Korea National University of Arts students stand in solidarity with cafeteria cooks

Students at the Korea National University of Arts take part in a performance expressing their solidarity in the fight to improve the labor environment for cooks in the school cafeteria at the Seokgwan campus in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul on October 19. Jeong Hyo-jin

Around 1 p.m. October 19, nearly a dozen students gathered at the Seokgwan-dong campus of the Korea National University of Arts (KNUA) in Seongbuk-gu, Seoul. In their hands, they all held a white piece of string. Then they pulled and hooked the string in various shapes to play Cat’s Cradle. The students performed a “food tray Cat’s Cradle performance” to show that they supported the school’s cooks, who collectively resigned this year.

More students participated as they continued to perform. Over thirty students had a string in their hands after about twenty minutes. Around 2 p.m. they completed the performance by creating a shape in the form of a food tray.

Kim Hui-wu--entered the school in 2021--who organized the performance said, “I realized that a lot of people were interested in the labor issue in our school. We came up with the idea to do Cat’s Cradle while thinking of friendly ways to participate facing each other.”

On October 5, a statement was posted on the campus bulletin board in the name of the university’s union titled, “We were forced to engage in intense labor and were not respected as human beings, so we are leaving KNUA.” The statement went on to say that all four cooks who worked in public service positions at the university had submitted their letters of resignation. Public service positions are employees who work in state or public agencies and whose employment is guaranteed.

The cooks claimed they were quitting because of an excessive workload. Before COVID-19, the school hired eight to nine public service cooks, but the school stopped recruiting public service positions. The school then opted for makeshift measures, filling vacancies with workers on a four-month contract after public service cooks retired. As of June, there were only four public service cooks remaining.

In September, the cooks engaged in a strike claiming that at least seven public service cooks were needed to operate the kitchen, but nothing changed. Their plan to meet with the school president never went through.

On October 12, the school released a statement and said, “We are paying for the school cafeteria labor costs with the students’ tuition only. The tuition has remained the same for a long time and due to the characteristic of the school cafeteria, which must provide meals for a relatively low price, we have no choice but to be cautious when recruiting public service employees, whose basic wage increases according to their years of service.”

In the end, the cooks all submitted their letters of resignation and will leave the school one by one by the end of this month. Yu Hyeon-ju (58), who worked in the cafeteria kitchen from 2019 said, “I was surprised too, at first, when everyone said they were going to quit at the same time.” She further said, “Then when I saw the school accept the resignations without even asking, ‘What’s wrong?’ I thought, ‘I can’t stay here any longer.’”

The school’s human rights committee has been receiving signs to an online petition calling for the school to improve the working environment of cooks since October 6. By 3 p.m. October 19, 720 people in the school signed the petition. A representative of the committee said, “We were surprised at the support, which was much stronger than we had expected. The students were very interested in the basic rights of workers, and I think this means that they see the cooks as members of our school.”

Yu, who went to work for the last time on October 18, said, “It’s only the students who appreciate all the trouble we went through, sweating so much in mid-summer that we suffered from heat rashes.” She recalled the students who greeted her saying, “Hi, I’m here.” She said, “I told them to enjoy the meal since it was my last day at work, but inside I was crying.”

Bak Yeong-nam (52), a cook who spent her last day at work Thursday said, “If other people come, I hope the school treats them differently from the way they treated us.”