tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-96461872024-03-07T09:17:00.326+00:00Kotaji 거타지Thoughts on the Korean peninsula, North East Asia, history and other things. <a href="http://kotaji.blogsome.com">Wordpress version</a>.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.comBlogger140125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1123774527216725412005-08-11T15:08:00.000+01:002005-08-11T16:35:27.476+01:00MovingI've finally decided to make the move to the <a href="http://kotaji.blogsome.com">Wordpress version</a> of my site at Blogsome. It's not perfect, but I've basically got things how I want them over there and I'm getting fed up with using Blogger and posting everything twice. So I won't be posting here any more. Hopefully over the next few months I'll get all the archived posts from here moved over there.<br /><br />Please update your links, blogrolls, RSS feeds etc accordingly.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1123688231771906132005-08-10T16:32:00.000+01:002005-08-10T16:37:11.783+01:00Pak Noja on Korean Nationalism and the LeftThe talk given by Pak Noja recently at Yonsei University seems to have been quite an event with a thousand-strong audience. A <a href="http://www.alltogether.or.kr/2005new/right/0702pnj/0702_pnj.htm">transcript</a> of his talk and the ensuing discussion with chairwoman Kim Ha-yong (who readers of this site may have heard of before) is now available on the <a href="http://www.alltogether.or.kr">Ta Hamkke</a> website.<br /><br />It would be great to have this in English, but translating the whole thing is a bit beyond the time I can spare at the moment, perhaps we can hope that Pak Noja will provide something in English on this subject sooner or later.<br /><br />In the meantime I thought I’d just roughly translate a short extract, partly because this topic fits quite well with my recent post on autonomism in Korea and the discussion that followed. Apologies for the somewhat stilted translation. I’ve also had some difficulties with some of the terminology, I’ll try to come back to this and make some improvements at a later stage.<br /><br />In this extract, after a discussion of the role played by nationalism and French imperialism in Vietnam, Pak turns to North Korea:<br /><blockquote>For us, one of the most difficult things to talk about is the North Korean revolution. The strength of the influence exerted by the legacy of imperialism and the intellectual inheritance of nationalism on the process of the North Korean revolution is worth thinking about. To some extent, we can talk about this even before the revolution in the North took the extreme form of a one-man dictatorship.<br /><br />It is a fact that in the 1940s the North looked like a far more advanced and people-oriented society than the South. The fact that a great number of progressive intellectuals migrated to the North in the late 40s shows just how attractive the revolution was. For a considerable proportion of those who went North it would be hard to say that they were communists in the strictest sense of the word. Many intellectuals who were inclined towards nationalism and populism migrated. The land reforms carried out in the North were actually one of the reasons that land reform was achieved in the South at that time. The North Korean reforms provided a model and gave Yi Sŭngman (Syngman Rhee) a sense of crisis: “if we don’t also do this to some extent we will not be able to compete with the North.” So the historical contribution of quite a few aspects of the North Korean revolution can be evaluated positively.<br /><br />However, already if you look at the series of campaigns that were waged between late 1946 and 1948, there is something about it that smells a bit strange. For example, the ‘Mass Mobilisation Campaign for the Cultivation of National Ideology’ (건국사상총동원교양캠페인) that began in late 1946 was aimed at educating people through a mass mobilisation of the whole nation to cultivate a national ideology. What was the purpose of this movement? According to the words of Kim Il-sung at the time it was “an ideological revolution to create among the workers of the new Democratic Chosŏn a national spirit, customs, morals and militancy.”<br /><br />What is the meaning of ‘national spirit’ (국민정신) and ‘mass mobilisation’ (총동원)? Mass mobilisation was a phrase that was continuously used during the latter years of Japanese colonialism, and one of the phrases that expressed in the most compressed manner the fascism of the late colonial period. Talk of making people do ideological study through mass mobilisation was a commonplace of this period. Terms like ‘citizen-like spirit’, ‘national spirit’ and ‘spirit’ were actually Japanese words that were first brought to Korea by students returning from study in Japan. But the term ‘national spirit’ was something that was also created within the paradigm of nationalism following the model of Japan. The fact that the term ‘national spirit’ came to be used at that time in the North shows the influence of early nationalist ideology and perhaps also the influence of the Soviet Union, but we cannot eradicate the impression that the North Korean regime just took over a term that had been used as a commonplace in the late colonial period. Although of course at that time it referred to a different nation’s citizens.<br /><br />Many of the other campaigns carried out in North Korea also had some similarities in their methods to the mass campaigns of the late colonial period, like the ‘Serving the Country behind a Gun Campaign’ (총후보국캠페인). Propagandists were sent out on a mass scale to forcibly mobilise people for education. Those who did not get on with the education programme or had different opinions were made to do self-criticism and undergo ‘ideological reconstruction’ (사상개조). If you look at the campaigns that were carried out in the late colonial period by state organs of ‘ideological cultivation’ like the Taehwasuk [an organisation of pro-Japanese Koreans] the similarity is quite noticeable.<br /><br />So, when General Kim Il-sung was constructing a nation state, he brought in considerable parts of the apparatus of state control and repression that were taken from the mechanisms of administration of the Japanese imperialists, the very people he had been struggling against up until then. In other words, it is hard to get rid of the sense that the state created by the nationalists in some way inherited a great deal from the imperialist state.</blockquote><br />I’d like to make some brief comments on this. Really the question that comes to my mind is: why was it that regimes founded by nationalists (whether or not they called themselves ‘communists’ let’s accept that’s what they were/are) took on much of the ideological and institutional apparatus of their erstwhile oppressors? I think it’s worth considering the possibility that these things were much the same from the point of view of the new rulers (Kim Il-sung, Ho Chi-min or whoever) as the factories that they inherited from the former colonialists. They were setting about creating an independent nation state (or in other terms an ‘independent centre of capital accumulation’). They needed the ideological tools for the job of mass coercion that is required when setting out on the path of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_accumulation">primitive accumulation</a>, just as much as they needed the physical tools that would combine with human labour to produce the steel, concrete, petrochemicals and so on.<br /><br />I suppose what I’m saying is that since nationalism (in the colonial/post-colonial context) ultimately means achieving a capitalist state, it is natural for it to utilise the tools necessary for this job, however brutal they may be. Nationalism ceases to have any really progressive tendencies not long after it comes to power.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1123546875708670012005-08-08T22:34:00.000+01:002005-08-10T16:39:35.540+01:00Korean books at SOAS 3: Biography of Yŏ Un-hyŏng<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/20994660/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos17.flickr.com/20994660_3769b559eb_m.jpg" width="175" height="240" alt="Yŏ Un-hyŏng Sŏnsaeng t'ujaengsa (1947)" align="right" hspace="5px" /></a><br /><br />A well-thumbed biography of a Korean nationalist who I've taken a liking to for some reason. Actually I know very little about Yŏ Un-hyŏng, although you can read a short and somewhat hagiographic bio <a href="http://www.kimsoft.com/2002/mongyang.htm">here</a> at the Kimsoft website and a more prosaic one <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lyuh_Woon-Hyung">here</a> at Wikipedia. He seems to be one of those figures that every developing nation state of the twentieth century must have had - a not-quite great leader.<br /><br />In the case of Mong-yang (his pen-name), one of the reasons for this is quite plain: he was a centre nationalist at a time (the mid 1940s) when the Korean peninsula was being polarised in two directions towards the 'left' nationalism of the North and the 'right' nationalism of the South. Perhaps you could say more honestly that Korea was being pulled rapidly in one direction by Soviet imperialism and in the other by US imperialism. Nationalists who didn't really want to rely on either of the new great powers tended to be left high and dry. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/32425098/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos21.flickr.com/32425098_ba98872b12_m.jpg" width="213" height="240" alt="Yŏ Un-hyŏng in 1921" align="left" hspace="5px" /></a><br /><br />During his lifetime Yŏ had been in the mainstream of the Korean nationalist movement, operating in Shanghai, Siberia and Japan. He had earlier founded the New Korea Youth Party, but in 1920 he actually joined Korea's first Communist Party and attended the First Congress of the Toilers of the Far East, where he apparently met Lenin. Later he joined the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Nationalist_Party">Kuomintang</a> (Chinese Nationalist Party) and worked for Chiang Kai-shek. According to the Kimsoft biography he was arrested and imprisoned by the Japanese in 1929, although the English Wikipedia entry says that it was the British who arrested him and then handed him over to the Japanese. Interestingly the Korean Wiki entry notes that Yŏ was arrested at Shanghai baseball stadium - I wonder if it still exists?.<br /><br />At liberation Yŏ emerged as one of the leaders of post-colonial Korea, but the People's Committees and the Korean People's Republic that he helped to form in September 1945 were short-lived and were soon crushed by the US military government (in the North the People's Committees were co-opted by the Soviet/Kim Il-sung regime). During 1946 Yŏ found himself on the left of the nationalist movement but was striving to bring elements of the right and left together in a coalition, working in particular with the main communist leader in the South: Pak Hŏn-yŏng.<br /><br />One thing that caught my eye about this book was its publication date. It was originally published in 1946, but this edition was reprinted in late July 1947. Yŏ Un-hyŏng had in fact been gunned down at the Hyehwa-dong Rotary in Seoul just a few days before this on July 19, by a hitman thought to have been acting on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhee_Syngman">Syngman Rhee</a>'s orders. Here's a description of the assassination from Kimsoft:<br /><blockquote><strong>When Yo's car slowed down at the Hyehwa-dong intersection, suddenly, a large truck pulled out from behind the police station and blocked Yo's car. Yo's driver pressed on the breaks and the car came to screeching halt, when the assassin jumped on the rear bumper and fired two pistol shots at Yo through the rear window. One bullet hit Yo's back and came out of his stomach and the other went through his heart, killing him instantly. It was one pm.</strong></blockquote><br />According to the Kimsoft biography, the hitman was a rightist refugee from North Korea called Han Chi-gŭn. The site also has a <a href="http://www.kimsoft.com/2002/yo-murder.htm">whole page</a> discussing the assassination.<br /><br />By a quirk of fate, a combination of the British and Yŏ's love of sport seem to have been his twin nemeses, getting him into trouble on more than one occasion. First when he was arrested at the baseball stadium in 1929 and then again in July 1946, when he was on his way home to change into a clean shirt before attending a friendly football match between British and Korean teams.<br /><br />If you want more resources on Mong-yang, there is a Wikipedia <a href="http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%97%AC%EC%9A%B4%ED%98%95">entry</a> in Korean and he has his own <a href="http://www.mongyang.org/">website</a>, run by his memorial foundation (every dead nationalist must have one of these it seems).Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1123109862115637842005-08-03T23:56:00.000+01:002005-08-04T00:00:52.293+01:00Chinese peasants, back on the stage of world history<img src="http://newsimg.bbc.co.uk/media/images/40630000/jpg/_40630750_protest203b.jpg" alt="Peasant riot" /><br /><br />Newsnight last night carried a very good report on rural unrest in China and the way that peasant farmers are fighting back to save their land from the gangster-capitalist property-developers, throwing up high-rises around Chinese cities at a phenomenal rate. This was one of those rare news reports that is truly informative and at the same time moving and even a little inspiring. You can watch the film <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/newsnight/default.stm">here</a> (at least for the time-being anyway) and there is a somewhat condensed <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4728025.stm">article</a> on BBC News too.<br /><br />The massive scale and violence of the struggles that Chinese peasants are waging is quite amazing. They are up against not only bands of hired thugs, often working for state-owned companies, but also the police and corrupt local officials. In some places the uprisings have been on the scale of historical rebellions of Chinese peasants: 100,000 in Sichuan last November, 20,000 in Zhejiang in April.<br /><br />What is perhaps even more amazing is that Chinese farmers are making documentaries of their struggles and filming their battles with the armies of thugs that come to take their land and demolish their villages. The Newsnight report includes footage from one such battle in Shengyou near Beijing this June. As the narrator comments, it is like watching a medieval Chinese battle scene: a muddy chaos of peasants with bamboo poles and farm tools. Well at least until the gunshots and explosions begin.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1122998157653737032005-08-02T16:55:00.000+01:002005-08-02T16:55:57.660+01:00Let my [little] people go!Kerim of Keywords has a superb post on the '<a href="http://keywords.oxus.net/archives/2005/07/23/oompa-loompanproletariat/#comments">Oompa-loompanproletariat</a>' which I feel obliged to share. Everything you could ever want to know about the struggle of these small persons for liberation from capitalism and Wonkaism.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1122977208102184792005-08-02T11:06:00.000+01:002005-08-02T11:06:48.106+01:00Kifaya once again<img src="http://photos21.flickr.com/30571925_1f2766e15e_m.jpg" alt="Khaled" /><br />Organising protests seems to be the same wherever you are these days: the importance of text.<br /><br />The BBC has come up trumps today with an <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4709011.stm">good piece</a> on the democracy movement in Egypt and even a <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/05/middle_east_young_egyptian_activist/html/1.stm">photo gallery</a> of activists organising protests.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1122916931770026942005-08-01T18:21:00.000+01:002005-08-01T18:22:11.776+01:00Utoro<img src="http://photos22.flickr.com/30312225_137281dff3_m.jpg" alt="Utoro people" /><br /><br />Oh My News International has a <a href="http://english.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?no=239453&rel_no=1">story</a> by David McNeil and Andreas Hippin about a Korean village near Kyoto in Japan, said to be the last community of forced labourers and their descendents who were taken to Japan during the colonial period. It has long been threatened with demolition and clings to survival in the shadow of the bulldozers, in half-way-round-the-world echo of a Palestinian village on the West Bank. Only 230 residents remain, most of them in old age it seems.<br /><br />The village of Utoro has clearly become something of a nationalist cause celebre in South Korea recently with solidarity movements and even fundraising concerts planned. One interesting aspect though, is that the attitude of the residents seems to lack the overt nationalism of their South Korean supporters. Their attitude is rather one of weary determination and pride in their 'solid' community. You can perhaps see the disconnect between residents and campaigners in this paragraph:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>The renewed attention and the possibility that the Utoro plot will be bought by supporters and preserved as a memorial to conscripted Koreans, is welcomed by Gen but he is wary of being used for political purposes. "There are the people who want to continue living here and those who want to preserve the history. We are not especially interested in a museum, but some want to force Japan to pay for one as a way of acknowledging the past."</strong></blockquote><br /><br />I might be reading too much into too little here, but I think this says something about the difficulties of imprinting the nationalist narrative onto every issue involving Korea and Japan and their shared history. This issue is also a universal issue, a human rights issue, a class issue. Obviously there is much that has yet to be dealt with in the history of Japanese colonialism, and the racism that it produced (towards Koreans and others) is still an important component of Japanese society. But to my mind, posing an issue like this solely, or even largely in the context of Korean nationalism as the South Korean NGOs seem to do, must act to shut off possibilities for solidarity with Japanese social movements and class-based alliances of Koreans and Japanese.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1122748085174134472005-07-30T19:27:00.000+01:002005-07-31T23:54:36.763+01:00Support KifayaI've <a href="http://kotaji.blogsome.com/2005/06/23/from-democracy-in-korea-to-democracy-in-egypt/">posted before</a> about the democracy movement in Egypt - Kifaya / Enough! - and the solidarity they received from socialists in Korea (some good pictures <a href="http://arabist.net/archives/2005/06/12/kifaya-protest-in-seoul/">here</a>). Aljazeera <a href="http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/1F2BF706-89A0-4D83-B5D5-18C3D2542AED.htm">reports today</a> that 15 members of the movement's leadership have been arrested while trying to organise a demonstration. Anyone who wants to support one of the most important democracy movements in the world today should find a way to show solidarity with Kifaya, perhaps by writing to your local egyptian ambassador.<br /><br />These are matters that concern all of us, especially since repressive governments like that of Mubarak that attempt to stifle all political debate (with the staunch support of the US of course) are one of the major factors in the growth of jihadi movements and support for the politics of desperation that believe the only solution is to carry out terrorist attacks on civilians. If we don't show our support for democracy movements like this (which are actually supported by the moderate Islamist Muslim Brotherhood) it is the violent Islamists that will gain, with the kind of horrific results in seen in Sharm El-Sheikh recently. By coincidence, Jonathan Steele had a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Column/0,5673,1538645,00.html">comment piece</a> in the <em>Guardian</em> yesterday in which he made a similar point.<br /><br /><strong>UPDATE</strong><br />An update to my post yesterday. According to a news <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/4731855.stm">story on the BBC</a> it seems that the crackdown by the Egyptian government was somewhat more severe than was reported by Al Jazeera. 19 of Kifaya's leaders were arrested and many demonstrators beaten (the story has video too).Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1122507128939033662005-07-27T23:31:00.000+01:002005-07-28T00:37:51.160+01:00Why six party talks are like a cheese sandwichI noted that the story about the 'upbeat' beginning to the new round of six party talks (North Korea, South Korea, US, Japan, Russia and China) briefly made it to the top position on the front page of BBC News Online yesterday morning. But the BBC soon realised the error of its ways and remembered that nothing important really ever happens in East Asia, only funny things like hats with umbrellas. Here is the BBC's <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/asia-pacific/4719903.stm">latest story</a> and also what the Korea Times <a href="http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/200507/kt2005072722561110160.htm">has to say</a>.<br /><br />To be honest, I'm not that keen on writing about negotiations between North Korea and the US, because, well perhaps because it's more boring than a processed cheese sandwich. Perhaps also because I don't care much for either side (although I must admit that negotiations are better than what they could be doing to one another). On this occasion though there is something about the talks that has just about prompted me to put finger to keyboard. This is the palpably different atmosphere. I could be wrong but it seems that both sides may be nearing the end of their strange mating dance and be about to do what we've all been waiting for: get it on.<br /><br />Seems to me that the Bush administration has never really had a solution for the old North Korea problem, but on the other hand was glad of a nice little bit of instability in East Asia (offering legitimation for its protection racket in the region, cf Giovanni Arrighi's article in the latest <a href="http://www.newleftreview.net/NLR33.shtml">New Left Review</a> [subscription]). But then along came a problem called Iraq and suddenly it seems like a better idea to get things tidied up at the far end of the Eurasian continent before they get too out of hand. <br /><br />North Korea on the other hand seems to have been less and less willing to compromise for just the same reason: it knows it has a strong hand. But maybe, just maybe, they feel they've reached a peak and the time is right to cut a deal. With South Korea providing electricity and the US and Japan offering diplomatic normalisation and lashings of cash it certainly seems that the nuclear gambit may have paid off, although I would attribute this as much to 'lucky' timing (ie Iraq) as to the North's skill in brinkmanship.<br /><br />Well, there you go, a bit of a pointless attempt at geopolitical analysis/speculation, which could very well be a load of bollocks.<br /><br />Oh, by the way, if you want a better informed analysis of the situation from a left perspective you could check out <a href="http://www.alltogether.or.kr/2005new/newslist/view.php3?mode=view&id=1811&page=1&num=17&nowpos=57&type=&sermun=&qu=&tb_name=news&board=&AdminVar=&ho_number=60">this piece</a> (in Korean) in the latest issue of <em>Ta Hamkke</em>. It also says that the new round of talks could produce results, but argues that any agreement would probably be pretty meaningless. Besides this, it includes some interesting criticism of the pacifist and pro-North (Juch'eist) sections of the left, all of whom seem to have great hopes in the talks. The author argues instead that power relations in East Asia will be decided elsewhere, principally by what happens in the Middle East.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1121947040895195532005-07-21T12:42:00.000+01:002005-07-28T00:33:57.750+01:00Korean books 2: North Korean poetry collections<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/23270188/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos19.flickr.com/23270188_207ae40785_m.jpg" width="240" height="235" alt="North Korean poetry collections" /></a><br /><br />Just a bit of eye-candy for book-lovers really. These are six poetry collections from North Korea dating from the late fifties to early sixties. I think the prints are really nice and very much of their time, although of course things haven't moved on that much in the DPRK and you can pick up books from only a few years ago that have very similar covers.<br /><br />One thing that is very noticeable about these books is that apart from the one in the top centre (건설의 나날) they all depict very rural or wild scenes and they have titles like 'The Embrace of the Earth' (대지의품). It is interesting and perhaps surprising to note that at a time of massive industrialisation the nostalgic/romantic fetishisation of nature seems to have been a major theme (ok so I haven't actually read the poems, but there's something to be said for judging a book by its cover). I say surprising because we tend to think of 'communist'/state capitalist countries as fetishising industrialisation itself. <br /><br />If you look closely at the two books to the bottom left you will see, however, that the pastoral scenes do include some form of farm machinery or tractors - clearly a hint at rural progress.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1121815775094555062005-07-19T23:28:00.000+01:002005-07-22T17:31:25.730+01:00Autonomism in KoreaReading conservative or liberal commentators on Korea, expat bloggers, experts or professional journalists, one thing that irritates is the tendency to lump together the Korean left into an amorphous mass of crazed stick-wielding students with a grudge against all things American and bolshie workers and farmers, who probably get paid too much anyway (to be 'globally competitive' that is). <br /><br />Some of these stereotypes may exist in real life (I dunno), but the Korean left is actually quite a diverse and rapidly changing place. In some ways this is nothing new as anyone who knows about the various factions of the 80s (handily denoted by easy-to-remember abbreviations like NL and PD) will know. But the biggest difference these days is that much of the left is no longer dominated by Stalinism of one form or another as it was 20 years ago. There are social democrats of various stripes, Trotskyists of different hues and, as the title of this post indicates, the current vogue for autonomism is also present on the Korean peninsula.<br /><br />I thought about making this the first of a series on the 'new' left in Korea, but I'm not sure I can actually come good on the promise of a series, so we'll see what happens. I might write some more on other aspects of the Korean left... and I might not.<br /><br />The term used for Autonomism in Korean <em>chayulchuûi</em> (자율주의) must be of fairly recent coinage, although I'm not sure whether it reached Korean via Japanese, as many other newish words have done. Another interesting term that is relevant here is <em>tajung</em> (다중/多衆), a term that I've not seen used elsewhere on the left and which is used by the Korean Autonomists to translate Hardt and Negri's concept of the 'multitude' (their alternative to the proletariat as the modern world's revolutionary agency).<br /><br />Anyway, according to people I've spoken to, the ideas of Autonomism, particularly in its recently revived form championed by Hardt and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antonio_Negri">Negri</a>, <a href="http://spip.red.m2014.net/rubrique.php3?id_rubrique=36">John Holloway</a>, the <a href="http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/tute/">Tute Bianche</a> and the <a href="http://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ej%C3%A9rcito_Zapatista_de_Liberaci%C3%B3n_Nacional">Zapatistas</a>, have gained quite a bit of popularity on Korean campuses. This is perhaps a result of the general crisis of the old Stalinist left (in Korea and around the world) and the turn by quite a bit of the old Korean left toward social democratic politics.<br /><br />Of course Korea did have a tradition of non-Stalinist revolutionary politics during the colonial period with the Korean anarchism of Sin Ch'ae-ho and others. But since liberation, anarchism or alternative forms of Marxism seem to have had little chance to make any impact on the left. Now, however, there is a Autonomist publishing house called <a href="http://galmuri.co.kr/">Galmuri</a> with the slogan 'Intellect of the Multitude' (다중지성). <br /><br />There is also an Autonomist journal called <em><a href="http://jayul.net/index.php">Chayul P'yôngnon</a></em> - 'The Autonomy Review'. The July issue (no. 13) is recently out, containing articles on subjects ranging from the debate on the left over the European constitution to the work of <a href="http://www.egs.edu/faculty/agamben.html">Giorgio Agamben</a>. Much of it is translations of the work of European Autonomists, but there is also some interesting-looking writing by Koreans, including some <a href="http://jayul.net/view_article.php?a_no=788&p_no=1">debate</a> between Autonomists and socialists like Ch'oe Il-pung.<br /><br />So there you go, if Autonomism is your thing and you can read Korean, you now know where to go. Just don't let it be said that the Korean left consists of a load of North Korea-loving America-hating <em>bbalgaengidûl</em>.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">UPDATE:</span><br />Wanted to add some extra information from one of my Korean correspondents who put this in the comment box:<br />"The [Korean] autonomists also emerged from the disorganisation of the old PD faction. Part of the National Students' Conference (전학협) and the Socialist Party (사회당), particularly the students, became autonomists or other sorts of anarchists... At the moment the PD faction is not only isolated but in an extremely severe state of disintegration, and there are a lot of areas [where the members] are no longer under their control."<br /><br />Blogger doesn't really seem to do trackbacks, so I'll manually link back to Marmot's link to me <a href="http://blog.marmot.cc/archives/2005/07/21/not-all-korean-lefties-the-same-must-read/">here</a> and Budaechigae's <a href="http://kr.blog.yahoo.com/kimcheegi/362.html">here</a>. Thanks for the links guys.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com15tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1121682206533204862005-07-18T10:00:00.000+01:002005-07-18T11:24:52.153+01:00Meanwhile in KoreaA round up of some recent coverage / bloggage of Korean matters.<br /><br /><a href="http://twokoreas.blogspot.com">Two Koreas</a> continue their excellent coverage of labour issues in South Korea with a <a href="http://twokoreas.blogspot.com/2005/07/summer-of-discontent_07.html">post</a> on what looks to be a hot summer season of disputes with the conservative FKTU union federation appearing to take an increasingly militant stance. For Korean readers the <a href="http://www.alltogether.or.kr/2005new/newslist/list.php3?tb_name=news§ion=news&ho_number=59">latest issue</a> of <em>Ta Hamkke</em> newspaper also has quite a bit on the joint struggle that the two big union confederations are planning to wage this month.<br /><br />Plans to expand the US Army base at P'yôngt'aek, to make space for troops who are to be redployed from the Yongsan base in central Seoul, seem to have a created another flashpoint and a great deal of resentment among locals. Once again Two Koreas are <a href="http://twokoreas.blogspot.com/2005/07/base-geopolitics.html">on the case</a> (this blog is in danger of becoming a list of links to Two Koreas...) providing a very good overview of the way in which this particular site of protest has become a focus for quite a number of different causes (the old-school National Liberation types of the Hanchôngnyôn students, the new anti-war movement, the farmers' movement and of course, local families themselves who will be turfed out with the expansion plans). Oh My News also had their usual excellent <a href="http://www.ohmynews.com/articleview/article_view.asp?at_code=267242">picture story</a> on last weekend's protests. And serious protests they were too - as the pictures of students charging police lines with 2-metre wooden poles show.<br /><br />On the subject of the military, BBC correspondent Charles Scanlon has finally <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/4683079.stm">got around</a> to doing something in-depth on the problems in the ROK Army that led to last month's one-man shooting spree that left eight men dead. A decent overview.<br /><br />The July English edition of <a href="http://mondediplo.com/">Le Monde Diplomatique</a> has an interesting <a href="http://mondediplo.com/2005/07/01leader">leader</a> on Korea. As the title - 'Korean Blues' - indicates the subject is the mood of pessimism in South Korea, particularly about the economy. The focus is also on Korea's role as something of a pioneer in the field of precarity and flexibilisation:<br /><br /><blockquote><strong>In no other part of the world is the precarious labour market as advanced as it is here, having been created under the pressures of globalisation.<br /><br />As the trade union officials explained: “Between the company that submits the original order and the worker who carries it out there are sometimes seven layers of subcontractors. The worker never knows exactly for whom he is working. The responsibilities of the main beneficiary of the production are diluted in a jungle of subcontractors. In the event of problems the occasional worker often has no recourse, because the trade unions for precarious workers are not recognised.”</strong><br /></blockquote><br />Good to see a European take on what's going on in Korea.<br /><br />Finally, <a href="http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200507/kt2005070119292511950.htm">news</a> from a couple of weeks ago about the establishment of a new progressive veterans' association in Korea. Traditionally the mainstream Korean Veterans' Association has been a bastion of rightwing retired generals, so the planned new group seems to be making some powerful enemies before it has even got off the ground.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1121337232420287072005-07-13T17:32:00.000+01:002005-07-14T11:33:52.426+01:00Fake solutions and real onesBefore I return to East Asian matters I wanted to write something a bit more editorial on the recent bombings in London. I don't really want to address the bombings themselves or the complex issue of the factors that lay behind them as I think this has been done better than I could ever do by some of the commentators I have linked to in previous posts (especially Gary Younge). So I thought I would look briefly at one slightly tangential aspect that interests me.<br /><br />The issue is one that <a href="http://kotaji.blogsome.com/2005/06/10/looking-out-of-the-well/">I've mentioned</a> here before: ID cards. Until the bombings the government's plans to bring in ID cards were definitely on the slippery slope, suffering from spiralling projected costs, rapidly waning public support and about to become victim to a concerted effort by the opposition parties to upset the (much weakened) Labour government's new legislative programme. It will be interesting to see how things pan out, but I suspect that it will be much harder to defeat them now and the government has already moved to use the bombings as justification for ID cards (among a number of other 'necessary measures'). Funnily enough, though, even Home Secretary Charles Clarke in his post-bombing advocacy for ID cards has admitted that they <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/politics/4663155.stm">would not have stopped</a> the attacks. He argues rather that "on balance they would help rather than hinder" the investigation of terrorist attacks like this one. This seems like an incredibly weak justification from a government minister who is supposed to be pushing for ID cards. (And it should be noted that it would have been completely irrelevant in the current case as the attackers seem to have been totally unconcerned about concealing their identities and were carrying documents from which the police have been able to identify them easily).<br /><br />However, I think in a strange way Clarke is actually being considerably more honest that much of the media rhetoric around that repeatedly uses the old cliche about how such bombings are "almost impossible to prevent in a free society like ours." The problems with such a statement are almost too many to unpack. First, it implies that technocratic solutions would be helpful and perhaps even prevent terrorism, but that we cannot implement them as we value our freedoms too much. But this government (like those before it during the 'troubles') has introduced a number of measures already that reduce our freedoms considerably and yet terrorism only seems to have become more likely. More broadly, I think the correlation between the degree of freedom granted to citizens in a particular society and its vulnerability to terrorism is a highly dubious one. In fact I think the correlation could almost be reversed: it seems highly repressive states are particularly good at breeding terrorism against themselves and there really is no way that a population can be 'locked down' to the extent that some people will not be able to commit acts of violence should they have the desire to do so. This is especially true of countries that are brutally occupying a another country - Russia and Israel come to mind straight away, but any number of other cases could be cited. Israel has opted for the ultimate technocratic measure: a massive concrete <a href="http://www.gush-shalom.org/thewall/">wall</a> with watchtowers turning the West Bank into a prison, but I doubt that even this can be entirely effective in protecting Israelis.<br /><br />Of course governments love technocratic solutions (even when they are honest enough to admit that they won't work) because they cannot commit themselves to the real solutions (and technocratic solutions have useful spin-offs too). In a rare moment of clarity, Blair said the other day that we have to tackle the 'roots of terrorism', but we all know that the reality is that he is completely incapable of doing this, tied as he is to Bush's disastrous 'war on terror'. While it goes without saying that security, prevention and (hopefully) justice are necessary when dealing with terrorism, here are a few suggestions for political rather than technocratic solutions to the problem:<br /><br /><li>Troops out of the Middle East</li><br /><li>Self determination for Iraq, Palestine, Kurdistan, Chechniya and Afghanistan</li><br /><li>No more military and financial support for regimes that oppress their own or neighbouring peoples, eg: Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia</li>Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1121123058064228772005-07-12T00:02:00.000+01:002005-07-12T10:26:10.570+01:00London at peaceSome pictures from the last few days in London.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/25293068/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos23.flickr.com/25293068_22beda735d_m.jpg" width="240" height="175" alt="Sealed Tavistock Sq" /></a><br />Police stand guard close to a sealed off Tavistock Square, where a bus was blown up last Thursday morning killing at least 13 people. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/25293067/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos21.flickr.com/25293067_57dc5ccdc7.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Peace vigil sign" /></a><br />A sign on a tree near Tavistock Square advertises a peace vigil organised by the Stop the War Coalition on Saturday evening at the peace garden of the nearby Friends Meeting House.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/25293065/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos21.flickr.com/25293065_3f34ea68cc.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Peace vigil 2" /></a><br />People pack into the peace garden for a minute's silence, after which a wide range of speakers addressed the crowd.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/25293064/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos23.flickr.com/25293064_23a7117392.jpg" width="240" height="180" alt="Peace vigil 1" /></a><br />Overhead picture of peace vigil (me perched slightly precariously on high wall).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/25293066/" title="Photo Sharing"><img src="http://photos23.flickr.com/25293066_a4548ac7aa.jpg" width="240" height="228" alt="Peace vigil 3" /></a><br />George Galloway MP addresses the crowd. He was followed by Jeremy Corbyn MP.<br /><br />Some more good writing in the papers today:<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1525706,00.html">Gary Younge</a> in the <em>Guardian</em> produces an astonishingly good piece, perhaps the best he has ever written (I only say perhaps because I doubt I've read every one of his columns). A small sample:<br /><strong><br /><blockquote>It is no mystery why those who have backed the war in Iraq would refute this connection. With each and every setback, from the lack of UN endorsement right through to the continuing strength of the insurgency, they go ever deeper into denial. Their sophistry has now mutated into a form of political autism - their ability to engage with the world around them has been severely impaired by their adherence to a flawed and fatal project.</blockquote></strong><br />In the same paper <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1525714,00.html">Karen Armstrong</a> discusses the terms we should use to describe terrorists.<br /><br />More <a href="http://comment.independent.co.uk/letters/article298215.ece">interesting letters</a> in the Independent today, where a battle of ideas is clearly raging over the factors behind the London bombings.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/attackonlondon/flash/0,16132,1524374,00.html">Images</a> from Thursday, selected by the <em>Guardian</em>'s photo editor.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1121039289905175692005-07-11T00:38:00.000+01:002005-07-11T22:39:32.283+01:00Korean Studies saved my lifePerhaps a slightly unserious title for such a serious subject, but a bit of lightheartedness doesn't go amiss at times like this. <br /><br />Let's just say that if I hadn't been at the <a href="http://www.akse.uni-kiel.de/#nextconf">AKSE</a> conference in Sheffield last Thursday, it is possible that I would have been on a bus into central London (although coming from the opposite direction to the one that was blown up) , or possibly sitting working in the SOAS library as a bomb went off on a bus less than a hundred metres away, killing at least 13 people. <br /><br />(Addendum: I've just checked the timing of the bus bombing and it was somewhat earlier than I believed, so to be honest, had I been in London I would probably have been saved from being in the vicinity of the explosion by my innate student laziness and inability to get to the library that early in the morning.)<br /><br />So strange to think of the many times that I've sat at SOAS listening to the sounds of ambulance sirens, thinking "perhaps this is it now". And then of course when it does finally happen I'm not even in the city. To make it more surreal, of all the places to choose in this city, the bombers go for two targets in the close vicinity of London University and the area of Bloomsbury where I come every day.<br /><br />My point is that we/I have been expecting this for a long time: really since Blair's involvement in the murderous invasion of Afghanistan and certainly since this government's decision to particpate in the Iraq catastrophe. This, and the strength of the anti-war movement in the UK, will undoubtedly have an effect on the nature of the response from British people toward this horrible terrorist attack. We will have to see how things work themselves out over the next few days and weeks, but there are already signs that people here have a very good understanding of the connections between people suffering in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine etc and now here in Britain.<br /><br />Fortunately, it seems that everyone I know, has escaped this attack unscathed. But I think the sadness and anger that will be most acute for those most closely affected by this tragedy will also be felt to some extent by huge numbers of people in this diverse and tolerant city.<br /><br />I hope to post a few pictures tomorrow, but in the meantime, some links on the London bombings:<br /><br />The Independent's <a href="http://comment.independent.co.uk/letters/article297573.ece">letters page</a>, Friday July 8, 2005.<br /><br />Raed Jarrar, a man who knows plenty about the innocent civilian victims in Iraq, gets to grips with the <a href="http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2005/07/brits-at-crossroads.html">real options</a> for solving the problem of terrorism.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=8262">Robert Fisk</a> writes on the 'bombing of the Bush-Blair alliance'.<br /><br /><a href="http://comment.independent.co.uk/commentators/article298048.ece">Dilip Hiro</a> in the Independent.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/terrorism/story/0,12780,1523838,00.html">Robin Cook</a> in the Guardian.<br /><br /><a href="http://theoldrevolution.net/2005/07/07/blogs-on-london-blast/">Tak</a> has provided a round up of interesting blog coverage on the bombings.<br /><br />Finally, if you can bear it, the BBC is posting a very impressive, if harrowing, <a href="http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/4670099.stm">log by a survivor</a> of the blast in the tube train that was travelling from Kings Cross to Russell Square.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1120212737617455582005-07-01T11:11:00.000+01:002005-07-01T11:12:17.623+01:00Service announcementsA couple of things: first, blogging may be very light over the next week or so as the <a href="http://www.akse.uni-kiel.de/">AKSE</a> conference has finally arrived (woohoo, a whole week of undiluted Korean studies) and I will be in Sheffield next week, where I hear the internet is almost unheard of. Who knows, perhaps <a href="http://www.hunjang.blogspot.com/">Antti</a> and I will live-blog the proceedings of the conference (but somehow I doubt it).<br /><br />Second, I've been trying out a new bloghost that uses <a href="http://wordpress.org/">wordpress</a> software. Wanted to set this up on my own webspace but I'm not enough of a techie to handle it so I'm using the handy <a href="http://www.blogsome.com">blogsome</a>. I'm not sure whether to go with this yet and I've got quite used to blogger. On the other hand wordpress is much nicer to use and has features I've been hankering after like categories (how cool is it that they get picked up straight away by <a href="http://www.technorati.com/tags/">technorati</a>). So I'd be interested to know what people think, should I cut the blogger apron strings? Comments welcome <a href="http://kotaji.blogspot.com">here</a> or <a href="http://kotaji.blogsome.com">there</a>. (Of course that last sentence only works if you're reading this post on blogger... confusing business having two blogs).<br /><br />Finally, good luck to anyone who's <a href="http://www.g8alternatives.org.uk/admin/test/g8Mambo/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1">heading up to Scotland</a> to fight the power. Sorry I can't be there.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1120085761283807272005-06-30T16:32:00.000+01:002005-06-30T17:11:41.363+01:00Korean books at SOAS 1: 'Aeguk tae yonsŏl chip'This is the first of what will probably be a series of irregular posts on some interesting old Korean books I've come across in the library at <a href="http://www.soas.ac.uk">SOAS</a>. By way of explanation, for the last few months I've been toiling away for a few hours a week in a tiny book-filled room in the library trying to get lots of old Korean books onto the computer catalogue. Inevitably a few gems have revealed themselves (at least they're gems to me anyway) and I thought it might be worth blogging them for posterity. I might even expand some of these into slightly longer articles if I feel inclined.<br /><br />My first choice is probably the most intriguing: a book of speeches published in Keijo (colonial Seoul) in 1940 called <em>Aeguk tae yŏnsŏlchip</em> (愛國大演說集), translating roughly as 'Collection of Great Patriotic Speeches'. The time and place of publication should be a hint that this is no treatise on Korean nationalism. In fact it's a collection of stirring pro-Japanese, pro-war speeches given by (apparently) prominent Korean writers. The editor is Kim Tong-hwan, who <a href="http://dic.yahoo.co.kr/search/enc/result.html?pk=11705800&p=김동환&subtype=enc">appears</a> to have later become an important figure in the North Korean literary scene - a peculiar, but perhaps not completely unique path for a 20th century Korean intellectual.<br /><br />As you can see from the picture below, much of the front cover has been ripped away, possibly before it came into the posession of SOAS. One can only guess that this was done by an angry Korean reader.<br /><br /><a title="Photo Sharing" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/20994659/"><img height="240" alt="Aeguk tae yŏnsŏlchip (1940)" src="http://photos16.flickr.com/20994659_acd3108921_m.jpg" width="165" /></a><br /><br />From a glance at the preface and contents (pictures below), some of the main themes appear to be support for the Japanese empire's 'sacred war' (聖戰) in Asia; the idea of Korea and Japan behaving as one body (called <em>naesŏn ilch'e </em>內鮮一體); and lots of the usual talk about 'our' duty to serve the country etc.<br /><br /><a title="Photo Sharing" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/20994658/"><img height="240" alt="Aeguk tae yŏnsŏlchip (preface)" src="http://photos17.flickr.com/20994658_ee94db61ee_m.jpg" width="153" /></a><br />Preface<br /><br /><a title="Photo Sharing" href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/kotaji/20994657/"><img height="186" alt="Aeguk tae yŏnsŏlchip (contents)" src="http://photos17.flickr.com/20994657_9b94f77d6d_m.jpg" width="240" /></a><br />ContentsOwenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1119223083054976312005-06-29T12:02:00.000+01:002005-06-29T12:02:19.996+01:00Pak No-ja speaking at Yonsei this weekendFor anyone living in Seoul you have a great opportunity to hear Pak No-ja (aka Vladimir Tikhonov) speak at Yonsei University this weekend. He will be giving a special talk hosted by <a href="http://www.alltogether.or.kr/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Ta Hamkke</span></a> on "Korean nationalism and the left." As the author of <a href="http://www.aladdin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?isbn=8984310638">당신들의 대한민국</a> ["Your Korea"] and most recently <a href="http://www.aladdin.co.kr/shop/wproduct.aspx?ISBN=8984311529"><span class="t1">우승優勝 열패劣敗의 신화</span></a> ["The Myth of the Survival of the Fittest"] I think we can expect his views to be very interesting and perhaps quite challenging for some leftwing activists in Korea. <a href="http://www.alltogether.or.kr/2005new/calendar/view.php?year=2005&month=07&date=02&id=20">Details</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.alltogether.or.kr/" target="new"> <img src="http://img291.echo.cx/img291/2924/paknojaflyer9gh.jpg" border="0" /></a>Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1120042708763876422005-06-29T11:47:00.000+01:002005-06-29T12:05:47.833+01:00Finished: Kim Ha-yŏng on NK economic development<span style="font-family: trebuchet ms;">Finally finished my translation of Kim Ha-yŏng's reply Han Kyu-han on the North Korean economy in the 1950s. All in all a very interesting discussion of the strategies of capital accumulation available in the context of state-led development and the political conflicts that they caused among the North Korean bureaucracy.</span><br /><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://kotaji.blogspot.com/2005/06/nk-economy-in-1950s-reply-to-han-kyu.html">part one</a><br /><a style="font-family: trebuchet ms;" href="http://kotaji.blogspot.com/2005/06/nk-economy-in-1950s-reply-to-han-kyu_24.html">part two</a>Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1119959704870109172005-06-28T11:58:00.000+01:002005-06-28T12:55:04.883+01:00Bachelors, barbecues and the new minjung<a href="http://del.icio.us">Del.icio.us</a> may be one of the best internet ideas of recent times, but it's also a fantastic way to bookmark everthing in sight and then read none of it. So, to force myself to use it more constructively, I present you with a selection from my recent <a href="http://del.icio.us/kotaji/Korea">bookmarks on Korea</a>.<br /><br />First up, yesterday's news that a <a href="http://times.hankooki.com/lpage/nation/200506/kt2005062717595811990.htm">quarter of rural bachelors</a> in South Korea are marrying women from overseas, a fairly good indicator I would have thought of the ongoing disintegration of Korean rural society. The great majority of men married Chinese women (it doesn't say what proportion were ethnic Koreans - 조선족), followed by women from Vietnam and then Filipina women.<br /><br />Next we have John Feffer's <a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/22151/">entertaining article</a> on the restaurant explosion currently taking place in P'yŏngyang (ok that's slightly hyperbolic). Apparently the recent economic reforms have led to a great number of new eateries in the North Korean capital and competition between them is beginning to heat up. A couple of UN workers have even produced a guide to 50 of the best in the city. Here's the passage that blew me away:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><blockquote>On his most recent trip this year to Pyongyang, Randall Ireson lunched at a microbrewery alongside average Pyongyangites in working attire. "The beer was excellent, a dark ale," says the DPRK Assistance Coordinator for the American Friends Service Committee. "You could make a meal of it. And they served the best cold noodles I've had."</blockquote></span>On a more serious note, this article provides a fascinating insight into the way in which the market is taking hold in North Korea and the state is losing much of its control. In my view, this doesn't look like a deliberate strategy on the part of the North Korean ruling class, like the Chinese turn of the early 80s, but rather emergency measures taken by a state that has little economy left to control. A sort of disintegrating state capitalism. Of course, as Feffer points out, those who will win from these changes (as they did in the Soviet transition) will be those sections of the nomenklatura who take advantage of their connections to become 'red capitalists' - oligarchs, robber barons, or whatever you prefer to call them.<br /><br />Finally, a plug for fellow blogger Jamie at <a href="http://twokoreas.blogspot.com">Two Koreas</a> and his <a href="http://twokoreas.blogspot.com/2005/06/new-minjung.html">excellent piece</a> on the migrant workers' movement in South Korea. He draws parallels between this recent movement and the 'minjung movement' (people's movement) that formed the basis of Korea's labour and democracy movements through the 70s and 80s. Jamie puts the case for migrant workers labouring in the underbelly of the Korean economy being the new excluded, unrecognised group in Korean society:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">Though Korean citizens now enjoy a broad range of civil, political, and labor rights and improved standards of living, I’d like to argue that the collective suffering that once defined the life of the </span><em style="font-weight: bold;">minjung</em><span style="font-weight: bold;"> today seems to shape the lives of a new group of people in contemporary South Korea. These people are the undocumented foreign workers who now toil in those jobs done by the </span><em style="font-weight: bold;">minjung</em><span style="font-weight: bold;"> of the past, in the 3-D (dirty, dangerous, and difficult) industries where, like the </span><em style="font-weight: bold;">minjung</em><span style="font-weight: bold;">, their toil seems endless and their struggles often go unrecognized.</span></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1119916284672394782005-06-27T23:09:00.000+01:002005-06-28T01:02:52.676+01:00Musical interlude: Callier at the Jazz CafeI saw Terry Callier at the Jazz Cafe last night (which by the way, is probably one of London's best venues). I've been wanting to see him live for quite a while, but wasn't really expecting any great revelations. I was wrong: in real life he has a presence. He is an absolutely mesmerizing singer. A man who can spin out his lyrics (which sometimes, admittedly, have an air of richest fromage) in a way that brings tears to the eyes of grown men (and perhaps even women too).<br /><br />The tracks from his recent album <a href="http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:z7ge4j877wav">Lookin' Out</a> were another revelation, rivalling his earlier classic tunes from the 60s and 70s. The lyrics to his cover of Dino Valenti's 'What About Me' particularly burned their way into my mind:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span><blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;">I work in your factory.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I study in your schools.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">I fill your penitentiaries.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">And your military too!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">And I feel the future trembling,</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">As the word is passed around.</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"If you stand up for what you do believe,</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Be prepared to be shot down."</span><br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oh.......oh What you gonna do about me?</span><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">Oh.......oh What you gonna do about me?</span></blockquote><span style="font-weight: bold;"></span>The Guardian has a <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/friday_review/story/0,,1327013,00.html">nice interview</a> with the man who was a computer programmer at Chicago University from 1983 until 1998, when they sacked him after finding out about his double life as a musician.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1119633649347260832005-06-24T18:15:00.000+01:002005-06-29T11:47:11.126+01:00NK economy in the 1950s: a reply to Han Kyu-han, part twoHere is the second part of Kim Ha-yông's reply to Han Kyu-han on the North Korean economy in the 1950s.<br /><br /><a href="http://kotaji.blogspot.com/2005/06/nk-economy-in-1950s-reply-to-han-kyu.html">part one</a><br /><br />Contrary to what Han Kyu-han writes, it is difficult to view the August 1956 so-called ‘Factional Incident’ as something that arose as a result of a “severe crisis of capital accumulation.”<br /><p class="MsoNormal"> The clash over the correct line for economic development that reached its apex at the all-members meeting of the party central committee in August 1956 had already begun in 1953-1954, at the time when the North Korean economy was in its [earliest stages of revival].<br /><br />The conflict between different economic lines that was revealed in the clash between Kim Il-song and the Soviet/Yenan factions did not [particularly] reflect the situation in North Korea but was actually symptomatic of the limitations of the Stalinist economic model which were revealed in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe.<br /><br />When Stalin died in 1953, the Soviet bureaucracy rushed into limited reforms aimed at solving the problems that had accumulated during Stalin’s rule. To borrow Tony Cliff’s expression, the Soviet bureaucracy felt the need to move from “the stage of primitive accumulation to mature state capitalism.”<br /><br />To raise the productivity of the Soviet economy, “while they were focusing capital investment into industry that was already to a certain extent developed, they could not any longer refuse to use a chunk of the remaining resources to raise the standard of living in the Soviet Union.”<br /><br />However, the situation in North Korea was different. To prepare a new industrial basis, all resources had to be focused on this. Even if it meant starving the peasants and squeezing the workers, it had to be done. There was no leeway for taking into account the living standards of the people.<br /><br />The person who advocated this point of view was Kim Il-song himself and those that took the side of the post-Stalin Soviet bureaucracy were the Soviet and Yenan factions.<br /><br />Kim Il-song first began to talk about Juche [<span lang="KO" style="font-family:Batang;">주체</span>] in 1955, reflecting the fact that the economic interests of the Soviet Union and North Korea had diverged from one another.<br /><br />Once Kim Il-song had emerged victorious from the central committee meeting of August 1956, he completely scrapped the five-year plan, which had partially reflected the call for an expansion of investment in the consumer sector. The heavy-industry-first line became all the more clear.<br /><br />According the ordinance passed by the Supreme People’s Assembly [<span lang="KO" style="font-family:Batang;">최고인민회의</span>] for the first five-year plan, of the total sum to be invested in industry, 83 percent would go to heavy industry!<br /><br />The North Korean bureaucracy was desperate to keep workers’ wages low while speeding up the rate of work. The bureaucracy organised mass meetings of employees and rallies of ‘zealots’ in every factory and enterprise, where workers resolved that they would complete the five-year plan a year and a half or more early.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">In any case, the high production targets (set in the state plan) were gradually inflated by the party’s policy of expansion of production and the resolutions of workers to increase production.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The North Korean bureaucracy made good use of the deeply held desire for economic reconstruction among a people who had experienced colonialism and war and who were afraid of renewed war with American imperialism. The drive for growth also gave a considerable number of people the opportunity to improve their social status. The ‘Heroes of Labour’ [<span lang="KO" style="font-family:Batang;">노력영웅</span>] who came to prominence in the drive to increase production became factory managers and members of the Supreme People’s Assembly.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">On the other hand, the majority of workers could not climb the ladder of social mobility and had to endure the appalling conditions that were the other side of economic growth.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">Although strict labour regulations were enforced, workers did not have the right to organise themselves to defend their conditions. The Labour Federations [<span lang="KO" style="font-family:Batang;">직업동맹</span>] were organisations of the state that enforced “the duty of competition” rather than collective contracts.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">However, it was difficult to ensure economic development beyond a certain level by forcing workers to accept low living standards and tiring work. To raise the productivity of labour, it was necessary to offer workers better consumer goods and holiday time.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">The North Korean bureaucrats could not avoid encountering, somewhat later, the same problems that the Soviet bureaucracy had come up against after the death of Stalin. In 1966-67 Pak Kŭm-ch’ŏl, Yi Hyo-sun and others pointed out the problems of the extensive [?] growth model and argued for the need to find a way of balancing economic growth and controlling the rate of growth.</p> <p class="MsoNormal">This was the period when the seven-year plan failed to achieve its target within the allotted time and the three-year extension started to be used as a countermeasure. They [the critics] insisted that defence spending should be reduced so that attention could be paid to the quality of goods produced rather than just economic output.</p> <p class="MsoNormal"><!--[if !supportEmptyParas]--> <o:p></o:p></p> <span style=";font-family:trebuchet ms;font-size:100%;" >The year 1966 [1967?] saw another round of purges within the North Korean bureaucracy [the so-called Kapsan Faction Purge, in which KWP deputy chairman Pak Kŭm-ch’ŏl was removed]. Unlike the purges of 1956, this time they did originate in a conflict among the bureaucracy over how to deal with the economic crisis and this reflected the fact that the limitations of Kim Il-song’s ‘more Stalinist than Stalin’ economic model were revealing themselves.</span>Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1119535511925338712005-06-23T14:27:00.000+01:002005-06-24T09:45:55.190+01:00From democracy in Korea to democracy in EgyptSome on the Korean left have taken the struggle for democracy in Egypt to heart. From this week's <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6748"><span style="font-style: italic;">Socialist Worker</span></a>:<br /><h4></h4> <blockquote style="font-weight: bold;"> <h4>Solidarity with Egypt from South Koreans</h4> <p>On 9 June a diverse group of anti-war and human rights activists gathered in front of the Egytian embassy in Seoul, South Korea to demonstrate against Egyptian dictator Hosni Mubarak.</p> <p>People chanted “Down with Mubarak”, “Kifaya!” and “Victory to the Egyptian people’s struggle for democracy”.</p> <p>It might seem that South Korea is far away from Egypt and that no one here would be interested in what is going on there. This is far from the truth.</p> <p>When South Koreans hear about Egypt’s Kifaya movement and Mubarak’s desperate attempts to hang on to power, we immediately make a connection to our former military rulers.</p> <p>We too have seen rulers pushing political “reforms” that are nothing more than shams to maintain control.</p> <p>Our military rulers also resorted to brutal violence when challenged. A prime example is the Kwangju Massacre in 1980, where citizens of Kwangju city were shot to death by the army.</p> <p>Rulers all over the world are learning from each other about how to control the people. This is why it is so important that people struggling for democracy build strong international solidarity and also learn from each other.</p> <p>On behalf of the South Korean anti-war and human rights activists I hope for a great victory for the Egyptian working people fighting for democracy and real change.</p> <p><em><strong>CJ Park, </strong>All Together, South Korea</em></p> </blockquote> <p><em></em></p> Meanwhile, <a href="http://raedinthemiddle.blogspot.com/2005/06/rice-60-years-of-us-intervention-in.html">Raed reports</a> on Condi's recent speech in Egypt where she said that the US would now be seeking democracy in the Middle East rather than just stability as it had done in the past. And who was she saying this to? Around "700 <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5086098,00.html">invited government officials</a> and academics". Would these be the same government officials who have been busy <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6596">brutally repressing</a> the Kifaya democracy movement in Egypt? Is this the same government that the Bush administration gives <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/0412/p07s01-wome.html">more than a billion dollars</a> a year in military aid and praises for its limited democratic reforms that everyone else believes are designed to smooth the <a href="http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/article.php4?article_id=6694">path of succession</a> for Hosni Mubarak's son? (Ring any bells NK watchers?)<br /><br />The battle lines are clearly drawn between people who want real democracy, whether they are in Korea or Egypt, and the Bush administration, which wants fake democracies that it can easily keep under control:<br /><span style="font-size:100%;"></span><blockquote style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-size:100%;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/worldlatest/story/0,1280,-5086098,00.html">Abdel</a> Halim Kandil, a member of the opposition group Kifaya, said his organization was boycotting Rice's speech and visit because reformers in Egypt don't want to seek the help of a "big dictator'' against a "small dictator.''<br /><br /></span><span style="font-size:100%;">"We believe the U.S. administration is not making a serious effort to support reformers,'' he said.</span></blockquote><span style="font-size:100%;"> </span>Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1119441030160263362005-06-22T12:43:00.000+01:002005-06-22T12:51:22.993+01:00New Japanese outrage against KoreaThis week's <a href="http://www.private-eye.co.uk/"><span style="font-style: italic;">Private Eye</span></a> (1135) has this clipping from the <span style="font-style: italic;">Yomiuri Shinbun</span>:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;"><blockquote>Newsweek screwed up. Nearly everyone admits that, including the magazine's editors, who retracted an inadequately sourced report that U.S. inerrogators had flushed a Korean down the toilet at Guantanamo Bay.</blockquote></span>I expect imminent outrage from the Korean netizen community, possibly flag burnings.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-9646187.post-1119228020564429882005-06-21T00:38:00.000+01:002005-06-21T00:58:29.013+01:00Flexibilisation: the biggest issue for the Korean leftFor the last few months I've managed to studiously avoid what is almost certainly the major issue of the moment for the South Korean left and the labour movement: the awkward-to-translate problem of 'non-regular' workers (비정규노동자). This is probably because I'm quite lazy and I didn't want to do the research and write something proper about the subject. On the other hand it's not an issue that can be ignored, particularly as the National Assembly is in the process of passing a bill which will worsen conditions for non-regular workers.<br /><br />Fortunately, Jamie at <a href="http://twokoreas.blogspot.com/">Two Koreas</a> has come to the rescue with an <a href="http://twokoreas.blogspot.com/2005/05/against-flexibilization.html">excellent article</a> on the struggle against 'flexibilisation' (a better translation methinks) in Korea. A taster:<br /><span style="font-weight: bold;" class="fullpost"><blockquote>The use of casual and contract workers was greatly expanded after the 1997 monetary crisis when the then President Kim Young-Sam administration passed a series of new labor laws, one of which allowed for companies in specific sectors to hire greater numbers of temporary and contract workers, including during times of labor action, causing an almost overnight rise in the number of temporary staffing agencies.<br /><br />The KCTU claims that with the introduction of these temporary agencies, exploitation of temporary workers and job insecurity greatly increased. They also claim that under the guise of sub-contracting workers, practices of illegally hiring and laying-off of temporary workers have also become prevalent. [6]<br /><br />Since the 1997 crisis, employer’s groups have been advocating greater flexibility in using irregular workers. According to the Korea Herald, the current labor minister Kim Dae-Hwan has also promoted further labor market reforms, and has pushed for the implementation of the recent government-initiated bills. </blockquote></span>For more intrepid readers, here are some resources in Korean on this subject:<br /><ul> <li>The Democratic Labour Party's <a href="http://www.kdlp.org/sitegroup.php?main_act=sitegroup&grp_code=biprog">special site</a> on non-regular workers.</li> <li>The KCTU <a href="http://www.nodong.org/main/news_view.html?serial=326">announces today</a> that it and its fellow trade union federation (FKTU) are launching an all-out struggle for the rights of non-regular workers. There's also quite a bit on the subject in English in the <a href="http://www.kctu.org/maybbs/view.php?db=kctuinfo2&code=eng_docu&n=35">April edition</a> of the KCTU's English newsletter.</li> <li><span style="font-style: italic;">Ta Hamkke </span>newspaper has been covering the subject very regularly, including on the <a href="http://alltogether.or.kr/2005new/newslist/view.php3?mode=view&id=1639&amp;page=&num=&nowpos=&type=&sermun=&qu=&tb_name=news&board=&amp;AdminVar=&ho_number=57">front page</a> of their most recent edition.<br /> </li> </ul> This struggle is really about the most basic level of the confrontation between capital and labour. The question being posed is: can Korean capital take a greater share of surplus value by forcing down wages and conditions? As is the case all over the world, one of the favourite tools in the neo-liberal box for this purpose is the casualisation or flexibilisation of labour. If pushed through successfully, it also has the added bonus of weakening labour organisation, thus providing further opportunities for capital to squeeze more out of workers for less compensation with less resistance.<br /><br />In fact, it is probably not an exaggeration to say that the future of the Korean left and the labour movement as a whole may rest upon the struggle to organise non-regular workers and defend their rights. Capitalism doesn't stand still - it's a constantly evolving organism and thus the working class itself and the focus of its struggles is also changing. If organisations like the KCTU and the Democratic Labour Party do not respond to these changes, the danger is that their base could narrow drastically and they could find themselves bureaucratised, corrupted or just irrelevant (there are disturbing signs of this already). As I wrote a <a href="http://kotaji.blogspot.com/2004/12/rise-of-koreas-democratic-labour-party.html">while ago</a>, this is one of the warnings that comes from the fate of the Brazilian <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Partido_dos_Trabalhadores">Partido dos Trabalhadores</a> (PT) and its near complete capitulation to neo-liberalism.Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06582121080189037705noreply@blogger.com2