The city of Ulsan near the southeast coast provides another window on how the old Korea is struggling to adapt to changing times. Long a symbol of Korea's industrial miracle, Ulsan built its wealth sending the output of its chemical plants, car factories and shipyards around the world. The city, with a population of 1 million, accounted for 14% of Korea's exports last year. Ulsan is a Hyundai town--the chaebol provides a third of local jobs. This spring, Hyundai Motors, the group's automaking arm, announced plans to lay off 8,200 workers. On a rainy morning last month, an angry crowd of housewives whose husbands are slated to lose their jobs gathered outside the gates of the city hall. Babies strapped to their backs and toddlers at their feet, they stood under umbrellas in the downpour, chanting and singing protest songs. A little girl in a yellow raincoat held up a sign saying, "Why should the workers suffer all the pain? Layoffs, never!" Her mother, Kim Kie Kyung, said the years of heavy work at Hyundai's car plant had given her husband an ulcer. "Who will compensate for his lost health now?" Kim asked. "There must be some other way than just laying people off." Then the leader of the group stepped to the microphone and bellowed, "Down with the mayor. Keep your word!" Mayor Shim Wan Gu had promised during his election campaign in May not to allow layoffs, the wives insisted. When Shim didn't appear, some of the women tried to push their way through a phalanx of armed riot police guarding the gate. Suddenly the crowd dragged a policeman out of line and started pummeling him, until colleagues could pull him back to safety. The housewives calmed down only when Hyundai Motors union leaders stepped in, pleading with them to avoid violence. A small incident, but emblematic of the new direction of Korea's feisty labor movement. To gauge the change, just rewind to 1987. Suppressed under decades of authoritarian rule, unions were starting to flex their muscles. Hyundai workers struck at the chaebol's giant Ulsan shipyard, demanding more pay and more say in management. For weeks, tear gas and Molotov cocktails filled the air as thousands of workers clashed with police. Similar protests erupted at Hyundai's Ulsan plants in the early 1990s. Though today's economic crisis threatens many more jobs, protests have been largely peaceful so far. Labor leaders say the public is tired of violence. The unions held the moral high ground in the old days of government repression. Now they are seen as part of the problem, scaring away the foreign investors Korea so badly needs. So labor leaders want to move the battlefield into politics. Under a law passed last year, unions for the first time can give money to political parties and even create their own parties. That's one reason labor has mellowed. A greater voice in politics will empower workers, says Heo Young Koo, vice president of the Korea Confederation of Trade Unions: "Political power will ease the tense confrontations between unions and companies." -Warren G, DRU Hill, Graham Bonnet, Boyz List, Boston Kickout, Areosmith,Shawn Colvin, FireHouse, Celine Dion, Rod Stewart, Toni Braxton, Kenny G, Mark Owen, Donna Lewis, Scolpions, Gloria Estefan, REm, Suede, Enya, Take That...n' HUFSan