S. Korea Strike Settled; Body to Be Released

Striking shipyard workers, who held the body of a slain co-worker hostage to their labor demands, accepted a company salary offer Wednesday and agreed to release the body for burial, state-run media reported.

Workers at the Daewoo Shipbuilding and Heavy Machinery Ltd. yard on Koje Island, 210 miles southeast of Seoul, accepted a company offer of $56 more per month. They currently earn between $142 and $337 per month.

They also agreed to end a blockade of the morgue where the body of Lee Suk Kyu, 21, was held, reports said. Lee was killed Saturday during a labor rally near the shipyard.

Union leaders had insisted on a “democratic workers’ funeral” and burial at a cemetery in Kwangju, 170 miles south of Seoul, where victims of a bloody 1980 uprising are buried. Lee’s family wanted a simple ceremony in his hometown of Namwon, 155 miles south of Seoul.

In another development Wednesday, a student leader was arrested in Seoul for comments he made to Western journalists. Woo Sang Ho, 24, president of the Yonsei University student body, was charged with slandering the state in comments to foreign reporters comparing the military-backed regime of President Chun Doo Hwan to the Nazis, officials said.