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A talk by Alan MacSimoin to the WSM Dublin
branch in September 1991
The Korean anarchist Movement
In the 2,000 years of Korean history there
arose movements fighting for peasants rights
and for national independence. Within these
movements there were tendencies that may be
seen as forerunners of modern anarchism, in
the same way as we might view the Diggers in
the English revolution.
In 1894 Japan invaded, under the pretext of
protecting Korea from China. The struggle
for national independance became central to
all radical political activity.
The modern anarchist movement in Korea began
to take form among the exiles who fled to
China after the 1919 independence struggle,
and students & workers who went to Japan.
This struggle, the 3.1 Movement within which
anarchists were prominent, involved 2
million people; 1,500 demonstrations were
held; 7,500 were killed; 16,000 wounded and
more than 700 homes and 47 churches
destroyed.
In the period up to the close of World War
II the Korean Anarchist Federation has
identified three stages.
The first stage covered the first half of
the 1920s and is described by the KAF as the
gestation period.
In the early years of this century as the
Japanese ruling class started their
imperialist drive into other Asian countries
they also ruthlessly cracked down on any
opposition at home. Japanese anarchists
were to the forefront in anti-imperialist
agitation. In 1910 Kotoku Shusui, a leading
Japanese anarchist, was executed for
treason. The Commoners Newspaper was
rallying opposition to the Russia-Japan war
and to the occupation of Korea. With the
Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the
rice riot of 1918 and the mass uprising in
Korea in 1919, the Japanese ruling class was
worried.
Following the bloody suppression of the 3.1
Movement and the rise in the level of class
struggle in Japan itself, the Japanese
bosses blamed anarchists and Koreans for the
Tokyo earthquake of 1923. More than 6,000
Korean workers in Japan were hunted down
with clubs and bamboo spears. All known
Japanese and Korean anarchists were
arrested. Park Yeol and his wife Kaneko
Fumiko, Korean anarchists, veterans of the
independence struggle and organisers of the
Tokyo "Black Workers Society", were
sentenced to death. Many others were jailed.
The charge of causing an earthquake may have
been a bit embarrassing to sections of the
ruling class so the sentences were commuted
to life in prison. Kaneko died in jail and
Park was not released until the end of WWll.
Many of the Koreans jailed in what became
known as "the High Treason case" went on to
become leading activists in the anarchist
movement in their own country.
The Korean Anarchist Federation in China was
formed in April 1924. and published the
"Korean Revolution Manifesto". It was
militantly anti-imperialist "we declare that
the burglar politics of Japan is the enemy
for our nation's existence and that it is
our proper right to overthrow the
imperialist Japan by a revolutionary means".
It went on to stress the to do more than
merely exchange rulers, pointing out the
difference between a political revolution
and a social revolution. It had no doubts
about the role of anarchists, it laid
emphasis on the leading role of the
anarchists in a revolutionary situation. The
Federation began to produce papers like
Recapture and Justice Bulletin.
By 1928 the spread of libertarian politics
allowed the Korean Anarchists to organise
the Eastern Anarchist Federation with
comrades from China, Vietnam, Taiwan and
Japan - which published a bulletin, Dong-
Bang (The East). The "Manifesto" was adopted
by the Eastern Federation as its formal
programme.
The second stage which covered the years
1925-30 was dominated by the organisation of
the movement. Armed with the theory of
anarchist revolution set out in the
"Manifesto" and practical experiences drawn
from the 3.1 movement, the workers
organisations in Japan and "the High Treason
case" groups were organised in Seoul, Taegu,
Pyongyang and other areas. By November 1929
there had been a huge growth and the Korean
Anarchist Communist Federation was formed as
a national organisation. As part of the anti
Japanese resistance it was a totally
underground body. This should not lead
anyone into thinking that it was small or
lacking in widespread support.
To give some idea of how the movement had
grown I want to look at how things had
progressed since the early 1920s. In Kiho
province the daily newspaper Dong-a Ilbo
reported in October 1925 that ten members of
the League of Black Flag had been jailed for
one year each. The following year the same
paper reported that five young workers were
jailed for putting out a manifesto very
similar in style and content to the "Korean
Revolution Manifesto". In 1929 Dong -a Ilbo
tells of a secret society of anarchists
organised by Lee Eun-Song which had one
hundred members in the town of Icheon in
Kwangwon province. In that year it
transpired that the entire membership of the
Chunju Artists Movement Society were all
anarchists, such were the names and fronts
used to throw the Japanese police off the
scent. In response to this the death
penalty was brought in for organising
societies with the aom of "changing the
national structure".
In Taegu a League of Truth and Fraternity
was set up in 1925 by exiles who returned
from Japan. The Revolutionists League also
came into being and both were in regular
contact with the Tokyo Black Youth Society.
I have also come across anarchist grou s in
Anui, Mesan, the Changwon Black Friend
League, the Jeju Island Mutual Aid group.
The last mentioned used their remoteness
from central government to organise co-ops
of farmers and artisans, even a peasants'
band. Needless to say the organisers quickly
found they were not that remote and saw the
inside of a prison cell.
In Kwanseo and Kwanbul province I have found
mention of at least eight more groups.
Almost all the groups around the country
were involved in a mixture of producing
leaflets & papers, oranising trade unions
and engaging in resistance to the
occupation.
By this time we know that most areas could
boast of an active group. There were also
organisations in Manchuria and amongst
exiles in China and Japan.
The next stage was the fighting period
which ran up to 1945.
Among the two million Koreans in Manchuria
the KAF in Manchuria was able to sink deep
roots immediately after its formation in
1929. The Federation's main organiser, Kim
Jong-Jin, drew up a plan which he put to the
anti-Japanese guerillas. It covered
voluntary collectives for farmers, free
education up to age 18 with adult education
for those older and arms training for all
responsible adults. Discussions followed and
eventually an anarchist plan was agree which
was described as being "according to the
free federation principle based upon the
spontaneous free will of man".
The difficulty that was not really addressed
was how to deal with the Stalinists who were
also organising in this region and were
slandering the anarchists and others as
"tyrants". The young anarchists around Yu-
Rim wanted to fight ideology with ideology
and demonstrate the superiority of their
ideas. The older anti-Japanese guerillas
around Kim Jwa-Jin (sometimes called the
Korean Makhno) thought it was enough to
state their support for anarchism but that
they could ignore the Stalinists until
national independence was won because only
then would real politics come to the
forefront. Not a lot different from the
stages theory put forward by elements in
Sinn Fein!
By August 1929 the anarchists had formed an
administration in Shinmin (one of the three
Manchurian provinces). Whether this was a
government is still a point of contention
among anarchists. Organised as the Korean
People's Association in Manchuria it
declared its aim as "an independent self-
governing cooperative system of the Korean
people who assembled their full power to
save our nation by struggling against
Japan". The structure was federal going
from village meetings to district and area
conferences. The general association was
composed of delegates from the districts and
areas.
The general association set up executive
departments to deal with agriculture,
education, propaganda, finance, military
affairs, social health, youth and general
affairs. The staff of the departments
received no more than the average wage.
We would expect that the organisation would
start at village level and then federate
upwards. However the EAPM believed that the
war situation made this impossible to apply
the principle immediately. In the interim
they appointed the staffs and appointed them
from the top down. Organisation and
propaganda teams were then sent out to
agitate for support and for the creation of
village assemblies and committees. In one
village a rice mill capable of milling over
1 million bushels was built to allow the
local co-op to break from reliance on
merchants. Seemingly all these teams
reported a good response and were made
welcome wherever they went.
The local administration of the anti-
Japanese fighters in Shimin voluntarily
dissolved itself and lent its support to
KAPM. As the anarchists grew in numbers and
support the Stalinists and the pro-Japanese
elements in manchuria felt their own power
bases threatened.
On January 20th the anarchist general Kim
Jwa-Jin was assassinated while doing repair
work on the rice mill I just mentioned. The
killer escaped but his handler was caught
and executed.
At a meeting in June in Peking of the KAFC
it was decided to divert all resources
outside Korea itself to Manchuria and most
KAFC members moved to the anarchist zone in
northern Manchuria. It should be noted that
women comrades were active as agitators and
arms smugglers.
>From late 1930 onwards the Japanese were
attacking in waves from the South and the
stalinists, supported by the USSR, from the
North. In early 1931 the stalinists sent
assassination and kidnapping teams into the
anarchist zone to murder leading activists.
They believed that if they wiped out the
KAFM the KAPM would wither and die. By the
summer of
1991 many leading anarchists were dead and
the war on two fronts was devastating the
region. It was decided to go underground.
Anarchist Shimin was no more.
There is much more to be said about activity
in China and Japan as well as in Korea both
in the years up to the close of the second
world war, about their attitude towards the
partition of their country, and about their
position today. It would take too much time
to deal with it all. What should be very
clear is that anarchism in Asia has a very
real history. We need more information to
properly assess its political development,
achievements and failings. In the meantime
we can draw strength from the knowledge
that anarchism was, and can be again, a
major force in the region.
The main source I have used in Ha Ki-Rak's A
History of the Korean Anarchist Movement
which was published in 1986 by the Korean
Anarchist Federation. Apart from being
poorly translated and chronologically
confusing, it is written from the
perspective of the more nationalist and
reformist tendency in the Korean movement.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
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