Search Results

A Korean American Housewife Confronts South Korea’s National Security Law By Hyun Lee* | January 27, 2015 Originally published in Foreign Policy in Focus and Asia-Pacific Journal On the 70th anniversary of the division of the Korean peninsula, the Korea Policy Institute, in collaboration with The Asia-Pacific Journal, is pleased to publish a special series, “The 70th Anniversary of the U.S. Division of the Korean Peninsula: A People’s History.”  Multi-sited in geographic range, this series calls attention to the far-reaching repercussions and ongoing legacies of the fateful 1945 American decision, in the immediate wake of U.S. atomic bombings of Japan and with no Korean consultation, to divide Korea in two.  Through scholarly essays, policy articles, interviews, journalistic investigation, survivor testimony, and creative performance, this series explores the human costs and ground-level realities of the division of Korea. On January 10, after detaining her for questioning on charges of violating the National Security Law (NSL), South Korea deported U.S. citizen Shin Eun-mi and barred her from returning to the country for the next five years. For the past two months, the Korean American housewife had made daily headlines in South Korea after her speaking tour on her travels to North Korea sparked controversy and became the target of right-wing attacks. At one of the events, the detonation of a homemade bomb forced the evacuation of 200 people. South Korean authorities interrogated Shin for more than 50 hours before deporting her. They also arrested activist Hwang Sun, who emceed the speaking tour. “The gap caused by national division runs very deep in South Korean society,” says Shin. Indeed, the deportation of Shin and the arrest of Hwang follow on the heels of South Korea’s dissolution of the opposition Unified Progressive Party and growing concerns about an intensifying government crackdown on free speech. The South Korean Ministry of Justice recently announced that it will push to strengthen the controversial NSL to allow the Supreme Court to disband organizations it deems “anti-government.” For now, Shin, the author of A Korean American Housewife Goes to North Korea, a Korean-language travel journal, is back home in California. The entire ordeal, she says, has taken a toll on her physical and emotional health. In the following interview, she reflects on her recent speaking tour, the South Korean government’s deportation decision, and the kind of response her saga has received in the United States. Hyun Lee: Start by talking about your personal background and how this affected your perception of North Korea. Shin Eun-mi: I grew up in a very conservative Christian family. My grandfather on my mother’s side served three terms as a member of the Constituent Assembly in South Korea during Syngman Rhee’s rule and played a key role in railroading the NSL through the National Assembly in 1948. My father is from a military background, so I received a very thorough anti-Communist education growing up. My earliest memories of hearing about North Korea were through my father’s stories of how he had led his troops all the way to the northern tip of North Korea during the Korean War to crush the North’s People’s Army, and I remember feeling proud that I was the daughter of a war hero. Naturally, growing up, I believed without question that the North Koreans are our enemy. In grade school, we had anti-Communist poster contests in art class. The North Koreans I drew always had devil-like red faces with horns and a tail. I wrote in big letters, “Crush all commies!” I won awards in anti-Communist writing and speech-making contests. I imagined North Koreans having no human emotion, always carrying guns and ready to die for their party and country. I imagined children snitching on their parents and their parents being dragged away by the police in the dark. As a child, I was part of a children’s performance troupe called the Little Angels, which toured the world to project a positive image of South Korea. I studied voice in university, then came to the United States to pursue a doctorate degree at the University of Minnesota. I taught voice in Seoul until 2002, then settled in the United States, where I am currently a housewife. My trip to North Korea in 2011 completely changed my thoughts about the people of North Korea. Ironically, I eventually became the victim of the NSL, which my grandfather had helped to establish. Your first trip to North Korea was in October 2011, and you have been back five more times since then. What made you visit in the first place, and what made you return? My husband, who loves to travel, was surfing the Internet one day looking for our next vacation destination when he learned that North Korea was open for tourism to people of any nationality except for South Korean citizens. [We realized] that it was even possible for us [to travel there] since we are U.S. citizens. When my husband decided on North Korea as the next vacation spot, I had no desire to go with him. So at first I refused. But then I started to develop a curiosity about just how different North Koreans really are from us. So I decided to join him. There, I realized that the North Koreans are not at all different from us. Parents worry about their children’s education, housewives worry about the dinner menu, and young women worry about marriage, no differently from us. They were not at all the warmongering and robotic people that I thought they would be. I discovered that the people in North Korea are very pure and innocent.But North Korea was very poor. So in the preface of my book, I described North Korea as “a poor country where beautiful people live.” I adopted the North Korean tour guide on our first trip, Seol-gyeong, as my goddaughter. So I returned many times since then to visit my goddaughter. Talk about your first trip to North Korea. What was most surprising? I arrived at the Pyongyang airport full of fear and curiosity. As soon as we met our tour guides and our driver, I was shocked. Seol-gyeong talked about her boyfriend, and another guide worried about his children’s education. Such mundane, everyday things — something I never imagined was possible in North Korea. I had imagined that they would be expressionless — certainly not smiling — but Seol-gyeong was so chatty, she reminded me of my own daughter. On the street, I saw couples holding hands, kids giggling and joking around, women gossiping on their cell phones, a man carrying his child on his shoulders. What would be just an ordinary street scene anywhere else in the world was the most shocking for me to see in North Korea. I’m a U.S. citizen of South Korean descent. Since North Korea considers the United States an enemy, I thought the North Koreans would really dislike people from the United States. But that wasn’t the case. The North Koreans we met on our trip gave us a warm welcome. They offered us food, beer, and became teary-eyed as they held our hands and said we are the same people. I can’t count all the times that I was deeply moved. How did these experiences change your perception of North Korea and your thoughts on unification? They changed my thoughts about the people of North Korea — that they are no different from us. We are misinformed about the North Koreans. They are not people who spend all their time wielding their guns and preparing for war. You would know this if you just had a chance to meet them face-to-face. To really know them, we need contact. We need to meet them face-to-face and converse with them. I came to the conclusion that we would have no problems getting along if we were to live together. And that’s how I came to think about unification. I started to long for a unified Korea and ending the state of war. You published a travel journal about your experiences in North Korea, and it became a bestseller in South Korea and even made it onto the recommended reading list published by the Ministry of Culture. Talk about the impetus behind writing the travel journal. I wasn’t planning on writing a travel journal. I didn’t think people would be interested in a travel journal about North Korea, and I didn’t want people to know that I had been to North Korea. When I told close friends about my trip, one of them suggested that I write about my trip and post it on a South Korean website called ohmynews. When I posted my first entry there, it was read by hundreds of thousands of people. I was shocked and overjoyed at the thought that people still care about North Korea and want unification. So I kept writing. After that, lots of publishing companies approached me about publishing my stories, and eventually, the series of my travel diaries was published as a book. You did a series of speaking tours in South Korea about your trip to North Korea, but the most recent one sparked controversy and drew allegations from right-wing groups and President Park that your “talk concerts” were “pro-North.” Talk about the most recent speaking tour. The speaking tour was organized by the Southern Committee to Implement the June 15 Joint Declaration and endorsed by many other civic groups. We started the tour in Seoul on November 19, then went to Gwangju, Daejeon, Daegu, and Iksan. Immediately after the first event in Seoul, there were sensationalized media reports calling the tour a “pro-North concert.” They falsely reported that I had said “North Korea is paradise on earth” and praised North Korea’s “hereditary succession of power,” and they re-broadcast these reports 24/7. It was like McCarthyism in the media. Right-wing agitators stood outside our events and yelled “Go back to North Korea!” The false media reports continued, and at each stop of our tour, the protests grew more intense. In Daejeon, just two hours before our scheduled event, the owner of the building where we were supposed to hold the event threatened to cut off electricity if we went ahead, so we were forced to cancel the event. But we refused to call off the tour and pushed on. We were also greeted by many supporters, who braved threats from right-wing agitators to fill the lecture halls. When we arrived at Iksan, in Jeolla Province, the university where we were scheduled to hold the event changed its mind, and we were forced to move the event to a Catholic church at the last minute. This is where the bomb incident occurred and we were forced to cancel the rest of our tour. A police investigation later revealed that the media reports about me were false. I am currently in the process of filing a lawsuit against those media outlets. What do you think caused such a backlash? I really have no idea. I had been to South Korea many times since 2012 and given many lectures about my travels to North Korea. In April last year, just six months before the most recent tour, I had done the same speaking tour, organized by the same people. We stopped at even more cities and I gave about 20 lectures in total without incident. The previous year, in 2013, the Ministry of Unification praised my book and produced a documentary about me. The same media that recently accused me of being “pro-North” had done interviews with me and praised my book. But suddenly, this time, it was exactly the opposite. Tongil (unification) became jongbuk (pro-North). I don’t understand why the same lecture became so controversial. At the event at Iksan on December 10, a high school student set off a homemade incendiary device in the middle of your lecture, and two people were seriously injured. What happened? A young man stood up in the middle of my presentation and said, “Isn’t it true that you referred to North Korea as ‘paradise on earth?’” Before I even had a chance to respond, he pulled out a homemade acid bomb from his knapsack and hurled it in my direction. Had a staff person not gotten in the way to block it with his own body, I would have been seriously injured. The police later found that the assailant had packed other incendiary devices in his knapsack. The police were quick to declare that he had acted alone, but this is doubtful. Several witnesses said they had seen the assailant being dropped off at the church by other people. And when he arrived inside the church, another man, who appeared to have arrived earlier to save a seat for him, got up and gave him his seat, then walked out. What was strange that day was that when we arrived at the church, I noticed fire trucks lined up by the building. I remember wondering, “What are they doing here?” What shocked me also was that when the bomb went off, an explosives unit was on the scene within minutes. I still wonder if the local authorities had been tipped off in advance about what was about to happen. Prior to that day, the assailant had apparently posted online comments announcing his plan. There are many unresolved questions about this incident. For example, the police claimed they searched the assailant’s home after the incident. But when organizers of the speaking tour met with the assailant’s parents, they told them that there had been no such search. What’s even more surprising is that President Park said nothing about the terrorist incident. Instead, she publicly denounced our speaking tour as “pro-North.” The police downgraded the charge against the assailant, then called me in for questioning and raided Hwang Sun’s home. We were the victims of a terrorist act, but the South Korean police and the Ministry of Justice treated us as if we were the criminals. Talk about your what happened when the South Korean police and the Ministry of Justice took you in for questioning. The police summoned me three times and the Ministry of Justice once. In total, they interrogated me for over 50 hours. I was scheduled to return to the United States on December 12, but they barred me from leaving the country. The investigation started based on an allegation that my lectures were in violation of the NSL. But it only took them a few hours to realize that there is nothing to substantiate this allegation. So then they focused their investigation on the content of my book and lectures I had given in the United States — which is absurd. I wrote the book and gave those lectures in the United States, so why is it the business of the South Korean government? They asked about every line in my book, from the preface to the very last page and demanded to know what my intentions were behind each sentence. For example, I had written in my book, “Christ tells us to love our neighbors, and I realized the North Koreans are our true neighbors,” and they wanted to know, “What is the true meaning behind this sentence?” I wrote about cell phone use in North Korea and printed photographs of my trips in the book, and they wanted to know, “Do you really believe these are real?” They showed me a copy of an email exchange between me and another person in the United States. The Internet server for our emails is based in the United States, so I have no idea how that was in their possession. At any rate, they found nothing that I had done that was in violation of their NSL. Ultimately, they deported me based on immigration law, which states that a foreigner who acts against the national interest, disturbs the peace, and/or threatens the safety or security of the country may be deported. Did the U.S. embassy or the State Department get involved? As soon as I felt threatened, I contacted the U.S. embassy in Seoul. At first we exchanged emails, but after the bomb incident, I went to the embassy myself and met with a consul there. I explained about my situation, but he already knew my story very well. I requested protection, and his response was, “Go to the South Korean police for protection.” I had no communication with the State Department. You also requested a meeting with President Park, who famously said “Tongil is dae-bak” (“Unification is a jackpot”) and claims to be pro-unification. Did you get any response from her to your request to meet? If you were granted a meeting, what would you have said to her? No response. If she had agreed to meet with me, I was going to tell her, “The people of the South and North are not much different. We share the same history and culture through thousands of years. Please move forward for unification of Korea — for peace and for the people of the Korean peninsula.” Describe what happened when you arrived at the Los Angeles airport upon your return home. How did you think you would be treated within the Korean diaspora community in the United States? When I arrived at the airport, it was the same scene as in South Korea. People from my church had come to the airport to welcome me home. And on the other side were right-wing people shouting, “Go back to North Korea!” I was focused on getting out of there quickly, so I only learned later that there was a physical confrontation and the police arrested two right-wing agitators for assault. I realized that the gap due to national division runs deep in our community. I’m not sure how I will be treated by the Korean American community. I suppose truth will prevail one day. What’s most urgent is reconciliation between North and South Korea — in other words, a return to the post-June 15 era. Hwang Sun, who appeared with you in the speaking tour, is now under arrest on charges of violating the NSL. The government has taken your book off the recommended list of books and has ordered all libraries to return all copies of the books to the Ministry of Culture. Your thoughts? Hwang Sun is the mother of two young children. She poses no flight risk. And since the police have already raided her home and taken everything, there’s no risk that she will destroy evidence. I hope they will allow her to go through investigation and stand trial without being detained. It was the South Korean government that selected my book for its list of recommended books, and it was the same government that rescinded this decision and announced a recall of my books. I don’t know what to say. I never considered the selection of my book for the government’s list as a matter of personal glory, because I’m not a professional writer. But it does raise a question for me. The content of my book hasn’t changed since the time the government saw fit to put it on the list, so what has changed to make it so controversial? All this follows on the heels of the controversial dissolution of the opposition Unified Progressive Party and the South Korean government’s frequent use of the NSL to stifle free speech. Can you comment generally on the current political climate in South Korea? I don’t know much about South Korean politics. But I do think the dissolution of a political party should be decided by the voters, not by the government. As for the NSL, it surely hinders freedom of speech and expression, which should be guaranteed in a genuinely democratic country. What are your future plans and hopes? What do you take away from this whole experience? I haven’t yet thought seriously about my future plans or hopes. For now, I want to take a good rest and recover from mental and physical exhaustion. The gap caused by division between North and South Korea runs very deep. Without resolving the problem of division, I don’t believe we can expect to have true democracy, let alone peace on the Korean peninsula. The most urgent task is national reconciliation and peaceful unification. *Hyun Lee is a member of the Working Group on Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific as well as a fellow at the Korea Policy Institute. She co-produces Asia Pacific Forum, a weekly radio show on culture and politics in Asia and the Asian diaspora. #NationalSecurityLaw #NorthKorea #parkgeunhye

By Hyun Lee | November 12, 2015 Co-published with Foreign Policy in Focus Standing in the way of South Korean President Park Geun-hye’s series of controversial labor market reform initiatives is the Korean Confederation Trade Unions (KCTU). The union confederation has vowed to “stop freight trucks in their tracks” and “immobilize the country” if the government continues to push through its comprehensive reform package. The proposed reform would increase labor flexibility on a scale that is unprecedented since the country’s adoption of International Monetary Fund (IMF)-imposed structural adjustment policies in the late 1990s. Cloaked as a solution to growing youth unemployment, Park and South Korea’s ruling conservative party propose to replace the country’s seniority-based wage system with a flexible, performance-based system. The reform would start in the public sector and introduce a wage peak system, under which older workers swap an extended retirement age for fixed salaries regardless of their seniority. The reform would also relax conditions for the termination of workers, increase the use of temporary contract workers, reduce job security in all labor sectors, and allow employers to change their employment regulations without worker consent. The reform initiative comes as South Korea pursues a series of free trade agreements (FTAs) that will further undermine the country’s food sovereignty and limit its sovereign sphere by impeding its policy-making powers. The Korea-US FTA, in its third year of implementation, has given foreign corporations the power to control South Korea’s domestic policies through the controversial investor-state dispute system, which enables foreign corporations to challenge the country’s laws on the grounds that they may interfere with the corporation’s ability to make profits. The Park administration is also in the final stages of completing a trade deal with China, which has farmers worried about the flood of cheaper products from China into South Korea’s agricultural market. And South Korea has just announced its intention to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP), the secretly negotiated mega trade deal, the full text of which was only recently been released. KCTU is forging a broad united front with farmers and the urban poor not only to oppose the labor market reform but to mount a challenge to Park’s broader pro-corporate, pro-free trade agenda. It has called for a mass convergence in Seoul on November 14 to build momentum for a potential general strike in the coming months. But it’s a risky fight, since Park has shown that she is willing to take extraordinary measures to silence her opposition. At the center of it all is a man named Han Sang-gyun, the newly elected KCTU president with seemingly unshakeable resolve, hardened from years of fighting labor struggles in the streets. He served three years in jail for leading the 2009 occupation of a Ssangyong Motors plant, in which 900 workers barricaded themselves for 77 days to protest layoffs and which ended in a violent showdown with the police wielding water cannons and tear gas. After being released from jail, he climbed on top of an electric transmission tower to stage a protest 164 feet up in the air. His aerial protest, which lasted 171 days in the harshest months of winter, forced candidates in the 2012 presidential election to declare their positions on the Ssangyong dispute, which still continues today. In 2014, in KCTU’s first direct election with the participation of all 800,000 rank-and-file members, Han ran on a pledge, if elected, to launch a general strike and make KCTU “Park Geun-hye’s greatest fear.” Han recently spoke about KCTU’s efforts to stop the proposed labor market reform, as well as the impact of IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies and the Korea-US FTA on South Korea’s labor market. Hyun Lee: We first came to know of you in January 2013 when you and other former Ssangyong Motors workers were living on top of an electrical transmission tower 164 feet above ground to protest the unjust layoff of 3,000 workers by Ssangyong Motors back in 2009. Tell us about your personal background – about the Ssangyong fight and what led to your decision to become the president of KCTU. Ssangyong Motors workers’ occupation of their factory in Pyeongtaek in 2009 (Photo: libcom.org) “Layoffs are akin to murder” – that was the leading slogan of the Ssangyong Motor workers during our 77-day factory occupation to oppose layoffs in the simmering summer of 2009. I was the union representative then, and I still shudder when I think back at the time I spent with comrades who were willing to risk their lives in that fight. The crackdown by the government, which had mobilized all of its might and special weapons, was a gruesome battle between the government, which had defined the workers as its enemy, and the workers, who were left to writhe in agony as they struggled to stay alive. Twenty-eight workers have died so far as a result of the trauma caused by the government violence. I had the unfortunate fate of receiving this tragic news while in jail, and that was incredibly hard to endure. Han Sang-gyun on top of an electrical supply tower in November 2012 (Photo: The Korea Times) After spending three years in jail, I wanted to fulfill our vow to live our lives in a world without irregular and precarious work, so I climbed a 124,000-volt electric transmission tower with my comrades. The reality in South Korea, where dismissed workers have to plead to be heard and bring attention to their pitiful and unjust plight, is not changing and in fact becoming more barbaric. I decided to run for the position of KCTU president in order to change this reality, where workers live in constant fear of dismissal and can be dismissed at any time and where even after they are dismissed, workers blame their own incompetence. I wanted to confront capital and those in power who want to institute a system of modern-day slavery, and fight for the liberation of 10 million irregular workers. I wanted to devote myself to turning this world of low-wage exploitation, where people work themselves to death for less than $2,000 a month, into a world where workers can live with respect and human dignity through meaningful labor. Lee: When you ran for office as KCTU president in 2014, you pledged to launch a general strike if elected. Why was this important? And why do you think the KCTU rank and file chose you as the president? KCTU represents the interest of 20 million workers. To fight for workers, who have their backs against the wall and are attacked from both sides by the government and capital, there is no other path but a general strike. The KCTU election in 2014 was the first election with the direct participation of all 800,000 members. I think the expectation that I won’t simply be complacent in a situation where struggle may be difficult and that I will find a way out is the reason they elected me as KCTU president. What we are about to embark on is a general strike not only to fulfill that expectation but more importantly to stop the Park Geun-hye government’s labor market reform, which will turn the entire country into a pool of irregular/precarious workers who can be dismissed at any time without cause. Lee: You have been confined inside the KCTU office, and the government has issued a warrant for your arrest. Why? And what are your days like? Seoul City Hall Plaza, April 24, 2015 (Photo: Solidarity for Peace and Reunification in Korea) After I became KCTU president, we called for a mass demonstration on April 24 to oppose the anti-worker laws that the government is pursuing. This was followed by Labor Day on May 1. Workers came out to the streets en masse for legal demonstrations. Lots of people were on the streets, so inevitably, this led to some minor violations of traffic laws and the Law on Assembly and Demonstration. So the prosecutor’s office ordered me to report to them for an investigation, and I told them that I would comply. But because we couldn’t agree on a date that was convenient for them, they issued an arrest warrant. And since June 23, I have not set foot outside the KCTU building. Outside the building, hundreds of police stand guard day and night on surveillance duty in order to arrest me. Although I am confined in the office, I am still just as busy. Many KCTU meetings take place at the office, several times a day. People from all regions bring me home-cooked meals. I’m not able to move around a lot, so I’m getting fat, and that worries me a bit. (Laughs) I haven’t been home for almost 5 months, but my family comes to visit me often. They haven’t abandoned me yet! (Laughs) Lee: President Park Geun-hye and the ruling conservative New Frontier Party (NFP) are intent on pushing forward a comprehensive labor market reform package. Talk about these reforms and the impact they will have on South Korea’s workforce as well as the labor movement. Article 33 of our constitution guarantees workers the right to form labor unions and exercise independent association, collective bargaining, and collective action to confront capital and protect our interests. But the government is trying to undermine labor unions through policy directives that trample on the spirit of our constitution. The most problematic aspects of the proposed labor market reform would enable employers to terminate workers whenever they want without cause and make all workers irregular/precarious workers. There are two proposed laws related to irregular/precarious workers. One would allow the use of dispatch/contract workers in all labor sectors, and the other would extend the contract term of irregular workers from two to four years. If this passes, an employer can hire young workers for four years, fire them temporarily, then rehire them for another four years. This means that they would have no reason to hire permanent, regular workers, and it would simply be a matter of time before the entire labor force in South Korea becomes irregular or precarious. It is already very easy for employers to lay off workers in our country. A company can lay off workers not only in cases where it is actually financially struggling, but even if it projects that it may run into a deficit in a few years. Currently, white-collar workers in banks and large corporations are forced into early retirement even before they reach the age of 50. At least in their case, they receive some compensation. The proposed law on general dismissal would enable an employer to terminate its workers based on “low performance” and send them away empty-handed. This would allow a company to get rid of unwanted workers without spending a dime. Also, according to the current law, a company can only change its employment regulations with the explicit consent of the majority of its workers. The labor market reform that the government is pursuing would allow employers to change their employer regulations as they please without worker consent. If this passes, a worker can lose his/her job or have his/her wages docked simply for falling out of favor with his/her employer, and there would be no reason for the employer to listen to the demands of a labor union. This would create a slavery-like work environment where workers constantly have to curry favor with their boss. This is designed to eliminate all means of resistance by organized labor, which is precisely the aim of the Park Geun-hye government. South Korea already has the highest percentage of irregular/precarious workers and the greatest labor flexibility of all OECD countries. The government’s policy is aimed at making permanent a structure in which workers can work the maximum work hours but still incur rising debts, and this spells disaster. The Park Geun-hye government, which refuses to hold the chaebols responsible and instead passes on distress to workers, is fanning the outrage of workers and the urban poor, and their outrage is about to reach a boiling point. Lee: KCTU was born on the eve of the Asian financial crisis of 1997. Its general strike to oppose labor law reforms in 1996 and International Monetary Fund (IMF)-imposed structural reforms in 1997 catapulted KCTU to international recognition. Please talk about that history and how the so-called “IMF crisis” of 1997 altered South Korea’s economy and conditions for workers. In 1996, the then-Kim Young-sam government railroaded the legislative process to pass a series of labor laws that would make it easier for employers to lay off workers and hire temporary/contract workers. A month-long general strike of millions of workers stopped the government from enforcing the law and boosted the confidence of workers that we can make a better world through our own power. It was that spirit that eventually led to the entry of progressives in South Korea’s political arena. A South Korean worker protesting IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies (Photo: todayboda.net) But the same law was reintroduced as part of a structural adjustment program imposed by the IMF after the Asian financial crisis in 1997. In the past, if you worked hard, it was possible to raise a family with hope for the future. But the IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies introduced a system for easy layoffs. The Act on the Protection of Dispatched Workers allowed companies to hire temporary workers on short-term contracts. Immediately after the passage of these laws, the Hyundai Motor Company announced layoffs, even though it was not in any financial hardship. So we understood that these laws are about forcing workers to the edge of a cliff. These laws were not only aimed at laying off workers but at destroying labor unions. If there were workers leading a struggle to demand their rights at the workplace, the employer could simply evoke this law to dismiss them at any time, undermine their legitimate labor union activity, and uproot the labor union from the workplace. Back then, we had no idea just how serious the problem of irregular/precarious employment could become. Since then, layoffs and the use of contract workers have turned 10 million workers into irregular/precarious workers. Today, you won’t find a single household without at least one irregular worker. The biggest disaster in South Korean society today is income inequality and the lack of decent and secure jobs. That is why this year, KCTU created a movement center to address head on all the problems related to irregular/precarious employment. Lee: Compare the KCTU of 20 years ago and the KCTU of today. What is the biggest challenge in carrying out a general strike on a similar scale? Twenty years ago, the term “worker” or “laborer” was not popular at all in South Korean society. Workers were derogatorily referred to as gong-soon-yi (factory girl) or gong-dol-yi (factory boy). There were no human rights for workers, who faced rampant exploitation and oppression. Through the popular democratic uprising of 1987 and the mass worker struggle of 1996, we built KCTU and declared workers as owners of society. The movement that faced off against dictatorship and ushered in democracy in South Korea was made possible by the flag raised by workers. And for the first time, there was hope that people can live decent and dignified lives as workers. Since then, KCTU has failed to address head on the problems of the ever-growing irregular/precarious workers. Until recently, no organization properly represented the 10 million such workers, and this ultimately weakened KCTU’s ability to fight. For some time, capital has pursued its strategy of labor exploitation by reining in those in power and taking control of the police, the prosecutor’s office, the national assembly, and the media, which all stand on the side of capital to oppress workers. And they have created fear among workers that struggle can lead to losing everything. Astronomical fines and seizure of property for so-called damages, warrants for imprisonment, termination from employment, destruction of democratic unions – these are the forms of punishment for those who dare to fight. Despite this, we have no choice but to fight. KCTU is calling for a general strike despite all this because without a fight, what’s left of organized labor, the only means to defend the rights of workers, can ultimately become obsolete. The lives of 20 million workers are on the line. Lee: It has been three years since the implementation of the Korea-U.S. Free Trade Agreement (FTA), touted as the largest trade deal for the United States since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and which became a model for the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a mega-trade deal among 12 Pacific Rim countries. What has been the impact of the Korea-U.S. FTA on South Korea’s workers and farmers? And what would be the impact of the TPP if South Korea decides to join? South Korean farmer protesting the Korea-US FTA (Photo: Voice of People) Workers and farmers fought hard to stop the Korea-US FTA but ultimately failed. Farming areas have become devastated, and workers have become prime targets of exploitation by transnational capital. The government has basically decided to give up on food sovereignty. Their logic is that we have to give up on agriculture in order to sell semiconductors, ships, and automobiles and that that is the only way for our economy to thrive. So they implemented the FTA by force. If you go to the rural areas today, you will find no farms that are economically competitive. The youth have abandoned the rural areas and have all gone to the city. But in the city, there are not enough jobs, so they have basically become day laborers who don’t even earn the minimum wage and barely eke out a living. Today in South Korea, there are 9.4 million workers, who, despite working long hours, earn less than $2,000 month. The Korea-US FTA has made low-wage exploitation a permanent feature of our society, and transnational capital now rules our economy. The government is now in the final stage of completing the Korea-China FTA and has announced its intention to join the TPP, which will cover a massive economic region. Joining the TPP will inevitably increase competition with Japan, and this is projected to cause damages that will exceed those of the Korea-US FTA. The reason why South Korea has not pursued an FTA with Japan thus far is that Japan is more competitive in many economic sectors. Experts warn that if Japan has increased access to South Korea’s market through the TPP, our economy will quickly become jeopardized and it could lead to mass unemployment. Japan’s agricultural products are similar to what South Korea produces, and if they flood our domestic market, it would be the death knell for our agricultural sector and food sovereignty. Lee: KCTU has called for a mass demonstration on November 14. Please talk about the significance of the November 14 demonstration as well as what’s at stake in this broader fight. KCTU’s top demands are to stop the labor market reform, create tougher conditions for termination of workers, and transfer irregular/precarious workers to permanent, regular employment. But we all know that we can’t win if we fight our struggles alone. We can’t resolve the problems faced by farmers, the urban poor, youth, and workers if we don’t fight together. So in each region, farmers, workers, and the urban poor are working together to organize for November 14. This is unprecedented, and KCTU is taking the lead in forging a united front at the regional level. So it’s not about coming together just on November 14 but working together leading up to November 14 and beyond. There are 11 demands for the November 14 demonstration, and they include: stop the labor market reform; abolish irregular/precarious employment; stop rice imports; stop crackdowns on street vendors; and hold the chaebols responsible. But these are simply a compilation of the top demands of the various sectors that are coming together. We know we can’t win all of them. More importantly, our unified goal is a fundamental change in a national system that favors the chaebols and overlooks the interests of the common people. The November 14 demonstration is an important step in this fight. That’s why all are resolved to converge in Seoul in a historically unprecedented scale on November 14. I’ve spent many hours worrying about preparations for November 14 while stuck in this windowless building, and these hours have been filled with apprehension and anxiety. But something amazing is unfolding as we speak. At least 50,000 irregular/precarious workers plan to converge in Seoul. Workers in various industrial sectors have resolved to oppose the labor market reform and also aim to mobilize 50,000 for November 14. Elderly farmers with canes will charter buses to join the mass demonstration. The urban poor, and youth and students, too, are determined to occupy Seoul. I’m only frustrated that many irregular/precarious workers who wish to join the demonstration but can’t afford to charter a bus. In the lead up to November 14, each region has been holding its own rally, and we have sent people on a national bus tour to educate and organize across the country. In Seoul, we are also doing an ad campaign on the city buses. It’s very expensive to buy an ad on a city bus, so we’re unable to do it on a large scale. But through the ads, we point out what’s wrong with the labor market reform and appeal to the general public about our fight to oppose it. And the general public has been applauding our efforts. We have staked everything on this fight. If the Park Geun-hye government continues to railroad the labor market reform despite our pleas, then we will also be ready for next year’s general election in April and the presidential election the year after that. We are more determined than ever to cast a unified ballot in the upcoming elections. Lee: Lastly, what are the plans for beyond November 14? I believe when workers from all regions gather in Seoul on November 14, we will regain our confidence, which will be critical as we prepare to strike. If the national assembly pursues the labor market reform and the government issues a directive to enforce the administrative and legislative reforms, we are prepared to launch a general strike. And this time, it will not be a one-day strike. We’re talking about stopping production, freight trucks stopping in their tracks, railroad and subway workers on illegal strikes, and paralyzing the country so that the government will feel the outrage of the workers. That’s what we’re preparing for. KCTU also opposes the Park Geun-hye government’s attempt to introduce state-authored history textbooks. A good president should write new history through his/her actions, but ours simply wants to revise the past. South Koreans have always been critical of Japan’s distortion of history, but now the Japanese media is pointing its finger back at us for doing the same thing. This is an embarrassment. Friendly soccer match between North and South Korean workers on October 29, 2015 (Photo: Yonhap News) Last month, a KCTU delegation traveled to Pyongyang for a friendly football competition between workers of North and South Korea. Peaceful unification is a long-cherished aspiration of our people, and the workers will demonstrate that the only way out of our current crisis is through reconciliation and economic cooperation between the North and South. Our spirits are buoyed by the fact that people as faraway as the United States are interested in and cheering on our efforts. I hope the November 14 demonstration will help us regain our confidence to lead a successful general strike so that when we speak again, I can relay news of our victory. Please stand with us in solidarity and be with us in spirit. Hyun Lee is a member of the US-Korea Solidarity Committee for Peace and Democracy and a fellow at the Korea Policy Institute. Photo captions Photo 1 – KCTU president Han Sang-gyun (Photo: KCTU) Photo 2 – Ssangyong Motors workers’ occupation of their factory in Pyeongtaek in 2009 (Photo: libcom.org) Photo 3 – Han Sang-gyun on top of an electrical supply tower in November 2012 (Photo: The Korea Times) Photo 4 – Seoul City Hall Plaza, April 24, 2015 (Photo: Solidarity for Peace and Reunification in Korea) Photo 5 – A South Korean worker protesting IMF-imposed structural adjustment policies (Photo: todayboda.net) Photo 6 – South Korean farmer protesting the Korea-US FTA (Photo: Voice of People) Photo 7 – Friendly soccer match between North and South Korean workers on October 29, 2015 (Photo: Yonhap News) #TPP #SouthKorea #globalization #Labor #freetrade

Photo: Voice of People By Hyun Lee and Gregory Elich | December 8, 2015 Originally published in Labor Notes Massive protests have rocked South Korea’s capital city of Seoul over the past month, as workers demand the ouster of President Park Geun-hye and an end to her plans to make drastic, anti-worker changes to the country’s labor laws. South Korea has historically been one of the United States’ strongest allies in the region. Its government, like so many others in the age of corporate globalization, is trying to weaken unions and restrict democratic debate. But there’s a growing resistance—led by organized labor. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) is anchoring a coalition of workers, farmers, the urban poor, and students to oppose President Park’s pro-corporate agenda and neo-authoritarian rule. Tens of thousands faced off against the police on November 14, braving high-pressure cannons and tear gas. Undeterred, they marched again on December 5, donning facemasks in defiance of the president’s threats to ban rallies with masks. A 69-year-old farmer remains in critical condition after being doused at short range by a water cannon. Police have arrested nine members and officials of the Korean Public Service and Transportation Workers Union over the past two weeks, and imprisoned five officials of the Korean Construction Workers Union. In the lead-up to the December 5 demonstration, they raided 12 offices of eight KCTU unions and affiliates, copying files and confiscating documents and computer hard drives. And police have surrounded a Buddhist temple where KCTU President Han Sang-gyun has been taking sanctuary since November 14 to avoid arrest.  If the government doesn’t change course in the coming weeks, Han has called for a general strike. FOUR-YEAR TEMPS Why are South Korean workers so upset? And why is their government responding with such force? President Park and her ruling New Frontier party want to introduce a package of laws that would fundamentally change the country’s labor market and undermine the power of unions. They would let employers fire workers arbitrarily, increase the use of temporary labor, and extend the contract term for temporary workers from the current two years to four. “If the reform passes, an employer could hire workers for four years, fire them temporarily, then rehire them for another four years, and they would have no incentive to hire permanent, regular workers,” Han warned in a recent interview. Contract workers are not entitled to the four major types of insurance that South Korean employers must legally provide to permanent workers—health insurance, unemployment insurance, industrial-accident compensation, and social security.  Unions say employers will use this loophole to replace regular workers with contract workers. Another proposed law would replace the country’s seniority-based salary system with a performance-based system, and let employers terminate workers based on subjective assessments of “low performance.” (Currently, “low performance” cannot be grounds to fire an employee legally, so employers resort to all manners of harassment and humiliation tactics to force employees to leave their jobs voluntarily.) Also, if companies want to push workers into early retirement, they are legally required to  pay them 30 days or more of average wages for each year of consecutive service as severance pay.  This new system “would allow a company to get rid of unwanted workers without spending a dime,” Han said. The new law would also allow employers to change their employment regulations as they please without worker consent. By law, employers of ten workers or more are required to prepare rules of employment, such as payment method of wages and annual paid-leave, etc., and submit them to the Ministry of Labor, as well as post them where workers can have free access to them. A company can alter its employment regulations only with the explicit consent of the labor union, or, if there is no labor union, the majority of its workers. “This is designed to eliminate all means of resistance by organized labor, and this is precisely the aim of the Park Geun-hye government,” Han said. The government is also introducing a peak-wage system, in which pay is automatically cut for workers at age 55.  The government argues that businesses need to cut the pay of older workers, because they become less productive as they age, and with the money they save, companies can hire more young people and solve the country’s growing youth unemployment. The government is trying to pit the young against the old, but its feigned concern for young people masks the real beneficiaries of the labor reform – companies that stand to reap enormous profits from cutting the wages of older workers and increasing their reliance on temporary labor. TROUBLE STARTED IN 1997 At the height of its development in the 1980s, South Korea’s economy was highly export-driven and controlled by a handful of family-owned conglomerates, such as Hyundai and Samsung. Workers at large industrial plants produced steel, automobiles, electronic parts, and textiles for export. Once a worker was hired by one of these companies, he or she was considered to have a job for life. A worker generally devoted his or her entire career to one company and had an opportunity to climb the ladder, with salaries based on seniority. The movement for democracy against the military dictatorship during the 1970s and 1980s produced a strong, militant labor movement, based in large industrial unions. At its height in 1996, for example, three million workers shut down auto and ship production, and disrupted hospitals, subways and television broadcast for 4 weeks to oppose newly passed labor laws that would give employers more power to lay off workers. That all changed after the Asian financial crisis in 1997. Foreign investors bought up shares in South Korean companies at bargain prices. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) bailed out South Korea’s economy—but at a steep price. It introduced two laws that devastated worker standards. One legalized layoffs for the first time in South Korea, and another legalized the use of dispatch workers through employment agencies  and popularized the practice of in-house subcontracting. Almost overnight, workers with decent, well-paying, secure jobs became “precarious workers”—part-timers or temps without benefits or job security. Today, among Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries, South Korea ranks number one for the most precarious workforce. Now the government wants to make workers even more precarious—and is intent on passing its controversial reform before the year is over. LABOR-LED UNITED FRONT Park, the daughter of a former military dictator, has come under widespread criticism for introducing neo-authoritarian practices that hark back to her father’s era. For instance, since taking power, she has used the outdated National Security Law to jail an opposition lawmaker and dissolve an opposition party, and has outlawed the Korean Government Employees’ Union and the left-leaning Korean Teachers and Education Workers Union. Now she wants to replace all history textbooks in public schools with a single, government-authored history text. The recent protests are part of a coalition effort. Fifty-two organizations representing various sectors of society came together earlier this year to establish a national coordinating body, with regional chapters across the country. They’re united not only against the labor law changes, but also the rest of Park’s pro-corporate agenda and anti-democratic initiatives. Farmers are especially opposed to the series of free trade agreements that her government is pursuing—including the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which will further undermine the domestic rice market with a flood of cheap imports and weaken the country’s ability to feed itself. KCTU, the coalition’s anchor, is the second largest labor federation in South Korea and by far the most militant. With 626,035 members, it accounts for approximately 40 percent of trade union members in South Korea and has more than 1,200 affiliated enterprise-level trade unions. The larger and historically more pro-government Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) had pledged earlier this year to not participate in the tripartite negotiations with government and business representatives about the changes to the labor laws.  But its leadership did an about-face in the fall of this year and entered the talks, giving legitimacy to the government’s push for anti-worker changes to the Labor Standards Acts and other labor laws.  Rank and file members of FKTU, especially those in the financial, metal, and public sectors, strongly oppose their leadership’s compromise with the government. KCTU President Han, who boycotted the tripartite committee, considered by many as a rubber-stamping institution, is no stranger to struggle. In 2009, as head of the Ssangyong Motor branch of the Korean Metal Workers Union, he led 900 workers in a 77-day occupation of a SsangYong Motor plant to protest mass layoffs (their slogan: “Layoffs equal murder”), and this earned him a three-year jail sentence. After he was released from prison, he launched a new protest—occupying an electrical transmission tower, 164 feet in the air, for 171 days, making the SsangYong layoffs a major issue in the 2012 presidential elections. In 2014 he became KCTU president in the labor federation’s first direct election in which all 600,000 members were eligible to vote. He ran on a pledge, if elected, to launch a general strike and make KCTU into Park’s “greatest fear.” Hyun Lee and Gregory Elich are both members of US-Korea Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace.  Gregory Elich is also the co-author of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period. Lee is a KPI fellow and Elich is on the KPI Advisory Board. #GregoryElich #SouthKorea #globalization #Labor #HyunLee

By Hyun Lee | July 10, 2017 “It won’t happen!” Trump had tweeted earlier this year in response to North Korea’s warnings that it was poised to test-launch an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM). Yet, it happened. In the early morning hours of July 4, North Korea test-launched the Hwaseong 14. Launched at a steep trajectory, the missile reportedly reached an apogee exceeding 2500 kilometers and flew for 37 minutes. Experts say if launched on a standard trajectory, the missile should technically be able to reach a distance of more than 6,000 kilometers , which would put the missile in the category of an ICBM. Trumps’ policy of maximum pressure is apparently not working. Intensifying sanctions, it seems, has only emboldened North Korea to speed up its missile development. Perhaps it’s time to try maximum engagement. North Korea’s ICBM test is a game-changer, not because Washington actually believes that the country will use the missile to attack the United States, as Gregory Elich and Stephen Gowans point out. What makes Washington nervous is North Korea’s ability to strike back at the heart of the U.S. Strategic Command in Hawaii if attacked. This changes the strategic balance in the region and hence forces the Pentagon to change its strategic calculus. In response to North Korea’s test, Donald Trump tweeted, “Perhaps China will put a heavy move on North Korea and end this nonsense once and for all!” But the nuclear standoff is essentially a problem between the United States and North Korea, thus the solution needs to be worked out between those two parties. What Each Party Wants from the Standoff The United States wants complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization, which North Korea has categorically rejected. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un—who presumably noted what happened to Iraq and Libya after they laid down their arms—declared after last week’s ICBM test that unless the United States abandons its hostile policy and nuclear threat against his country, his nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles will never be on the table for negotiation. Historian Bruce Cumings says U.S.’ nuclear threats against North Korea date back to the Korean War when the U.S. Air Force flew B-29 bombers over Korea not long after it dropped atom bombs that annihilated approximately 200,000 people, mostly civilians, in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. “North Korea is the only country in the world to have been systematically blackmailed by US nuclear weapons going back to the 1950s, when hundreds of nukes were installed in South Korea,” Cumings wrote. The United States has also imposed sanctions on North Korea for almost 70 years and conducts annual military exercises that routinely rehearse the collapse of the North Korean regime. What North Korea wants is an end to the provocative U.S. military exercises, replacing the armistice—a temporary ceasefire signed at the end of the Korean War in 1953—with a permanent peace agreement, and the final withdrawal of U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula in accordance with the armistice. These are out of the question for the United States, which considers South Korea a strategic foothold for its presence in Asia. Thus, the two countries are locked in a perpetual standoff, with North Korea continuously firing off missiles and the United States piling on sanctions—both sides trying to force the other to capitulate. North Korea has offered a solution to ease the current crisis. It said it will stop testing its nuclear weapons and missiles if the United States stops its military exercises. China and Russia, as well as the new South Korean President Moon Jae-in and a growing number of experts in Washington, including former Defense Secretary William Perry, have all echoed this proposal. What’s standing in the way is the U.S. military industrial complex, which needs perpetual war and a bogeyman to continue to sell weapons of mass destruction. No Legal Basis for US Sanctions The United States says North Korea’s tests are in violation of UN resolutions and urges the UN to pile on more sanctions as punishment. But there is no international law that prohibits countries from testing nuclear and ballistic missile tests. Therefore, there is no legal basis for the UN resolutions that condemn North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests. The UN Security Council, in particular the permanent five, which all have nuclear weapons, has no legal or moral authority to dictate who can and can’t have nuclear weapons. Furthermore, North Korea legitimately withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). Article X of the NPT says parties have the right to withdraw from the treaty if “extraordinary events have jeopardized their supreme interests.” In 1993, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the United States announced that it was retargeting some of its strategic nuclear weapons away from the former Soviet Union to North Korea. Then, it conducted military exercises near the North Korean border involving tens of thousands of U.S. soldiers as well as B1-B and B-52 bombers and naval vessels with cruise missiles. In 2002, George W. Bush listed North Korea among seven countries that are potential targets of U.S. preemptive nuclear attack. North Korea determined that these constitute “extraordinary events that jeopardize its supreme interests” and followed the proper procedure as outlined in the NPT to pull out of the treaty. The United States, on the contrary, is in violation of the NPT, which says parties to the treaty that have nuclear weapons should reduce their arsenal toward complete elimination. The United States spends billions of dollars each year to modernize its nuclear arsenal. Most importantly, North Korea has declared a “no first strike” policy, meaning it will not use its nuclear weapons in a preemptive attack and only use them defensively. The United States, notably, does not have this policy. U.S. war plans in Korea includes plans for a preemptive nuclear attack. Moon’s Confusing North Korea Policy New South Korean President Moon Jae-in was elected through mass protests that brought out millions week after week for five months in the dead of winter and ousted the previous president for corruption. His election was a mandate from the South Korean people, who demanded systemic change and a different course in North-South relations. For that reason, it was widely expected that when Moon meets with Trump, South Korea will finally stand up to the United States and reverse the alliance’s policy toward engagement with North Korea. But that’s not what happened. At a meeting with U.S. senators ahead of his summit with Trump at the end of June, Moon assured them that he was committed to the US-ROK alliance and the THAAD deployment, then said, “South Korea’s candlelight revolution represented the blossoming of the democracy that the US brought to South Korea.” With that he negated the importance of the struggle and sacrifices of the millions of South Koreans, who fought for democracy for decades against U.S.-backed military dictatorships. It was a clear signal that his meeting with Trump would fall short of expectations. The joint statement produced through the Moon-Trump summit was all about strengthening the U.S.-ROK alliance and appears no different from the alliance’s posture under the previous conservative administrations of Lee Myung-bak and Park Geun-hye. It said the allies “do not maintain a hostile policy toward the DPRK,” yet repeatedly denounced North Korea for “ provocative, destabilizing actions and rhetoric” and its “accelerating threat” to international peace. It then said the allies are committed to “fully implement existing sanctions and impose new measures designed to apply maximum pressure on the DPRK.” Sanctions are aimed at cutting off trade, isolating the country and choking its economy. If that’s not hostile, what is? The statement also said the two leaders agreed to cooperate on a “conditions-based transfer of wartime operational control,” but they also agreed to strengthen the trilateral cooperation among US, Japan and South Korea, which will inevitably subordinate South Korea as a junior partner in a U.S.-led regional alliance. Following his summit with Trump, Moon attended the G20 summit in Berlin, where he proposed a vision for resumption of inter-Korean cooperation and reconciliation and called on the North to dismantle its nuclear program. He then proudly announced that both Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping support his initiative to resume dialogue with the North. This is problematic for several reasons. Moon is putting forward resolution of the nuclear crisis—essentially an issue between the United States and North Korea—as a condition for North-South dialogue. This is no different from the approach of his conservative predecessors. North-South relations need to be decoupled from US-North Korea relations, and inter-Korean cooperation and reconciliation should have no preconditions. The June 15 Joint Declaration, signed in 2000 by Kim Jong-il and Kim Dae-jung, the two leaders of North and South Korea respectively, stated, “The South and the North have agreed to resolve the question of reunification independently and through the joint efforts of the Korean people, who are the masters of the country”—i.e. without the intervention of foreign powers. That is the very first clause of the joint statement. When the South Korean people elected Moon—former Chief of Staff for President Roh Moo-hyun, a proponent of unconditional North-South engagement in the spirit of the June 15 Joint Declaration—it was with the expectation that he would resume this spirit. The fact that South Korea turns to China and the United States—to Trump, of all people—for acknowledgment to resume dialogue with the North is in itself a violation of the June 15 spirit. Moon can’t have it both ways. He can’t strengthen the US-ROK alliance and at the same time hope to improve North-South relations. The US-ROK alliance came about through the Mutual Defense Treaty in 1953 in violation of the armistice signed after the Korean War. Article IV(60) of the armistice stated that within three months of its signing, a political conference should be held “to settle through negotiation the questions of the withdrawal of all foreign forces from Korea and the peaceful settlement of the Korean question.” The armistice also mandated all sides to “cease the introduction into Korea of reinforcing combat aircraft, armored vehicles, weapons, and ammunition.” The political conference recommended in the armistice never happened. Instead, t he United States and South Korea signed the Mutual Defense Treaty (MDT), which became the basis for the United States to permanently station its troops and introduce weapons of mass destruction, including nuclear weapons, in South Korea. If war resumes in Korea, South Korea is bound by the MDT to fight alongside the United States. And the United States, which has wartime operational control, will command South Korean troops. The US-ROK alliance routinely flies nuclear bombers over the Korean peninsula and trains special operations teams to take out the North Korean leadership. The US-ROK alliance, by nature, is hostile to North Korea, and strengthening it counters the spirit of peaceful reunification. True Force for Change Ahead of the Moon-Trump summit, thousands of people surrounded the U.S. embassy in Seoul to form a human chain and protest the U.S. deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) anti-missile system in South Korea. Marching through the center of Seoul, they held up signs that read ‘Koreans hate THAAD’ and ‘Yes to peace talks,’ as well as banners directed at Trump. Hope for peace on the Korean peninsula lies in the mass movement that installed Moon Jae-in and continues to call for fundamental change. Hyun Lee is a member of the US-Korea Solidarity Committee for Peace and Democracy, a writer for Zoom into Korea,  and a fellow at the Korea Policy Institute. #KimJongUn #SouthKorea #peacetreaty #THAAD #Nuclearweapons #MoonJaein #HyunLee #NorthKorea

By Hyun Lee | September 5, 2017 Irregular women workers—part-time and/or short-term contract workers without job security or benefits—are emerging as the new face of organized labor in South Korea. On June 29, ahead of a nationwide strike called by the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) for an increase in the national minimum wage, tens of thousands of contract workers at public schools walked off their jobs. They are mostly women who work as caregivers, cleaners, and cafeteria staff, and they demand regular employment (i.e., full-time with job security and benefits) as well as an increase in wages. Workers in over three thousand public schools—27 percent of public schools nationwide—participated in the walk-out, forcing many schools to cut classes short, according to the South Korean Ministry of Education. KCTU is known for its militant actions by predominantly male industrial unions like the Korean Metal Workers Union, and it’s rare to see women at the fore of its mass strikes. But women comprise the majority of the South Korean irregular workforce, currently estimated at nearly 9 million and steadily growing due to neoliberal policies aimed at increasing labor flexibility and reducing labor costs. Once overlooked by government institutions as well as organized labor, this growing sector of irregular and largely women workers has become an important force in the country’s economy. Forty-three percent of all public school employees are irregular workers, according to the National School Irregular Workers Union, which includes cafeteria and administrative staff, librarians, computer room assistants, caregivers, as well as special education teachers and counselors. The union estimates the total number of irregular public school employees at approximately 400,000—including 141,965 education support staff, 153,015 teachers, 27,266 dispatch workers, and 42,033 temporary/substitute teachers. Sweating for Half the Pay “I stand next to a hot grill and a boiling pot all day,” wrote an anonymous cafeteria worker on the union’s public bulletin board, which has emerged as an archive of worker testimonies about the job-related hardships they endure. “I become soaked with sweat down to my underwear. We don’t even have time to get a drink of water. I work like crazy so that I can take a short break, but my supervisor thinks I’m resting because I don’t have enough to do. He doesn’t see how hard I hustle just so that I can take a ten-minute break.” “My one wish is to work in a relaxed atmosphere where I can take a leisurely lunch,” someone else wrote, “They say we work so that we can eat, but in the cafeteria, we eat so that we can work. Heartburn and indigestion from eating too quickly are nothing; they happen all the time.” “We’re not asking for pity,” wrote another, “What we are saying is give us some relief by reducing the intensity of labor. At least give us half the wages of civil servants. We work more than they do, but our wages aren’t even half of theirs….” South Korean irregular workers on average are paid 54 percent of what their full-time counterparts make, and public school employees are no exception. Irregular workers are denied the annual salary increases that regular employees receive. Consequently, the wage gap between regular and irregular workers intensifies the longer they have been employed, according to the Education Workers Solidarity Division of the Korean Public Service and Transportation Workers Union (KPTU Ed-sol). In the case of school nutritionists and librarians, the starting salary of irregular workers is 70.5% of that of regular workers, but after ten years of employment, their salary is only 57.1% of that of regular workers, and after twenty years, only 45.6%. Irregular workers in public schools are also denied year-end bonuses, as well as paid holidays and vacations, to which regular workers are entitled. The workers who led the strike in June say they are fighting for the rights of all working women, but not all women were sympathetic to their cause. National Assemblywoman Lee Eon-ju of the centrist People’s Party referred to the striking women as “mad bitches” in a conversation with a news reporter and said, “They are just middle-aged neighborhood women who make rice. It’s no big thing. Why do they need to be regular workers?” Two striking workers, who confronted Lee at the National Assembly building, accused her of giving a “fake apology after making reckless remarks” and treating them “like dogs and pigs.” Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sqVS2ZYVKx0 Lee was forced to issue a public apology the next day, but her comments reflect a widespread belief that is at the root of subpar working conditions for women in South Korea. The patriarchal belief that reproductive labor, such as cooking, cleaning, and caregiving, is undeserving of formal recognition as essential labor undergirds the growing problem of labor flexibility in women-dominated sectors like service and education support. It also explains why South Korea has the biggest gender pay gap of all OECD nations. Fighting for Gender and Class Equality Defying such deeply-held societal views to establish a union of irregular and women workers was no easy feat, according to Pak Geum-ja, a cafeteria worker turned labor organizer. “I woke up at the break of dawn to cook and wash my kids’ school uniforms before going to work. As soon as I finished work, I would organize in the evenings,” she said. Pak founded the National School Irregular Workers Union in 2010. As a cafeteria worker, Pak was prohibited from using her cell phone while on the job and with no access to a fax machine, thus reaching out to workers in other schools required a double-agent like prowess on her part. “I had to hide in the storage closet to make phone calls,” she explained. “A lot of our communication was via fax, but getting access to the school fax machine was impossible. I had to rely on my husband, who worked in the school admissions office. I would tell him when and to where to send the fax. To make sure that supervisors at the receiving end wouldn’t see it, I would call the workers in advance and instruct them to wait by the fax machine at the exact time.” To devote herself to organizing, Pak had to first work out an understanding with her family: “One day I sat my husband and children down and said to them, ‘All these years, I’ve lived my life for my family. I didn’t have a life of my own. I just want one year to live my own life. So let’s divide up the house work.’” Without support from her family, she said, it would have been impossible to organize the union. The fight of irregular public school employees is part of a long history of struggle by South Korean women standing up for labor rights and gender equality. The very “miracle” of South Korea’s economic expansion during Park Chung-hee’s dictatorship in the 1960s and 1970s was achieved on the backs of young women who toiled in export industrial zones that produced textiles, garments, electronics, and chemicals. In their opposition to Park Chung-hee’s Yushin system and in their assertion of their right to organize democratic labor unions, the Chunggye Pibok Garment Makers Union, which represented 20,000 women at Seoul’s Peace Market, and the women of Dongil Textile defied humiliation and intimidation from the police and company-hired goons. Their fight inspired the famous 1985 strike of tens of thousands of women workers at the Kurodong Industrial Estate in solidarity with the striking workers of Daewoo Apparel—which, in turn, led the way for the mass democratic labor uprising that followed two years later. The modern-day labor movement in South Korea stands on the shoulders of countless nameless women workers, who risked their lives to resist labor exploitation and sexual violence at the workplace. Striking women workers at Dongil Textile in 1978 Striking factory workers in 1970—“Too hungry to live. Give us food.” Striking women at Kurodong Industrial Estate in 1985 Although proud of the union’s accomplishment, Pak carries guilt for not having been around for her family. At the height of the union organizing drive, she could only go home every two or three weeks. She gets upset when she talks about her daughter, who boiled instant noodles for dinner on the eve of her college entrance exam because she wasn’t home. “It’s hard trying to build a union while raising children as housewives,” she said, “But this is how we all did it.” Pak and her colleagues organized 1,700 irregular public school workers in just forty days and launched the union in October 2010. After repeated rejections, the Labor Department finally recognized them as an official union in 2011. They now boast 50,000 members. Striking for a Better Future The strike by 20,000 school workers in June 2017 was a coordinated action by three different unions that organize irregular workers in the public schools—the Education Workers Solidarity Division of the Korean Public Service and Transportation Workers Union (KPTU EdSol), the National School Irregular Workers Union of the Korean Confederation of Service Workers’ Unions, and the Korean Women’s Trade Union. Regularization of their employment status—i.e., direct employment by the Ministry of Education as opposed to subcontractors—as well as a collective bargaining agreement that guarantees a raise in wages and seniority allowance topped their list of demands. Striking irregular public school employees in 2015 While South Korea’s corporate media denounced the walk-out for forcing students to go without lunch for a day, many students and parents applauded the striking workers. A junior high school student in Incheon said in a local TV interview on the day of the strike, “I support them. It’s wrong to discriminate against irregular workers, who perform the same work as regular workers.” The cafeteria in her school was adorned with hand-written posters made by students and parents in support of the strike. “Your fight is also for our children’s future,” read one. “Don’t worry about us! Safe travels and stay cool in the heat,” read another. In Seoul, where the education chief is progressive, the strike has definitely paid off. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education announced on August 2 a plan to phase in a set of policies to guarantee job security for and end discrimination against irregular school employees. According to its policy guideline, subcontracted workers, including cooks, security guards, janitors, and call center operators, will be hired directly by the Office of Education and become regular public service employees. Those who work 40 hours or more per week will see their hourly wages increase by 10,000 won (USD 8.85) starting next year. Those who work less than 40 hours will also see their hourly wages increase from average 8,400 won (USD 7.44) to 10,000 won (USD 8.85)—an increase of 24.4%. The Seoul Metropolitan Office of Education says it will also consider ways to expand the collective bargaining table to include all fifty-some different types of occupations that are part of the education support sector for future contract negotiations. Collective Bargaining at the National Level Workers in other regions are not so fortunate. Due to the decentralized responses to the workers’ demands by the various city/province level offices of education, working conditions vary greatly from region to region. Daycare workers at elementary schools in Gangwon Province, for example, are still fighting. They rallied outside the provincial education office on August 10 to demand an increase in their paid work hours to reflect the increase in workload. “The school system is constantly introducing new programs that require us to perform more administrative duties on top of caregiving, but we  are only paid to work five hours a day,” said Jeong Hyeon-mi, the chief of the Gangwon division of the National School Irregular Workers Union, “We have to get to work earlier and leave later to perform all our tasks, but most of us are denied overtime pay.” The workers demand an eight-hour paid work day, but the Gangwon Province Office of Education has so far brushed them off. Buoyed by the momentum of the national strike in June, the caregivers in Gangwon Province are gearing up for a local strike next month. Perhaps the greatest achievement of the national strike in June was the right of irregular public school employees to collectively bargain at the national level directly with the Ministry of Education. If effectively carried out, this would unify working conditions across the country and eliminate the burden of workers at the local level, like the caregivers in Gangwon Province, to fight their battles alone. The Ministry of Education and the consortium of irregular public school workers unions held their first negotiation on August 18. The workers presented their basic demands, which include a seniority allowance (a salary increase of 50,000 won (USD 44.31) each year after two years of employment) and a regular bonus. The parties agreed to hold a series of talks with the goal of completing the negotiations by late September. Fighting for Systemic Change and Eradication of Precarious Labor Irregular workers in the education support sector turned out the largest force in KCTU’s social general strike for a higher minimum wage on June 30. “We support the KCTU’s main demands—elimination of precarious labor and raising the minimum wage to 10,000 won (USD 8.85),” said a spokesperson for KPTU Ed-Sol. Soon after his election, President Moon Jae-in pledged to eliminate precarious labor and introduced a road map to “usher in an era of zero irregular work in the public sector.” KPTU Ed-sol says its primary concern is to make sure that the predominantly-women and historically marginalized sector of education support workers are no longer excluded from national policies aimed at improving labor conditions. Seong Jeong-rim, the head of the Seoul division of the National School Irregular Workers Union, agrees. The task of the “candlelight revolution” that brought together millions last year to oust previous President Park Geun-hye is incomplete, she said: “The most important demand of the ‘candlelight revolution’ was systemic change, and the biggest systemic failure in South Korean society is class polarization. Since the financial crisis of 1997 and subsequent structural changes imposed by the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the number of irregular workers has continuously increased and the wage gap between regular and irregular workers has grown.” Seong says her union’s plan to fight for broader systemic change includes participating in the political arena and supporting the formation of a new progressive party. “We share the values and goals of the New People’s Party,” she said, referring to left/progressive forces that are coming back together for the first time since the dissolution of the radical Unified Progressive Party in 2014 by the former Park Geun-hye administration. The party-in-formation has said its top priorities are the eradication of precarious labor, peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula, and the creation of a unified progressive front. It will formally launch as the New People’s Party in early September, then join forces with other progressive parties to re-launch with a new name in early October. Seong says her union plans to work closely with the new party to participate directly in local elections that will take place across the country next year and elect candidates who stand on the side of women, irregular workers and other historically-marginalized people. “Our members want to be part of creating systemic change,” she said. Women irregular workers promise to be a force to be reckoned with in the growing fight to eradicate precarious labor in South Korea. Hyun Lee is a Korea Policy Institute Associate, a member the Working Group for Peace and Demilitarization in Asia and the Pacific, and works with Zoom in Korea, a news and analysis blog on Korea. #globalization #HyunLee #Labor #SouthKorea

By Simone Chun | April 28, 2022 | Originally published in Counterpunch “The best policy, I think, would be in the general spirit of the Sunshine policy: steps toward accommodation, relaxation of tensions, withdrawal of threats and provocations.” Noam Chomsky Conservative Yoon Suk-yeol's razor-thin 0.7% victory margin in South Korea’s March 9 presidential election was far from a public mandate for his much-touted hawkish foreign policy. Yoon’s sharp rhetoric on a tougher stance toward North Korea--including repeated references to pre-emptive strikes against Pyongyang--is out of step with the South Korean electorate, the majority of whom want peace with the North. His foreign policy stance promises to force South Korea into the front lines of a new US-led Cold War. By doing his part to ensure that a state of tension is maintained in the Korean peninsula, Yoon is faithfully serving US strategic interests by placing the Korean nation at risk while enabling Washington to continue justifying its nearly eight-decade occupation of South Korea in order to secure its forward military position against China. Five years after the ignominious end of the conservative Park administration, South Korea’s conservatives are back in power, a development that does not bode well for Korea or the rest of the world. Yoon’s controversial past, his lack of practical experience, and his hawkish views combine to form a dangerous political free radical in the game of brinkmanship that continues to be played out in the Korean Peninsula. Yoon has lost no time in labeling Pyongyang as Seoul’s “main enemy,” marking a departure from his predecessor Moon Jae-in. Amplifying this rhetoric, Yoon’s foreign policy delegation to Washington has advocated for a policy of Complete, Verifiable and Irreversible Denuclearization (CVID) with respect to the North. The delegation also stressed South Korea’s commitment to the US strategy of containing China, and advocated for the redeployment of US strategic assets such as nuclear-capable aircraft carriers, bombers and submarines to the Korean peninsula. Unsurprisingly, Yoon’s victory has been welcomed by the Biden administration and the foreign policy elite in Washington, who believe his tenure will provide the US with the opening it needs to co-opt South Korea into its strategy of containing China. Conservative US news outlets lauded the election of the “pro-US Yoon” and predicted that the new president would be “good for the western alliance”, while emphasizing that Yoon’s victory represented an opportunity to “reconstitute pressure on Pyongyang’. Echoing this chorus, Philip Goldberg, the nominee for US ambassador to South Korea and former enforcer of UN sanctions against the North, stated that the United States should “resolutely pursue complete, verifiable and irreversible denuclearization” of “the rogue regime in North Korea”. However, Washington’s strategy of demanding concessions in the absence of meaningful assurances has only increased Pyongyang’s determination to acquire nuclear deterrence capability as a security guarantee against the US. As Daniel DePetris observes: The chances of Kim relinquishing his nuclear deterrent at this late stage in the game is somewhere between slim to none. No country has undergone such large opportunity costs over a period of decades to develop as many as 65 nuclear warheads, only to suddenly trade those weapons away in exchange for economic and political concessions and vague security guarantees. Only last week, China, stressing that the additional US sanctions imposed on Pyongyang were only raising tensions, proposed a halt to the historically provocative annual US-South Korea military drills in exchange for the North’s suspension of ICBM and nuclear testing. The US rejected China’s proposal. On March 31, South Korea and the United States upgraded their joint wartime operations plans to include a response to potential North Korean nuclear measures. Subsequently, senior US, Japanese, and South Korean military leaders discussed trilateral cooperation, ostensibly to “deter the North’s threats”--a euphemism for the Biden administration’s priority of hemming in China. The fact that a majority of South Koreans oppose such a provocative military alliance has done little to deter Biden’s Asia foreign policy team, which is headed by “Asia Czar” Kurt Campbell, who Tim Shorrock has called “one of the most pro-Japanese officials in government”. As Shorrock notes: “[Campbell] is a key figure in a policy faction that sees Japan and its right-wing ruling Liberal Democratic Party as the linchpin of the US alliance system in the Asia region [and] views South Korea…as a subordinate partner to US and Japanese efforts to force North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and contain the growing military power of China." On April 14, under the pretext of deterring the North’s “aggression,” the US dispatched the USS Abraham Lincoln strike group to conduct bilateral operations with the Japanese navy near the Korean Peninsula, marking the first time since 2017 that a US carrier group has been deployed to the waters between South Korea and Japan. On April 18, the US and South Korea began their controversial annual joint military drills, in spite of the opposition of the majority of Koreans and over 350 US, South Korean, and international organizations who released a statement calling for their suspension. The drills, which mobilize considerable numbers of US troops and ordnance on the Korean Peninsula to simulate combat with the North, have historically served as a reliable means to increase regional tensions: In recent years, these war drills have been based on operation plans that reportedly include preemptive strikes and “decapitation measures” against the North Korean leadership. They also have involved the use of B-2 and B-52H bombers (which are designed to drop nuclear bombs) and nuclear-powered aircraft carriers and submarines. While the United States and South Korea have called them defensive in nature, these military exercises have long been a trigger point for heightened military and political tensions on the Korean Peninsula, due to their scale and provocative nature. Thus far, Yoon’s hawkish policies have failed to garner public support. According to a series of recent polls conducted in 2021, over 70 percent of South Koreans do not regard the North as an enemy; 70 percent support an End of War declaration; 61 percent support relaxing sanctions on the North; and 79 percent support peace with Pyongyang. These sentiments persist even among Yoon supporters, a majority of whom support a peace treaty, breaking with his rhetoric calling for a tougher stance toward North Korea. While Yoon’s victory bodes well for Washington’s unrelenting campaign to drive Seoul into the front lines of its anti-China crusade, his stated policy stance of “no to North Korea and China” and “yes to the US” will be easier said than done, not the least because of the far-ranging economic interdependence between South Korea and China. In 2021, China took in more than a quarter of all Korean exports, while the United States accounted for only 15 percent. According to a 2021 survey, Koreans remain unenthusiastic about America’s anti-China containment strategy, with a majority supporting a neutral stance in the US-China rivalry. Yoon’s refusal to meaningfully engage with the North or to exert any degree of sovereignty vis-a-vis the US ensures that South Korea remains a semi-occupied subordinate “force multiplier” existing primarily to serve Washington’s growing strategic interests in Northeast Asia. The US itself, having waged a brutal war in the Korean peninsula that left millions dead, continues to block all attempts at reconciliation by the two Koreas, refusing to support constructive diplomacy, sign a peace treaty or even declare a symbolic end to the nearly eight-decade Korean war. Instead, Washington’s policies, and the limits they place on South Korean sovereignty and inter-Korean relations, ensure the maintenance of a permanent state of tension in the Korean Peninsula, providing the US with perpetual justification for its unprecedented seventy-seven year military occupation and political subjugation of the South. The “North Korean threat” serves as a cover for Washington’s anti-China policy and its expanding military projection into Asia, and in this context, Yoon’s victory is a component of a transnational hawkish pivot that threatens peace and stability in the Korean peninsula and all of Northeast Asia. Dr. Simone Chun has taught at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and served as an associate in research at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. She is an active member of the Korea Peace Network and a member of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea’s steering committee. She participated in an international women’s delegation of peace to Korea organized by Women Cross DMZ and Nobel Women’s Initiative.

The Dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party and the Incarceration of Lee Seok-ki By Hyun Lee | December 28, 2014 | Originally published in the Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus On December 19, 2014, South Korea’s Constitutional Court delivered an unprecedented ruling to dissolve the opposition Unified Progressive Party and disqualify all five of its representatives from the National Assembly. The ruling was in response to a petition filed by the Park Geun-hye government in November 2013 to dissolve the party based on allegations that it was under orders from North Korea to subvert the South Korean state through violent revolution. The government filed the petition two months after it arrested UPP lawmaker and National Assembly member, Lee Seok-ki, who is currently behind bars on charges of inciting an insurrection and violating the National Security Law (NSL). This is the first time South Korea’s Constitutional Court has ordered the breakup of a political party since it was founded in 1988. Pro-democracy advocates state that the court’s ruling will set a dangerous and undemocratic precedent for state repression of other progressive parties, civil society organizations, and possibly even individual citizens. According to South Korean public intellectual and long-time reunification activist Kang Jeong-koo, “The UPP has been the only political party fully advocating not only democracy but also the core values of peace, reunification, and social justice.” Kang further stated that the dissolution of the UPP will “not only destroy democracy, but also undermine peace, reunification, and social justice.”[1] Indeed, more than simply seek to uproot the UPP, the current South Korean administration, under the cover of anti-communism and anti-North national security concerns, aims broadly to delegitimize all progressive elements and values that it deems to be in opposition to its rule. At this juncture, what is on display in South Korea is the state’s erosion of the very democracy that the people of South Korea historically struggled for and continue to defend. Park Geun-hye’s Campaign against Lee Seok-ki and the UPP On August 28, 2013, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), at the behest of President Park Geun-hye, raided the homes and offices of ten members of the opposition Unified Progressive Party (UPP), including Assemblyman Lee Seok-ki. Lee was detained and indicted on charges of conspiring to incite an insurrection under criminal law, as well as sympathizing with and praising the enemy and possessing materials aiding the enemy in violation of the National Security Law.[2] Six other UPP members were indicted on similar charges. The NIS based its accusations on a speech made by Lee at a May 2013 meeting, which it alleged was a secret gathering of an underground subversive organization plotting the overthrow of the government. Before they could defend themselves in a court of law, Lee and his colleagues were the targets of a sensationalized trial by state-aligned media, which made unfiltered leaks from, and unofficial allegations by, the NIS front-page news for over a month. Lee’s alleged connections with North Korea made headlines even as this charge was ultimately dropped by the NIS in the subsequent trial for lack of evidence. The formidable array of forces lined up against Lee included both ruling and main opposition parties which joined together in common cause, taking measures that effectively preemptively judged Lee to be guilty. The National Assembly, with full cooperation from the main opposition party, New Politics Alliance for Democracy (NPAD), stripped Lee of immunity and approved a motion for his arrest.[3] On September 6, 2014, the ruling Saenuri Party sponsored a bill to expel Lee from the National Assembly. On November 5, 2013, the Park Geun-hye government issued inflammatory charges that Lee and the other UPP members were part of an underground subversive organization with ties to North Korea called RO, or “Revolutionary Organization,” which had infiltrated the UPP in order to instigate an insurrection, and filed a formal petition requesting that the Constitutional Court dissolve the UPP.   Ironically, its main argument was that the UPP platform and activities violated the democratic tenets of South Korea’s Constitution. In a sweeping move, the Park administration also called for the disqualification of UPP members currently holding seats in the National Assembly. Critics of the Park administration’s draconian maneuvers to silence the UPP charge that the “Lee Seok-ki sedition conspiracy case” has all the trappings of political repression and in this regard recalls the authoritarianism of the military dictatorship period. They add that failure to counter the government’s attack on Lee and his party signals not only a major setback to democratic progress but also, more ominously, a return to the politics of fear that ruled South Korea only a few decades ago when government surveillance and unwarranted arrests of citizens were routine. The 2013 NIS Scandal As critics have pointed out, the sensationalized arrest of Lee Seok-ki was timed to deflect mounting public scrutiny away from the NIS following revelations of its central involvement in manipulating public opinion against opposition candidates and thus in favor of Park Geun-hye’s candidacy during the 2012 presidential election. Bolstering their claims is the fact that Lee was arrested in September 2013, four months after the alleged conspiracy plot came to light–precisely a moment when the NIS needed to deflect public attention away from its own scandal. Throughout 2013, the NIS faced intensifying public criticism for its role in illegally intervening in the 2012 presidential election. Former NIS Chief Won Sei-hoon, who had ordered an online disinformation campaign against opposition candidates, was indicted in June 2013 for interference in the 2012 presidential election.[4] In January 2014, he was found guilty of graft and received a two-year jail term.[5] Since its foundation, the NIS, formerly known as the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), and the National Security Agency have interfered both directly and indirectly in South Korean politics and civil society. Conservative former president Lee Myung-bak strengthened the NIS by restoring its anti-communist investigation and surveillance functions and by appointing Won, his right-hand man, to its helm in 2009. In this capacity, Won actively encouraged NIS manipulation of public opinion in favor of the ruling party.[6] In the lead-up to the 2012 presidential election, NIS agents, using aliases, posted 5,333 online comments on 15 public websites. The Prosecutor General’s office identified 1,704 of these comments as constituting “political involvement” and 73 comments as directly intervening in the election.[7] This investigation also revealed that NIS agents used an automation program to retweet millions of comments about the election.[8] Throughout the summer of 2013, as the public became aware of the extent of NIS interference in the election, the UPP was at the forefront of protests questioning the legitimacy of Park Geun-hye’s presidency. In other words, it was within the very juncture in which disclosures of NIS misconduct had significantly eroded public trust in President Park that her government, in a crude face-saving move, saw fit to arrest Lee and other members of the UPP. In this way shifting attention away from the NIS role in manipulating democracy to its supposed function of safeguarding democracy against communist infiltration, the trial of Lee Seok-ki and other UPP members became the first “sedition conspiracy” trial since South Korea’s first democratic election in 1987. The Trial of Lee Seok-ki and Other UPP members The government’s case against Lee and other UPP members relied exclusively on two related pieces of evidence, the testimony of a government informant and the transcript of his audio recording of the controversial May 2013 meeting. During the first trial, however, the defense noted and the NIS conceded that a large portion of the original audio transcript was full of errors–272 errors to be exact.[9] The “errors” in the NIS transcript of Lee Seok-ki’s speech reveal a pattern of manipulation and distortion that itself calls out for careful scrutiny. Indeed, NIS transcriptions fundamentally altered the meaning of original phrases, discerning a radicality of purpose that far exceeded the actual language: for example, “carry out propaganda” was distorted as “carry out holy war,” and “Jeoldusan Catholic Martyrs’ Shrine” was ominously rendered as “shrine for decisive war.” Similarly, “specific preparation” was interpreted as “war preparation,” “Let us prepare specifically” as “Let us prepare war,” and “Let us be decisive” as “Let us carry out a decisive war.”[10] Despite such discrepancies, the Suwon District Court found Lee guilty on all counts, sentencing him to 12 years in prison. This ruling was partially overturned in August 2014 when the Seoul High Court acquitted Lee Seok-ki and his co-defendants of the highest and most controversial charge of conspiring to overthrow the government. The Seoul High Court found no evidence that the attendees of the May 2013 meeting arrived at a consensus to carry out a concrete plan of action, much less made preparations for violence either before or after the meeting. It found no evidence to substantiate the government’s claim that Lee and other UPP members belonged to an underground subversive organization plotting a government overthrow. It furthermore dismissed the testimony of the government’s key witness as mere speculation not supported by evidence.[11] Lee and his co-defendants still remain behind bars, however, on the lesser charge of inciting an insurrection and violating the National Security Law. This is the first time in South Korean history that an “inciting an insurrection” charge has been brought to court. The case is now in the hands of the Supreme Court, which is slated to deliver a final ruling in January 2015. Dissolution of the UPP Elaborating on Park Geun-hye’s incendiary charges that Lee and the other UPP members were part of RO, the Ministry of Justice alleged that 80-90% of so-called confirmed RO members were part of the UPP and that RO was directly involved in the party’s decision-making. The UPP, it insisted, was a political party under orders from North Korea to subvert the South Korean state through violent revolution. Despite the Seoul High Court’s ruling that the prosecution failed to demonstrate that the UPP had any intention to use violent means to overthrow the government or that it had any connection to North Korea–which thereby invalidated the evidentiary basis for the government’s petition to dissolve the UPP–the Constitutional Court delivered an 8 to 1 ruling on December 19, 2014 in favor of dissolving the party. The majority of the Constitutional Court found fault with “progressive democracy,” as expressed in the UPP’s platform, and ruled that progressive democracy coincided with North Korea’s aim of fomenting revolution in the South. The court also upheld the government’s charge that the UPP aims to install a socialist government through violent means.[12] The lone dissenting voice was Justice Kim Yi-su, who wrote, “The respondent is a political party in which dues-paying members alone number 30,000. In the process of discerning the majority of its members’ political orientation, one must not regard the orientation of a small minority as reflecting the political views of the entire membership.” Kim added, “It’s hard to deny that the progressive policies proposed by the respondent, from its days as the Democratic Labor Party to the present, have resulted in many changes in our society,” and warned that dissolving the party based on the actions of a handful of members would have the effect of stigmatizing all 100,000 of its members as part of an outlaw party. Referring to the dissolution of the Communist Party by the West German Constitutional Court in 1956, he highlighted the undemocratic repercussions of such a draconian action, writing, “From the time the German Communist Party was dissolved until it reformed, 12,500 Communist Party personnel were investigated, 6000-7000 received criminal punishment and in the process were fired from their jobs or otherwise restricted in their social lives”; he further warned, “There is no guarantee that a similar decision will not produce similar results in our society.”[13] Aftermath of the Ruling Immediately following the Constitutional Court’s ruling, the Park Geun-hye government declared any protests by the UPP against the ruling to be illegal.[14] The Prosecutor General has reportedly opened a criminal investigation based on charges filed by right-wing groups against the entire UPP membership, including Chair Lee Jung-hee, a rival candidate against Park Geun-hye in the 2012 presidential election, for violation of the National Security Law.[15] And a right-wing group calling itself the Freedom Youth League has filed a petition to the Central Board of Election to demand the release of the names of all UPP members. “The reason why we demand the release of the names is to ensure there are no government employees registered as UPP members in the interest of national security,” explained a spokesperson for the group at a press conference on December 24, 2014.[16] The Park government and the ruling Saenuri party appear intent on ending the political careers of all former UPP National Assembly representatives, who have pledged to challenge their disqualification by the Constitutional Court. On December 26, 2014, the Seoul Central District Prosecutor subpoenaed former UPP representatives Lee Sang-kyu and Kim Mi-hee for questioning based on allegations that they received campaign funds from North Korea during the 1995-96 local and general elections.[17] The allegations were made by Kim Young-hwan, a former democracy activist-turned-right-wing human rights activist of the Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights, during the Constitutional Court proceedings. Representatives Lee and Kim have filed countercharges against Kim Young-hwan for defamation. Former UPP representative Oh Byung-yun faces a criminal trial starting January 2015 in the Seoul Central District Court for his alleged role in obstructing the arrest of labor leaders during a railroad workers’ strike against privatization in December 2012, a labor issue that garnered wide international solidarity. The court also issued a summary order against former UPP representatives Kim Mi-hee and Kim Jae-yeon, fining both $3000 each for the same violation.[18] And, in a final coup de grâce, the Saenuri Party has stated that it is drafting a bill to bar the disqualified UPP representatives from running in any political election for the next ten years.[19] Amnesty International’s East Asia Research Director, Roseann Rife, has stated that the ruling “raises serious questions as to the authorities’ commitment to freedom of expression and association,” adding, “The space for freedom of expression has been vastly diminished in recent years. The authorities are using the NSL to suppress dissent and persecute individuals with opposing political views.”[20] Like the sensationalized arrest of Lee Seok-ki, which was timed to cover up exposures of the NIS’ illegal meddling in the 2012 presidential election, the government’s November 2013 filing of the petition to dismantle the UPP and the recent Constitutional Court ruling seem perfectly timed to deflect attention away from major crises facing the Park administration. When Park’s approval rating dipped in the fall of 2013 after her retreat on key campaign pledges regarding pensions and college tuition, her Justice Minister, to some degree, succeeded in diverting public attention by filing the petition against the UPP in the Constitutional Court.[21] In the past month, Park had been embroiled in another crisis after controversial leaks exposed a power struggle among an unofficial group of people, including her own brother, who had been pulling the strings behind her administration.[22] The Constitutional Court’s ruling on December 19 helped shift the public spotlight away from the precipitous drop in Park’s approval rating to an all-time low of 37%.[23] We might be reminded that the last time the South Korean government forcibly dissolved an opposition party was during the Syngman Rhee dictatorship, when Rhee charged his political opponent, Cho Bong-am, with espionage and eliminated the Progressive Party.[24] Cho was executed the following year, and Rhee himself was ousted shortly thereafter in the April 19 uprising of 1960. In the wake of the 1960 uprising, the South Korean constitution was revised to include Article 8 in Chapter I to protect minority opposition parties from government suppression. Article 8 guarantees the freedom to establish political parties and outlines the legal mechanism for the dissolution of parties if their activities pose a clear and urgent threat to the Constitution.[25] The Park Geun-hye government’s petition against the UPP was the first invocation of this mechanism since Article 8’s inception in 1960. The Constitutional Court’s ruling in this case therefore sets an ominous precedent for all opposition parties in the future. Cold War Legacy of Silencing Political Opposition South Korea has a long history of wielding anti-communist rhetoric to crack down on progressive political opposition by vilifying the latter as “pro-North Korea” or as North Korean agents. On the eve of the Korean War, in 1948-49, under the pretext of eliminating “internal enemies,” the South Korean government carried out a scorched-earth campaign, killing an estimated 30,000 people, including women, children, and the elderly, on Jeju Island; in the summer of 1950 in the early stages of the war, it executed an estimated 100,000-200,000 in the Bodo League massacre; and in the course of the war, more than one million people were killed, many of them being innocent civilians massacred for having “communist tendencies.”[26] Park Chung-hee, the father of the current president Park Geun-hye, ruled the country by military force for 18 years from 1961 to 1979, and established a vast intelligence apparatus primarily aimed at silencing dissent and eliminating political opponents. Perhaps the most famous victim of such strong-arm politics was the late president Kim Dae-jung, kidnapped by the precursor to the NIS, the Korean Central Intelligence Agency, and charged with conspiracy and sedition. In 1973, in a dramatic incident that could be plucked from a movie script, the KCIA kidnapped Kim Dae-jung, the major political rival and most vocal critic of then-president Park Chung-hee. Kim narrowly escaped assassination after they took him, blindfolded, out to sea, where he might have met the fate of countless others who had been silently disappeared by the KCIA had they not been discovered at the eleventh hour by Japanese maritime authorities.[27] Park Chung-hee’s successor, Chun Doo-hwan, who like his predecessor seized power through a military coup, arrested Kim Dae-jung for his role at the time of the Gwangju people’s uprising in 1980 and charged him with conspiracy to wage insurrection. Sentenced to death, he escaped execution due to international attention and calls for his release from pro-democracy forces, including from Pope John Paul II, who appealed to Chun for clemency.[28] Kim was exonerated 25 years later in a retrial and later went on to serve as the president of South Korea and to receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his role in the country’s transition to democracy. Today, South Korean courts have established greater judicial independence. Judges are no longer penalized for delivering decisions disagreeable to the ruling administration, as was commonly the case under South Korea’s military dictatorship. But South Korea has yet to escape the dark shadow of the National Security Law, which is often used to punish political opponents, including those who simply agitate for social progress and democratic rights. Enacted on December 1, 1948 by the Syngman Rhee government to crush anti-government forces, the National Security Law gave new life to the infamous Public Order Maintenance Act established by Japanese authorities during the era of Japanese colonial rule on the Korean peninsula.[29] The NSL was wielded by the Rhee regime to arrest, detain, and even execute thousands of opposition figures and dissolve social organizations and political parties. Subsequent military dictators, Park Chung-hee and Chun Doo-hwan, similarly used the National Security Law to fabricate countless espionage cases to suppress opposition parties. Even after the ostensible end of military dictatorships and the inauguration of democracy in South Korea, the National Security Law continues to be used as a tool for suppressing progressive voices. It makes a broad spectrum of activities punishable by law. Article 7 of the law makes all activities that sympathize, praise, encourage, and/or promote the positions of North Korea punishable by up to 7 years imprisonment. Simply possessing materials that can be considered “benefiting the enemy” is also punishable. Most people accused of violating this law are punished under Article 7.[30] The National Security Law directly breaches Article 19 of the International Covenant on Human Rights in so far as it fundamentally denies the right to freedom of thought and expression.[31] For this reason, the UN Human Rights Committee as well as a host of international human rights organizations have repeatedly called on the South Korean government to abolish the National Security Law. Born Out of the Struggle for Democracy The UPP was heir to political formations that emerged out of the South Korean people’s struggle for democracy, namely, the People’s Victory 21 of 1987 and the Democratic Labor Party (DLP), founded in 2000. After the decades-long South Korean struggle for democracy culminated in the June people’s uprising of 1987, thus finally putting an end to a succession of U.S.-backed military dictatorships, the forces at the helm of the democracy struggle, labor unions and social movement organizations, joined together to form the People’s Victory 21. Running its own candidate in the 1987 presidential election, the People’s Victory 21 became the foundation for the establishment of the Democratic Labor Party, which, in 2004, garnered 13% of the general vote and gained ten National Assembly seats to become the third largest political party in South Korea.[32] Ahead of the 2012 general election, the DLP sought to unify all opposition parties into a coalition as the only viable strategy to defeat the ruling conservative party. But its hasty merger with other progressive and liberal forces to form the UPP was rocky from the start and eventually led to deep rifts from which the South Korean left has yet to recover. The UPP managed to gain 10.3% of the general vote and 13 National Assembly seats in the 2012 general election, but political infighting led to the defection of half of its National Assembly representatives and many of its party members. Before the recent Constitutional Court ruling, the UPP held five National Assembly seats and was a membership-driven party with 100,000 dues-paying members, 30,000 of whom paid dues. This self-proclaimed “party for workers, peasants, and the common people” has been the most vocal opponent of Park Geun-hye’s policies on a range of issues, from privatization of public services to her hostile stance towards North Korea. UPP Chair Lee Jung-Hee, who as a candidate in the 2012 presidential election publicly challenged and humiliated candidate Park in nationally-televised presidential debates,announced that she was running in order to make Park lose the election. Lee furthermore enraged Park by referring to her father, Park Jung-hee, by his adopted Japanese name, Takaki Masao, on national TV to remind the public of his dark past when he collaborated with Japanese colonialists. Many sense an element of revenge in Park’s assault on the UPP. Lee Seok-ki, the Party’s most vocal critic of Park and the ruling party, has a colorful past like many pro-democracy activists in his generation. He was a student activist during Chun Doo-hwan’s military dictatorship, then served prison time from 2002 to 2003 for his activities in the outlawed People’s Democratic Revolution Party, and was eventually pardoned by former President Roh Moo-hyun. He went on to found a political consulting group, which helped to triple the DLP’s local electoral seats in 2010 and double the UPP’s National Assembly seats from six to thirteen in 2012. His success in helping progressive candidates win elections earned him the second position in the UPP’s party list for proportional representation in the 2012 general election.[33] As a National Assembly member, Lee was a persistent critic of unequal South Korea-U.S. relations and called for dramatic cuts in South Korean subsidies for U.S. Forces in Korea.[34] When Korea seemed on the brink of war in early 2013, he called for four-party talks among the two Koreas, China, and the United States.[35] Lee also earned Park Geun-hye’s ire for his role in derailing her appointment of Korean American and former Bell Labs president, Kim Jeong-hoon, for the position Minister of Future Creation and Science by exposing his former connection to the CIA.[36] In the summer of 2013, when the public began to learn about the illegal interference of the NIS in the 2012 presidential election, the UPP was on the streets, marching and organizing candlelight protests. Shortly thereafter, the Park Geun-hye government decided to raid and arrest Lee and other UPP members. The Ongoing Fight to Defend Democracy The entry of the Democratic Labor Party (later called UPP) into the National Assembly was heralded as a sign of South Korea’s progress as a democracy and a salutary acceptance of a diversity of viewpoints within the political arena. Today’s dissolution of the UPP reflects a marked retreat from such progress. As MIT linguistics professor and political critic Noam Chomsky notes, “The courageous struggle of the Korean people for democracy has been an inspiration worldwide. The assault against the UPP is a serious blight on this record of achievement.”[37] The court ruling was followed by a series of denouncements by labor and civic groups, including the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, Citizens Coalition for Economic Justice, Professors for Democracy, Korean Alliance of Progressive Movements, and the Writers Association of Korea. Under the banner of the “Roundtable to Oppose the Dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party and Defend Democracy,” pro-democracy forces that came together in the lead-up to the Constitutional Court ruling held an emergency meeting on December 22. The “Roundtable,” composed of leading intellectuals, elected officials, faith leaders, and civic society groups, as well as notable international figures, such as Chomsky and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark, says the dissolution of the UPP will only further galvanize its forces. “Remember the law of history: the more they trample on our desire for democracy and progress, the more extensively this desire will spread,” said UPP Chair Lee Jung-hee on the steps of the Constitutional Court after last week’s ruling, adding, “The outdated system of national division, buttressed through red-baiting, is destined to crumble. I am confident that the dream of progressive politics, shared by the UPP and the people, will only grow. Our people will rise up from this bitter moment and march onward.”[38] Pro-democracy forces in South Korea vow to mount a challenge to the current government’s assault on democracy. They have also launched an international campaign to demand the release of Lee and his co-defendants, awaiting a final Supreme Court ruling expected in January 2015. Their fight might very well be the most important one in recent South Korean history to defend the basic democratic principles that the South Korean people fought so valiantly to secure. The author is grateful to Christine Hong of the Korea Policy Institute who provided encouragement and critical feedback and dedicated many precious hours for editing. Hyun Lee is a Korea Policy Institute Fellow, a member of the Working Group on Peace and Demilitarization of Peace and the Asia Pacific, as well as the National Campaign to End the Korean War. She co-produces Asia Pacific Forum, a weekly radio show on culture and politics in Asia and the Asian diaspora. [1] Kang, Jeong-koo, Remarks at the Roundtable Meeting for the Protection of Democracy and against the Forced Dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party, November 6, 2014. [2] Kim, Hyung-Jin, “S Korea lawmaker indicted over pro-NKorea charges,“ Associated Press, September 26, 2013. [3] Kim, Hyung-Jin, “S Korea assembly votes to allow lawmaker’s arrest,” Associated Press, September 4, 2013. [4] Sam Kim, “South Korea’s ex spy chief indicted in election scandal,” Associated Press, June 14, 2013. [5] “Former spymaster gets 2-year jail term for graft,” Yonhap, January 22, 2014. [6] Lee, Kyung-mi, “NIS found to have shilled for conservatives on Twitter,” The Hakyoreh, March 11, 2014. [7] ([Gukjeongwon daetgeul susa balpyo] Gukjeongwon Simrijeondan 70yeomyeong jung 4myeong gisoyuye…nameojineun muhyeomui) “[국정원 댓글 수사 발표] 국정원 심리전단 70여명 중 4명 기소유예… 나머지는 무혐의” [NIS Online Comments Investigation Report – Of the 70 Psychological Warfare Unit Personnel, 4 Receive Suspension of Prosecution…the Rest are Acquitted], Chosun Biz, June 15, 2013. [8] Lee, Kyung-mi, “NIS could have posted 22 million political messages online,”, The Hankyoreh, Dec 6, 2013 [9] (“Gyeoljeongeul Naebonaeja” -> “Gyeoljeoneul Iruja”, Lee Seok-ki nokchuirok 272got yisang ‘oryu’) “결정을 내보내자”→“결전을 이루자”로, 이석기 녹취록 272곳이상 ‘오류’ [“Let us decide” -> “Let us wage decisive war”, More than 272 ‘Errors’ in Lee Seok-ki Audio Transcript], The Hankyoreh, November 18, 2013. [10] Ibid. [11] Kim, Seon-sik, “Lawmaker Lee Seok-ki acquitted of plotting an insurrection,” The Hankyoreh, August 12, 2014. [12] (Tonghap jinbodang haesan cheonggu sageon seongo) 통합진보당 해산 청구 사건 선고 [Pronouncement in the Case of the Petition to Dissolve the Unified Progressive Party], Constitutional Court of the Republic of Korea, December 19, 2014. [13] Ibid. [14] (Beopmubu, daegeom “Tongjindang haesangyutan jiphwe bulbeop”) 법무부·대검 “통진당 해산규탄 집회 불법” [Ministry of Justice, Prosecutor General “Protest against UPP Dissolution Illegal”], Donga.com, December 19, 2014. [15] (Geomchal, Lee Jung-hee deung jinbodang insa ‘gukbobeop wiban’ hyeomui susa chaksu) 검찰, 이정희 등 진보당 인사 ‘국보법 위반’ 혐의 수사 착수 [Prosecutor General Opens Investigation of Lee Jung-hee and Progressive Party Personnel on Charges of ‘NSL Violation’], Voice of People, December 21, 2014. [16] (Bosudanche, jinbodang dangwonmyeongbu gonggaedo yogu) 보수단체, 진보당 당원명부 공개도 요구 [Right-wing group demands release of UPP membership roster], Voice of People, December 24, 2014. [17] (Geomchal, Lee Sang-kyu, Kim Mi-hee jeon tonghapjinbodang uiwon sohwan josa) 검찰, 이상규·김미희 전 통합진보당 의원 소환 조사 [Prosecution summons former UPP Representative Lee Sang-kyu Kim Mi-hee for Questioning], The Hankyoreh, December 26, 2014. [18] (‘Cheoldo nojo chepo jeoji’ Kim Mi-hee, Kim Jae-yeon beolgeum 300man) ‘철도노조 체포 저지’ 김미희·김재연에 벌금 300만 [‘Obstruction of railroad workers union arrest’ Kim Mi-hee, Kim Jae-yeon fined 3,000,000 won], Voice of People, December 24, 2014. [19] [Saenuridang, ‘Jinbodang uiwon 10nyeongan chulma jehan’ beoban chujin] 새누리당, ‘진보당 의원 10년간 출마 제한’ 법안 추진 (Saenuri Party pursuing bill to prevent UPP representatives from running in elections for the next 10 years), Voice of People, December 22, 2014. [20] “South Korea: Ban on political party another sign of shrinking space for freedom of expression,” Amnesty International press release, December 19, 2014. [21] Kwanwoo Jun, “Welfare Retreat Adds to Heat on President Park,” The Wall Street Journal, September 27, 2013. [22] Choi, He-suk, “Allegations, accusations fly in probe of document leak,” The Korea Herald, December 11, 2014. [23] “Park’s approval rating hits record low: poll,” Yonhap, December 19, 2014. [24] Andrei Lankov, “Tragic end of communist-turned-politician Cho Bong-am,” Korea Times, January 9, 2011. [25] (Daehanminguk heonbeop) 대한민국 헌법 [Constitution of the Republic of Korea] [26] Bruce Cumings. The Origins of the Korean War Volume II. Princeton University Press, 1990; Charles J. Hanley & Hyung-Jin Kim, “Korea bloodbath probe ends; US escapes much blame,“ Associated Press (San Diego Union Tribune), July 10, 2010.; Truth and Reconciliation, Activities of the Past Three Years, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of the Republic of Korea, March 2009. [27] Choe, Sang-hun, “Kim Dae-jung, Ex-President of S. Korea, Dies at 83,” New York Times, August 18, 2009. [28] “John Paul II’s appeal saved future Korean president from death sentence,” Catholic News Agency, May 21, 2009. [29] Amnesty International, The National Security Law Curtailing Freedom of Expression and Association in the Name of Security in the Republic of Korea, 2012. [30] Ibid. [31] Ibid. [32] Park, Mi, Democracy and Social Change: A History of South Korean Student Movements, 1980-2000, Peter Lang, 2008. [33] (Teukjip, Lee Seok-ki neun nugu? Silche eopneun ‘Sumeun silse Lee Seok-ki’) [특집| 이석기는 누구?]실체 없는 ‘숨은실세 이석기’ [Special feature – Who is Lee Seok-ki?], Kyunghyang Weekly, May 22, 2012. [34] Lee, Seok-ki, [Bangwibi bundamgeum hyepsang, migukui i-iki anira gukmingwa gukikeul wihan hyeopsangi dweeoya] 방위비 분담금 협상, 미국의 이익이 아니라 국민과 국익을 위한 협상이 되어야 (Negotiation for defense burden-sharing needs to be in the interest of the people and the nation, not the United States), July 24, 2013. [35] Lee, Seok-ki, (4jahwedaneuro jongjeonseoneon, pyeonghwacheje ikkeureonaeya) “4자회담으로 종전선언, 평화체제 이끌어내야” [The need for four-party talks for declaration to end the war and peace regime], Presented in the National Assembly of South Korea, April 15, 203. [36] Gregory Elich, “Political Firestorm in South Korea,” Counterpunch, September 12, 2013. [37] Noam Chomsky, Remarks at the Roundtable Meeting for the Protection of Democracy and against the Forced Dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party, November 6, 2014. [38] (Jinbodang haesansikindago jinbojeongchiui kkum haesansikil su eopda) “진보당 해산시킨다고 진보정치의 꿈 해산시킬 수 없다” (Dissolution of the UPP will not dissolve the dream of progressive politics), Voice of People, December 19, 2014. #NationalIntelligenceService #parkgeunhye #SouthKorea #UnifiedProgressiveParty

By Simone Chun | March 12, 2022 | Originally published in Counterpunch Writing days before South Korea’s March 9th presidential election, KPI Associate, Simone Chun warned that a victory by People Party candidate Yoon Suk-yeol forbode a more hawkish policy toward North Korea, “insisting on major North Korean concessions without addressing Pyongyang’s security concerns,” to the point of “expressing his support for a US-ROK-Japan military alliance even if it would mean allowing Japanese troops to deploy in the Korean peninsula.” Yoon defeated ruling Democratic Party candidate, Lee Jae-myung, by a slim margin of 0.73, and moved swiftly to implement his approach to North Korea, informing Japanese Prime Minister, Fumio Kishida, on March 11, of his “hope for greater trilateral cooperation involving the United States in dealing with North Korea,” a spokeswomen for Yoon, said. - Korea Policy Institute The March 9th South Korean election comes down to a race between the two leading candidates, Lee Jae-myungof the ruling liberal Democratic Party and Yoon Suk-yeol of the opposition conservative People Power Party. While the two candidates are nearly neck and neck in South Korea’s highly polarized electoral environment, Lee’s mastery of political affairs has struck an obvious contrast with Yoon’s lack of knowledge and experience. As a result, the majority consensus among voters is that Lee would be better able to handle the challenges facing the country, with polls consistently showing that voters trust Lee over Yoon on issues such as international relations and security policy. According to the latest poll, 43 percent say that Lee is more capable in the sphere of diplomatic and security policy, while only 31 percent favor Yoon in this category. Regardless of which side wins the election, however, Washington’s redoubled emphasis on China-North Korea containment will severely constrain the foreign policy of any new South Korean administration. First, Korea’s geographic location makes it a lynchpin of Washington’s anti-China campaign. The US perceives South Korea as a “force multiplier” whose military assets and personnel will be freely used by the US to supplement its military needs anywhere in the Asia-Pacific region–even beyond the Korean Peninsula. According to Tim Beal, as long as its hegemonic rivalry with China persists, the US will never permit peace in Korea, thereby forcing South Korea to the frontline of a new US-led regional containment coalition. Second, with regard to US-DPRK relations, US containment policy is the main roadblock to rapprochement. While waging war on the entire population of North Korea through sanctions, cutting off trade relations, and staging provocative live-fire drills, Washington, according to Gregory Elich, has shown no sign of changing its behavior and seems unprepared to offer the DPRK anything in exchange for denuclearization. Elich stresses that the crippling US sanctions against North Korea remain the most serious underlying challenge to the incoming South Korean administration. Third, in spite of US maximum pressure and sanctions, North Korea has advanced its nuclear capabilities while maintaining its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear detonations and ICBM launches for the past 3 years. However, analysts predict that the longer that the US posture toward the North remains essentially unchanged, the more likely it becomes that North Korea will resume nuclear and ICBM tests at some point. Because of these geopolitical constraints, analysts predict that regardless of which party prevails in the elections, the broad strokes of South Korea’s foreign policy will not change, and Seoul will be forced to continue its commitment to the US alliance. A more hawkish and combative South Korean policy toward North Korea and China is also a possibility. In spite of this, key differences do exist between the two main presidential candidates with respect to their views on South Korean sovereignty, as well as their overall leadership qualifications. Yoon, on the one hand, promotes a hawkish view that prioritizes almost exclusively the broadening of South Korean military commitments to the US and the effective further subordination of Seoul to Washington’s Asia policy. Yoon has also called for preemptive strikes against the North, has increasingly resorted to McCarthy-era red-baiting against liberals, and engages in harsh anti-China rhetoric. He adopts a hawkish line of attack against proponents of engagement while insisting on major North Korean concessions without addressing Pyongyang’s security concerns. During the recent presidential debates, Yoon went as far as expressing his support for a US-ROK-Japan military alliance even if it would mean allowing Japanese troops to deploy in the Korean Peninsula, stirring a controversy and criticism among South Koreans, the majority of whom are apprehensive about Japan’s growing militarism. Yoon’s hawkish view even goes beyond existing US policies. He insists on purchasing additional batteries of the infamously controversial US Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, even though the Biden and Moon administrations implemented a policy decision capping these batteries to the extant six currently deployed in Seongju. Yoon also declared that he would request redeployment of US tactical nuclear weapons in South Korea, only to be forced to retract this statement following criticism by the Biden administration. The former-general prosecutor’s amateurish leadership skills, lack of knowledge of geopolitical affairs, and anachronistic zero-sum thinking, coupled with his combative persona, could be a deadly combination which would bring about disastrous consequences and lead to a new crisis in the Korean Peninsula. The Korean scholar in Kim Nury states: [As a] developed country South Korea calls for a mature, rational leader, but Yoon’s authoritarian personality, deficient sensibility for human rights, and shamanistic tendencies are not fit for a leader of a developed country. In contrast, Lee has stated that Seoul should take the lead in inter-Korean affairs, making relevant decisions independently and putting South Korean national interests first. Lee refrains from taking sides between Washington and Beijing, opposes a joint-ROK-US-Japan military alliance, and seeks to build relations with North Korea through engagement and economic cooperation. He has a stated emphasis on South Korean national interests and resists the prospect of Koreans becoming a “pawn in the plans of other states”, promising to pursue peace and unification based on the principles of independence and sovereignty. In contrast to Yoon’s lack of practical governing experience, Lee has long-standing experience in government and has a demonstrated commitment to productive and result-oriented policies. These qualities would strengthen Lee’s ability to foster a stable and pragmatic US-ROK alliance while cultivating cooperative relationships with China, Russia and Japan. Further, in contrast to Yoon’s all-or-nothing approach, Lee’s pragmatism would yield much-needed progress in the emergent geopolitical environment of Northeast Asia. Russia and China recently submitted a draft resolution to the UNSC calling for easing of economic sanctions against North Korea in response to Pyongayng’s 3-year long moratorium on nuclear and ICBM testing and its destruction of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. Lee’s presidency would welcome such a pivot toward diplomacy, as he favors sanctions relief as part of denuclearization talks and is committed to re-engagement with the North. “What the country needs is pragmatism and a focus on problem solving,” Lee wrote in his piece published on February 23 in Foreign Affairs. Glibly advocating for a preemptive strike against Pyongyang, for example, evokes Cold War posturing that is no longer relevant and serves only to stoke fear and division. A second Korean War, which would likely be a nuclear war, is unacceptable. It is important to win a war; it is even more important to win without a war. This can be achieved with a mixture of deterrence, diplomacy, and dialogue. Lee’s rational pragmatism would result in more stable and productive policies that would benefit not only South Korea’s interests, but also US-ROK relations as well as regional partnerships. These qualities would enable him to better navigate the turbulent geopolitical environment of Northeast Asia and deal with potential geopolitical crises in a measured and forward-thinking manner. Dr. Simone Chun has taught at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, and served as an associate in research at Harvard University’s Korea Institute. She is an active member of the Korea Peace Network and a member of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea’s steering committee. She participated in an international women’s delegation of peace to Korea organized by Women Cross DMZ and Nobel Women’s Initiative.

By Gregory Elich | February 8, 2022 | Originally published in Counterpunch South Koreans go to the polls on March 9 to elect a new president, who will assume office two months later. At a time when U.S.-North Korean relations are at an impasse, and the Biden administration is building an aggressive anti-China alliance, much may rest on the outcome. The two candidates, who are currently running neck-and-neck in opinion polls, present a stark contrast. Lee Jae-myung of the ruling Democratic Party advocates South Korea taking the lead on inter-Korean relations, in contrast to President Moon Jae-in’s unwillingness to adopt any measure that would elicit Washington’s disapproval. “In succeeding the Moon Jae-in administration, the Lee Jae-myung government should act as a more independent and active mediator and problem solver,” Lee announced late last year. [1] That will come as a welcome change in direction if it comes to fruition. Lee is also disinclined to accede to U.S. demands to join the anti-China campaign, questioning why South Korea should be forced to choose between China, its leading trading partner, and the U.S., with whom it has a military alliance. “I think the situation is coming where we can make decisions independently, putting our national interests first. Any thinking that we have to choose between the two is a very disgraceful approach,” Lee argues. [2] If Lee is serious about changing course, he will be steering into strong headwinds. South Korea is such a politically polarized society that Lee cannot count on broad-based domestic support. Furthermore, his party will need to win a substantial majority in the National Assembly for Lee to adopt a more independent policy. In addition, the nation’s security and military establishments are hardly likely to countenance a change in the relationship with Washington. The United States, for its part, has an arsenal of economic and diplomatic weapons at its disposal to keep a wayward nation in line. Only time will tell if Lee has the inclination and determination to try and overcome such obstacles. Lee’s conservative opponent, Yoon Seok-youl of the inaptly-named People Power Party, takes a hardline position on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK – the official name for North Korea), including talking about the option of launching a preemptive strike. [3] Yoon also prioritizes the military alliance with the United States and favors joining Washington’s “global coalition” confronting China. [4] “The U.S. is our ally,” Yoon asserts, “while China is a partner. And a partnership is based on mutual respect. China is North Korea’s key ally. Isn’t North Korea our main enemy? We cannot make an alliance with a country that is allied with our main enemy.” [5] It is no mystery which candidate the Biden administration would prefer to deal with. Yoon’s stated policies align perfectly with those of Washington. President Moon Jae-in missed opportunities to improve inter-Korean relations by continually deferring to the United States. In regard to reducing U.S.-DPRK tensions, Moon advocates an end-of-war declaration. Combat in the Korean War came to a halt in 1953 with an armistice agreement, so technically speaking, a state of war still exists. Moon regards that unfinished business as a destabilizing situation that can be resolved by all parties signing an end-of-war declaration to “mark a pivotal point of departure,” which would lead to “irreversible progress in denuclearization and usher in an era of complete peace.” [6] South Korean officials have been engaged in talks with their counterparts in the United States, China, and North Korea on the subject of a peace declaration for some time now. Moon believes “in principle” that “everybody agrees to the declaration,” although he noted that the DPRK needs to see the U.S. withdraw its hostile policy. [7] In other words, no party has explicitly rejected the proposal outright, although South Korea has yet to come to an agreement with the United States on its wording. According to Moon, “If North Korea takes certain measures, the end-of-war declaration would be a political statement that would announce that the longstanding hostile relations between Pyongyang and Washington had ended.” [8] Note that action is required from only one side, while no change in behavior is asked of the United States. Moon has also stated that an end-of-war declaration would be “the starting point to discuss the peace treaty.” [9]However, a peace treaty is a nonstarter in the current U.S. political environment, as it would require approval by a two-thirds majority in the Senate and ratification by President Biden. The protracted wrangling over the declaration’s wording suggests that American officials have taken note of Yoon’s strong showing in the South Korean opinion polls and concluded that they need only drag their feet until getting a partner more to their liking. At the very least, it indicates that the Biden administration is intensely focused on wordsmithing to ensure that nothing in the final draft of a peace declaration could be misconstrued to suggest that anything should change. Too much can be made of the claim that a technical state of war is automatically destabilizing. Failure to sign a peace treaty is not a unique historical phenomenon. In a more recent example, the Soviet Union and Japan never signed a peace treaty after World War II. However, a peace declaration was agreed to in 1956 as an interim measure. Technically, then, Russia and Japan remain in a state of war yet are hardly likely to engage in combat. Talks are currently underway regarding a peace treaty. [10] Conversely, there is nothing inherently transformative in being officially at peace with a hostile party. Cuba and Venezuela, for example, are formally at peace with the United States yet are subjected to unrelenting sanctions, economic blockade, and destabilization campaigns aimed at regime change. The risk in placing so much emphasis on an end-of-war declaration alone is that Moon may inadvertently be reinforcing the already entrenched U.S. view that it need not offer North Korea anything substantive in exchange for denuclearization. It is difficult to imagine what mechanism could metamorphose a piece of paper acknowledging that combat ended in 1953 into Moon’s envisioned “era of complete peace.” Moreover, U.S. hostility toward the DPRK is driven by regional geopolitical objectives, which a peace declaration cannot alter. As a purely symbolic measure, a peace declaration is not worthless, but it would need to be accompanied by a change in U.S. attitude to hold any value. Otherwise, a symbol at variance with action is drained of any meaning. Indeed, what significance would such a symbol have as the United States continues to wage siege warfare against North Korea in the form of sanctions designed to impose economic ruin, hardship, and hunger? Asia specialist Tim Beal believes the number one problem with an end-of-war declaration is “that the U.S. is still waging war – sanctions, military exercises, practicing invasion, and so forth. And it gives no indication of actually wanting to stop any of these.” [11] The sustained effort that Moon has invested in promoting a peace declaration may have been better spent on advocating real change as a path to peace. However, it must be noted how so much of the Washington elite recoils at the prospect of granting North Korea even a symbolic diplomatic crumb. There is a deeply ingrained belief that the only acceptable formula for negotiations is for the DPRK to surrender everything while getting nothing in return. Perhaps Moon’s devotion to a peace declaration is based partly on the realization that the United States is unwilling to offer North Korea anything meaningful in exchange for denuclearization, so more cannot be expected. While South Korean officials have discussed the subject of a peace declaration with their counterparts in the north, the impetus and enthusiasm for the proposal essentially come from the former side. Indeed, Moon’s narrow focus on a peace declaration resolutely ignores what North Koreans say they need. The DPRK is under siege, and consequently, its officials are looking for something more concrete from the United States. They certainly have not minced words on the subject. Kim Myong Gil, North Korea’s chief negotiator during talks with Trump administration officials, was quite direct: “If the U.S. believes that it can lure us to the table with secondary issues, such as an end-of-war declaration – which can instantly end up as garbage depending on the political situation – and the establishment of a liaison office, instead of presenting fundamental solutions to withdraw its hostile policy against North Korea, which interferes with our right to survival and development, there will never be any hope for a solution.” [12] Last September, North Korean Vice Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song reiterated that position when he termed an end-of-war declaration premature. “Nothing will change as long as the political circumstances around the DPRK remain unchanged and the U.S. hostile policy is not shifted, although the termination of the war is declared hundreds of times.” Ri added, “We have already clarified our official stand that the declaration of the termination of the war is not a ‘present’ and it can become a mere scrap of paper in a moment upon changes in situations.” [13] Biden administration officials repeatedly announce that the U.S. has no hostile intent toward the DPRK while showering that nation with invective and strangling it economically. U.S. State Department spokesperson Ned Price says that “specific proposals” have been made to North Korea. [14] Although nothing is publicly known about the nature of the proposals, the lack of response from the North Koreans would seem to reveal that the U.S. is sticking to its customary approach of offering diplomatic trinkets in exchange for demanding unilateral disarmament. Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying advocates a more viable approach to resuming talks. “We believe under the current circumstances, the key to breaking the stalemate and restarting dialogue is taking seriously the DPRK’s legitimate concerns. The U.S. should avoid repeating empty slogans, but rather show its sincerity by presenting an appealing plan for dialogue. It is imperative to invoke the rollback terms of the Security Council’s DPRK-related resolutions as soon as possible and make necessary adjustments to relevant sanctions, especially those relating to provisions on the humanitarian and livelihood aspects.” [15] In October, China and Russia submitted a draft resolution at the United Nations to drop economic sanctions that target North Korea’s population, in recognition of the nation’s continued adherence to its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and long-range ballistic missile tests. [16] Chinese U.N. envoy Wang Qun explained, “Obviously, the crux of the deadlock in the DPRK-U.S. dialogue is that the denuclearization measures taken by the DPRK have not received due attention and the legitimate and reasonable concerns of the DPRK have not been properly addressed.” [17] Predictably, the U.S. side reacted with outrage, and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield instead called upon U.N. member states to “ramp up the implementation of the sanctions.” [18] Rather than signal a softer attitude, on December 10, the Biden administration piled on more sanctions, targeting several individuals and North Korea’s animation firm SEK Studio. Also sanctioned was a Chinese animation company for doing business with SEK Studio. [19] According to Go Myong-hyun, a research fellow at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies, the Biden administration “is sending a very strong message to North Korea and the rest of the world that the U.S. government is going to really not leave any stone unturned and make sure that the North Koreans don’t get even a single cent of profit by trading with the outside world.” [20] The Biden administration followed that action by naming Philip Goldberg as ambassador to South Korea. His selection appears to indicate that Washington remains wedded to the punishment approach. During the Obama administration, Goldberg served as coordinator for implementing sanctions on North Korea. That position led him to travel abroad and meet with foreign political and banking officials to eliminate trade and financial operations with North Korea. Philosophically, he aligns well with an aggressive foreign policy. As ambassador to Bolivia, he was expelled from the country for meeting with the right-wing opposition. [21] In his nomination hearing for ambassador to Colombia at the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 2019, Goldberg promised to support the U.S. campaign to overthrow the government of Venezuela: “If confirmed, I will work with Colombia on efforts to restore democracy to Venezuela.” He added that “the United States government has made clear that all options remain on the table while it continues to engage on all diplomatic and economic fronts to support Interim Venezuelan President Juan Guaido and the Venezuelan people’s pursuit of freedom.” [22] The new ambassador is not a man who can be expected to challenge conventional thinking regarding the DPRK. The DPRK has evidently concluded that the United States is unwilling to abandon its hostile policy and has recently stepped up weapons testing. Its demolition of the Punggye-ri nuclear test site and a self-imposed moratorium on long-range ballistic missile testing yielded no corresponding measure from the United States, aside from a temporary reduction in the size of military exercises that rehearse the bombing and invasion of the DPRK and infiltration of commando teams to assassinate North Korean officials. Meanwhile, the South Korean military is accelerating technological upgrades and has seen its budget increase by an average of 7.4 percent each year of the Moon administration. [23] The United States, for its part, is expanding its military presence in the Asia-Pacific, and regularly launches intercontinental ballistic missiles, most recently on two occasions last year. [24] The North Koreans feel compelled to modernize their military capability in response to U.S. and South Korean arms advancements. As a result, an arms race is underway, in which the targeted side’s efforts are deemed illegitimate. DPRK leader Kim Jong Un emphasizes that “recourse to arms against the fellow countrymen must not be repeated on this land.” He adds, “We are not talking about a war with someone,” but “are building up war deterrent…to prevent the war itself and to safeguard the sovereignty of our state.” [25] And that is the crux of U.S. concern. A small targeted nation able to defend itself sets a bad precedent and limits options. Western media and officials habitually characterize each North Korean missile test as a “threat” or “provocation,” uniquely so, in that other nations performing similar tests prompt no condemnation. India, like North Korea, is a non-member of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and its launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile on October 27 last year was greeted by silence. [26] No doubt, the Times of India’s description of the launch as “a stern signal to China” came as a welcome development in Washington. [27] The two other nuclear powers that are non-NPT members are Israel and Pakistan, both of which have ballistic missile programs that are deemed of no concern by U.S. officials and media. [28] There is a double standard at play. Only North Korea is forbidden by the United Nations from testing and is punished by economic sanctions so crushing as to amount to a war on the entire population. Even military tests that are not prohibited, such as the recent cruise missile and hypersonic missile launches, are denounced. Using inflammatory language, U.S. Ambassador to the UN Linda Thomas-Greenfield recently described North Korea’s tests as “attacks” and promised to “continue to ramp up the pressure on the North Koreans.” [29] U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres rebuked the DPRK for its recent launch of a Hwasong-12 intermediate-range ballistic missile, charging that it not only violated U.N. sanctions but also “the DPRK’s announced moratorium.” [30] That was an outright falsehood, as North Korea’s self-imposed moratorium on testing applies only to long-range ballistic missiles. Why is North Korea singled out for punishment? According to Thomas-Greenfield, it is because that nation is “a serious threat to our peace and security and to the globe.” [31] That language is echoed by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who called the DPRK “a source of danger and obviously a threat to us and our partners.” [32] That American officials can make such pronouncements without being met by derision is a tribute to the efficacy of U.S. propaganda. Since the Korean War came to a halt nearly seven decades ago, the DPRK has been at peace. Yet, in the decades that followed the Second World War, the United States has bombed and invaded numerous countries, undermined and toppled foreign governments, spread its military bases across the globe to threaten other nations, and performed drone strike murders of thousands of civilians. And the U.S. is currently trying to stoke war fever against Russia. Yet, the common perception in the West turns reality on its head. Regardless of whether or not a peaceful end to the Korean War is declared, the United States has broader plans for South Korea. The Biden administration’s central foreign policy objective is to build alliances with Asian nations to ensure U.S. domination over China. South Korea’s geographical location places it on the frontline of the Biden administration’s fanatical anti-China project, and the Koreans are assigned the role of “force multiplier” in that effort. The South Koreans are not regarded as having a choice in the matter. Koreans are expected to support the U.S. confrontation with China and any military adventure in the Asia-Pacific that the U.S. may choose to undertake. According to an American military official, the Republic of Korea (ROK) will act as “a net provider of security not just on the peninsula but across the region.” [33] Last May, Biden and Moon issued a joint statement, which pledged that “the U.S.-ROK alliance will play an increasingly global role” and claimed that the two nations’ relationship “extends far beyond the Korean Peninsula.” Moon also promised to align his country’s policy with “the United States’ vision for a free and open Indo-Pacific.” [34] In December, U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin met in Seoul with his South Korean counterpart, Suh Wook. Austin announced that “we discussed ways to broaden our alliance’s focus to address issues of regional concern.” Using the familiar code words for anti-China hostility, Austin stated that “we emphasize our shared commitment to the rules-based order in the Indo-Pacific.” In addition, Austin reported that he and Suh “agreed to explore ways to expand and enhance regional security cooperation and capacity building.” [35] If an end-of-war declaration is made the vehicle for bringing peace to the peninsula, the main roadblock, as Korea specialist Simone Chun sees it, is U.S. containment policy and the practice of “pressuring allies for U.S. strategic interests.” Under the Moon administration, “South Korea’s security policy has been subordinated to the United States” and “South Korea does not have strategic insight to properly respond to the U.S. policy of containment with respect to China.” Chun proposes supplementing an end-of-war declaration with a revival of the Sunshine Policy as offering a potentially more promising path to reducing tensions on the Korean Peninsula. [36] The Sunshine Policy, launched during the presidential term of Kim Dae-jung and continued by his successor Roh Moo-hyun, redirected inter-Korean relations from confrontation to cooperation. However, since Roh’s term ended in 2008, no subsequent South Korean president has followed suit. In Chun’s proposal, South Korea does not need to play a passive role and defer to U.S. intransigence. Instead, it can initiate its own program. It cannot be overlooked that South Korean progressives and U.S. imperialism have divergent goals. Their class and national interests are at opposite poles. If positive change comes, it will be driven by Koreans. As Tim Beal points out, “Peace undercuts the rationale for U.S. forward position in East Asia. It undercuts the rationale for all those bases, the bases in South Korea, the bases in Japan, and so forth. And it undercuts the rationale for their utilization of [South Korean] military power.” The problem is “that peace in Korea would hamper the containment of China. That’s how they look at it.” [37] A lot may ride on the next presidential election in South Korea. A conservative victory would automatically give the Biden administration everything it wants. Yoon has explicitly stated his intention to ally closely with U.S. militarism. A win by Lee Jae-myung offers more hope. Lee promises to chart a more independent path than Moon. It remains to be seen if he can follow through, given the certainty of fierce opposition by Washington. Progressives in South Korea face a twofold struggle in the months ahead: pressing their government to improve inter-Korean relations and blocking being dragooned into the U.S. anti-China military machine. At the heart of both issues is resistance to U.S. encroachment upon South Korean sovereignty. It will not be an easy struggle, but it is a necessary one. Notes. [1] Thomas Maresca, “South Korea Presidential Hopeful Seeks Closer Ties with Pyongyang,” UPI, November 25, 2021. [2] Kang Seung-woo, “’Choosing Between US, China is Disgraceful,’ Ruling Party’s Presidential Candidate Says,” Korea Times, December 30, 2021. [3] Jung Da-min, “Controversy Rises Over Yoon’s Preemptive Strike Remarks,” Korea Times, January 13, 2022. [4] Lee Haye-ah, “Yoon Says Firm S. Korea-U.S. Alliance Ever More Important,” Yonhap, November 12, 2021. [5] Lee Ji-yoon, “Yoon Seok-youl Hints at Possibility of Ditching Inter-Korean Military Agreement,” Korea Herald, November 18, 2021. [6] https://english1.president.go.kr/BriefingSpeeches/Speeches/1068 [7] https://www.pm.gov.au/media/press-conference-canberra-act-32 [8] “South Korea’s Moon Optimistic About End to Korean War,” BBC News, October 12, 2018. [9] Lee Ji-yoon, “Moon Holds Rare Inflight News Briefing,” Korea Herald, September 24, 2021. [10] “Future Russia-Japan Peace Treaty Must Reflect Outlook for Cooperation – Lavrov,” TASS, January 14, 2022. [11] “A Geopolitical Perspective of Biden’s North Korea Policy,” JNC TV, January 2, 2022. [12] Jeong Je-hyug, “NK Kim Myong-gil, “Beigun Conveyed Wish to Meet for Talks in December. Willing to Sit with the U.S.,” Kyunghyang Shinmun, November 15, 2019. [13] “Press Statement of Vice Foreign Minister Ri Thae Song,” KCNA, September 24, 2021. [14] Chaewon Chung, “US Made ‘Specific Proposals’ to the DPRK in Latest Attempt to Engage Regime,” NK News, October 14, 23021. [15] “Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Hua Chunying’s Regular Press Conference on September 30, 2021,” Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, September 30, 2021. [16] Chad O’Carroll, “China and Russia Submit Proposal to Ease UN Sanctions on North Korea: Sources,” NK News, October 30, 2021. Michelle Nichols, “China, Russia Revive Push to Lift U.N. Sanctions on North Korea,” Reuters, November 1, 2021. [17] “Invoking Rollback Terms of DPRK-related Resolutions at Early Date Effective to Break Deadlock: Chinese Envoy,” Xinhua, September 25, 2021. [18] https://usun.usmission.gov/remarks-by-ambassador-linda-thomas-greenfield%e2%80%afat-the-un-security-council-stakeout-on-the-dprk/ [19] https://home.treasury.gov/news/press-releases/jy0526 [20] Chad O’Carroll, “US to Impose New Sanctions Against North Korea for First Time Under Biden,” NK News, December 10, 2021. [21] “Bolivian Leader Doesn’t Regret Expelling U.S. Ambassador,” CNN, April 22, 2009. [22] https://www.foreign.senate.gov/hearings/nominations-062019 [23] Lami Kim, “A Hawkish Dove? President Moon Jae-in and South Korea’s Military Buildup,” War on the Rocks, September 15, 2021. Sang-Min Kim, “South Korea Boosts Military,” Arms Control Association, September 21. Hiroshi Minegishi, “South Korea Beefs Up Military Muscle to Counter Threat from North,” Nikkei Asia, September 14, 2021. [24] “Minuteman III Test Launch Demonstrates Safe, Reliable Deterrent,” United States Air Force (Air Force Global Strike Command Public Affairs), February 24, 2021. “Minuteman III Test Launch Showcases Readiness of U.S. Nuclear Force’s Safe, Effective Deterrent,” United States Air Force (Air Force Global Strike Command Public Affairs), August 11, 2021. [25] “Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un Makes Commemorative Speech at Defence Development Exhibition,” KCNA, October 12, 2021. [26] Kelsey Davenport, “India Tests Missile Capable of Reaching China,” Arms Control Association, December 2021. [27] Rajat Pandit, “In Stern Signal to China, India Tests 5,000-km Range Agni-V”, Times of India, October 28, 2021. [28] https://www.iiss.org/blogs/analysis/2021/08/israel-ballistic-missile-programme https://missilethreat.csis.org/country/pakistan/ [29] “Transcript: ‘Capehart’ with Linda Thomas-Greenfield, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations,” Washington Post Live, January 18, 2022. [30] “DPR Korea, UN Chief Condemns Missile Launch as ‘Clear Violation,’ UN News, February 1, 2022. [31] “Remarks by Ambassador Linda Thomas-Greenfield at a Press Conference on the March Program of Work and the U.S. Presidency of the UN Security Council,” United States Mission to the United Nations, March 1, 2021. [32] Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung, “Blinken Urges China to Convince North Korea to Denuclearize,” Associated Press, March 18, 2021. [33] Jeff Seldin, “US, South Korea Updating War Plans for North Korea,” Voice of America, December 1, 2021. [34] https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2021/05/21/u-s-rok-leaders-joint-statement/ [35] https://www.defense.gov/News/Transcripts/Transcript/Article/2859519/secretary-of-defense-lloyd-j-austin-iii-and-south-korean-defense-minister-suh-w/ [36] “A Geopolitical Perspective of Biden’s North Korea Policy,” JNC TV, January 2, 2022. [37] “A Geopolitical Perspective of Biden’s North Korea Policy,” JNC TV, January 2, 2022. Gregory Elich is a Korea Policy Institute associate and on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute. He is a member of the Solidarity Committee for Democracy and Peace in Korea, a columnist for Voice of the People, and one of the co-authors of Killing Democracy: CIA and Pentagon Operations in the Post-Soviet Period, published in the Russian language. He is also a member of the Task Force to Stop THAAD in Korea and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific. His website is https://gregoryelich.org Follow him on Twitter at @GregoryElich.

By Paul Liem | December 14, 2021 The question for the Biden administration is not why the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, North Korea, repeatedly rebuffs its offer to restart talks, “without preconditions.” The question is, rather, what is there for the United States to lose, or possibly gain, from considering North Korea’s precondition for the resumption of talks - that “the key to establishing new DPRK-U.S. relationship lies in the withdrawal of its hostile policy towards the DPRK.” Reacting to the Biden Administration’s characterization of North Korea’s missile testing as a violation of UN resolutions while sponsoring South Korea’s recent arms build-up, including missile testing, DPRK Ambassador to the United Nations, Kim Song, called upon the U.S. “to remove the double standards towards the DPRK.” In his address to the United Nations General Assembly, September 27, 2021, Kim went on to state that if the U.S. wants to see the Korean War come to an end, “it should take the first step towards giving up its hostile policy against the DPRK by stopping permanently the joint military exercises and the deployment of all kinds of strategic weapons which are leveled at the DPRK in and around the Korean peninsula.” The Biden Administration has stated that it has no preconditions to restart up talks with North Korea. The only preconditions on the table then are those of North Korea. Let’s consider them. What if the U.S. and South Korea stopped characterizing North Korea missile tests as “provocative,” and acknowledged that North Korea has at least as much to fear from the U.S.-Republic of Korea (ROK) military alliance, and the U.S. nuclear umbrella over the ROK and Japan, as they of North Korea’s nuclear and conventional weapons programs? Since the doctrine of nuclear deterrence defines first-strike capability as the deterrent and the U.S. far exceeds North Korea in this regard, it serves no purpose to single out the latter as the provocateur, other than to demonize it. Does the United States need to cast North Korea as the villain in order to justify its continued military alliances with South Korea and Japan? That has been the rationale, to be sure. But those alliances are not subject to negotiation between the U.S. and North Korea. They will remain in force as long as South Korea and Japan renew their alliances with the U.S., or discontinue them, of their own volition. Regarding the DPRK’s demand that the U.S.-ROK war games be cancelled permanently, they’ve been cancelled before, temporarily, resulting in the thawing of hostilities most recently in 2018 while talks were underway leading to the U.S-DPRK Singapore Summit, June 12, 2018. One year later they were halted again in hopes of rekindling diplomacy after President Trump walked from the U.S.-DPRK Hanoi Summit, February 27 2019, unwilling to meet North Korea half way. Cancelation of “upcoming” war games, would be well received by Pyongyang, and by itself could result in resumption of diplomacy to end the exercises permanently. On the cusp of an escalating cold war with China, underscored by the Biden administration’s diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and hostilities with Russia over Ukraine, U.S. military presence in Northeast Asia is not about to dissipate. But must U.S. strategic weapons be leveled at the DPRK? Under what circumstances, if any, would North Korea not feel threatened by the deployment of U.S. strategic weapons in and around Korea? Moreover the fear of some members of U.S. Congress, that a Declaration of the End of the Korean War, as proposed by President Moon Jae-in, would open the door “for the removal of U.S. troops from the Korean peninsula before the North has fully denuclearized,” and “ would have disastrous consequences for U.S. national security, erode our combined deterrence, and jeopardize the lives of tens of millions of Americans, Koreans, and Japanese,” is unfounded. Neither the withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea, nor agreement to declare that the war has ended, are among North Korea’s preconditions for talks, and what may turn out to be on the other side of the door is subject to negotiation by the parties; it is not foretold. In sum, the U.S. could refrain from publicly disparaging North Korea’s missile testing, it could cancel upcoming war games, and it could engage in dialog to assess whether or not there are conditions under which North Korea would not feel threatened by the U.S. military foothold in South Korea and the region. It could do these things without having to lift any sanctions, provide any humanitarian aid, and without jeopardizing its security commitments to South Korea and Japan. But regrettably, the U.S. continues to identify North Korea as a threat. In its Global Posture Review, November 29, 2021, the U.S. Department of Defense calls upon allies to “deter potential Chinese military aggression and threats from North Korea,” and commits to permanently stationing previously rotational Apache helicopter and artillery headquarters in South Korea. Moreover, the U.S. has just added new sanctions on DPRK entities and individuals, the first leveled by the Biden administration. Given these developments there is no reason to be hopeful that the U.S. will give consideration to North Korea’s preconditions for talks, unless the U.S. were to arrive at a new calculation and entertains the possibility that it has a better chance of achieving its geopolitical goals in Asia with North Korea as friend, rather than foe. Since the debacle of the Hanoi Summit, North Korea has been demanding that the U.S. “approach us [DRPK]with a new calculation.” In his speech to the 14th Session of the Supreme People’s Assembly of the DPRK, April 12, 2019, General Secretary Kim Jong Un intimated that there could be a third summit, “with the condition that the US has the right attitude and finds a methodology that can be shared with us, we would be willing to try one more time.” The new calculation probably doesn’t mean that the DPRK would ever take sides with the U.S. in a cold war against China. However, the U.S. and North Korea may yet share interests in common upon which to found a partnership sufficient to deescalate the arms race on the Korean peninsula, and enable North and South Korea to make progress in implementing the Panmunjom Declaration on Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula of April 27, 2018. North Korea doesn’t wish to be dependent upon China, and would benefit from having normalized relations with the U.S. as a counter balance. It may therefore adopt a policy of neutrality vis a vis tensions between the U.S. and China, and may be willing to tolerate continuation of security agreements between the U.S. and ROK provided that measures it takes to secure its sovereignty are tolerated, in kind. For the U.S., normalized relations with North Korea would expand its influence to encompass both Koreas, and check the influence of China and Russia on the peninsula. However, the sticking point is the denuclearization matter. If, as terms for normalizing relations, North Korea is expected to accept the deployment of U.S. strategic weapons, in and around the peninsula, the deployment of U.S. troops in South Korea, the sale of U.S. weapons to the ROK, and the U.S. nuclear umbrella over the ROK and Japan, the D.P.R.K. may well expect the U.S. to accept, in kind, that it is a nuclear state. Formal recognition of the D.P.R.K. as a nuclear state is anathema to the U.S. For the Biden administration, as with its predecessors, denuclearization has meant disarmament of North Korea as a security threat and a free pass for inspectors to travel the country demanding access to “suspicious” facilities, unannounced. But that approach, over the past two decades, only succeeded in motivating North Korea to become a nuclear power. As long as the U.S. deems it necessary to deploy strategic weapons in and around the Korean peninsula, and its nuclear umbrella over Japan and Korea, what may be possible, between the U.S. and North Korea, is nuclear arms control, i.e., a partnership to manage the deployment of nuclear weapons in the region, minimize the possibility of their use, and eventually eliminate their presence altogether, if one can imagine it. Ironically, however, the greatest obstacle to achieving the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula has been refusal on the part of the U.S. to recognize North Korea for what it is, a nuclear state, and to arrive at terms for threat reduction that are mutually agreeable and realistic given the current state of affairs in which Northeast Asia is the most heavily militarized region on the globe, and bristling with Chinese and Russian nukes, as well as those of the U.S. and North Korea. North Korea is still willing to reengage with the U.S. However, it insists that the U.S. approach it on the basis of a new “calculation.” Ambassador Kim explained, “If the current U.S. administration tries to solve the issue of the Korean peninsula, which had not been solved by the preceding administrations, by relying on the anachronistic method of calculation like the present one, the result would not be different from the past.” This can mean many things. In less cryptic terms, it could mean, simply, “stop treating us as a threat.” The ambassador’s statement would then read, “if you fail to stop treating us as a threat, ‘the result would not be different from the past.’” North Korea has stated clearly that diplomacy with the U.S. is possible, but not if the U.S. persists in singling out North Korea’s weapons programs as provocative; not if the war games continue, and not while it feels threatened by U.S. strategic weapons in and around the peninsula. If diplomacy is to resume, and bear fruit, recalculation is in order. The alternative? If developments stay on present course, the war exercises will continue, the U.S. will continue to sanction North Korea, the latter will continue to develop and test its nuclear weapons and missiles, the arms race on the peninsula will continue to escalate, and Korea may once again find itself standing at the precipice of nuclear war, unless the U.S. recalculates. Paul Liem is the Chair of the Korea Policy Institute Board of Directors.

By Paul Liem | January 16, 2020 The palpable fear in Washington that North Korea—or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK)—would test an ICBM as a “Christmas gift” to the Trump administration for refusing to negotiate the lifting of sanctions has now been replaced with an anxiety that such a test could occur at any time.  In a year-end meeting of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), Chairman Kim announced that the country would no longer be bound to its self-imposed moratorium on nuclear and ICBM testing, and that the “world will witness a new strategic weapon to be possessed by the DPRK in the near future.” Rather than addressing this new development head on, President Trump chose to send Chairman Kim a “happy birthday” greeting through diplomatic channels.  On January 11, 2020, Kim Kye Gwan, Advisor to the DPRK Foreign Ministry (FM) confirmed receipt, albeit not on the terms Trump might have hoped: “Although Chairman Kim Jong Un has a good personal feeling about President Trump, they are, in the true sense of the word, ‘personal.’ The Chairman of the State Affairs Commission [Kim Jong Un] would not discuss the state affairs on the basis of such personal feelings, as he represents our state and its interests.” By “state and its interests,” advisor Kim Kye Gwan was referring to the priorities established by Chairman Kim Jong Un in his address to the 5th Plenary Meeting of the 7th Central Committee of the WPK, December 28 to December 31, 2019.  Unlike the celebratory tone of Chairman Kim’s past New Year’s speeches, he chose to deliver a set of marching orders to the core leadership of the WPK, aimed at launching a “frontal breakthrough as required by the present situation and the developing revolution,” in reference to the breakdown of diplomacy between the United States and DPRK, beginning with the collapse of the Hanoi Summit of February 27 and 28, 2019. To wit, the aim of the Hanoi Summit meeting was to arrive at concrete steps towards normalizing relations between the United States and the DPRK and to achieve the denuclearization of the “Korean peninsula,” as agreed at the June 12, 2018 US-DPRK Singapore summit.  In Hanoi, the DPRK offered to permanently dismantle all plutonium and uranium production facilities at the Yongbyon Nuclear Scientific Research Center, its key nuclear research facility and supplier of weapons grade plutonium, and to commit to a permanent halt to nuclear and long-range rocket testing, in exchange for a partial lifting of sanctions—those “related to people’s livelihoods and unrelated to military sanctions,” as DPRK Foreign Minister, Ri Yong Ho, specified.  President Trump, however, reverted to the demands of his predecessors, insisting on complete and irreversible dismantlement of all nuclear weapons systems, historically a non-starter for the DPRK.  He went further to insist on dismantlement of biological and chemical, weapons systems, demands not previously discussed.  To exact these concessions President Trump doubled down on his “maximum pressure” policy in the form of draconian sanctions and walked away before the scheduled end of the summit. “Sometimes you have to walk … and this was just one of those times,” he said.  A couple months later, the DPRK gave the United States a year-end deadline, by which time the Trump administration was to have returned to the table, willing to adopt a step-by-step approach to addressing the sanctions/denuclearization issues.  The threat of a “Christmas gift” emerged as the “or else” component of the DPRK’s ultimatum. In his address to the WPK leadership, Chairman Kim summarized the standoff between the DPRK and the United States as that “between self-reliance and sanctions.”  In the face of “sanctions by the hostile forces in the future,” the DPRK, he concluded, would have to accept as “a fait accompli” that U.S. hostility would not relent in the future, and proceed to “strengthen the internal power from all aspects,” emphasizing that “the key front in the offensive for frontal breakthrough is the economic front.” In the matter of denuclearization, Chairman Kim declared, “if the U.S. persists in its hostile policy towards the DPRK, there will never be the denuclearization on the Korean peninsula and the DPRK will steadily develop necessary and prerequisite strategic weapons for the security of the state until the U.S. rolls back its hostile policy towards the DPRK and lasting and durable peace-keeping mechanism is built.” While nothing in Chairman Kim’s end-of-the-year remarks suggests that North Korea has abandoned the ideal of denuclearization of the entire Korean peninsula, as envisioned in the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration signed by the leaders of North and South Korea, what is plain is that a unilateral dismantlement of the DPRK’s nuclear weapons systems in exchange for the promise of economic benefits is now off the table.  What remains to be seen is how the DPRK will develop its weapons systems, and under what circumstances they might be deployed.  In this regard, Chairman Kim clarified that “the scope and depth of bolstering our deterrent will be properly coordinated depending on the U.S. future attitude to the DPRK.” The Birthday Missive The only diplomatic interaction between Chairman Kim and President Trump in the interval since the WPK plenary session has been the latter’s birthday greeting to the former and the publication by the Korean Central News Agency’s (KCNA) of Kim Kye Gwan’s reply to it.  Kim Kye Gwan’s reply is instructive in that it clarifies the DPRK’s position on the personal relationship between Kim and Trump; the lessons drawn from the Hanoi Summit; the precondition required for the DPRK to meet again with the United States; and the attitude of the DPRK towards efforts by the Republic of Korea (ROK), or South Korea, to act as an intermediary between the United States and the DPRK. Kim Kye Gwan’s remarks, taken one by one below, also suggest how hostility between the United States and the DPRK might deescalate. State-to-state relations between the United States and the DPRK take precedence over the personal relationship between Kim and Trump.  “What is clear is that we will never lose our time again, being taken in by the U.S. trick as in the past on the basis of such personal feelings, as he (Chairman Kim) represents our state and its interests,” Kim Kye Kwan stated. Yet even as the relationship between Kim and Trump is subordinate to the affairs of state, it might still play a positive role in moderating hostilities between the United States and the DPRK, averting a return to the fiery verbal exchanges of 2017. Regarding the Hanoi Summit, “There will never be such negotiations as that in Vietnam, in which we proposed exchanging a core nuclear facility of the country for the lift of some UN sanctions in a bid to lessen the sufferings of the peaceable people even a bit,” Kim Kye Kwan said.  “There is no need for us to be present in such talks, in which there is only unilateral pressure, and we have no desire to barter something for other thing at the talks like traders,” he continued. That said, acknowledgement by the U.S. State Department that it moved the goal posts on the DPRK at Hanoi by adding disarmament demands not previously discussed, that it misrepresented the DPRK’s bargaining position by claiming it wanted “all” sanctions lifted in exchange for dismantlement of the nuclear production facilities at Yongbyon, and that it arbitrarily put pressure on the DPRK to unilaterally disarm before receiving any relief from sanctions would help restore the credibility of the United States as a reliable negotiating partner. The DPRK will not make compromises in future dialogue with the United States.  “It can be said that the reopening of dialogue between the DPRK and the U.S. may be possible only under the condition of the latter’s absolute agreement on the issues raised by the former, but we know well that the U.S. is neither ready nor able to do so,” Kim Kye Kwan clarified. Although “absolute agreement” to DPRK conditions by the United States is unlikely, a decision by the United States to support, or not veto, a prospective UN Security Council resolution by China and Russia to ease sanctions against the DPRK and cancellation of its upcoming war exercises with the ROK might encourage Pyongyang to moderate its deployment of the strategic weapons it has pledged to unveil and refrain from testing ICBMs and nukes. The ROK is not in a position to influence US-DPRK relations.  Kim Kye Kwan derided South Korean diplomats for having “lingering hope for playing the role of ‘mediator’ in the DPRK-U.S. relations.” Should South Korea display agency in implementing its agreements with the North regarding the peaceful development of inter-Korea affairs, rather than siding with U.S.- led sanctions, its diplomats would likely be accorded respect by their northern counterparts, enabling South Korea to assert itself in the role of independent mediator, in de-escalating hostilities between the US and DPRK.. We might be reminded that the Chinese word for “crisis” is also the word for “opportunity.” The opportunity described in each of the DPRK foreign minister’s key points above is just as present as the crisis it presupposes.  However, there are no signs on the horizon that the United States will pull back from its policy of maximum pressure or that the ROK is prepared to face the consequences of asserting independence from U.S. policy.  Regrettably, at the start of the New Year, the DPRK, having no hope for relief from sanctions or hostility from the United States, is steeling itself to launch a “frontal breakthrough” to overcome barriers to its social development posed by sanctions and external threats to its sovereignty, by virtue of its own resources, nuclear deterrent, and will.  To U.S. maximum pressure, the DPRK has issued a maxiumum response. Paul Liem is the Chair of the Korea Policy Institute Board of Directors.

By K.J. Noh | December 12, 2021 The Death of South Korean dictator Chun Doo Hwan signals the consolidation of a false media narrative. This is misleading and dangerous. Speaking ill of the dead: General Chun Doo Hwan was the corrupt military dictator that ruled Korea from 1979-1988, before handing off the presidency to his co-conspirator General Roh Tae Woo. Chun took power in a coup in 1979, and during his presidency he perpetrated the largest massacre of Korean civilians since the Korean war. He died on November 23rd, in pampered, sybaritic luxury, impenitent and arrogant to the very last breath. Many western media outlets have written censorious, chest-beating accounts of his despotic governance and the massacres he perpetrated (here, here, here, and here)-- something they rarely bothered to do when he was actively perpetrating them in broad daylight before their eyes. Like the light from a distant galaxy--or some strange journalistic time capsule--only after death, decades later, do "human rights violations" in South Korea burst out of radio silence and become newsworthy. Better late than never, better faint than silent, better partial than absent, one could argue. Still all of them miss out on key facts, spread lies through omission. A key dimension of Korean history and politics looks to be buried with his death. A little background history is necessary to elucidate this. The Sorrows of the Emperor-Dictator: Chun's predecessor and patron, the aging South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee, had ruled the country as an absolute totalitarian despot for 18 years, but he knew in his bones that his days were numbered. He had survived two violent assassination attempts, mass civil protests, and even opprobrium from his American puppet masters, despite serving them loyally by sending 320,000 South Korean troops to Vietnam. Even Park's closest advisors were worried about the fragility of his rule. Park Chung Hee had been a former Japanese military collaborator during Japan’s colonization of Korea. A US-installed puppet Syngman Rhee had smashed socialism in the South through genocide--a method later to be replicated in Indonesia's "Jakarta method". But the puppet-genocidaire Rhee was in turn toppled by student protests in 1960, and the integration of South Korea into a US-led security structure and capitalist order looked precarious due to popular hatred of the US. Into this foment, Brigadier General Park took power in a vicious putsch. Park was a totalitarian fascist groomed within the Japanese military system, where he had conducted counterinsurgency against Korean independence fighters in Manchuria. (One of them, a legendary guerrilla leader called Kim Il Sung, would escape his clutches and become a life-long nemesis). He had then been trained and cultivated by the US during the 1950's, attending military school in the US. When Rhee was deposed, Park rapidly took power, pledging fealty to the US and total war against communists. Having already proven his anticommunist credentials through a massive treachery, betrayal and slaughter, he was welcomed by the Kennedy Administration. This established the Junta’s legitimacy, while maintaining the continuity of US colonial “hub and spoke” architecture in the region. Park nominally assumed the presidency through an election but then tightened his regime until he attained the powers of the Japanese Emperor, whom he had worshipped and admired during Japanese rule. He formally rewrote the constitution after the Japanese imperial system, legally giving himself the powers of Showa-era Sun God. This, along with his dismissal of colonial atrocities to normalize relations with Japan, in obeisance to the US strategic design for the region, resulted in massive civil insurrection against him. These protests were barely put down with mass bloodshed, torture, disappearances, and terror. But even among his inner circle, doubts were voiced about his extreme despotic overreach. The Insurance Policy: Ruthless and Cunning From the earliest days of his rule, Park Chung Hee had cultivated high ranking officers to key positions, as loyal retainers in an insurance policy in case a coup happened against him. A secret military cabal, later to be called "Hanahwe" [also, “Hanahoe”; "the council of one"], a group of officers within the 1955, 11th class of South Korea's Military Academy, had signaled their total fealty to Park during Park's military coup in 1961. As a result, Hanahwe members were rapidly brought in-house, rewarded with powerful roles within the military government, and formed a deadly, elite Praetorian guard within the labyrinthine power structures of the Park Administration. Two of them were the leaders of this secret-society insurance policy. One of them, Chun Doo Hwan, would be referred to as the "ruthless one", known for his amoral brutality and utter lack of conscience. He would later be called "the slaughterhouse butcher". The other was Roh Tae Woo, Chun's military blood brother, the "cunning one", known for his strategic, tactical, and political cunning. Together, “Ruthless and Cunning” would prove their mettle in Vietnam, auditioning as understudies for the US Imperial war machine, and proving their bona fides by operating a rolling atrocity machine, the SK 9th Infantry "White horse" Division, where Chun’s 29th regiment would cut its teeth on brutal massacres against Vietnamese civilians. Psychopathic and Amoral, they would form a two-headed hydra, ensuring Park's rule against enemies within and without. A third member of Hanahwe, Jeong Ho Yong, would also cut his teeth in the 9th Division in Vietnam, as would the Capital Mechanized "Fierce Tiger" Division, and various Marine and Special warfare brigades. All would gain recognition and favor with the US military brass in Vietnam, where South Korean troops would eventually outnumber US troops on the ground. They would also play key roles in future Korean history. Sex, Whiskey, and Guns: High Deductibles Park's insurance policy kicked in when his KCIA chief pumped him full of bullets at a whiskey-sodden orgy gone bad in late autumn of 1979. Two young women--a nervous college student and a popular singer--had been procured to serve the sexual whims of the president at a luxurious KCIA "safehouse" that had been set up for such routine vernal assignations. During the pre-coital dinner banquet, with expensive whiskey serving as lubricant, a heated argument arose between the KCIA Chief, Kim Jae Kyu and Chief Presidential Bodyguard, Cha Ji Chol, about how to put down massive civil protests against Park's rule in Pusan and Masan. Cha Ji Chol proposed the "Pol Pot option" arguing that a massacre of 30,000 civilians would subdue civilians and put the genie back in the bottle. This was accompanied by insults at Kim for not having implemented such "effective" measures. Kim Jae Kyu, incensed either at the casual brutality or at the blatant criticism, put an abrupt end to the debate by drawing his pistol and shooting Cha and Park. "I shot the heart of the beast of the (Yushin) dictatorship", he would later claim. Park's insurance policy would rapidly kick in at that point, although the deductible would be his own life. Enter the Praetorian Guard: Tigers, Horses, and Dragons After Park's death, Oct 26th, Lt General Chun Doo Hwan, the head of the Armed Forces Defense Security Command (DSC)--Park's institutional Praetorian Guard--rapidly took matters in hand. Chun would rapidly take over, first the investigation of the assassination, then key army positions, and then the government. Some historians marvel at the rapidity with which Chun consolidated power and how quickly he disciplined loose factions within Park's old guard. This ignores the rhizomatic base of Hanahwe deep within the executive and in all branches of the military, and the institutional powers baked into the DSC to preserve loyalty and deter subversion and coups. Chun, using his statutory powers, and good dose of military firepower, arrested key military leaders for the assassination, and then on Dec 12th, 1979 instigated a coup, supported by Hanahwe comrade Roh Tae Woo, now division commander of the 9th “White Horse” Division. Roh withdrew the elite unit away from its critical position on the DMZ to the Capital, where they were joined by another Vietnam/Hanahwe classmate, general Jeong Ho Yong. These troops, with another Vietnam-veteran division, the Capitol Mechanized "Tiger" Division, and various special warfare brigades, fought the old guard in the streets before rapidly subduing them. Not long after this class reunion, Chun would declare martial law and appoint himself president with a new constitution and fill all key military ranks with his Hanahwe classmates. A "Splendid Holiday" turns sour: Mass protests broke out again after Chun’s declaration of Martial Law on May 17th, 1980. In the city of Gwangju, hundreds of students protested. Chun's response was to send a crack division of special warfare troops to smash heads, assault bystanders, and shoot protestors, in an operation named "Splendid Holiday". Beatings, rapes, and mass killings were the order of the day; “blood flowed like rivers in the streets”. However, in an extraordinary turn of events, stunned protestors, instead of capitulating at the terror, responded by storming police armories and requisitioning weapons, taxis, buses, and improvised explosives, to fight the elite troops to a standstill. Despite the deployment of helicopter gunships and Armored Vehicles, 3000 Special Warfare Paratroopers, along with 18,000 riot troops, found themselves driven out of the city. In this, the liberation of Gwangju stands out as one of the most astonishing feats of civil resistance of the 20th century. This victory was not to last, however. After the rebels surrendered thousands of arms as a gesture of good faith to seek amnesty, Chun's administration would assault the city with 2 armored divisions and 5 special forces brigades. An untold number of civilians--excess death statistics note 2300 individuals--would be slaughtered, searing Gwangju into the historic annals of atrocity and infamy. Anti-government protests would go underground, and re-erupt 7 years later, when Chun's presidency, which had been awarded the Olympics found it inconvenient to perpetrate another massacre in front of the international press in the run up to the Olympics. Chun would accede to protestors' demands for a direct election, the outcome of which conveniently passed the presidency to his Hanahwe second, General Roh Tae Woo. The missing factor: Who let the dogs out? The above are the basic historical outlines, acknowledged by most journalists and historians. But what they miss out, is the platform and permissions that circumscribed these historic events. In particular, two questions arise: Under what authority did Chun initiate his coups? And how did he subdue Gwangju? The answer leads back to the same place. South Korea has never had a policy independent of the US--it has always been a vassal neo-colony. This was demonstrated when the US placed THAAD missiles on Korean soil, ignoring the explicit orders of President Moon Jae-In by coordinating secretly with the South Korean military. Even US Ambassador Donald Gregg, acknowledged openly before Congress that the US-South Korea relationship had historically been a Patron-Client relationship. This is because the Southern state of Korea, from its inception, was created deliberately by the US after liberation to thwart a popular, indigenous socialist government (the Korean People's Republic) from taking sovereign power over the entire peninsula. Since its occupation in 1945 by the US military government, South Korea has always been constrained and controlled by the US. Its politics and culture, even where it might be nominally independent, has been thoroughly colonized by the US. For example, in the early 90's, a fractious intra-party conflict broke out between two Cabinet factions of the Liberal Kim Young Sam presidency. The “irreconcilable” fight was between cliques who had studied political science at UC Berkeley and those who had studied at Yale. Such were boundaries of South Korean discourse and the overarching nature of US influence. This state of affairs is most true of the South Korean military, which was cloned from the US military during the US occupation of 1945-1948, and which has been continuously under US control (Opcon) since July14th, 1950. Key leaders such as Park, Chun, Roh were trained and indoctrinated into US military practices and culture and had close personal connections with the US military. Chun, for example, had attended the US Psychological Warfare school and Special Warfare school in Fort Bragg, Ranger school at Fort Benning, and Airborne training at the US Army infantry school before receiving commissions to lead Special Warfare forces. He then in Vietnam fighting under US MACV command before ascending to key positions in the ROK military. This dependency is starkest regarding military operational control, which the US still maintains in “wartime” to this day. ROK divisions cannot move or act independently without explicit orders from the top of the military command chain, or unless explicit permission is granted to be released from this operational control. The head of the military command chain at the time of Gwangju was General John A Wickham Jr, the head of the UNC/CFC command. Wickham would have been subordinate to the US Joint Chiefs of Staff. In other words, SK troops do not get to commit massacres on their own. They need a hall pass from the US to engage in any military maneuvers or actions. The US military granted them such a hall pass to travel down to Gwangju, knowing that this plan that would likely result in the slaughter of students and citizens. The released units under the Special Warfare Command, a lethal killing machine, are all divisions with a deep integration with and long history of serving the US. The US claims that it was utterly in the dark and in no position to refuse the release of Opcon demanded by South Korea: that the Koreans snatched up Opcon, like a bully stealing lunch money, and then went on to commit mass atrocities that the US could only sit by and watch in slack-jawed innocence. These are after-the-fact re-workings of history by creative lawyers ignorant of military realities. Militaries are instituted to have unity of command, and Chun was a US-trained, known actor in a specific chain of command, with close ties to the US brass. The notion that a partially established coup junta of a client state could simply Swiss-cheese US military command structure and snatch Opcon to commit massacres at will strains credibility. The absurd official portrayals of the US Military brass as hapless damsels before roguish generals is refuted by official records and smacks of satire or desperation. In fact, Journalist Tim Shorrock using the declassified "Cherokee files", has detailed well the discussions that happened at the time of Gwangju: top US officials in the Carter administration 1) knew of the brewing crackdown and 2) greenlighted military action, knowing full well the costs. According to Shorrock’s meticulous reporting: [Troops] were sent with the approval of the US commander of the US-Korea Joint Command, Gen. John Wickham…That decision, made at the highest levels of the US government….exposed how deeply the Carter administration was involved in the planning for the military coup of 1980….the Carter administration had essentially given the green light to South Korea’s generals to use military force... This action was authorized to avoid a second "Iran" debacle, where another US-placed despot had been overthrown by popular revolt to US consternation, humiliation, and loss. Not only did the US greenlight the massacre by US-familiar Vietnam-veteran divisions, the US deployed the USS Coral Sea to support the flank of Chun's military during the retaking of the city and heightened surveillance support with AWACS. In other words, the Gwangju massacre was a US-enabled-and-supported operation, done with explicit US knowledge and coordination Pentagon lawyers have argued that they had previously "released opcon" to the Korean military, so that these massacres were not done under direct US control. That is a distinction without a difference, akin to a pit bull owner saying that they took their beast off the leash, and therefore are not responsible for the deadly consequences. The ROK military was a US-trained-and-coordinated combatant force; some units involved had served directly under the US I Corps in Vietnam only years prior to Gwangju. The very fact that the US released opcon, knowing full well their capacities, military histories, and what was on the cards, makes the whole argument a poor exercise in plausible deniability. No one who has the smallest understanding of how armies work would fall for "the pit bull ate my homework" excuse. The US has also argued that the Special Warfare division was exempt from opcon at the time. This, too, is a legal fiction--Special Warfare Troops, of all ROK troops, are the most tightly integrated and bound to US command, where they have a long history of training, coordinating, and working with and as proxies for the US military. (The US maintains this pretense because SWF are designed to infiltrate into NK, where the necessity to avoid US command responsibility requires a legal fiction of "independence"). The same could also apply for Chun's coups as well. The Dec 12th coup involved the movement of the Vietnam-veteran 9th division, far away from its position guarding the DMZ to attack the incumbent government, along with maneuvers of the Capital Mechanized Division and Special warfare troops. The May 20th coup also involved large troop maneuvers to threaten and dissolve the Korean parliament. South Korea is a small, crowded peninsula, bristling with arms and military bases on hair trigger alert, surveilling and monitoring every inch of its territory for military movement. To assert that the US command was aware of the coups is not conspiracy that presumes US omniscience. It's simply assuming clear signaling on a crowded dance floor to avoid inadvertent collisions. It's inconceivable that such a massive troop maneuver would not have been signaled up the chain at minimum to avoid a friendly fire incident. Return OPCON, Restore Peace. So where do these facts leave us? As the media stir up the flies around Chun's sordid past, they also seek to bury with his body the fact that South Korea's military is an appendage of the US military, and that its warts, chancres, and tumors are grown from within the US body politic. Exorbitant atrocities such as the Bodo League Massacres, or the Gwangju Massacre, accrue to the secret debit account of the US imperial ledger, where human rights violations vanish off the books, and where moral debt and karmic interest are never calculated or reconciled. Despite a confusing, bifurcated organizational structure (Independent command control vs. Subordinated operational control; Peacetime Opcon vs. Wartime Opcon), the bare political fact is that South Korea's military falls effectively under US control, not simply in “wartime”, but whenever it is politically expedient or strategically necessary. This card was obvious when the ROK military simply defied Moon’s moratorium on THAAD missile installation and took its orders from the US, not even bothering to notify the Korean president that the missiles had been delivered in-country. Subsequent investigation revealed that the South Korean military claimed a confidentiality agreement with the US military as the reason to hide the information from South Korea’s own commander-in-chief. Not only does the ROK military translate the will of the US in domestic actions--including coups and massacres, but it has also functioned as a brutal sidekick for US aggressions abroad, and serves as a strategic force projection platform and force multiplier for US containment against China. Unlike any other "sovereign" state in the world, South Korea's 3.7 million troops and materiel all fall under US operational control the instant that the US decides that they want to use them. This is despite the fact that since the inception of its civilian government in 1993, SK has sued the US for the return of Opcon. This request is now going into its third decade; the US has simply stalled, moved goal posts, changed definitions and conditions, and stonewalled to this date. This debate around Opcon is important in the current historical moment as the US is escalating to war with China. Any de-escalation with North Korea will require the declaration of peace, predicated on the return of sovereign opcon to South Korea. However, the US will not seek to de-escalate tensions with North Korea, because if that happens, South Korea is likely to confederate in some manner with North Korea, join China's Belt and Road Initiative and then become integrated as an ally of China. This would cripple the US security architecture in the Northeast Pacific. This renders any peace with North Korea antithetical to US strategic interests. Secondly, the US escalation for War with China requires the capacity to access and threaten the Chinese continent across a series of leverage points. Inescapably, South Korea will be a key theater of battle, because of its geostrategic position as a bridgehead onto China. Also, the temptation to leverage a force of 6.7 million South Koreans (3.7 M troops +3 M paramilitary) as cannon fodder for war against China is simply too irresistible to pass on. In light of this, Korea expert Tim Beal argues that in this moment of heightened tension with China, the most dangerous place in the Pacific is not the South China Sea or the East China Sea, but on the Korean Peninsula. We will see this conflict heighten as South Korea enters into a new presidential election cycle between a US-favored conservative candidate, and a China-sympathetic progressive candidate. Nevertheless, South Korea’s history offers a stark and ominous lesson, one that the MSM would prefer you ignore: a battle is brewing, with very high stakes. Under pressure, the US has taken brutal actions to maintain control and hegemony. It may do so again. Chun’s passing is being taken as an opportunity to distribute soporific drafts of historical amnesia--the better to sleepwalk into war or tragedy, again. People with a conscience should not let this misdirection pass. To close one’s eyes to history is to enable future atrocities and war. Only with eyes wide open does the public have a chance of staving off this coming war. K.J. Noh, is a scholar, educator and journalist focusing on the political economy and geopolitics of the Asia-Pacific. He writes for Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Counterpunch, Popular Resistance, Asia Times, MR Online. He also does frequent commentary and analysis on the news programs The Critical Hour, By Any Means Necessary, Fault Lines, Political Misfits, Loud & Clear, Breakthrough News, Flashpoints.