The Lee Myung-bak administration’s war on the leftist unions continues:

The Seoul Central District Prosecutor’s Office has announced the arrest without detention of 273 members of the Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union (전국교직원노동조합) and 전국공무원노동조합 (a union for public servants) on charges of illegally taking part in political activities.

That concludes the investigation of teachers and public servants’ illegal political activities afer just over 100 days.

According to prosecutors, they are accused of joining the Democratic Labor Party (민주노동당) and supporting it financially after public servants were forbidden to join political parties.

Investigators found that they deposited over 50 million won (US $44, 705)  in a secret bank account for the DLP and over 100 of them registered on a DLP voting site as party members.  [Korea Beat]

You can read more at the link from Korea Beat but at first glance you would think that it is a bit extreme to tell a teacher they cannot donate money to a political party.  However, the KTEWU is not any normal union.  This group routinely indoctrinates students with pro-communist propaganda, spreads anti-government lies, and anti-Americanism in the classrooms of Korean schools.  To further emphasize where the true loyalties of this organization lies, the political party they were caught giving money to, the DLP was linked to a North Korean spy scandal.

So considering the past activities of this teachers’ union, it is easy to understand why the Lee government is taking the measure they are.