Gov`t Consider Lawsuit Against Railroad Strikers For 10 Billion Damages

The government has begun to make a full preparation to file a lawsuit against the railroad union members and officials who led the illegal general strike for the past few days. It is also estimating exact losses caused by the strike before prosecuting those responsible for such damages.

The government sent out a punishment notice to 8274 strike attendees who violated its order to come back to work right away and decided to hold a special committee to determine the level of punishment for those people starting from July 9th.

Most train courses recovered their normal operations including Seoul and metropolitan areas.

The Ministry of Construction and Transportation and Korail estimated on July 2nd that a total of 9.5 billion won worth of losses were caused by the four-day strike of passenger and freight train workers from June 28th through July 1st.

This does not include additional expenditures used to cover wages for some 1089 alternative workers from outside. If those expenditures were added, the total amount of damages would go beyond 10 billion won.

The government plans to file a civil lawsuit against strikers and union members for such damages as soon as it finishes its estimation process. It is also considering the level of punishment for those who did not comply with its ultimatum, regardless of the fact that the union withdrew its strike on its own.

In relation to this, an official from Korail expected that at least 100 people would be under a severe punishment.

Meanwhile, passenger trains including Saemaul, Mugunghwa and Tongil started off their courses at 10 a.m. as they were before the strike. Subway trains in the metropolitan area began their operation at 12 o`clock in the morning. In total, 625 passenger trains, 2040 metropolitan subway trains and 434 freight trains were run on this day.

But operations of low-usage trains in 22 areas around the nation were suspended due to the punishment process for engineers who did not listen to the authorities` demand. Those trains are expected to be out of operation for a while.

Jae-Seong Hwang jsonhng@donga.com