Sabuk Incident

Overview

The Sabuk Incident (also called the Sabuk Disturbance or Sabuk Uprising) was a labor uprising from April 21 to 24, 1980, in which miners of the Sabuk Mine of Dongwon Coal Mine and their families, in Sabuk-eup (then Sabuk-ri), Jeongseon County, Gangwon Province, opposed a company-controlled union, the company itself, and the public authorities that protected them. Dongwon Coal Mine was then the largest private coal mine in Korea. For four days the miners effectively controlled the Sabuk town center, and during this process one police officer was killed and many people were injured. The incident was settled through an agreement among labor, management, and government, but afterward the Martial Law Command carried out large-scale arrests and interrogations involving torture, which produced another human rights violation. It is evaluated as the first large-scale eruption of the 1980s labor movement, bursting out during the "Seoul Spring" period right after the death of Park Chung-hee.

Background

After the oil shocks of the 1970s, the government pursued a policy of increasing coal production, and Dongwon Coal Mine accounted for about 9% of the nation's coal output (11% including subcontracted mines), according to Wikipedia. However, mine collapses and pneumoconiosis were frequent, and although wages were higher than those of urban workers, they fell short of living costs. The Encyclopedia of Korean Culture explains that the miners had accumulated grievances over the company's unfair wage setting and its domination of the union, in an environment where their rights to the three labor rights were restricted, and that local police and intelligence agencies colluded with the company and intervened in union activities. The union had been in disarray for nearly a year after suspicions of irregularities in the branch chief election of April 1979. When the spring 1980 wage increase was only marginal, the miners demanded a wage increase and the resignation of the company-friendly branch chief.

Course of Events

Refused Assembly and Clashes (April 21)

On April 18, the union branch chief and the Sabuk police chief promised to hold a members' meeting in the courtyard of the police substation for discussion. However, at around 2 p.m. on April 21, when the miners learned that the assembly had not been approved and protested, a plainclothes police officer from the Jeongseon Police Station, who was filming the scene, drove off in a car and struck miners. Enraged miners attacked the Sabuk police substation and other major buildings and smashed property, while the branch chief fled. Wikipedia writes that on this day some 6,000 miners and family members took part in the protests.

Attempted Suppression and Bloodshed (April 22)

On the morning of April 22, some miners and women seized the branch chief's wife, who had been taken in place of her fleeing husband, tied her to a pillar, and assaulted her as a group. This incident is recorded as a dark aspect of the uprising. On the same day, the Gangwon Provincial Police launched a suppression operation, but a police officer was killed and more than 70 people were injured by stones thrown by miners and residents (Encyclopedia of Korean Culture). Wikipedia writes that around this time public authority had effectively been disabled, but efforts to maintain order also existed among the miners.