At this moment the Hyundai chaebol continues to engage in terrorism by oppressing and squeezing workers. Capitalists' fake factory closures and shutdowns which deprive a great number of workers of our rights to sustain a livelihood.

However, we are not who we were yesterday. We have the power to produce, to move the world, to create new lives and a new society, and the force to remove social evils that oppress people.

Look! The tremendous power of 50,000 workers joining together in the rally on November 13, 1988! Workers igniting fierce struggles against faked factory closures! Workers across industries and regions in strong solidarity establishing the National Struggling Center for the Reformation of Labor Laws and for Wage Increases! Farmers starting to collect rice across the nation to support the Hyundai workers' struggles!

This year we will finally form workers' battalions through wage increase struggles, and so we, workers, will move forward to achieve real democracy and reunification of the Korean society, to obtain national independence and sovereignty without any foreign intervention, and further to achieve the important historic mission of contributing to world' peace.

Our previous generation of women workers waged strong struggles to achieve workers' freedom and national emancipation although they were dragged into sex slavery during the Japanese occupation.

During the oppressive 1970s, women workers fought on behalf of the spirit of the democratic workers' movement. In 1979, Martyr Kim Kyong-sook struck down the Yushin regime (controlled under the martial law) with her decisive blow. In 1986, married women workers at the Kyong-dong Industry died because of severe overtime work.

Martyr Kim Sung-Ae, a 19-year worker who was injured only for three months, killed herself to shield injured workers from continued industrial accidents and hazards. In 1988, Martyr Song Chul-soon, the union general secretary at the Syeh-chang company, tragically fell off the roof while she was hanging a placard to fight for collective bargaining rights.

We, women workers will never forget the martyrs' spirits. Their deaths help us realize their wills. In commemoration of International Women Workers' Day, we make the following resolutions to follow in the footsteps of the fighting wills and spirits of our previous generations of women workers:

• Obtain minimum standard of living by 44 working hours a week!

• Achieve equal work for equal pay by abolishing discriminatory wage systems!

• Obtain life-long rights to work through maternity protection!

• Gain women's emancipation earlier by institutionalizing housework

• Eliminate sex slavery and trafficking!

• Gain labor emancipation earlier through the united force of workers' families!

• Achieve three basic labor rights for workers through reforming anti-worker labor laws!

• Uniting Korea in solidarity with independent trade unions!

Written by the Women's Bureau of the Seoul Regional Trade Unions Association United Women's Department of the National Confederation of Hospital Trade Unions Korean Women Workers Association

dated March 5, 1989