Pen/Insular_Notes

I’m not going to pretend to offer very insightful analysis of the recent elections to the leadership of the Democratic Labour Party (민노당) since I’m far away and far from knowing all the complexities of left politics in Korea. However, I do want to point out that it was a good day for the radical wing of the DLP with Ta Hamkke’s candidate for policy chief, Kim In-sik gaining five and half thousand votes or 16.86 percent. This was a huge acheivement when Kim was an outsider from a faction many party members hadn’t heard of. It is also significant that a Ta Hamkke candidate could get many many times more votes than the group has members. It shows that there is a sizeable audience inside the party for a radical, militant and internationalist alternative to the dominant social democrat and left-nationalist factions.

And now for the not so good news: the winner was the left-nationalist (ie NL) Yi Yong-dae. As Antti mentioned in the comments to a previous post, Kim In-sik laid into Yi Yong-dae in one of his speeches over his popular frontist politics and attitude toward North Korea. Here’s what Kim had to say on the latter subject:

Our DLP has to have the right attitude toward North Korea. I believe that North Korea is fundamentally exactly the same sort of exploitative and repressive society as South Korea. So the DLP must make policy in relation to exchanges and cooperation between North and South from the point of view of solidarity between the workers and oppressed people of the two countries. It’s only from this standpoint that we can put forward the working class position on [issues such as] the North Korean defectors, North Korean human rights, the nuclear issue and the rights of workers at the Kaesŏng industrial complex.

On other hand, Pak Noja has this to say about the elevation of Yi Yong-dae to DLP policy chief:

You know, my sort of gut feeling is that Yi Yongdae would be careful enough not to mix his personal/factional allegience to the “national liberation” too much/openly with the official business of the DLP. The Chusap’a [left-nationalist faction] knows too well in what way they are perceived by the most people outside of their faction, and they know also that speaking about Swedish welfare state would earn them more Brownie points with the wider audience in and outside of the party. One Hangyoreh poll around a year ago (if you are interested, I can find concrete date and link to the article) suggested that around 45% of those polled were more in favour of the Northern European sort of social system - so, it would be very irrational if Yi Yongdae were to ignore this sort of sentiment. Although the big issue here, of course, is whether the Scandinavian welfare reforms of the 1930-60 can be repeated at all today inside the framework of a single nation-state. But it doesn’t look as if the soc.-dem. faction in the KDLP asks themselves exactly this question.