Businesses say 'real challenge' is uncertainty of declaration's impact
Union workers in South Korea are walking off their jobs to demand President Yoon Suk-yeol's resignation after he declared a short-lived martial law on Tuesday.
Among the participants of the protests are Hyundai Motor's 43,000-strong union, the largest single-workplace union in Korea, who held four-hour partial strikes on Thursday and Friday, Yonhap News Agency reported.
GM Korea's 7,300-member union also staged a similar walkout on Thursday and Friday, the report added.
Hyundai Motor's union is part of the Korean Metal Workers' Union, which is part of the militant Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU). The KCTU said on Wednesday that it will go on indefinite strike until Yoon steps down to be accountable for his martial law declaration.
Yoon shocked South Korea and the rest of the world when he issued the declaration on late Tuesday, attributing it to "anti-state forces that are trying to paralyse the essential functions of the country and destroy the constitutional order of liberal democracy."
But the martial law, which was declared in the country for the first time in more than four decades, was overturned just hours later by South Korea's National Assembly, Korea JoongAng Daily reported.
Yoon, in response, held a Cabinet meeting also on Wednesday to lift the emergency martial law and announced that troops deployed to enforce it have been withdrawn.
But the impact of Yoon's short-lived martial law was widespread in the business community. In addition to strikes, various major organisations in South Korea held emergency meetings amid concerns of its effects.
Executives of Samsung Electronics, SK Group, LG Group, and HD Hyundai Group each held their own emergency meetings in anticipation of the turmoil that Yoon's declaration carried, The Korea Times reported.
"The resignation or impeachment of the president is a matter of politics. For businesses, however, the focus is on assessing and discussing how such major political events might impact consumer sentiment, exchange rates, and other economic factors," a conglomerate official told the news outlet.
Another official said no one can predict the extent of the "unprecedented" situation's impact and potential repercussions.
"Our top priority is to monitor how both domestic and international markets will respond. The real challenge lies in the uncertainty of what kind of aftermath may unfold," the second official told The Korea Times.
