month, but she and about 100 others refused to give up their protest.

She decided to maintain her lonely vigil far above the dockyard. The 51-year-old former welder sleeps in the crane's cab, and has so far seen sub-zero temperatures, a typhoon, a heatwave and monsoon rains. She has no shower and uses a bucket as a toilet. "Every day is a life-and-death battle," she said by telephone, adding the company's private guards had prevented some food and books from being delivered to her by supporters, but she had enough to keep going.

She added: "Bad weather and a food problem here is not a big deal compared to what the people are fighting down there."

Analysts claim the growing divide between rich and poor, rising youth unemployment and inflation amount to the biggest issues confronting Lee Myung-bak in the final 18 months of his presidency.

Tax agency data shows the wage disparity is deepening in Asia's fourth-biggest economy, with the top 20 per cent of earners taking home nearly three quarters of total reported pay.

Won-taek Kang, a political expert at Seoul National University, says Kim has attracted growing support due to the growing frustration among skilled workers and the out-of-work.

He said: "It is closely related to the kind of oppressed response by the government to the labour movement and labour market in general.

"Big businesses are enjoying quite a favourable situation under Lee Myung-bak."

At the weekend, more than 7,000 people rallied at Busan, South Korea's second-largest city with a population of 3.5 million, in support of Ms Kim's sit-in, arriving in a caravan of about 185 so-called "Hope Buses". But they failed to get close to the crane. Riot police stopped them outside the dockyard. They used water cannon containing teargas to disperse the crowd. There were about 50 arrests.

"I couldn't see or hear anything" of the protest, Ms Kim said, adding she was kept updated throughout the clashes by her supporters on the internet.If last weekend's numbers are anything to go by, there should be even more protesters at another Hope Bus rally in August. In June, a few hundred had turned out at a pro-Kim demonstration. Then protesters climbed over a wall with ladders to enter the shipyard.

One of the organisers of the Hope Bus movement, poet Song Kyung-dong, said increases in temporary work and layoffs had sparked the trouble. He said: "People do not talk about it, but there is an inherent anger about this, and this is where the solidarity has emerged from."

South Korea has previously seen union and student protests. Ms Kim recalled that one union leader had killed himself in 2003 on the same crane during a similar protest.