Pen/Insular_Notes

This is the first of what will probably be a series of irregular posts on some interesting old Korean books I’ve come across in the library at SOAS. By way of explanation, for the last few months I’ve been toiling away for a few hours a week in a tiny book-filled room in the library trying to get lots of old Korean books onto the computer catalogue. Inevitably a few gems have revealed themselves (at least they’re gems to me anyway) and I thought it might be worth blogging them for posterity. I might even expand some of these into slightly longer articles if I feel inclined.

My first choice is probably the most intriguing: a book of speeches published in Keijo (colonial Seoul) in 1940 called Aeguk tae yŏnsŏlchip (愛國大演說集), translating roughly as ‘Collection of Great Patriotic Speeches’. The time and place of publication should be a hint that this is no treatise on Korean nationalism. In fact it’s a collection of stirring pro-Japanese, pro-war speeches given by (apparently) prominent Korean writers. The editor is Kim Tong-hwan, who appears to have later become an important figure in the North Korean literary scene - a peculiar, but perhaps not completely unique path for a 20th century Korean intellectual.

As you can see from the picture below, much of the front cover has been ripped away, possibly before it came into the posession of SOAS. One can only guess that this was done by an angry Korean reader.

From a glance at the preface and contents (pictures below), some of the main themes appear to be support for the Japanese empire’s ’sacred war’ (聖戰) in Asia; the idea of Korea and Japan behaving as one body (called naesŏn ilch’e 內鮮一體); and lots of the usual talk about ‘our’ duty to serve the country etc.

Preface

Contents

For anyone living in Seoul you have a great opportunity to hear Pak No-ja (aka Vladimir Tikhonov) speak at Yonsei University this weekend. He will be giving a special talk hosted by Ta Hamkke on “Korean nationalism and the left.” As the author of 당신들의 대한민국 [”Your Korea”] and most recently 우승優勝 열패劣敗의 신화 [”The Myth of the Survival of the Fittest”] I think we can expect his views to be very interesting and perhaps quite challenging for some leftwing activists in Korea. Details.

Del.icio.us may be one of the best internet ideas of recent times, but it’s also a fantastic way to bookmark everthing in sight and then read none of it. So, to force myself to use it more constructively, I present you with a selection from my recent bookmarks on Korea.

First up, yesterday’s news that a quarter of rural bachelors in South Korea are marrying women from overseas, a fairly good indicator I would have thought of the ongoing disintegration of Korean rural society. The great majority of men married Chinese women (it doesn’t say what proportion were ethnic Koreans - 조선족), followed by women from Vietnam and then Filipina women.

Next we have John Feffer’s entertaining article on the restaurant explosion currently taking place in P’yŏngyang (ok that’s slightly hyperbolic). Apparently the recent economic reforms have led to a great number of new eateries in the North Korean capital and competition between them is beginning to heat up. A couple of UN workers have even produced a guide to 50 of the best in the city. Here’s the passage that blew me away:

On his most recent trip this year to Pyongyang, Randall Ireson lunched at a microbrewery alongside average Pyongyangites in working attire. “The beer was excellent, a dark ale,” says the DPRK Assistance Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. “You could make a meal of it. And they served the best cold noodles I’ve had.”

On a more serious note, this article provides a fascinating insight into the way in which the market is taking hold in North Korea and the state is losing much of its control. In my view, this doesn’t look like a deliberate strategy on the part of the North Korean ruling class, like the Chinese turn of the early 80s, but rather emergency measures taken by a state that has little economy left to control. A sort of disintegrating state capitalism. Of course, as Feffer points out, those who will win from these changes (as they did in the Soviet transition) will be those sections of the nomenklatura who take advantage of their connections to become ‘red capitalists’ - oligarchs, robber barons, or whatever you prefer to call them.

Finally, a plug for fellow blogger Jamie at Two Koreas and his excellent piece on the migrant workers’ movement in South Korea. He draws parallels between this recent movement and the ‘minjung movement’ (people’s movement) that formed the basis of Korea’s labour and democracy movements through the 70s and 80s. Jamie puts the case for migrant workers labouring in the underbelly of the Korean economy being the new excluded, unrecognised group in Korean society:

Though Korean citizens now enjoy a broad range of civil, political, and labor rights and improved standards of living, I’d like to argue that the collective suffering that once defined the life of the minjung today seems to shape the lives of a new group of people in contemporary South Korea. These people are the undocumented foreign workers who now toil in those jobs done by the minjung of the past, in the 3-D (dirty, dangerous, and difficult) industries where, like the minjung, their toil seems endless and their struggles often go unrecognized.

I saw Terry Callier at the Jazz Cafe last night (which by the way, is probably one of London’s best venues). I’ve been wanting to see him live for quite a while, but wasn’t really expecting any great revelations. I was wrong: in real life he has a presence. He is an absolutely mesmerizing singer. A man who can spin out his lyrics (which sometimes, admittedly, have an air of richest fromage) in a way that brings tears to the eyes of grown men (and perhaps even women too).

The tracks from his recent album Lookin’ Out were another revelation, rivalling his earlier classic tunes from the 60s and 70s. The lyrics to his cover of Dino Valenti’s ‘What About Me’ particularly burned their way into my mind:

I work in your factory.
I study in your schools.
I fill your penitentiaries.
And your military too!

And I feel the future trembling,
As the word is passed around.
“If you stand up for what you do believe,
Be prepared to be shot down.”

Oh…….oh What you gonna do about me?
Oh…….oh What you gonna do about me?

The Guardian has a nice interview with the man who was a computer programmer at Chicago University from 1983 until 1998, when they sacked him after finding out about his double life as a musician.

Here is the second part of Kim Ha-yông’s reply to Han Kyu-han on the North Korean economy in the 1950s.

part one

Contrary to what Han Kyu-han writes, it is difficult to view the August 1956 so-called ‘Factional Incident’ as something that arose as a result of a “severe crisis of capital accumulation.”

The clash over the correct line for economic development that reached its apex at the all-members meeting of the party central committee in August 1956 had already begun in 1953-1954, at the time when the North Korean economy was in its [earliest stages of revival].

The conflict between different economic lines that was revealed in the clash between Kim Il-song and the Soviet/Yenan factions did not [particularly] reflect the situation in North Korea but was actually symptomatic of the limitations of the Stalinist economic model which were revealed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.

When Stalin died in 1953, the Soviet bureaucracy rushed into limited reforms aimed at solving the problems that had accumulated during Stalin’s rule. To borrow Tony Cliff’s expression, the Soviet bureaucracy felt the need to move from “the stage of primitive accumulation to mature state capitalism.”

To raise the productivity of the Soviet economy, “while they were focusing capital investment into industry that was already to a certain extent developed, they could not any longer refuse to use a chunk of the remaining resources to raise the standard of living in the Soviet Union.”

However, the situation in North Korea was different. To prepare a new industrial basis, all resources had to be focused on this. Even if it meant starving the peasants and squeezing the workers, it had to be done. There was no leeway for taking into account the living standards of the people.

The person who advocated this point of view was Kim Il-song himself and those that took the side of the post-Stalin Soviet bureaucracy were the Soviet and Yenan factions.

Kim Il-song first began to talk about Juche [주체] in 1955, reflecting the fact that the economic interests of the Soviet Union and North Korea had diverged from one another.

Once Kim Il-song had emerged victorious from the central committee meeting of August 1956, he completely scrapped the five-year plan, which had partially reflected the call for an expansion of investment in the consumer sector. The heavy-industry-first line became all the more clear.

According the ordinance passed by the Supreme People’s Assembly [최고인민회의] for the first five-year plan, of the total sum to be invested in industry, 83 percent would go to heavy industry!

The North Korean bureaucracy was desperate to keep workers’ wages low while speeding up the rate of work. The bureaucracy organised mass meetings of employees and rallies of ‘zealots’ in every factory and enterprise, where workers resolved that they would complete the five-year plan a year and a half or more early.

In any case, the high production targets (set in the state plan) were gradually inflated by the party’s policy of expansion of production and the resolutions of workers to increase production.

The North Korean bureaucracy made good use of the deeply held desire for economic reconstruction among a people who had experienced colonialism and war and who were afraid of renewed war with American imperialism. The drive for growth also gave a considerable number of people the opportunity to improve their social status. The ‘Heroes of Labour’ [노력영웅] who came to prominence in the drive to increase production became factory managers and members of the Supreme People’s Assembly.

On the other hand, the majority of workers could not climb the ladder of social mobility and had to endure the appalling conditions that were the other side of economic growth.

Although strict labour regulations were enforced, workers did not have the right to organise themselves to defend their conditions. The Labour Federations [직업동맹] were organisations of the state that enforced “the duty of competition” rather than collective contracts.

However, it was difficult to ensure economic development beyond a certain level by forcing workers to accept low living standards and tiring work. To raise the productivity of labour, it was necessary to offer workers better consumer goods and holiday time.

The North Korean bureaucrats could not avoid encountering, somewhat later, the same problems that the Soviet bureaucracy had come up against after the death of Stalin. In 1966-67 Pak Kŭm-ch’ŏl, Yi Hyo-sun and others pointed out the problems of the extensive [?] growth model and argued for the need to find a way of balancing economic growth and controlling the rate of growth.

This was the period when the seven-year plan failed to achieve its target within the allotted time and the three-year extension started to be used as a countermeasure. They [the critics] insisted that defence spending should be reduced so that attention could be paid to the quality of goods produced rather than just economic output.

The year 1966 [1967?] saw another round of purges within the North Korean bureaucracy [the so-called Kapsan Faction Purge, in which KWP deputy chairman Pak Kŭm-ch’ŏl was removed]. Unlike the purges of 1956, this time they did originate in a conflict among the bureaucracy over how to deal with the economic crisis and this reflected the fact that the limitations of Kim Il-song’s ‘more Stalinist than Stalin’ economic model were revealing themselves.

Some on the Korean left have taken the struggle for democracy in Egypt to heart. From this week’s Socialist Worker:

Solidarity with Egypt from South Koreans

On 9 June a diverse group of anti-war and human rights activists gathered in front of the Egytian embassy in Seoul, South Korea to demonstrate against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.

People chanted “Down with Mubarak”, “Kifaya!” and “Victory to the Egyptian people’s struggle for democracy”.

It might seem that South Korea is far away from Egypt and that no one here would be interested in what is going on there. This is far from the truth.

When South Koreans hear about Egypt’s Kifaya movement and Mubarak’s desperate attempts to hang on to power, we immediately make a connection to our former military rulers.

We too have seen rulers pushing political “reforms” that are nothing more than shams to maintain control.

Our military rulers also resorted to brutal violence when challenged. A prime example is the Kwangju Massacre in 1980, where citizens of Kwangju city were shot to death by the army.

Rulers all over the world are learning from each other about how to control the people. This is why it is so important that people struggling for democracy build strong international solidarity and also learn from each other.

On behalf of the South Korean anti-war and human rights activists I hope for a great victory for the Egyptian working people fighting for democracy and real change.

CJ Park,
All Together, South Korea

Meanwhile, Raed reports on Condi’s recent speech in Egypt where she said that the US would now be seeking democracy in the Middle East rather than just stability as it had done in the past. And who was she saying this to? Around “700 invited government officials and academics”. Would these be the same government officials who have been busy brutally repressing the Kifaya democracy movement in Egypt? Is this the same government that the Bush administration gives more than a billion dollars a year in military aid and praises for its limited democratic reforms that everyone else believes are designed to smooth the path of succession for Hosni Mubarak’s son? (Ring any bells NK watchers?)

The battle lines are clearly drawn between people who want real democracy, whether they are in Korea or Egypt, and the Bush administration, which wants fake democracies that it can easily keep under control:

Abdel Halim Kandil, a member of the opposition group Kifaya, said his organization was boycotting Rice’s speech and visit because reformers in Egypt don’t want to seek the help of a “big dictator'’ against a “small dictator.'’

We believe the U.S. administration is not making a serious effort to support reformers,'’ he said.

This week’s Private Eye (1135) has this clipping from the Yomiuri Shinbun:

Newsweek screwed up. Nearly everyone admits that, including the magazine’s editors, who retracted an inadequately sourced report that U.S. inerrogators had flushed a Korean down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay.

I expect imminent outrage from the Korean netizen community, possibly flag burnings.

For the last few months I’ve managed to studiously avoid what is almost certainly the major issue of the moment for the South Korean left and the labour movement: the awkward-to-translate problem of ‘non-regular’ workers (비정규노동자). This is probably because I’m quite lazy and I didn’t want to do the research and write something proper about the subject. On the other hand it’s not an issue that can be ignored, particularly as the National Assembly is in the process of passing a bill which will worsen conditions for non-regular workers.

Fortunately, Jamie at Two Koreas has come to the rescue with an excellent article on the struggle against ‘flexibilisation’ (a better translation methinks) in Korea. A taster:

The use of casual and contract workers was greatly expanded after the 1997 monetary crisis when the then President Kim Young-Sam administration passed a series of new labor laws, one of which allowed for companies in specific sectors to hire greater numbers of temporary and contract workers, including during times of labor action, causing an almost overnight rise in the number of temporary staffing agencies.

The KCTU claims that with the introduction of these temporary agencies, exploitation of temporary workers and job insecurity greatly increased. They also claim that under the guise of sub-contracting workers, practices of illegally hiring and laying-off of temporary workers have also become prevalent. [6]

Since the 1997 crisis, employer’s groups have been advocating greater flexibility in using irregular workers. According to the Korea Herald, the current labor minister Kim Dae-Hwan has also promoted further labor market reforms, and has pushed for the implementation of the recent government-initiated bills.

For more intrepid readers, here are some resources in Korean on this subject:

The Democratic Labour Party’s special site on non-regular workers.

The KCTU announces today that it and its fellow trade union federation (FKTU) are launching an all-out struggle for the rights of non-regular workers. There’s also quite a bit on the subject in English in the April edition of the KCTU’s English newsletter.

Ta Hamkke newspaper has been covering the subject very regularly, including on the front page of their most recent edition.

This struggle is really about the most basic level of the confrontation between capital and labour. The question being posed is: can Korean capital take a greater share of surplus value by forcing down wages and conditions? As is the case all over the world, one of the favourite tools in the neo-liberal box for this purpose is the casualisation or flexibilisation of labour. If pushed through successfully, it also has the added bonus of weakening labour organisation, thus providing further opportunities for capital to squeeze more out of workers for less compensation with less resistance.

In fact, it is probably not an exaggeration to say that the future of the Korean left and the labour movement as a whole may rest upon the struggle to organise non-regular workers and defend their rights. Capitalism doesn’t stand still - it’s a constantly evolving organism and thus the working class itself and the focus of its struggles is also changing. If organisations like the KCTU and the Democratic Labour Party do not respond to these changes, the danger is that their base could narrow drastically and they could find themselves bureaucratised, corrupted or just irrelevant (there are disturbing signs of this already). As I wrote a while ago, this is one of the warnings that comes from the fate of the Brazilian Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT) and its near complete capitulation to neo-liberalism.

For a bit of fun I’ve decided to add a flickr badge to my sidebar. Will remove it if it becomes annoying.

Another excellent writer on North Korea, Kim Ha-yông, has written a reply to the Han Kyu-han article I translated recently, in the latest issue of Ta Hamkke. I realise that not all readers are going to find this subject interesting and may be amused by my obsession with the North Korean economy – but what’s a blog for if not for pursuing your own egocentric, personal interests?

I think that Kim makes some very interesting points, particularly about the North Korean economy in relation to long-term trends in the world economy (this definitely brings to mind Kondratieff). I also feel some obligation to translate this reply as I think it provides some important points to balance areas which were perhaps weak in Han’s analysis. Well, anyway, if you can be bothered to read it you can make your own minds up about who is right on this one. Here’s the first part:

Was the North Korean economy in crisis in the 1950s?
Ta Hamkke 57, June 2005
Kim Ha-yông

I won’t deal with all the detailed facts in [Han Kyu-han’s] article, but limit myself to addressing the big picture: was North Korea’s economy doing well in the 1950s or was it in crisis?

To begin with the conclusion, the decade from 1950-1960 was one of renaissance that saw North Korea create a miracle from the ruins of the Korean War.

In the three-year plan implemented from 1953-1956 the economy recorded a massive average annual growth rate of 41.7 percent – almost world record level – and in the ten years after the Korean War, North Korea maintained an annual average growth rate of 25 percent.

To achieve this sort of growth in the place that, after the Korean War, the US had boasted “would never recover, even if it took 100 years” was astonishing. During the war the majority of the North’s industrial facilities had been destroyed and one million people were killed, including some 400,000-480,000 civilians.

It is true that pursuing rapid economic growth in a small country with few resources and almost no aid produces massive contradictions. But during this period the trend of the North Korean economy was an upward curve.

The reason why I’m bringing up this problem is that I worry that comrade Han Kyu-han’s article almost gives the impression that North Korea is a society that has been in a permanent state of crisis from the 1950s right up until the present. This can be a major obstacle to understanding the character of North Korean society.

The impression that North Korea is a society that has fallen into a state of continuous stagnation is a typical, and prevalent misunderstanding and one that is clearly connected to the idea that the South Korean system is superior to the North Korean one.

However, the important fact that people have quickly forgotten as a result of the famine that North Korea is suffering today is that South Korea could not catch up with the North Korean economy at all until the 1970s. In 1982 North Korea’s average food intake was higher than that of South Korea.

It goes without saying that today the North Korean economy has fallen into a severe crisis, but you have to look at this alongside the fact that the country was able to achieve massive economic growth up until the 1970s.

If you don’t look at this contradictory development, it is easy to fall into the view that the North Korean system is fundamentally inefficient, irrational and different to the capitalist system.

However, far from displaying an inefficiency that makes it fundamentally different to capitalism, the [trend of the] North Korean economy followed the rise and decline of state capitalism in the world economy. In the 1950s the trend toward state capitalism remained marked in the world economy, and North Korea was just one country among a number that created an economic success story through the use of powerful state intervention.

In the 1970s, the trend toward “globalisation” (세계화) became more influential in world capitalism than the state capitalist [trend], and those countries that stuck to the state capitalist road began to fall behind. North Korean economic growth had begun to slow down in the late 1960s and by the end of the 1970s it had dropped to 3-4 percent [annually].

[Further reading: T. Cliff, State Capitalism in Russia.]