An 8 won kick in the teeth

From the Joongang Ilbo:

Students and members of People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy rip up signs of a 10 won ($0.01) coin to protest a proposal by employers to raise the minimum wage by 8 won. The protest, held in Daehangno, central Seoul, called for a rise in the minimum wage by 1,000 won to 5,100 won.

What an insult. To put that into perspective, after working 60 hours - two or three weeks for a part time worker - they'll be able to afford an extra samgak (triangle) kimbap. Wow.

Of course, minimum wage workers aren't alone in being poorly paid:

Foreign workers earn far less than Koreans with their average paycheck lower than that of the bottom 10 percent, a government report says. A more chilling fact is their meager wages are not increasing.[...]

According to the findings by the National Tax Service (NTS), the average annual wages of a foreign worker last year who paid income tax was 13.17 million won - a decrease of 2.9 percent from the previous year's 13.56 million won.

The annual paycheck of the "bottom 10 percent" of a South Korean worker was 14.60 million won, the government agency said.

The number of foreign workers who paid income tax rose by 22.2 percent, or 62,519, to reach 344,583, last year, from 282,064 in 2007.

What a way to treat such a valuable resource.