South Korea car strikers amass arms

WORKERS AND management at Hyundai Motors were engaged in a final effort last night to avert a violent confrontation at South Korea's biggest car factory after strikers and police amassed arsenals of weapons.

Negotiators from the ruling party spent all day talking to leaders of the Hyundai union, which seized control of the plant last month after the company announced 1,600 compulsory redundancies. Since the beginning of the week the factory, in the south-eastern city of Ulsan, has resembled a town under siege, with 5,000 strikers camping in its grounds and twice as many riot police massed outside.

The government and the company insist the strike is illegal, and warrants have been issued for the arrest of 63 union leaders. The police are not expected to raid the plant while the talks are continuing, but last night the negotiators said time was running out. "We have requested the government to refrain from sending in the police while we are holding talks but this is for them to decide and we are not in a position to dictate this," the leader of the ruling-party delegation, No Moo Hyun, said. "If this round of arbitration fails we have no hope of further mediation."

The potentially deadly consequences of a confrontation were obvious yesterday. The strikers have complete control of the plant and have assembled a range of crude weapons and barricades. An array of scrap metal and 50 new Hyundai cars block the main gate, some of them loaded with tanks of oxygen. A large tank of petrol stands among them, and the strikers threaten to ignite the whole barricade if police force their way in.

The strikers are sleeping in factory buildings and in tents made of girders and plastic sheeting. Trays of stones and large bolts have been placed outside many of the tents, for hurling at police or to be propelled from tubes attached to gas canisters. The male strikers are organised into small militias armed with hollow metal pipes.

"At first we didn't bother with the rocks, but the police scared us when they suddenly started to rehearse their raid early yesterday morning," said a striker named Song. "It may look like an uneven fight but even a worm will turn when it is trodden upon. I am prepared to fight until my last breath."

South Korean papers say 15,000 police are on stand-by to raid the plant, ranging from nervous conscripts to the notorious "white-skull force", elite riot police who bear the skull and crossbones on their helmets.

The police have been displaying their own hardware - a giant bulldozer and an armoured car supporting a tear- gas cannon.

Both sides engaged in psychological warfare yesterday, the strikers vowing at noisy rallies to remain defiant, and the police marching up in formation to the entrance of the plant, only to march away again a few hours later.

The potential for tragedy is further increased by the presence of several hundred children and wives who are camping out alongside their husbands.

Many of the women in the plant say they intend to be at the front of any resistance force as a further discouragement to a violent frontal assault.