Pen/Insular_Notes

It seems that the return to the ‘good old days’ has begun well before the Roh Moo-hyun government leaves office next year. The conservative forces in the security and legal apparatus of South Korea have made their move and decided to start a major witchhunt against the country’s (moderate) left party the Democratic Labour Party. Either that or in a rather strange tactical move Roh Moo-hyun himself has decided to prove his toughness credentials after the North Korean nuclear test by attacking those to the left of him. In any case, it turns out that the earlier attempts to take down Prof. Kang Jeong-koo were just a dress rehearsal for the real attempt to revive the National Security Law. So two senior members of the DLP have been arrested and accused, along with a Korean-American businessman of being part of a North Korean spy-ring.

I’m in no position to know what the truth is about these people, but one thing is clear: the timing of this is dodgy and the motivations are almost certainly political (as in so many cases where there is the supposed ‘uncovering’ of a terrorist or espionage cell that has clearly been kept on ice for sometime by the security services). There are some more details in English at the Marmot’s Hole, including the interesting facts that the accused are apparently thought to have engaged in such heinous crimes as compiling dossiers to keep track of trends in South Korean society or promoting environmental issues to involve civic groups in the anti-American struggle, and… wait for it, reporting on the activities of the DLP branch in Seoul. It strikes me that even if all this stuff were to turn out to be true then basically what they are being accused of is gathering materials on South Korean social movements and left for passing on to North Korea. So they were spying on themselves and their comrades.

If you need more reading matter (in Korean), here is a statement from All Together (다함께) and an in-depth article in Pressian.

Finally, to get some idea of just how desperately excited the Korean right are by all this and how keen they are to return to the good old cold war days of red baiting and ppalgaengi bashing, you must read this translated editorial from the Joongang Ilbo. I picked up a copy of the paper’s English edition for the first time in years when I was catching the plane down to Chejudo a few days ago and this made me almost fall out of my seat. A sample:

The recent incident has revealed that former and current officials of the Democratic Labor Party are involved in this case. This is an issue that could become a death sentence for the Democratic Labor Party. The party itself has staged protests in front of the National Intelligence Service arguing that the case is fabricated. Protesters also argued for the abolishment of the National Security Law. How can one argue that the incident was fabricated under an administration such as the current one?

No political party can exist outside national security. The Democratic Labor Party has to reflect upon itself, find the internal “red” part and apologize to the people.

This is crossposted from Frog in a Well.

I’m spending a few weeks in Korea, mainly for the Academy of Korean Studies organised World Congress of Korean Studies that will be taking place this weekend in Chejudo. A few days ago I had the enjoyable experience of visiting the Hongsŏng area (South Ch’ungch’ŏng Province) together with one of our other contributors, Pak Noja. This was a sort of pilgrimage to see the birthplace of Manhae Han Yongun (1879-1944), the Buddhist reformer, poet and political activist whose writing we have been translating together. We also had the opportunity to visit the lovely Sudŏksa temple nearby, a place I would highly recommend.

Seeing the site of Manhae’s birthplace brought a number of thoughts and feelings to mind, but the sense of being somewhere historically significant or imbued with any atmosphere was unfortunately not one of them. Of course, this could be attributed to my attitude as much as anything else. But seeing a place that has been so obviously constructed in very recent times as a facsimile of the location where Manhae may have been born, I think most people might have similar feelings. The site consists of two small thatched cottages (초가집) one of which is the management office and the other a replica of the house where Manhae was born. Higher up, there is also a shrine to Manhae in the usual style of a small building within a walled compound with a grand gate. Besides that there is an expanse of freshly-paved wasteland, a few stele with inscribed poems (시비) and what appears to be a small museum, currently under construction.

Although it seems they were constructed in the early 1990s, the two thatched cottages were nicely done and pretty enough. But I think there were two things about this place that made it profoundly ‘ahistorical’ for me. One was the expanse of paved ground, a barren nothingness, ready to be trampled on by hordes of daytrippers or school children (actually the place seems rather forlorn and only one coach turned up while we were there). The other was the lack of any real context - it seems that whatever material remains of the village where Manhae was born and lived have long since disappeared to be replaced years later by these disembodied symbols of the world that the young Han Yongun existed in.

Noja pointed out this stone inscription, which is of the three additional points written by Han Yongun at the end of the Proclamation of Korean Independence (1919). The rest of the document was written by Ch’oe Namson. An English translation of the three points:

1. This work of ours is in behalf of truth, religion and life undertaken at the request of our people, in order to make known their desire for liberty. Let no violence be done to anyone.
2. Let those who follow us every man all the time, every hour, show forth with gladness this same mind.
3. Let all things be done decently and in order, so that our behavior to the very end may be honorable and upright.

Yesterday I went for a look around the new National Museum of Korea, located at Ich’on in Seoul, on what I believe was once a US Army golf course. As you can see from the picture below, this site of historical education has a similar expanse of emptiness in front of it, heightening the effect of the massive blank walls of the building. In some ways I quite like this sort of brutalist architecture, but you can’t help feeling that this is a crude attempt to impose upon the visiting masses a sense of awe at the weighty authority of Korean history. What I saw of the exhibitions inside (the history section) , was excellent however. I would recommend the parts on Chosŏn dynasty socio-economic life, thought and international relations which are refreshingly clear and lacking in nationalistic tones.

Can there be a silver lining to North Korea’s entry into the ranks of nuclear powers? Well, this might be a bit of a stretch, but it has produced quite a lot of interesting writing over the last week or so. A round up is in order I think.

First up, I’m very pleased to say that some of the people in All Together (다함께) have put together an English-language blog with translations of various Korean and Asian social movement-related articles. The site is called Counterfire and I’ve put a button in the righthand panel to direct people towards it. Even better, they have a translation of Kim Ha-yong’s article on the nuclear test from last week which you can read here. This is an excellent translation of a very good article, which means I don’t have to feel guilty about not having time to translate any of this stuff. A taste:

In the given circumstances, the Bush administration is likely to apply pressure on NK through UN sanctions first, and then wait and see how things develop, trying to figure out how to respond. An administration that has been incapable of devising a unified policy on NK for the last 5 years is unlikely to have suddenly found one in the course of a few days.

The progressive forces in South Korea must oppose UN sanctions as well as military action by the US, for the sanctions themselves could further de-stabilize the situation. We shouldn’t lend our support to the South Korean government’s plan to support UN sanctions. Sanctions will only make ordinary North Koreans suffer. The only way to stop nuclear proliferation is to force the US to quit threatening NK.

For more on the internationalist left in South Korea, there is this interview with Choi Il-bung and Kim Ha-yong of All Together in the latest issue of ISJ, obviously done before the latest developments on the peninsula.

Some other useful reading matter, generally from a left or strategic analysis perspective:

Gary Leupp’s piece at Dissident Voice assesses North Korea as a ‘religious state’ with interesting parallels with Japan’s state-sponsored shinto system set up in the Meiji era:

Growing up under Japanese occupation, Kim Il-song could have observed the usages of a state religion in the service of a hereditary monarchy linked to Heaven. Maybe these observations subconsciously affected the evolution of his thinking. Once in power in North Korea, from 1945, he increasingly built a personality cult, initially modeled after Stalin’s but by the 1970s plainly monarchical in nature. It integrated Confucian values of filial piety and obedience, and glorified the entire family of the Great Leader, including especially the crown prince Jong-il.

This was also an interesting, if fairly predictable insight into North Korea’s attitude to Marxism:

according to a Russian study in 1995, “the works by Marx, Engels, and Lenin are not only excluded from the standard [school] curriculum, but are generally forbidden for lay readers. Almost all the classical works of Marxism-Leninism, as well as foreign works on the Marxist (that is, other than [Juche]) philosophy are kept in special depositories, along with other kinds of subversive literature. Such works are accessible only to specialists with special permits.”

This PINR intelligence brief argues that although it has been sounding rather tough and somewhat peeved, China’s basic stance toward North Korea has not changed: it is an ally and it desperately needs it as a buffer against the US.

John Feffer’s piece at Foreign Policy in Focus from August looks at the bind in which the Bush regime finds itself.

Andrei Lankov points out the connections between instability in North Korea and China’s recent moves in the field of Korean historiography - AKA the ‘history war’ over the ownership of the ancient kingdoms of Koguryŏ Parhae and Kochosŏn. His argument (and I think it’s pretty feasible) is that this is the ideological preparation for a future Chinese takeover, to go along with its apparent military planning for this eventuality.

Dan Plesch in the Guardian argues that a universal disarmament policy is needed to deal with nuclear proliferation.

An in-depth analysis of North Korea as a ‘nuclear stalker’ from Peter Hayes of the Nautilus Institute.

And finally…. (former China correspondent) John Gittings reviews a load of books on North Korea for the Guardian.

Another Redian cartoon from a couple of days ago. In this one, Kim Jong-il kicks the nuclear football to George Bush, saying, “take this.” Bush, in turn, passes it on to the UN, who expresses bewilderment.

Some of the cartoonist’s comments below are actually funnier than the cartoon itself. He notes how odd it is that even after the nuclear test the US is refusing to recognise North Korea as a nuclear state. His final sentence is almost poetic in its construction. Rough translation: “The US-centred nuclear order seems to be that if you don’t have nukes but the US says you do, then you do, whereas if you do have nukes but the US says you don’t, then you don’t.”

A cartoon from yesterday’s Hankyoreh (SK’s left of centre mainstream newspaper).
Bush sits in the Oval Office while outside the US press and pundits (I like the way this particular cartoonist always represents them with fountain pens behind their ears) criticise his policy failure over the North Korean nuclear issue. Meanwhile, Bush is reading the South Korean press (like, hello!) who are unanimously agreed that this situation is the fault of the Roh Moo-hyun’s government. Bush expresses his thanks to Korea’s rightwing press saying “At least I’ve got you guys!”

Interesting here how the Hankyoreh is using this issue to have a go at the rest of the South Korean press, meaning basically the three rightwing papers: Chosun Ilbo, Joongang Ilbo and Donga Ilbo. The broader point here is that while the nuclear test has been something of a disaster for Bush and the Neocons in Washington, it has been a boon for the hard right in both South Korea and Japan.

A cartoon from today’s edition of the leftwing South Korean internet newspaper ‘Redian’. I’ll try to put some more interesting cartoons up if I get a chance.

The central protagonist is a right-wing South Korean protester, wielding the club of UN sanctions and shouting at Kim Jong-il (hiding next to his mushroom cloud) to come and fight it out. Meanwhile, the majority of the South Korean people (68.6% according to a recent opinion poll) attempt to hold him back, pleading that it can only be solved by dialogue.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that North Korea’s nuclear test was a bit of a damp squib, somewhat like its previous missile test. Of course, this doesn’t necessarily make much difference to its significance or the seriousness of the situation. But there is even speculation (from the French) that it was just a lot of conventional explosives. The odd thing, as far as people who know about this sort of stuff are concerned, is that the yield of the explosion is estimated at not more than 800 tons, whereas a first-time nuclear test would usually be a few thousand tons (kilotons).

There appear to be a number of possibilities here:

1. It really was a failed test which should have had a much higher yield
2. It was a sort of preliminary mini-test, or just the best North Korea could manage
3. It was a fake using conventional explosives
4. Suggestions about a failed or fake test are actually deliberate misinformation from sources (largely the US) who want to play down the nuclear test for their own strategic reasons

Admittedly the last possibility is pretty unlikely, but worth bearing in mind. In any case, this seems to be one more reason (in addition to the lack of movement from the US) why the North Korean regime will probably want to do another test in the near future. Hankyoreh speculates on when and where.

Article on the North Korean nuclear test in this week’ s Socialist Worker:

US hypocrisy over North Korean nuclear test
Owen Miller looks at growing conflicts in the region

George Bush reacted to North Korea’s first nuclear test by calling for “an immediate response from the United Nations security council”. The tests, he said, were “unacceptable”.

While no one on the left should support nuclear weapons, this is pure hypocrisy from the US - itself a nuclear superpower.

As George Monbiot pointed out in the Guardian earlier this year, the US and British governments fuel the nuclear arms race with their “refusal to make any moves towards disarmament, their threats of pre-emptive bombing and their development of new weapons systems”.

North Korea was designated part of the “axis of evil” in Bush’s 2002 State of the Union address, but - bogged down in the Middle East - the US appears unable to deal with North Korea by military means.

The strategy of the Bush administration has been to maintain the basic status quo in the region while gradually tightening the financial noose around North Korea’s neck.

While North Korea appears to be attempting to follow in the footsteps of China by repeating its liberalising economic reforms of the 1980s, the US is doing everything it can to stop this - freezing the accounts of North Korean banks around the world and ratcheting up the pressure on the North over its alleged counterfeiting and money laundering activities.

Deadlock

The response of the North Korean government has been to attempt to break this deadlock and force the US to make a deal with it. Thus the regime has pulled off progressively more shocking stunts - first announcing its nuclear programme, then testing ballistic missiles and now carrying out a nuclear test.

This may seem a high risk strategy, but the North Korean ruling class probably feels that it is playing to its strengths and speaking the only language that Washington understands.

It certainly doesn’t want to go the way of the Taliban or Saddam Hussein.

Behind the confrontation between North Korea and the US is the much bigger looming confrontation between China on the one hand and a US-Japan bloc on the other, with the Korean peninsula stuck uncomfortably in between.

Currently the economic integration between the two blocs is very deep, but geopolitical rivalry continues nonetheless, and North Korea is one of the flashpoints of this behind the scenes conflict.

China wants North Korea as a buffer state between it and the heavily armed US presence in South Korea and Japan. But while China and North Korea are ostensibly allies, China is more interested in maintaining the status quo than upsetting the US by defending the North Koreans.

It seems that the North Korean ruling class is also becoming worried by China’s increasing economic influence in its country and by its apparent preparations to take control of the country in the event of a regime crisis in the North. Korea’s rulers have thus decided that the best option is to follow the lead of Israel, India and Pakistan and have their own independent deterrent.

In the event of an escalation in this crisis it is the Korean people, North and South, who will pay the terrible price, as they did during the 1950-3 Korean War.

That is why we should be opposed not only to nuclear weapons on the Korean peninsula but also to the general militarisation of north east Asia and the US policy of strangling North Korea.

Immanuel “World-system” Wallerstein had some interesting things to say about Nuclear nonproliferation a couple of months back in NLR.

Nor did [US] intimidation work any better with potential nuclear proliferators. Both North Korea and Iran drew the conclusion from the American invasion of Iraq that the US could attack Iraq not because it had nuclear weapons, but because it did not have them. It seemed obvious to both governments that the surest defence of the existing regimes was to speed up the acquisition of a nuclear arsenal. For tactical reasons, Iran denied this, as North Korea did not. The US asserted that both countries were in fact pursuing such programmes. But the US found itself weakened militarily and politically by the occupation of Iraq. It became clear that the US would not be capable of a successful land invasion of another such country. It might pre-emptively launch nuclear missiles, but the consequences of doing so seemed daunting. Indeed, it was now in less of a position to rally either Western Europe or East Asia to any effort to force the two countries to cease their programmes. The US was consequently in a weaker position to stop nuclear proliferation after the invasion of Iraq than before it, the opposite of neo-conservative projections.
…
Looking ahead over the next two decades, what kind of trends are probable? The first is a complete breakdown of nuclear non-proliferation, with the rise of one to two dozen small nuclear powers in addition to those already in existence. The decline of US power plus the competing interests of the multiple power centres virtually guarantee that those countries which ended such programmes in the period 1970–2000 will resume them, no doubt joined by others. This will both act as a deterrent to military actions in many zones of the world and make the consequence of such actions much more dangerous.

Prescient stuff. There was also an excellent article (in Korean) yesterday by Hwang Chunho in Pressian on ‘Bush’s non-proliferation failure’ and its consequences for US domestic politics among other things. Meanwhile, for some light relief, Pakistan (yes Pakistan) decides to waggle its finger at North Korea.

Unlike all the previous wars Korea fought, a next war will be better called the American War or the DPRK-US War because the main theater will be the continental US, with major cities transformed into towering infernos. The DPRK is now the fourth-most powerful nuclear weapons state just after the US, Russia, and China.

The DPRK has all types of nuclear bombs and warheads, atomic, hydrogen and neutron, and the means of delivery, short-range, medium-range and long-range, putting the whole of the continental US within effective range. The Korean People’s Army also is capable of knocking hostile satellites out of action.

Full text of Kim Myong Chol’s [raving] opinion piece available here at Asia Times. I suppose he does have a point about the US being screwed right now. It’s relying on the Russians to come to its rescue.