Pen/Insular_Notes

Crossposted from Frog in a Well.
I thought I would revive this title once more and add another post to the series on recent historiographical clashes in South Korea since I recently came across another interesting example that actually fits rather nicely with some of the posts made here by Jiyul and Noja.

I came across this report on a debate on the Park Chung-hee era between Im Chi-hyŏn and Cho Hŭi-yŏn in the pages of the Donga Ilbo newspaper. Apparently the debate between the two has been going on since 2004, particularly in the pages of the journal Historical Criticism (역사비평) and the Professors’ Newspaper (교수신문).

Basically, the main protagonist, Im Chi-hyŏn, argues that Park’s rule was an example of a ‘mass dictatorship’ (대중독재), in other words, the idea that Park was able to rule by creating some degree of consent for his dictatorship. Cho counters that “the mass dictatorship theory is problemmatic because it expands the accommodating silence of the masses into a general and active agreement with the dictatorship, thus justifying it.”

Im on the other hand responds that “Cho’s understanding makes the people into heroes and demonises the dictator, creating a moralistic duality. If we are to prevent a new dictatorship from arising we need to go beyond moralistic dualism and provide a dispassionate analysis.”

Going a bit further, Cho argues that both Im Chi-hyŏn’s views and those of Yi Yŏng-hun (who edited two recent books I’ve mentioned here: 해방 전후사의 재인식 and 수량경제사로 다시 본 조선후기) are part of a general attempt to create a revisionist history that takes advantage of the current crisis of ‘democratic progressive discourse’. He argues that while Yi’s critique comes from the viewpoint of the so-called ‘New Right’, Im’s comes from a postmodernist (탈근대적) position. Funnily enough I’m planning to translate a review of 해방 전후사의 재인식 by a Korean Marxist historian whom I rate highly, who makes almost exactly the same point, titling his review: ‘A reactionary duet between the right and the postmodernists.’ When I actually have some time to do the translation I’ll be sure to make it available to readers here.

More on the debate here at the Chosun Ilbo. And something in English I found here on Im’s theory of mass dictatorship.

Very sad to hear that Stanislaw Lem, one of my favourite writers, has died. I say ‘favourite’ but to be honest that might be a bit of nostalgia for my teenage years because I don’t think I’ve read anything by him since then. But on the other hand if a writer’s works and ideas can stay so firmly fixed in your mind as his have done, then perhaps favourite is not such a bad word. I think, if I remember correctly, I was introduced to his books by finding an old copy of Memoirs of a Space Traveller in the Sci-Fi section of my local library (where I probably spent too much time as a 13-year-old). It was full of excellent, mind-bending speculative fiction of a similar sort to Borges, Ballard and Priest. I remember [or probably misremember] one story in particular about a man who invents a time machine and transports himself into the future. Nothing is heard of him until years later when his dead, old body turns up in the room from which he transported himself.

Funnily enough I’ve never seen either of the film versions of Solaris.

The headline of this week’s edition of the Ta Hamkke newspaper (no 76) reads:

프랑스처럼 하자

Which I would loosely translate as:
Let’s fight like France

The appropriateness of this headline is perhaps lost until you realise the similarity of the situation facing workers and students (ie soon-to-be workers) in France and Korea. In both countries governments are attempting to bring in laws that they say will boost employment and maintain the competitiveness of their country’s economy, but which at the same time throw millions of people (often young) into permanent or semi-permanent states of precarity and flexibilisation.

David Harvey talks quite a bit in A Brief History of Neoliberalism of the ‘uneven geographical development’ of neoliberalism across the world. The other side of this coin is the very real ‘evening’ process of neoliberalism, as states around the world employ the same policies and techniques against workers and often against welfare or the state sector itself (which of course they must do to conform to the requirements of competitive capital accumulation). The constant drive for more and more ‘flexible’ labour (ie the drive to exploit workers harder and extract more surplus value from them), is is certainly one of these ‘evening’ factors, found in both East Asian ‘tigers’ and ‘old’ European states alike.

If there is an evening process in the global neoliberal attack, then there must also be an evening process in the responses of social and labour movements around the world. Not only must workers and movements provide solidarity to one another across all artificial boundaries, they must learn from one another what works and implement it wherever they are.

Of course this is easier said than done and surely the conditions that have created the current struggle in France are very different to those in South Korea. So far in the struggle against the Casual Workers Bill currently being considered by the Korean National Assembly there has been much fighting talk from union leaders but seemingly less in the way of real solidarity or confidence on the ground. Maybe the French students can be an inspiration. That would be my sort of globalisation. Tous Ensemble! 다함께!

Update: Thought I should add some links to places that have been doing a good job of covering the situation in France. Korea-Germany-World blogger CINA has had plenty of good stuff on this, as has Lenin’s Tomb of course here and here and finally something thoughtful from Le Colonel Chabert.

So it’s that time again. It doesn’t seem like another whole, bloody year has passed since thousands of us around the world marched on the second anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.

Today’s anti-war, anti-occupation demo in Seoul, one of hundreds that were held around the world this weekend, in the biggest show of force from the world’s second superpower(tm) in a long time. The march in Seoul was similar to those around all over the world in calling for an end to occupation and calling for no attack on Iran. More specifically it called for the withdrawal of the so-called Zaytun Division of Korean soldiers stationed near Irbil in northern Iraq. In true Orwellian style the troop division is named with the Arabic word meaning olive - a reference to the olive branch of peace. Surely the Arabic word for imperialism would be more appropriate. (Pictures from here.)

I like these slogans carried by members of the Democratic Labour Party. The one of the left reads “No War, No Muhyon” a bilingual pun on the name of the South Korean president. The one on the right simply says “Don’t even dream of attacking Iran.”

Julie Felix entertains the masses at Trafalgar Square.

In London it was freezing but a great march nonetheless. We got thousands of people to sign the submission to Kofi Annan calling for an official tribunal to look into war crimes in Iraq. Lenin’s Tomb also has a good picture report on the day. As with Lenny, one highlight of the event for me was the speech from Hasan Zargani, overseas representative of the Al Sadr Movement. Hearing it clearly was difficult with the translation and the general noise, but his final sentence did stand out loud and clear so I’ve used it for the title of this post.

According to an article in the Korea Times yesterday North Koreans have a preference for seeking asylum in the UK with 27 applying in 2004. The information, from the UNHCR, also revealed that:

a total of 320 North Koreans were living in five West European countries - Denmark, Germany, Ireland, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom as of 2004.

That’s quite a large number and probably an underestimate. I have heard of there being a ‘North Korean community’ in London, although I know absolutely nothing about it and nor do many other people I expect, for some fairly obvious reasons. It does occur to me though, that should any of these North Koreans suddenly feel the urge to return to the bosom of the motherland, London is an easy place to start since we have a DPRK embassy here in leafy Ealing.

The possible irony also occurred to me that some of these people, perhaps escaping prison camps in South Hamgyong Province, may have ended up in one of our own lovely detention camps in Cambridgeshire. Particularly since this was the same day that a parliamentary committee recommended that the UK lock up and electronically tag more asylum seekers.

BREAKING NEWS: It seems that in the chaos of today’s goings on in Palestine the Middle East correspondent of Korean Broadcasting System, Yong T’ae-yông has been kidnapped. I wonder what Koreans will make of the British government’s rather odd decision to withdraw its monitors from the Jericho prison at 7.30 this morning, thus allowing Israel to raid the prison and set in motion the whole chain of events?

Update: While other hostages taken in Gaza and the West Bank have been released Yong T’ae-yong remains captive along with two French journalists in Khan Younis refugee camp. The Hangyoreh is reporting that they are being held by the PFLP which would make sense since it is their leader who the Israelis were after in their raid on the Jericho prison today. Oh My News is now reporting that according a representative of PA security forces they will be released within a few hours. The article also has pictures of the hostages looking rather pissed off. More on events at Al Jazeera.

Update 2: Oh My News reports today that the three journalists seized in Gaza have all now been released.

The Korea Times had an article a couple of days ago on hard to find and rather neglected historical spots in Seoul. Unfortunately, as is often the case with the KT it could do with some more editing. That aside, it does have some interesting tidbits of historical information, including something about the house of Korean nationalist Yŏ Un-hyŏng, who I have written a bit about here before.

Apparently the house has not been well-preserved and is now a noodle restaurant (if it’s the one that I’m thinking of it’s quite famous for its k’alguksu). Apparently a plaque commemorating the fact that Yŏ lived there had to be moved over the road due to the objections of the restaurant which didn’t want the ‘red’ association. This is despite the fact that Yŏ was not in any way a ppalgaengi (red), but a sort of centrist nationalist. Although the article mentions that he was assassinated in 1947, it fails to mention that his killing, at the Hoehwa-dong intersection, was almost certainly ordered by Syngman Rhee.

A fairly intelligent piece in the Korea Times today on the problems currently facing unions in Korea and specifically the Federation of Korean Trade Unions which is celebrating (perhaps not the appropriate word) its 60th birthday.

Interestingly the author comes up with a new translation for that tricky word 비정규직 (which I usually render as casual employment), calling such employees ‘contingent workers’, which is perhaps better than the cumbersome ‘irregular workers’.

Also two interesting facts the writer drops in: Korea now has the lowest rate of unionisation of any OECD country (France is the lowest apparently) and the rival and more radical umbrella union group, the KCTU is now, unofficially at least, larger than the FKTU. This is because the civil servants union has affiliated to the KCTU, although it officially remains illegal.

We had a national lecturers’ strike here yesterday, part of a campaign by the AUT and NATFHE unions (which will soon be amalgamating to form the University and Colleges Union) to improve pay and conditions for lecturers at British universities, which have been declining for the last 20 years or so. I must admit that I took the lazy option and stayed at home rather than come into SOAS to show my support for the strikers, so I don’t know first hand how well things went here. According to a report on the AUT website though, support from us SOAS students was ’solid’. The latest Socialist Worker also has reports from picket lines aroung the country.

It seems symptomatic of the somewhat downtrodden position of lecturers these days that this strike was barely reported at all in any of the mainstream media, despite it being a national strike that apparently affected some 1 million students. John Sutherland writes in the Guardian’s education supplement on this theme, providing an informative history of the decline of lecturers’ status and pay as well as the gradual but growing businessification of UK universities. It’s an object lesson in a particular sort of neoliberalisation:

Insecurity was factored into the profession and with it docility. The whole university system, under Tory ministers such as Keith Joseph, was weakened by cut and freeze. It was “brought to heel”, throttled by government purse strings. The new externally imposed discipline was institutionalised by the inspectorial regime - standards, via the research assessment exercises, the Teaching and Qualifications Authority -introduced in the 1990s and administered by bodies wholly outside the campus whose primary responsibility was to the government of the day, not the academy. This has now reached the point of low-grade, perpetual, tyranny.

The final split came in with tuition fees. Henceforth, academics were no longer teachers, but service providers. They did not “give” classes, tutorials, or seminars. They were vendors selling a product. And beneath them was a restless, surly, ever-growing underclass of short-term, “adjunct teachers” underselling them. And, of course, in the eyes of the accountant offering better value for money…

The administration is remote, stern, unfeeling and, for the most part, unknown. It may not be friendly.

His conclusion is very depressing - that lecturers basically now lack the muscle to improve their lot or reverse the tide of commercialisation, fragmentation etc - but perhaps it doesn’t take into account the fact that lecturers have actually won a few disputes recently such as last year’s pay dispute and the recent library dispute at SOAS which was won just on the threat of all-out action. Now that universities are charging fees (soon to get a lot bigger) the pressure from students to avoid strikes is going to be bigger. I think the responsibility for students is to ensure that that pressure falls squarely on the university managements and the government who have been treating lecturers so badly for so long.

The Korean rail strike has come to an end after massive repression from the employer (Korail) and the state. Some 2200 workers were ‘dismissed’ on Friday and more than 400 strikers were arrested by the police for ‘questioning’ or for holding an ‘illegal sit in’. It’s an informative illustration of the real lack of rights of workers in Korea. Despite all the rhetoric of a ‘leftwing’ and inclusive government, as soon as workers come out on strike to defend their conditions or the integrity of public services, the old repressive state comes down on their heads like a ton of bricks.

It seems this won’t be the end of the matter. The president of Korail, Lee Chul, is taking an uncompromising stand and threatening disciplinary action against the strikers, which they are obviously promising to resist:

“We’ve returned to work, but it does not mean we’ve stopped fighting. If the corporation cracks down on unionists at workplaces, or slaps disciplinary actions on us and continues to ignore our demands for better working conditions, we can stage a strike again,'’ a unionist said.

Oh My News had a good report from a rally of the rail workers at a park in Pusan while Pressian also had a long and interesting piece on the subject. Ta Hamkke produced a special edition of their newspaper on the strike which can be viewed here (only works with IE for some reason)

Meanwhile, in other casual (’irregular’) worker related news, a correspondent in the comments box below points out the recent ruling of the National Human Rights Commission that temporary teachers should not be discriminated against in terms of salary. Also this week, the KCTU decided to call off its action over the bill on casual workers for the time being, after the parliamentary session ended without it being passed. The bill will now have to wait until the next session in April, hopefully giving more opportunity for pressure from the labour movement to have it dropped or significantly revised.