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Title: The Korean Anarchist Movement Author: Alan MacSimoin Language: en Topics: Asia, history, Korea, Workers’ Solidarity Movement Source: Retrieved on January 1, 2005 from http://www.cat.org.au
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 independence 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 WWII. 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 need 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 aim 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 groups 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 agreed 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 20^(th) 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
1931 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.