kotaji 거타지

July 28, 2008

Urgent appeal for solidarity against repression in South Korea

Filed under: korea, democracy, protest - kotaji @ 12:14 pm

I reproduce in full below an urgent appeal for solidarity from Korea (see also No Ordinary Sun):

Greetings of international solidarity!

Starting May 2, 2008, South Korean people took to the streets holding candle lights in protest against various policies (import of US beefs in danger of being infected with mad cow disease, privatizations of public broadcasting, health, and public corporations, and the grand-canal project) put forth by the Lee Myung-bak (LMB) government.

The protesters came from all walks of life from elementary school students to 80-year-old seniors, ordinary working people to opposition National Assembly representatives. More than a million people just in the greater Seoul area alone gathered on June 10 for a peaceful candle light protest.

However, the LMB government responded with force, repressing the peaceful candle light protests. It discharged fire extinguisher and water cannon, wielded shields and batons, and crushed the people with military boots. Police Commissioner Eo Cheong-soo is leading what he proclaimed in the mainstream media “the real 80s military dictator style” violent repression.
(more…)

July 4, 2008

An enticing invitation

Filed under: korea, democracy - kotaji @ 3:39 pm

I received this rather enticing invitation in my inbox a few days ago:

Dear Sir or Madam,

My name is Joseph Hong and am the Research & Policy Officer at Liberty in North Korea, or LiNK, a nongovernmental organization devoted to the protection of refugees and human rights in North Korea.

We would like to cordially invite you to a funeral procession for the dead and dying of North Korea on July 5, 2008 at 6:00 PM, sponsored by LiNK and No-No Demo. The funeral procession will be held in Cheongyecheon towards Shichong.

Groups organizing protests in Seoul have pledged that one million will turn out to protest over the beef issue on July 5, 2008. Last week, protestors came brandishing steel pipes and bricks, toppling police vans and attacking the offices of several major newspapers. The funeral procession will be next to the protestors and remind them that perhaps there are more pressing issues.

For more details, please visit:
English - http://libertyinnorthkorea.blogspot.com
Korean - http://blog.daum.net/linkglobal

The invitation is attached and we look forward to your response.

Best regards,

Joseph Hong
Research and Policy Officer

There are two strange things about this. First, do they not realise that I’m a Kim Il-sung worshipping bbalgaengi son of a bitch? Why would I want to attend a demo organised by a US-government funded organisation that is now joining up with a rightwing South Korean pro-LMB group? Second, and somewhat more seriously, I really wonder about the motives behind this whole enterprise. Holding a rightwing counter demonstration to a potentially million-strong demo of anti-Lee Myung-bak protesters is surely asking for trouble. Unless of course that’s what they actually want…

July 2, 2008

Reaction

Filed under: korea, democracy, protest - kotaji @ 12:43 am

The reaction begins in earnest


Both photos from Oh My News.

Eighties nostalgia has been fashionable in the UK for a while now, but reenactments of the Miners’ Strike have not been a feature (actually, on second thoughts…). In Korea meanwhile, by last week the Lee Myung-bak government obviously felt that the candlelight protests had quietened down enough and the time had come for some serious, 1980s Chun Doo-hwan style repression.

There had been some warning signs with increasingly belligerent announcements from the government as well as increasingly confident and violent attacks by far right organisations. Attacks have also come on other fronts with the prosecution beginning criminal investigations into the the TV station MBC’s coverage of the US beef issue and into a movement to boycott companies that advertised in the major rightwing newspapers. But it was on Saturday night at the latest large-scale candle-light demonstration that the government gave a taste of the sort of repression it was prepared to mete out.

As I said before though, a real return to the eighties is not as easy as getting a silly hairstyle, wearing brightly coloured clothes and listening to electro-pop. The anti-2MB protests show no sign of flagging at the moment and for all its bluster the Lee Myung-bak government is really unable to use the sort of repression that was available to Chun Doo-hwan back in the dark days. Or at least so far anyway…

[Note: I’m not being sponsored by the Hankyoreh, but their coverage of recent events in Korea has been invaluable, hence the large number of links here. Clearly many Koreans think so too as their subscriptions have been soaring apparently).

June 10, 2008

Reversing the barricades

Filed under: korea, economics, democracy, protest, June87 - kotaji @ 3:00 pm

It is interesting - but perhaps already a cliche - to note how over the last decade or so the barricades have been reversed and police forces around the world have become experts in stacking shipping containers to protect places of power and privilege in the same way that the Parisian working class became experts in a similar art during the course of the 19th century.

Barricades in Paris, 1848
Paris, June 1848

Kwanghwamun barricade 1 (10/6/08)
Seoul, June 2008 (source: OhMyNews)

Of course, one of the consequences of putting all your energy into protecting a centre of power (on this occasion protecting the presidential palace Chongwadae from an anti-government march hundreds of thousands strong) in such a way is that you effectively give up the rest of the city to the protesters. As a police force you also cause yourself other problems such as a lack of mobility. I experienced some of this when I took part in the first of the big beef protest marches on Thursday 29 May. Since the police had decided to take up a position ‘protecting’ the Kwanghwamun junction and other approaches to Chongwadae from the march using their buses, they had blocked themselves in and could go nowhere else. This gave the march the freedom of the city and we wandered apparently aimlessly for a couple of hours, taking over the central streets and no doubt causing traffic chaos. And as I write this, the sea of candle bearing protesters some 500,000 strong has begun to march away from the police barricades, refusing, for the time being to confront directly the metal wall thrown up hastily by the powers that be to protect themselves.

Another consequence is that protesters are able to use the barricades themselves for expressions of protest and humour:

Kwanghwamun barricade 2 (10/6/08)
Seoul, June 2008 (source: OhMyNews)

banksy-palestine3
Palestine, 2005 (www.banksy.co.uk)

June 1, 2008

If you park illegally your vehicle will be towed…

Filed under: korea, democracy, protest - kotaji @ 4:45 pm

tow
From: OMN

illegal parking
From: Ch’am sesang

I’ll put some of my own pics up soon, when I get a chance.

May 9, 2008

Going down

Filed under: korea, democracy, protest - kotaji @ 4:44 pm

It’s my theory that political and social events in Korea often take the form of a magnified version of events that are taking place in Europe, and recently the country that has been most similar to South Korea in its political trajectory is France. So a case in point would be the dramatic fall in the popularity of Sarkozy since he was elected last year and the even more dramatic fall suffered by Lee Myung-bak since he came into power a few months ago:

Sarkozy - came to power just under a year ago - current popularity rating: 38%

2MB (Lee Myung-bak) - came to power two and a half months ago - current popularity rating: 28%

By the way, it’s interesting to note just how upset the Grand National Party are by Democratic Labour Party lawmaker Kang Ki-gap’s recent election victory in the GNP stronghold of South Kyongsang and the key role he has played in the current popular revolt over US beef imports. They’ve now decided to go after him on supposed election violations. As if that wasn’t enough of a sign of panic among the conservatives now running the country, they’re hastily making all sorts of noises about prosecuting anyone they don’t like “spreading rumours on the internet” or holding candlelight rallies with “political slogans and placards”. I have a feeling they’ll soon realise that it’s not so easy to turn the clock back…

January 17, 2008

Election fallout and falling out

Filed under: korea, democracy, DLP - kotaji @ 8:17 pm

I’m not going to too spend much time picking over the carcass of the recent Korean presidential elections, but I will make a few inexpert comments and point toward some reading matter for those who are interested. Then we can move on…

Lee’s victory
Obviously no surprises here, but the question is raised of why it was so comprehensive a victory. Clearly the very strong (can I use the word palpable when I’m 9000 miles away?) sense of betrayal felt by Roh’s erstwhile supporters and much of the rest of the progressive-leaning Korean population had a profound effect. No doubt there were many who voted for Lee and somehow believe that he is a ’safe pair of hands’, but I have little doubt there were more who voted against Roh out of bitter disappointment, and even spite.

There are echoes here of the French elections in 2007 in which an electorate that still broadly considers itself ‘progressive’ (according to opinion polls) ends up voting in a rightwing leader. This sort of so-called ‘masochistic politics’ even has echoes of the US situation, where some commentators have puzzled over why the working class would repeatedly vote for a candidate (George W) who acted explicitly against their own interests. Personally I don’t think these political phenomena are so difficult to understand in the context of ‘left’ and ‘right’ or ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’ political parties that appear different on a superficial and rhetorical level but then implement exactly the same neoliberal and pro-imperialist policies as one another. This is something the British electorate has been faced with ever since Blair came to power over ten years ago and which has now reached bizarre proportions with the Conservative party regularly positioning itself to the left of Labour. My feeling is that voters know very well that they’re not really being offered a choice any more, even the limited choice between traditional conservatism and watered-down social democracy. Thus voting criteria move more toward the US model in which personalities and a sense of who will be the most able technocrat to run the state for the next 4-5 years become most important among those who actually bother to vote at all.

What of Lee himself? So far only one interesting thing has come to my attention about his plans for the Korean economy (forgetting for a moment his ‘Chonggyech’on on steroids’ canal plan). Despite all the nonstop free market rhetoric it looks suspiciously as though Lee will be taking a somewhat more statist (or perhaps ‘chaebolist’) approach to the economy than his two ‘liberal’ predecessors. On the one hand, massive civil construction projects like the ‘Grand Canal‘ can be seen as somewhat Keynesian in nature, but more strikingly, as Ch’oe Il-bung has pointed out, Lee’s plans for reviving the economy more generally have something of a smell of the old developmental dictatorship about them (there are strong hints at a return to centralised economic planning). I haven’t read it myself yet, but here is Prof. Jeong Seong-jin’s analysis of Lee Myung-bak’s planned economic policies.

The situation in the DLP
The most obviously disappointing outcome of the elections is that virtually none of Roh’s disappointed former supporters went to the left and the Democratic Labour Party did rather badly (although perhaps not as badly as some think, since it retained its support base in some key areas). This seems perplexing considering the considerable strength of the movements against the Korea-US FTA, the continued use of South Korean troops in Iraq and the mass casualisation of the Korean workforce under Roh. For answers to this question you might want to look at the various intelligent analyses in the Counterfire newspaper (in Korean). One important factor to bear in mind is that the misfortunes, defeats and scandals that have beset the KCTU (main left union federation) in recent years have obviously had an impact on the credibility of the DLP since it basically originated as the political wing of the federation and is still very close to it.

Whatever the reasons for the DLP’s poor showing (and they are undoubtedly multiple), it has been the trigger for an internal crisis that is threatening to split the party. It would be a mistake however, to think that these divisions within the DLP are something new - it has always been an amalgam of very different factions. And the tensions between the two main factions came to the surface very clearly before in late 2006 when the Roh administration sought to use a supposed ’spy ring’ within the party as a scapegoat in the febrile atmosphere after North Korea’s nuclear weapon test.

I’m sure I would be accused of being overly simplistic if I described the current split as being along the lines of the old ‘NL’ (National Liberation) and ‘PD’ (People’s Democracy) factions of the 80s and 90s, although there is some truth in this. Basically, as far as I can make out, the more moderate factions (i.e. more rightwing and more social democratic factions) in the party along with some sectarian radical left elements, under the general banner of the ‘Equality Faction’ (평등파/P’yongdungp’a - including many former PD people) are attempting to get rid of the more old fashioned left-nationalist ‘Independence Faction’ (자주파/Chajup’a - basically NL), or split the party if they cannot achieve this. The P’yongdungp’a accuse the Chajup’a of being in thrall to North Korea (종북주의) and exercising undue dominance over the party. Many big hitters both within the DLP as well as some on the outside are now openly calling for the founding of a new party, presumably purged of those power-hungry pro-North elements.

As the analysis in Counterfire by Kim Ha-young points out, this faction fight is not really about the supposed pro-North leanings of the dominant Chajup’a faction (they weren’t considered a problem before, so why now?), but has more to do with a simple power struggle within the party as well as a desire, among some at least, to move the party in a rightward direction. The basic fact is that the coming South Korean government, like all those before it, will use the accusation of being pro-North whenever it wants to physically suppress the left or simply smear its image. And this will happen whether or not the DLP purges its (rather mildly) pro-North Chajup’a elements.

Clearly both sides in this battle for the DLP are not without their political problems, but the Korean working class and the left in general will be immensely stronger in the tough months and years ahead if it has a single, united left party to articulate its interests in the political arena. Unfortunately it doesn’t look as though this will be the case.

If you want more on this in English, Jamie at Two Koreas points out that there are some articles up at the new NewsCham English website.

December 17, 2007

Son’gon chongch’i [Korean elections special 7]

Filed under: korea, economics, democracy - kotaji @ 12:59 am

So it seems that the grateful people of the Democratic Chaebol Republic of Korea will soon have a new Dear Leader, a strong and decisive man, committed to pouring as much concrete over Korea as he can and bulldozing anything that gets in his way. In fact, I think we can safely say that Korea is about to enter the great era of victorious “Construction-First Politics” (先建政治).

But then, when your main opponent is trying to compete with his own concrete-lovin projects, you know you must be doing something right.

Of course, at the risk of upsetting the national pride of Korean rightwingers and their soon-to-be Dear Leader, I feel obliged to point out that this is just another of those wonderful innovations that Korea has imported from its favourite neighbour, a place where politics, pork barrels and the construction lobby have a long tangled history of close relations.

November 26, 2007

More on the anti-GNP front

Filed under: korea, democracy, DLP - kotaji @ 1:37 pm

For readers of Korean, there are a couple of excellent articles in the recent issue of the Matpul [Counterfire] socialist newspaper, both of which deal with the topic of my last post (the idea of an anti-Grand National Party electoral front) in a way that is much clearer and better informed than my attempt. One by Kim Insik (Ta Hamkke’s candidate last year for the position of policy DLP chief) and another by Kim Ha-young.

November 22, 2007

Liberal panic [Korean elections special 6]

Filed under: korea, democracy, anti-war, DLP - kotaji @ 2:07 pm

I know I really shouldn’t feel this way, but sometimes there’s a sort of schadenfreude to be derived from seeing scared liberals on the run. The panic definitely seems to have set in amongst Korea’s once-radical, now soft social-liberal intellectuals (Paek Nak-chung, Ko Un, Hwang Sok-yong etc). With both rival conservative candidates (Lee Myung-bak and Lee Hoi-chang) for the presidency polling better than any of the liberal or left candidates and less than a month to go before election day on December 19, the ddong is definitely hitting the sonp’unggi. The response from a group of concerned intellectual types is to call for all the various so-called progressive candidates to merge their campaigns and find a single candidate. This is clearly unlikely to happen and if it did I think it would be a travesty, taking away the last real choice from Korean voters - the choice to vote for a really left, really different presidential candidate (I’m talking about Kwon Young-ghil of the Democratic Labour Party).

What disturbs me about the liberal call for unity is that this panic that the world is about to end and the dark days of conservatism are about to return is really devoid of politics or sensible political analysis. Worst of all it leads to very much the sort of moral blackmail that the unions and liberal commentators have used to sustain the New Labour government here in the UK through all its abominable neoliberal and pro-war follies of the last 10 years. It goes something along the lines of “we know this lot of neoliberal shysters aren’t much good, but think how much worse things would be under the Tories/GNP. So you’d better vote for the shysters you know or you’ll be sorry!”

This question really comes down to where you perceive the main political divide in Korean politics as lying. Is it, as the liberals would have us believe, between the dark authoritarian forces of conservatism (dark though they undoubtedly are) and the forces of liberalism and democratisation? Or is it between the forces of neoliberalism and the pro-US troop-dispatchers in both the conservative and liberal camps on the one hand and the anti-war crowds demonstrating to bring the troops back from Iraq, the anti-FTA protesters fighting neoliberalism and the DLP, standing for worker’s rights and egalitarian development on the other? Well I think you can probably guess where I think the real divide lies. The current liberal panic may be truly felt by many intellectuals and others who see themselves as ‘progressive’ in some sense, but at heart it is smokescreen, clouding the real issues at stake in South Korea’s polarised and neoliberalised society. Perhaps it’s also a smokescreen hiding the guilt of all those liberals who know in their hearts that the last two administrations have betrayed the hopes of many ordinary Koreans. One can only hope.

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