-Paper presented by Bae Joon-Beom, Director of the International Department of the Democratic Labor Party, at the 5^th Summit of Social Debt and Latin American Integration in Caracas, Venezuela from the 24^th to the 27^th of May 2006.

Good morning,

It is a great pleasure and an honor to be here at a time when changes within the country and its interaction with positive trends in the region have energized discussions amongst the movements across the globe. We at the Democratic Labor Party believe that the social and political trajectory of Venezuela and the region have far-reaching implications not just for the country and the Latin American region, but the world as well.

I have offered to speak about the response of the movements in Korea against the on-going negotiations for a Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. Of course, this is not just because of the reality that the political and economic relationship that an individual country establishes with the one superpower of the globe will have major effects on that country, but because the issue of a free trade agreement with the U.S. is a controversial and sensitive one in this region as well. It has relevance well beyond the borders of South Korea.

We live in a world economic order that has seen unfettered neo-liberalism spread across the globe through various mechanisms and apparatuses. International financial organizations, multilateral economic institutions, and various pacts and agreements embody such neo-liberal logic, and have also played an important role in furthering neo-liberal policies in each country.

  Countries become subject to neo-liberal policies in various ways. On the one hand you have direct control over national governments by agreements with international financial organizations or multi-lateral agreements. Various governments in Latin America have to repay a certain amount of their foreign debt each year to international financial institutions such as the IMF. This has justifiably drawn criticism from the social movements because this severely restricts the ability of the government to meet the needs of its supporters. Korea has had to open up its rice markets because of the negotiations which started in the Uruguay Round and currently under the WTO framework, resulting in the devastation of the domestic agricultural sector. Little regard or consideration for the intricacies of national diversity or the domestic socio-economic needs can be found here.

  There also exists a more complex mechanism where investment banks, private international financial funds, credit rating firms, and other organs will discipline the political forces in a country by a variety of means: capital flight, lowering of credit ratings, of reports unfavorable to measures and policies that damages the interests of international capital. Conservative media and domestic forces also join in this disciplinary action. This disciplinary globalization has serious repercussions not only for the left, but for democracy in general, because it excludes and eliminates from the start any type or trajectory of a different development or growth model. It reinforces the ideology that there is no alternative and that there can be no alternative.

  Recently, during the last several years, as the negotiations at the WTO have become stalled, we have seen the proliferation of bi-lateral free trade agreements, the provisions of which are very similar to the contents of the WTO negotiations. Opening up domestic markets, the introduction of market logic to the public services, reinforcement of the rights and powers of trans-national corporations. Of course, these various methods of suffocating the democratic capabilities of the state are not mutually exclusive. They work together in many cases and the specific context depends on the concrete material conditions and the political situation of each state.

  However, the results of such globalization have been stunningly uniform across the national spectrum. In Korea, as in many other countries represented here, we have seen an increasing polarization of wealth, the privatization of many essential public services, the opening up of core industries/sensitive markets, and a jump in irregular and informal sector work. Standards of living have decreased, and at the same time, democratic means to reverse or curtail such trends have been constrained.

  Our Party was born from the refusal of workers and peasants to accept and succumb to the logic of neo.liberal globalization and the degradation it enforced upon the working people. It has worked at the national and international level to counter the forces which further the neo-liberal drive of globalization. This is why the party was in Cancun, and in Hong Kong at the WTO Ministerial conferences together with the mass movements, calling for a rethinking of the current trade order and criticizing the undemocratic nature of the trade talks. Over 1000 were arrested during the process of the protests in Hong Kong just 5 months ago and I personally had to stay in Hong Kong for close to 2 months to assist with the trial of those charged and arrested. I am happy to report that none of those charged were found guilty.

  Domestically the party has acted through the means at its disposal to 1) Stop the introduction of market logic and forces in the public sector and uncompromisingly opposed the privatization of transportation, health, education, water, electricity and all other public goods. 2) It has also presented as one of its core goals the strengthening and expanding of 'gonggongseong'(a term that does not translate well, but I belive 'commonness' comes closest). Strengthening of the public character of the national economy, expanding what should be common to all and accessible to all. This includes such fields as Education, Healthcare, housing, childcare, and food allocation to the needy etc. In other words, de-marketization of the public sector and expansion of the services it provides to all is the key direction. Such action, of course, presupposes more intervention of the state in key sectors of the economy. 3) To do this the party has presented, based on popular support, a plan for taxation, state budgeting that has sought to radically alter the priorities of the state to meet the needs of the people.

  As a natural extension of its activities the party is currently engaged in a struggle to stop the conclusion of a Korea-U.S. Free trade agreement. The party is currently participating in a national coalition of over 350 organizations that have come together to stop the conclusion of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement. The government intiated the negotiation process earlier this year. A very broad range of groups are participating in this coalition, ranging from movie stars and directors that are demanding that partial protection of the domestic film industry be upheld, to peasants and workers, to teachers and healthcare workers, students, intellectuals, and various social movements. The coalition has criticized the government for being unprepared and the negotiating process for being undemocratic and intransparent. But at a more fundamental level, it is the reaction from the movements in Korea to a decade of neo-liberal changes brought on during the last decade. We recognize from previous examples such as NAFTA and the contents of the current negotiation that the agreement, if finalized, will lead to the deterioration of the livelihoods of the majority of workers and peasants.

  The fight will intensify during the second half of this year, as the Korean peasants have called for a million peasants march agains the FTA in November and the trade unions are calling for a strike to coincide with the 2^nd negotiation session in Seoul during July. At the Cannes movie festival in France last week, the organizing committee unanimously adopted a resolution calling for the preservation of the film industry protection system in the name of cultural diversity.

  Another reason why many Koreans are opposed to this FTA is because of the foreign policy and security aspects of the negotiations. Although the Korean government has stated that the decision to pursue the FTA came from pure economic reasons, the USTR homepage states that one of its missions is to ?쐀uild alliances through trade,??an affirmation that there are strategic considerations, and that the negotiations are part of a global project of the US to further its hegemony in the region. There is concern that together with the military base realignment on the Korean peninusula, designed to allow US military more flexiblity in its deployments, the FTA will bring more instability to an already fragile region and hamper nascent efforts for regional cooperation.

  However there are many challenges to our struggle. It is our assessment that in the age of disciplinary globalization, one cannot respond adequately to the many adverse effects of neo-liberal globalization at solely the domestic level, for the autonomy of national policies has been curbed substantially by the globalization of capital. So the challenge remains, under such conditions, how to articulate and formulate an alternative to the current trend at the international level, both global and regional. We believe this is the central challenge for the left during its reconstitution process.

  Asia is a region of immense diversity and multiple differences. Distinct religions, cultures, languages, levels of development, and economic systems, among others can be found within our region, as well as within our borders. Politically, it also has very different components within it. Competition and the calculation of relative interests, instead of absolute gains, still prevail on most issues among nations.

  In this respect, the on-going experiments in Venezuela and the other countries in Latin America are very important for us, for it provides a precedents that can be used as a practical tool for other struggles, a new model of regional economic cooperation can shift the ideological terrain of the struggle and provide spaces for further experiments. This is why the initiatives for a different kind of regional cooperation and solidarity are so important and why meetings such as this one are so valuable. 

  We express our gratitude once again to the organizing committee for the opportunity it has    provided to us, and my we wish a successful conclusion to the conference. Thank you,