SOUTH KOREA

Shipyard Workers End 2-Month Strike: Korean workers last week ended two months of crippling strikes that cost the world’s largest shipyard more than $1 billion. With the acceptance of a new wage contract with Hyundai Heavy Industries, normal operations were expected to resume Wednesday after workers return from their summer vacations. The relatively peaceful resolution of the labor dispute in the southern industrial city of Ulsan also marked a success for the government’s new hands-off policy toward labor disputes. The government had refused requests by management to order binding arbitration and refrained from using police to break up rallies by the hard-line unionists. The shipyard is a subsidiary of the Hyundai group, the maker of Hyundai cars, semiconductors and electronic goods. Hyundai was the second-largest South Korean conglomerate last year in sales volume.