05.02.1998

Facing the fire of Korean unification

How has a divided Korea impacted upon the working class? Lee Min Young - a former partisan of Cliffism - looks at the relationship between the class struggle and unification

At the start of 1997, two months of general strikes in South Korea demonstrated clearly that capitalism, so long as it exists, cannot avoid being challenged by workers’ struggle, and that the working class cannot help but struggle. This simple and clear truth once again inspired the world’s working class and made the blood of the ruling classes everywhere run cold.

South Korea has often been cited as a model of rapid economic growth, nicknamed the ‘little tiger’. Over recent years it has also been in the spotlight because of the struggle for democracy against the old repressive regime. However, much of what has been said is totally superficial. Thorough and precise Marxist analysis is required.

First of all, it is essential to understand the situation of the Korean peninsula as a whole: ie, the relationship between South Korea and North Korea. The division of the peninsula into two hostile states determines the political situation and conditions both north and south: the decisive question being unification.

This relates directly to the question of revolutionary strategy. In no time at all, unification will become a practical question of the day. Having a correct strategic grasp of the tasks in the Korean peninsula is therefore an essential precondition for the development of a socialist movement in the south.

Such matters are the concern of socialists the world over. Obviously the identification of socialism and communism as the expression of the proletariat’s political will is an international phenomenon, transcending national borders.

To understand the politics of the Korean peninsula, we must first appreciate the significance of its division into two separate states over the last half-century. The ‘dual’ liberation from Japan in 1945 marked the end of the Yi feudal dynasty. However, the historic task of building a bourgeois state, the bourgeois democratic republic, was determined by the flow of world history, the so-called Cold War. Instead of a unified state, two incomplete bourgeois states were born. North Korea has been called a workers’ state, but this is a myth. Following scientific socialism, I argue that it has nothing at all to do with workers’ power. The ruling system in the north is designed to exploit the proletariat.

On the one hand the former Soviet Union and its eastern European state capitalist allies backed the Democratic People’s Republic of Cho-Sun (North Korea), while on the other hand the Republic of (South) Korea was supported by US imperialism and the other western capitalist states. Naturally both north and south claim in their constitutions to be the only legitimate government of the whole peninsula.

The DPR of Cho-Sun identified the South Korean government as a colony of US imperialism and regarded itself as a “democracy base”, a springboard for the southern revolution. Here was its founding identity - the application of the ‘national liberation people’s democracy revolution’ to the Korean peninsula. The first government of the Republic of Korea, in its turn, argued that the North Korean government was a puppet regime of the Soviet Union, and declared the whole peninsula to be its own territory.

With this situation of ‘dual power’ - each claiming the other’s territory - the seeds of the Korean War (1950-53) had already been sown from the very beginnings of the two states. The formal end of the conflict changed nothing. The war was not over: merely interrupted.

Hence, the boundary between north and south was not a border dividing two sovereign nations, but the ceasefire line of dual power in one nation, one territory. This meant the war was continuing by other means, and was likely to break out again so long as dual power remained. So the ceasefire line was not simply a dividing line, but shows clearly the irreconcilable antagonism between North and South Korea.

In the situation of dual power, each state must prove the superiority of its system. Having passed through war, their conflict assumed an alternative form. Each strove to propagate and prove its legitimacy to govern the whole peninsula through a concerted drive for the accumulation of capital - ie, exploitation of living labour.

This was life or death for both powers. They put all their energy into industrialisation and economic development. The political tension caused by military confrontation provided excellent conditions in which to make profit and to exploit, particularly through the low pay policy in the south. Vicious state repression was intensified. It was easy to smash any movement against the system. South Korea achieved sustained economic growth at a rate probably unparalleled in the world.

This capital accumulation, led by the state, fully integrated South Korea into the world economy. At the same time it meant the most severe exploitation of the working class of South Korea, as well as the brutal suppression of democracy. The proletariat thus cannot help but challenge the system. During the course of the 1970s South Korean capitalism slowly began, bit by bit, to come up against the fundamental hostile relationship between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. If the basic contradiction of capitalism began to surface in the 1970s, by the 1980s it was unmistakable.

In May 1980 a popular uprising against the regime in the southern city of Kwangju resulted in a bloody massacre. The revolt was a milestone in the history of South Korea. It exposed the system’s true nature, and turned out to be a catalyst for the massive, violent democratic struggle of 1987. After Kwangju, political groups began to appear. The struggle of Kwangju was heroic, but its ending was indeed a horrific tragedy. It cried out for a conscious revolutionary movement based on scientific socialism.

There were a variety of schools: but mainly ‘official communist’ and Kim il-Sungist (after the founder of North Korea, who died in 1995). There was nevertheless a consensus in their strategies: they were all based on carrying out a revolution in South Korea as a political unit.

Firstly the South Korean revolution would be made by the working class and people of South Korea. Then, after victory, it would be united with the ‘democracy base’, North Korea - which had already been liberated from US imperialism. In the process, a unified socialist state, or a federal socialist state would be built. In essence this strategy considered North Korea a workers’ state and a supporting or allied force. The North Korean state was certainly not regarded as an enemy, not something which must be smashed.

Based on this view of the relationship between the South Korean revolution and North Korea, two trends began to appear in the mid-1980s.

Firstly, the National Liberation trend in the South Korean student and labour movement. It accepted North Korea and its ideology at face value. Thus the South Korean revolution must be led by North Korea’s Cho Sun Ro Dong Dang (Workers’ Party). This would be so even if a workers’ party existed in South Korea. In fact this trend thought a workers’ party of South Korea was superfluous.

The other trend - called People’s Democracy or National Democracy - was different because it emphasised the South Korean revolution rather than ‘national liberation’: ie, it put South Korea’s working class struggle against the bourgeoisie above the national struggle or the anti-imperialist struggle. Hence, it thought the decisive role in the revolution would be played by a workers’ party. So the major task was to build a separate workers’ party of South Korea.

Although differing in approach and practice, both trends shared a common premise - the South Korean revolution. The difference lay in the fact that one tended to depend on North Korea completely (it was actually directed by North Korea), while the other looked to the Soviet Union for inspiration and authority. But the Soviet Union was the womb of the North Korean regime. It was the Soviet Union which had made North Korea. Hence differences over the South Korean revolution were not in fact fundamental.

Meanwhile, at the time when discussion of strategic questions among socialists was beginning, a great mass movement swept South Korea in June 1987. This was the culmination of the democratic struggle begun in the 1970s. Until then, the South Korean ruling system had not allowed even the minimum of democracy or political freedom: eg, freedom of assembly and association, speech and press. With North Korea dubbed the cause of all evil, anti-democratic laws completely prohibited ‘normal’ political activity.

The Great Struggle produced a partial victory over the system, in the sense that it resulted in an easing of the dictatorship. It was a fake democracy, but the political space won threw up new opportunities.

The Great Strike of July, August and September followed the democratic struggle of June. The proletariat came to the forefront of history. Despite suffering unbelievable exploitation and having been hidden by the democratic struggle for political freedom, the proletariat of South Korea clearly demonstrated its existence as a class.

Unexpected, unpredicted by anyone or by any political trend, the spontaneous general strike demonstrated the latent power of the working class - ultimately, the only force capable of eliminating the exploitation and oppression endemic in capitalism.

Just as South Korea was going through this turning point, an epochal change of world history began. Gorbachev’s perestroika policy, followed by the collapse of eastern European ‘communist’ power, the Tienanmen revolt in China, the unification of East and West Germany, etc - these great events changed the world. While ‘communist’ power in most eastern European states was overturned by popular revolt, the pro-democracy demonstrations centring on Tienanmen Square were put down by the ‘communist’ power of China. The former Soviet Union was dismantled. ‘Communist’ power was exposed as a system of exploitation of the proletariat, not a system of self-liberation of the proletariat.

The essential hypocrisy of these states stood revealed. For the proletariat it was an invaluable moment in freeing itself from a fraudulent ideology, thus making possible genuine, meaningful international solidarity. That is the true meaning of those events.

The changes of 1989-91 ended the so-called ‘confrontation between camps’ - state capitalism, centred on the former Soviet Union; and western capitalism, centred on the US. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the most important task for socialists was to grasp the new situation - ie, the remade conditions faced by the movement of the world proletariat. What was not needed was the absurd, stupid view that ‘socialism imploded’, nor the tendency to flippantly dismiss these events, as did the SWP in Britain.

The new world order impacted particularly sharply on the Korean peninsula, one of the symbols of the old world order. A new analysis of the dual power relationship in Korea was needed. For South Korean political groups active in the space created by the 1987 democracy struggle, the new world order came as a complete shock. They had no effective response to the ideological onslaught of the capitalists. One by one they fell dumb, and began to disintegrate.

The revolutionary movement needed to prepare a precise analysis of the new situation in order to construct a long-term strategy. That demanded self-criticism and self-rectification. But South Korea’s socialists had the greatest of difficulty in grasping the significance of what had happened.

In terms of ideology they could not but be disarmed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Their whole politics was based on a South Korean revolution with the Soviet Union and North Korea acting as allies. Their future was the Soviet Union.

Without correctly considering the relationship with North Korea, any revolutionary strategy for South Korea makes no sense. The collapse of the Soviet Union meant that the umbilical cord was cut. Its collapse presaged the collapse of North Korea. That the collapse of North Korea was now only a matter of time was understood intuitively. Hence, the very foundation of their strategy for the South Korean revolution was seen to have fallen away under them.

The National Liberation group still functions. But its political line and activity remains very harmful. Because it sees North Korea as the only legitimate power in the peninsula, it concentrates its energies on the unification movement, which corresponds to North Korea’s plan for federal unification. Its fundamental problem however is that the working class struggle of South Korea is treated with contempt.

Its interventions in every struggle since the Great Strike of 1987 have been agitation and propaganda supporting North Korea’s unification plan. This provided the perfect excuse for the ruling class of South Korea to undermine the workers’ struggle in terms of ideology. Instead of helping to develop the workers’ movement, it has therefore been a negative influence. No wonder it is now in danger of extinction. Its demonstrations, mainly of students, have become isolated from the masses, reflecting the general view that the North Korean regime is doomed. What it does simply becomes the object of criticism and recrimination. The only reason it has continued to be active, while its rivals, Peoples Democracy and National Democracy, have withered, is that North Korea, for the moment, still hangs on. But the collapse of North Korea is now a kind of established fact, admitted by almost everyone. Hence the unification movement in support of North Korea is, ultimately, simply reactionary.

The key point I want to emphasise in summarising the political movement of South Korea is the limitations of its theory. In the situation of dual power, the South Korean revolution was a non-starter, as history has proved. The 50-year dual power shows that a nation state in the Korean peninsula cannot help being ‘one’. In 1991, by joining the United Nations simultaneously, North and South Korea were accepted as two sovereign states. In international law, at any rate, they relate to each other as separate states, just like the relationship between the UK and France.

But has the ceasefire line between north and south turned into a border dividing two sovereign states? Has each recognised the other as a separate sovereign state? Clearly not. Each of the two powers, in its constitution, still declares the whole peninsula to be its own territory. Each still denies the other’s existence, and thus still claims to be the only legitimate power in the peninsula. This situation can be interpreted in no other way than dual power. So, even in the new, changed world order, the dual power situation continues - thus far.

We do not think dual power will last long. Following the defection of the high ranking North Korean Workers’ Party official, Hwang Jang-yop - founder of the juche ideology - several North Korean diplomats have defected. The exodus of ordinary North Korean people has also been continuing. North Korea is beset by severe starvation and economic dislocation. The collapse of North Korea, especially since the death of Kim il-Sung, is only a matter of time.

What will this mean? Could the collapse of the Kim Jung-il regime see a new substitute power appear in the north? This seems very unlikely.

Firstly, North Korean people would be faced with the immediate problem of obtaining food merely to survive. Secondly, North Korean workers have been deprived of the chance of realising themselves as a class by the imposition of the juche ideology, which was supposed to be a direct reflection of proletarian class consciousness. Consequently, after the ending of juche power (Kim Jung-il power) they will be able to begin to realise their consciousness, their historical mission as the proletariat. I cannot imagine they would want another state separate from the south.

The collapse of East German ‘communist’ power did not give rise to a separate state, but led directly to unification with West Germany. So the collapse of Kim Jung-il power will in all likelihood result in immediate unification - ie, the annulment of dual power. From the incomplete republics of South and North Korea will come the complete republic of the Korean peninsula.

While North Korea shows all the signs of collapse, in South Korea the petty bourgeoisie has been alienated by the process of capitalist development, and dreams of turning the wheel of history backwards, by campaigning for unification in support of North Korea’s line. As to the bourgeoisie of South Korea, it is already focusing on the north as a market, weighing up the profits obtainable in a unified Korea. Meanwhile though, the new proletariat sired by South Korean capitalism has begun to be aware of itself as a power.

The first duty of the Marxists of South Korea must be to unite the ranks of the working class of South Korea. This is more important than any other task and has already been begun by the proletariat themselves - its class struggle has been going on since 1987.

With the changed situation, our attitude towards unification has to be clarified once and for all. The socialist movement of South Korea must identify Kim Jung-il power, which is using feudal methods to impose the worst possible conditions on the North Korean working class, as its implacable enemy. We must not fall in behind the South Korean petty bourgeois unification movement, which supports Kim Jung-il power in the North. It is not the bourgeoisie of South Korea that the proletariat should fight on this issue, but the Kim Jung-il power of North Korea and its follower, the petty bourgeoisie of South Korea.

“The communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement,” said Marx and Engels in the Communist Manifesto. The working class movement of South Korea must begin solidarity work with the North Korean working class, criticising the Kim Jung-il regime and urging the working class of North Korea to fight against it. Because of the dual power situation, the working class movement of South Korea has been brutally oppressed. The opportunity to fully realise class consciousness has been blocked by division. Naturally, this has also squeezed the political space open to the working class. It goes without saying that this applies to the socialist movement too. In addition the North Korean working class, which has until now been infused with juche as proletarian ideology, could, with the collapse of Kim Jung-il power, begin to realise its self-consciousness as a class.

The working class as a whole has been victim of division. Due to their respective ruling ideologies, workers of North and South Korea have come to regard each other with hostility, instead of recognising each other as parts which must be united. Hence, the collapse of Kim Jung-il power and the process of re-unification of the Korean peninsula will be a kind of historical purgatory through which the working class will have to pass in order to realise itself.

How soon will the working class come to view itself as a detachment of the international proletariat, not as a constituent part of a nation? This will depend on the South Korean working class, which already in 1987 woke from its long sleep. The key is the political independence of the working class of South Korea. The working class movement must separate itself from the petty bourgeoisie’s campaign and movement for unification in support of North Korea’s line. This is the precondition for consolidating its own independent class power and escaping from petty bourgeois hegemony in the so-called progressive movement of South Korea.

Can the working class of South Korea achieve political independence and make itself into an independent class force, before unification of the Korean peninsula? If unification comes very soon, will it be ready to receive the working class of North Korea as brothers and sisters, not as atomised citizens of bourgeois society, and prepare itself as a class political force looking to the future alongside the working class of the world?

Perhaps Marx gives us an answer here: “Mankind thus inevitably sets itself only such tasks as it is able to solve, since closer examination will always show that the problem itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution are already present, or at least in the course of formation” (K Marx Preface to A contribution to the critique of political economy).