I participated in the ASEM 2000 People’s Forum in
Seoul from October 18 to 21 with Tono Haruhi, the Corepresentative
of APWSL Japan. ASEM stands for the
Asia-Europe Meeting and is a biennial summit of 25
countries from Asia and Europe. The first ASEM was
held in Bangkok in 1996 and the second was in London
in 1998. This yearís third meeting was held in Seoul.
The official objectives of the ASEM were economic cooperation,
political and security dialogue and reinforcing
cultural links between the two regions. But the
real intention of the meeting was to counter the global
dominance of the USA, as seen in the World Trade Organization
and the World Bank, under the hegemony
of the European Union and its member countries.

The ASEM 2000 People’s Forum was a parallel
meeting to the ASEM. It was organized by 96 labor organizations
and NGOs including the Korean Confederation
of Trade Unions ( KCTU) and International
Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU), under
the main theme "People’s action and solidarity challenging
globalization". The APWSL network supported
the Forum and delegates from six national
groups, Australia, Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Japan
and Korea attended workshops concerning labor issues.
There were many different opinions towards the
ASEM among the Forum participants. Some people
wanted to shut down the meeting, some were just
against the meeting; some were supporting the meeting
and some were trying to make advantage of it. But
it was significant that people from the two regions
with all the different opinions gathered at the Forum
to share their experiences and discussed the ways for a
globalization from the bottom. Another asset of the
Forum was the cooperation between the trade unions
and NGOs in preparing it. KCTU took the leading role
in the Forum and this enabled the participation of labor
organizations such as the ICFTU and the International
Union of Food and Allied Workersí Associations (
IUF ). In Seoul, the ties between ì the Turtles and the
Teamsters ì seemed to be stronger than in Seattle.

On October 20, there was a big rally and demonstration
against neo-liberalism, the WTO and the
ASEM, organized by the Peopleís Forum. 20,000
people attended the rally. I was impressed by the massive
turnout and by the strong support from the citizens,
waving and clapping hands and tooting. What
were these Korean people calling for? I think it was
clear; down with the ASEM, down with the WTO.
Workers in Korea have suffered a lot since the economic
crisis of 1997. As I write this article, I heard the
news of bankruptcy of the Daewoo Motors. Chaebols
seems to be in debt crises caused by over-borrowing
infusion funds from the IMF and WB after 1997. Korean
workers are furious with anger. They now know
that international organizations such as the WTO and
the ASEM means nothing but more suffering and harassment
to their lives.

The question posed at the People’s Forum was "is it
possible for us to live on denying economical development?". I learned in participating the Forum that cultural
exchange of people is possible only by negating
the first two pillars of the ASEM, i.e., economic cooperation
and political and security dialogue.