South Korea’s newly elected president Moon Jae-in’s inauguration normally would have taken weeks, but he was sworn-in within hours of his victory announcement. These are turbulent times. South Korea has the Asia-Pacific’s worst income inequality, rising youth unemployment and anaemic growth. Chronic tensions with the North are escalating again. A South Korean newspaper editorial warned, “A military clash on the Korean Peninsula would have disastrous consequences… The brinkmanship of the US and North Korea, which appear to be engaged in a battle of nerves, is tantamount to taking hostage the entire populations of North and South Korea. ”
However, Moon portrays that it is his destiny to bring the two Koreas closer after seven decades of partition. He told the Time magazine, “The North and South were one people sharing one language and one culture for about 5, 000 years… Ultimately, we should reunite. ” He obviously wants to engage with the North Korean regime. But Moon’s motives are to revive a decaying capitalist economy. “Economic integration will not only benefit the North but also will give the South a new growth engine,” he said.
In the 1990’s, Nawaz Sharif used to cite South Korea and the other so-called Asian Tigers as role models for Pakistan. However, after the crash of 1997, these economic miracles plummeted, and South Korea is striving to recover. In the aftermath of the Second World War, it was under the jackboots of General Douglas MacArthur, heading the US eastern command that the tasks of bourgeois revolution were forcibly pushed top-down in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and other split-off Eastern statelets.
The Korean masses were the victims of the 1945 Yalta agreement between the US President Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Churchill and Joseph Stalin who headed the USSR. They decided to partition the Korean peninsula in the post-war collaboration between Stalinism and Imperialists. The Korean War started in June 1950, with the rapid advance of North Korean troops to the south. The war resulted in the loss of three million Korean lives. During the war and after the 1953 armistice, South’s US puppet regime carried out a brutal repression internally with over 100, 000 executions and assassinations of the left activists and workers. Due to the majority of the economy under state control, rapid industrialisation, state-controlled banking sector, modernised infrastructure and military expenses financed by the US, South Korea came closer to the industrialised countries between 1960 and 1980.
However, in the first few decades, the South Koreans had to suffer the vicious US-backed dictatorships. One of the mechanisms of the Korean ‘miracle’ was the incessant exploitation of workers. But since 1985 the Americans gradually modified their strategy by imposing controlled and moneyed democracies as their puppet military dictators were becoming more expensive and often turned roguish. Above all the repressive dictatorships frequently provoked mass revolts threatening the whole system.
Inspite of the democratic façade introduced in South Korea in 1987, the movements from below have been erupting intermittently. The general strike of 26 December 1996, the first since 1948 had shutdown the country. After 24 days of the strike, workers got their main demands accepted, and the ruling class had to beat a retreat. But with the Asian crash of 1997 the elite started to take its revenge by dismantling the benefits the toilers had won.
Recently, the country has been rocked by new scandals of the ruling politicians and corporate bosses. More than a million marched in Seoul in November last year against the crony capitalist regime of President Park Geun-hye. Due to the tremendous pressure of the mass revolt, the National Assembly impeached Park in December 2016. In April this year, she was arrested. Similarly, Lee Jae-yong, the boss of Samsung, South Korea’s largest company is imprisoned for bribing Ms Park’s companies in return for restructuring clearances. This imperialist grafted ‘miracle’ capitalism seems to be unravelling. President Moon faces an immense crisis on the domestic front and in relations with North Korea, Japan and China with Trump’s pressure being another millstone around his neck.
However, Moon apparently is unworried about Trump’s bluster. But with the underlying crisis exacerbating situation can spiral out of control. Military strikes by the US seem unlikely. China has its strategic designs in the region. A collapse of the Kim regime will deluge China with a massive influx of refugees. There are 28,500 US troops stationed in South Korea, and reunification will bring them on China’s doorstep. Hence Kim is confident that China would never force his downfall.
In the womb of the Korean societies, there is a longing for an end to this cruel partition. Moon tried to appeal these reunification desires during the election campaign. “My mother is the only one (of her family) who fled to the South… (She) is 90 years old. Her younger sister is still in the North alive. My mother’s last wish is to see her again. ”An American journalist commented, “It’s a wish that resonates with countless ordinary Koreans — on both sides of the battle lines.” But the ruling bourgeois in the south and the bureaucratic regime in the north promote the so-called ‘existential dangers’; thrive on the hostile atmosphere and exaggerating military threats for the perpetuation of their rulerships. It’s only the proletariat and the youth that can unite Korea by a revolutionary overthrow the systems and states inciting divisions, hatreds and fears.
The writer is the editor of Asian Marxist Review and International Secretary of Pakistan Trade Union Defence Campaign. He can be reached at [email protected]