Using a Korean construction union’s attempt to deliver a protest letter to Japan’s embassy in Seoul and the Kansai ready-mix dispute as a lens, this piece criticizes Japanese media—including Asahi Shimbun and NHK—for amplifying political paralysis and failing to confront external lobbying carried out in the meantime.

January 21, 2019
Readers must take this piece to heart and understand how deep the guilt of media such as the Asahi Shimbun and NHK truly is.
What follows is an article I found yesterday while thinking about an English translation online.
January 12, 2019, Webmaster.
Korean Construction Union Protests at the Japanese Embassy.
On January 9, South Korea’s construction union (50,000 members) visited Japan’s embassy in Seoul to hand over a protest letter.
They demanded the immediate end to what they called an abnormal exercise of state power against the Ready-Mix Concrete Branch of the Rengo Union in the Kansai region.
The construction union is one of the core organizations of South Korea’s national center (central labor federation) and has maintained a brotherly solidarity relationship with the Rengo Union for over 17 years.
The January 9 action positioned the ongoing crackdown—continuing since last year—against the Kansai ready-mix branch as repression against a legitimate strike by a labor union, and demanded its immediate cessation.
The Japanese embassy refused to accept the letter.
The full text of the protest letter addressed to the Japanese embassy can be read in the PDF below.
Protest Letter to the Japanese Embassy from the Construction Union (PDF).
Korean media have also taken note of this solidarity action and published articles such as the following.
Mainichi Labor News.
http://www.labortoday.co.kr/news/articleView.html?idxno=156117
“Japan Must Stop Repressing Construction Workers and Release Those Detained.”
39 ready-mix workers arrested for demanding higher freight rates… Construction union delivers protest letter to Japan’s embassy in Korea on the 9th (2019.01.08).
Japan’s government has arrested ready-mix workers who went on strike demanding fulfillment of promised freight-rate increases, becoming a public controversy.
South Korea’s labor movement has defined these actions by Japan’s government as union repression and resolved to wage a “joint struggle in solidarity to guarantee the labor rights of construction workers in Japan and South Korea.”
According to the construction union on the 8th, the All Japan Construction and Transport Solidarity Union has been conducting a full-scale strike throughout the Kansai region since December of last year (as in the original).
This was because ready-mix companies had repeatedly promised freight-rate increases for five years yet failed to keep that promise even once.
The union stated that “ready-mix companies in Kyoto, Nara, Wakayama, and Shiga accepted the union’s demand for higher freight rates and resolved the issue amicably, but Osaka’s ready-mix industry consistently ignored the union’s demands, deprived members of work, and attempted union-busting attacks,” and added that “Japan’s government also sided with the companies and moved to repress the union.”
According to the union, Japan’s government arrested 39 ready-mix workers by December of last year on suspicions such as obstruction of business by force and attempted extortion in connection with the strike by the All Japan Construction and Transport Solidarity Union.
Of these, 21 have been indicted and nine are being detained.
Through annual exchanges, the union and the All Japan Construction and Transport Solidarity Union grasp the realities faced by construction workers in both countries and stand in solidarity so that basic labor rights will be guaranteed.
The union declared that it “demands the release of those detained and an end to repression against the All Japan Construction and Transport Solidarity Union,” and that it “will fight together until the problem is resolved whereby the labor rights of all construction workers in Japan are guaranteed and the legitimate activities of unions are destroyed by public authority.”
On the 9th, the union attempted to deliver a protest letter to the Japanese embassy in Korea demanding the release of detainees and the suspension of union repression. (Reporter Lee Eun-young).
Korea Times (2019.01.09).
Why the construction union visited Japan’s embassy.
http://www.hankookilbo.com/News/Read/201901091638343121?did=NA&dtype=&dtypecode=
A domestic labor union visited Japan’s embassy in Korea and held a demonstration protesting what it called Japan’s government repression of labor unions.
Even as Japan–Korea relations are tense over issues such as the patrol aircraft radar dispute and court rulings on compensation for wartime labor, solidarity within the labor movements of both countries continues.
The National Construction Union held a press conference on the morning of the 9th in front of the Twin Tree Tower in Jongno-gu, Seoul, where Japan’s embassy is located, along with a ceremony to deliver a protest letter.
According to the construction union, Japan’s government arrested 39 union members of the “All Japan Construction and Transport Solidarity Union” (hereafter, the Solidarity Union) during the four months from August through December last year; 21 were indicted and nine remain in detention.
The Solidarity Union is an organization of about 3,000 workers—ready-mix concrete and dump-truck drivers—active mainly in the Osaka area of Japan.
When the Solidarity Union went on strike demanding “keep the promise to raise freight rates for ready-mix,” Japan’s government moved to suppress them by applying charges such as obstruction of business and attempted extortion.
In a protest letter explicitly naming Prime Minister Shinzo Abe as the recipient, the construction union stated that “the Solidarity Union’s demands and strike were carried out as industrial-union activities to protect the livelihoods of workers in the ready-mix industry, and the purpose and means constitute a legitimate exercise of basic labor rights,” and demanded the immediate release of union members while protesting the “unjust criminal crackdown.”
The embassy refused to accept the letter, and the delivery did not take place.
The reason the construction union involves itself even in another country’s labor issues is its strong relationship of more than 17 years with the Solidarity Union.
In 2001, during a protest march by ready-mix workers to Yeouido in Seoul, footage showed police forcibly dispersing the protest using hammers and axes; after seeing this, the Solidarity Union, which took an interest in South Korea’s labor movement, began full-scale exchanges with the construction union, triggered by the acquisition of Ssangyong Cement by Taiheiyo Cement, a Japanese company that is also their employer.
During the 2002 labor-management dispute at Ssangyong Cement, the Solidarity Union even sent 30 million won in struggle funds to the construction union.
Since then, the two unions have traveled back and forth between the two countries each year to continue exchanges.
Kim Jun-tae, head of the construction union’s education and publicity bureau, said that “when five executives of the construction union’s tower-crane division were detained in 2015, the Solidarity Union also delivered a protest letter to the Korean embassy in Japan.”
After reading this article, what would you think about the posture of Japanese media—beginning with NHK—which repeatedly broadcast close-up images of Makoto Kimura and Kiyomi Tsujimoto, both deeply connected to Kansai ready-mix, throughout the year and a half of the Moritomo–Kake ‘fabrication’ coverage that kept the Diet paralyzed, national politics stalled, and thus Japan’s national strength stalled?
Moreover, while Japan was driven into the foolish Moritomo–Kake uproar, the Korean Peninsula exploited the gap and, at the IHO, not only remained unsatisfied with having illegally occupied Takeshima amid the postwar confusion, but now sought even to steal the Sea of Japan itself by deploying their specialty—an intense lobbying operation.
They fully exploited the stupidity of Japan’s media and commentators, and displayed their true character as a country of “bottomless evil” and “plausible lies,” pushing the claim at the IHO that the name “Sea of Japan” was something Japan created during the colonial era—an assertion that is beyond astonishing.
They made the IHO—equally ignorant, foolish, and crude as Japan’s media—believe an outrageous lie.
Readers must take this piece to heart and understand how deep the guilt of media such as the Asahi Shimbun and NHK truly is.