1,857 Rail Strikers Fired; 195 Arrested

About 195 Korea Railroad Corporation (KORAIL) workers who stayed off the job were arrested by police yesterday, Many other railroad workers, facing threats of stern punishment by KORAIL, returned to work, making this weekend a likely turning point in the KORAIL labor strike.

KORAIL fired 1,857 railroad workers who didn’t return to their jobs yesterday, raising the number of dismissed workers to 2,469.

The police also brought 32 union leaders from Paju, Gyeonggi province in for questioning, and searched the union office in Yongsan-gu, Seoul. Police are currently looking for 133 other union members and suspected strike leaders named by KORAIL.

The proportion of workers who returned to their jobs on March 1, the first day of the strike, was 9.6 percent. As of 4:00 p.m. on March 3, 4,338 workers, or 34.58 percent, had returned to work.

KORAIL expects that KTX high-speed rail service will soon be restored to 60 percent of its normal operating capacity.

But as of yesterday, the third day of the strike, the nation’s transportation system and commuters were still in chaos, and KORAIL has suffered enormous losses.

KORAIL has lost an estimated 10 billion won because of the strike; 5.97 billion won from passenger train losses, 1.9 billon won from freight train losses, and 2.27 billion won from subway losses.