Mick Hartley

An interesting look at left-wing politics in South Korea, and the lingering tendency, even now, to equate being "progressive" with support for the Dear Leader over the border:

There have been calls for the progressive movement in Korea to declare an end to links with pro-Kim factions in order to reconnect with its roots. One set of such calls came at a special discussion session attended by Lee Gwang Baek, the director of Radio Free Chosun and someone who went from being a left winger to a North Korea democratization activist; Choi Hong Jae, the director of Zeitgeist; and Joo Dae Hwan, president of the Social Democratic Coalition and someone who once called for an end to the DLP’s pro-Kim stance when he was its chief policymaker.

“We can say that pro-Kim factions in the Korean Progressive Coalition, the Democratic Labor Party, the General Association of Korean Universities and the Teachers and Education Workers’ Union all have a fair amount of influence,” Lee first pointed out. “These pro-Kim supporters do not go around openly shouting long live Kim Jong Il or calling for the construction of North Korean style socialism. Instead, they work to develop various issues including independence, reunification and anti-Americanism, so even for people with an interest in politics they are pretty hard to distinguish.”

Indeed, he went on, “There is almost nobody at present who is really wild in his or her pro-Kim Jong Il regime-ism, but the problem is that this generation took on the political doctrines of independence, democracy and reunification when they were in university in the ‘80s and ‘90s. Every time a new political issue arises, they express their ideas against the backdrop of the basic political slogans they are used to.”

“Even though the numbers of pro-Kim supporters is small, they are vocal, and because they fan the flames of unrest, there is an element of danger,” Choi contested, pointing out, “In the case of the death of two schoolgirls by a U.S. military vehicle, we saw the ‘386 Generation’ (those born in the 60s, involved in the 80s South Korea democratization movement, and in their 30s when the term was coined in the late-1990s) politically agitating before the true facts were even known.” 

Even after the North Korean model of socialism had failed completely and the regime had revealed itself to be a totalitarian dictatorship, some groups never cast off their pro-Kim regime ideology entirely, and this is something which Lee says seems to show nothing so much as willful blindness. In his words, “North Korea has clearly failed, while South Korea is a state which has developed more quickly than anywhere else on Earth. Either these groups cannot see this extraordinarily obvious reality, or they’re looking the other way.”

The phenomenon of so-called progressives who grew up politically defining themselves by their anti-Americanism, and now end up supporting the most reactionary and despotic ideologies, is not of course restricted to South Korea.