So-called Nuclear Crisis and Increasing Threats by US Imperialism
Early October of 2002, the US special envoy visited Pyongyang, North Korean capital, to have a “dialogue.” Soon the intention of the delegation was revealed. Couple of weeks later, the US State Department gave an urgent briefing on North Korean issue that North Korea has a nuclear development program. It strongly demanded that North Korea stop the nuke program immediately. And international media echoed, drawing worldwide attention on this issue.
However, the attitude of North Korean government is still obscure as to its possession of nuclear bombs, as has been the case for the last decade. Its response was dual: on one hand, North Korea announced a series of harsh criticism on the US imperialism and its resolve to fight back, while it took serious negotiation proposal for the resolution of the NK-US resolution.
Another resource showed part of North Korea’s intention for a dialogue. Don Oberdorff, an US expert on East Asia, told in his Washington Post contribution that North Korean officials were ready to talk with US counterpart. According to him, the assertion of North Korean nuclear bomb is rather a question of the interpretation. But this story was put aside. Instead both sides were colliding: North Korea declared the end of IAEA inspection and started functioning of nuclear reactors in Youngbyun, while the US, in response, stopped the oil supply, and kidnapped a North Korean ship on the Indian Ocean, alleging its involvement of weapon smuggling.
Actually, in the course of harsh confrontation, Bush and co. succeeded in gripping the initiative of Far Eastern Asia geopolitics, and that’s what Bush and his neo-con dwarves wanted to implement: to de-stabilize Korean peninsula and North Korea, as one of “axis of evil.” Since the September 11, Bush administration defined North Korea as an enemy and needed a pretext to put pressure toward North Korea. However, the political situation of the peninsular was rather difficult to intervene, as the Sunshine Policy of South Korean government was successful and the historic N-S summit in 2000 June brought a mood of detente, thus blocking US intervention and dwindling its influence. Even China and Japan supported this move of N-S Korean government for its positive impact on neighboring nations.
In the course of NK-US conflict, the South Korean government was enmeshed in a complicated situation. In spite of its official position of continuing Sunshine policy, it couldn’t oppose to Bush’s drive to isolate North Korea. As Koisumi government turn its back because of North Korea’s kidnapping of Japanese citizens, the room for South Korean government got more and more limited. Furthermore, the killing of two schoolgirls by US armed vehicle and acquittal of US soldiers by Marshal Court set fie on millions of South Koreans’ indignation toward US imperialism.
As of this March, the US administration started the invasion on Sadam Hussein’s Iraq, the North Korean issue was set aside temporarily, but after the unexpected end of the aggression, the US imperialism turned to Syria, Iran and North Korea. The recent dialogue between North Korea and the US in Beijing failed to produce any positive result, and Bush’s talks with South Korean president and Japanese prime minister was utilized to put further pressure toward North Korea. Thus far, the prolonged conflict driven by US imperialism put the peace and lives of Korean people, North and South, in peril, pushing the dark clouds of catastrophic war over the Korean peninsular.
The Essence of the Sunshine Policy
The former government under Kim Dae-jung conceptualized the Sunshine policy borrowing Aesop’s Fables, with the firm belief of president Kim, an avowed expert on national reunification issue that the soft approach, not the confrontational one, to North Korea is the only way to disarm North Korean regime in the long run. This approach was, in essence, based on the South Korean ruling oligarchy’s confidence over North Korea regime.
With the rapid development of South Korean capitalism and recent calamities suffered by North Koreans due to a series of natural disasters and food shortages, the relationship between North and South changed. In the fifties and sixties, North Korean “socialist” society was better off with more advanced industrialization and more equal distribution of resources. However, overloaded militarization drive for self-defense and finally collapse of Eastern bloc, autarky type of North Korean economy fell to the ground, facing the reality of the regime’s inability to provide basic food for people and thereby producing hundreds of thousands of hungry refugees hovering around Northern China.
The sunshine policy enjoyed almost unanimous support of South Koreans for its approach of national reconciliation and humanitarian inter-course, with the exception of stubborn response by ultra-conservative anti-communists. The difference was between the blind opposition against North Korea and the long term gradualist approach by inducing North Korean opening to market economy and causing the collapse of North Korean regime from inside.
However, this very modest approach to North Korea was hampered by the election of Bush as US president. Bush himself and his neo-con advisers preferred the confrontation approach to North Korea by putting pressure and sanctions. Thus, the process of national reconciliation and peaceful co-existence was threatened by the US imperialist offensives, and South Korean government is forced to make a choice: either it will go back to US-SK military alliance and give up Sunshine policy, or it will keep on the sunshine policy and be faced with growing pressure from Bush administration.
Basically, though the Korean governments, under Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun, vowed its adherence to Sunshine policy, they cannot escape from the imperialist-colonial framework. This has been proven repeatedly by the presidents’ servile attitudes to Bush and fear of anti-communists attack by reactionary media and factions. Therefore, the maximum that can be expected from the liberal-semi-populist ruling bloc is the hypocritical dualism. They have neither any capacity nor any intention to move toward the national reunification by confronting the imperialist offensives.
Popular Movement: National Liberation vs Class Struggle
In 1945, the liberation from Japanese imperialism didn’t result in the building of an independent state, but the occupation of imperial forces and Korean war, and finally the permanent national division. The Korean War, which is a civil war and an international war at the same time, destroyed the revolutionary capacity in the South, thus resulting in ideological vacuum in South Korean society. A series of anti-communist dictatorships systematically suppressed any resistances to the corruption and anti-democratic regimes. However, harsh dictatorship couldn’t prevent the popular movement from growing into the new generation of anti-dictatorship forces. Later, from these liberal opposition was differentiated into liberal wing and left wing.
In 1970s, student movement and labor movement developed in the struggles against fascist military regime, and after Kwang-ju Uprising 1980, there happened a massive radicalization of student movement and a massive turn to industry by the new generation of activists. Thus, the decade of 1980s saw the emergence of revolutionary left movement.
However, over the strategy and tactics, movement was divided into two camps, especially under the influence of North Koreans: national liberation tendency and popular democracy tendency. The former recognized the leadership of North Korea Worekrs Party, emphasizing anti-imperialist struggle and national reunification, while the latter refused to recognize the North Korean leadership, instead following an independent path the revolution and emphasizing the class struggle perspective.
In revolutionary 1980s, the North Korea defined South Korea as a colonial semi-feudal society by keep eyes closed on the manifest fact of rapidly developing capitalism and newly emerging working class. That’s why the left class struggle tendency refused North Korean leadership during the debate with nationalist currents. Further more, Juche Thought, or Kim Il-sung-ism, was a vulgarized version of Stalinism combined with historical distortion and personality cult, more than the characterization of may in the international radical left as Stalinism.
In subsequent years, this national liberation current pursued the so-called strategic alliance with “national bourgeoisie” that were almost non-existent politically under the unique Korean situation. The actual consequence was that they became ardent supporters for Kim Dae-jung under the disguise of “critical support” and that many leaders from that current converted into his henchmen in hundreds in a series of political conjuncture. In spite of continuous desertion to liberalism, the national liberation, or pro-North, tendency still occupies the majority status within the popular movements, except the labor movement which exploded from Hot Summer in 1987 just after June uprising that nearly toppled the military dictatorship.
The last two decades’ development of labor movement was the vivid demonstration of the revolutionary Marxism, despite the comparatively poor development of left current. The newly emerging working class kept on their class struggle in face of ideological impact of collapse of existing socialism. Of course, recently there’s the growing trend of bureaucratization in trade union leadership and its political shift toward social democracy, exemplified in the KCTU’s support of Democratic Labor Party (DLP) which is in essence dominated by awkward mixture of trade union centrists, social democratic leaders and national liberation current.
Another important phenomenon in 1990s, especially after the end of Cold War, is the proliferation of NGOs, or civil movements, to use their own term. These NGO movements occupied the newly formed space for the political reform, being hegemonic toward popular movement, with the connections and ties with institutional politics. While very critical toward popular movements and political left, these NGOs became another power bloc. But unable to mobilize masses of their own, the civil movement always attempted to trade union leadership into their cause. Thus, the working class militants and radical left activists are faced with two fronts: against the nationalists and the civil society.
North Korea: Where to?
Basically, North Korea is not free from historical failures and fallacies of Stalinism, and its official Juche-ism is one of the worst versions of distorted Stalinism, which can be compared to Albanian Hoxhaism.
Historically, North Korea used to represent the diverse currents of anti-imperialist struggle, political lefts, and armed guerillas, and the truce in Korean War meant the failure of national liberation war/revolution. After the war, in contrast to corrupt and incompetent SK regimes, North Korea carried out the successful reconstruction and pursued the path for socialism. However, overload of military budget and mistake strategy for economic development, mixed with such distortion as personality cult and internal suffocation of the party and state, imposed the stagnation of North Korean economy and political regime.
The complete segregation of South from the North kept both the regimes permanently separate, with the exception of sporadic contacts between authorized officials. On the other hand, South Korea was incorporated into the world market, driven by the development dictatorship, and on the bloody toils and sacrifice of working class, joined the ranks of the newly emerging economies in East Asia.
Especially, the collapse of existing socialism made the situation even worse for North Korea, finally North Korean being the least threat for its regime competition with South Korea, except extraordinarily high degree of militarization. The socialism, as North Koreans say, is no longer valid. Even some one describe it as a feudal socialism that lacks the concept of modernism.
And as Kim Ilsung died in 199? and his son Kim Jong-il succeeded to him, North Korean regime began to show some fissures, of which the most remarkable is the massive desertion of North Korean refugees to North China to get food. So far, the regime maintains its control over the armed forces and the party apparatus, but in border areas the control got more and more loosened. The long-tern disintegration of North Korean regime is indisputable, but the short term symptoms are hard to read because of the information control by North Korean authorities, contrary to the hopes of US neo-con hawks.
What Is To Be Done?
The Bush Doctrine (National Security Strategy, September 2002) formulized the military ideology of the Empire: pre-emptive attack to keep globalization going. Not just in Middle East, but in East Asia as well, the permanent state of war is the strategic goal of US Empire.
The debate on Empire by Negri and Hardt became obsolete by Bush’s war drive under the name of “war on terrorism.” Not the multitude, but the movements and militants organized the struggles against Bush-Blair’s war drive. This unprecedented anti-war movement was described as the other super-power by the New York Times, the very newspaper that said farewell to the anti-globalization movement just after September 11 terrorist attack.
The unprecedented broadness and intensity of the anti-war movement was enabled by the incessant mobilization of anti-globalization movements, especially since Seattle Battle in November 1999. The struggle against the WTO was so broadened and deepened as to gradually target the global capitalism. Thus, the anti-war movement is inter-linked with anti-globalization movement, and these struggles are anti-imperialist movement in this century, and in its essence, have a very strong anti-capitalist struggles.
In spite of heroic struggle, the anti-war movement failed to stop the war. However, the struggle is not over. Any further drive for the war will inevitably be met by the even stronger anti-war, anti-imperialist struggle.
In South Korea, the death of two schoolgirls ignited an unprecedented mass mobilization during last December. In response to growing scale of candle light vigils, the conservative media started its attack on the mobilization for organizers instigating anti-Americanism. At that time, the leadership showed rather defensive position, thereby losing the chance to expand the struggle in line with then-growing international anti-war movement. Thus, presidential candidate Roh’s promise to represent the will of candle vigils, the mobilization lost the momentum, back to the symbolic protest.
This February, South Korean movements organized a series of anti-war mobilization, but its scale was rather small, considering its militancy and capacity. Strange to say, that was almost the first anti-war movement in South Korea, especially in organized coordination with the international action. This shows the political and ideological weakness of Korean popular movement, and a historical paradox that because of collective memory of the war, every body is against the war, but only a few come to act against the war.
At anyway, the coming crisis on the Korean peninsular cannot be confined to the national question in which only Koreans are involved. In this political context, the anti-imperialist struggle of the working class and popular masses in South Korea should extend its solidarity not only to regional alliance of popular movements around East Asia, but also to international anti-war, anti-globalization, anti-imperialist, and anti-capitalist activists and movements, concretely to overthrow the US imperialism’s intervention on Korean peninsular.
Note
1. The PWC (Power of the Working Class) is a revolutionary Marxist group of in South Korea. It was formed in 1999, with union leaders, social movement activists, and left intellectuals joining as a left unity project. It represents the left militant currents in labor movement, and is actively committed in diverse social struggle. At the moment, the PWC is focused on the next round of the left unity project and anti-globalization struggle, based on the internationalist perspective. It has good relationship with international left currents and groups.