Chapter 5 : 
Deradicalized Anarchism and the Question of National Development,
1945–1984
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Author : Dongyoun Hwang

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 5: Deradicalized Anarchism and the Question of National Development,
1945–1984

 
Against the hope that Korean anarchists had held before the end of the
Pacific War, Korea was not able to gain outright independence when Japan
surrendered to the Allied Powers on August 15, 1945. The Korean peninsula
was divided into north and south along the 38th parallel line and occupied
respectively by the United States and the U.S.S.R. The establishment of two
separate regimes in north and south in 1948 followed with their respective
occupier’s sponsorship. In the south the United States called in
pro-American and anticommunist Syngman Rhee (1875–1965), who led the
establishment of the government of the Republic of Korea (South Korea) in
August 1948, in the name of a United Nations’ resolution. The north
remained in the hands of the communists, and the Democratic People’s
Republic of Korea (North Korea) was established a month later, with Kim Il
Sung (1912–1994) as its head. The Korean peninsula became the first and
foremost warfront of the Cold War.

The subsequent Korean War (1950–1953) consolidated the anticommunist
political map of South Korea much further and deeper with Rhee’s
dictatorship and his suppression of communists and their progressive
ideals. To make the situation worse, Bak Yeol, one of the leading
anarchists who had returned to South Korea from Japan after 1945, was
kidnapped to North Korea during the war,[501] and some anarchists abroad
gave up their plan to return to their own homeland. Yu Ja-myeong, for
example, decided to stay in communist China because of the cloudy situation
in the Korean peninsula before and after the Korean War.[502] And some
Japan-based anarchists too decided to stay in Japan after 1945, making
Japan their home for activities and life possibly out of their fear for
potential political suppression in two Koreas. It is not clear how Korean
anarchists in North Korea, if any, responded to the political environment
there when North Korea was formally set up in 1948. Many of them seemed to
have defected to the south but they were also constantly bewildered by the
unstable political situation in the south.

To all Korean anarchists their target of struggle before 1945 had been
mainly Japanese colonialism and their immediate goal was independence,
albeit their distance goal was a new Korean society bent on anarchist
principles. The main target was now removed, but their two goals, immediate
and distant, were still untouched, due to the division of Korea by the two
powers. To them the most urgent task after 1945 was therefore the
construction of an autonomous, independent new Korea without which their
distant goal would slip away. The goal and direction of their post-1945
activities were to be set accordingly.

The situation they faced, however, went athwart their post-1945 plan, as
they saw not only incomplete national liberation with the division of their
country but the growing unfavorable political environment in the south,
under which they were increasingly vulnerable to new kinds of suppression,
first by the new foreign occupier and ultimately by their own pro-American,
antisocialist state. The anarchists in the south now faced vexing
questions: Given the division of their country and incomplete national
liberation, what direction did they need to take and what method they would
employ to fulfill the goals of national liberation and an anarchist society
in Korea? Answers to the questions rested on other related questions: Did
they have to participate in the nation-building efforts in collaboration
with the foreign occupier and later the anticommunist regime in the south?
If they decided to do so, was it necessary to participate also in politics
and organize their own political party for the goals? If they participated
in politics, what kind of programs for social transformation and national
development did they have to put forward for the goals? And if they did not
participate in politics, what other options were available or should be
acted on for the goals? These were the questions increasingly raised by
many anarchists who had rushed back to their country after Japan’s
surrender from their exiled places. In the words of a post-1945 generation
anarchist, Korean anarchists in the south faced some fundamental questions
as to whether they still had to prioritize social revolution to build a new
anarchist society or had to renew their struggle for national sovereignty,
first in the south, despite the possibility of perpetuating the division of
the peninsula.[503]

Yi Jeonggyu offered his own answers and presented two new tasks that he
believed unfolded before Korean anarchists in the south after 1945: driving
the communists in the north out of the peninsula and uprooting the
“remnant feudal forces” in the south that had been present since the
Japanese colonial period.[504] Yi’s faithful disciple Lee Mun Chang notes
that Korean anarchists pursued both tasks by setting “retaking freedom”
as their revolutionary goal to deal with the situation. The meaning of
freedom was defined with three broad dimensions: first, political freedom
from the communist dictatorship in the north; second, freedom from foreign
interventions in economy; and third, social freedom from the “feudal
forces” prevalent in Korean society at the time.[505] As is clear,
neither capitalism nor imperialism was considered the source that deprived
Koreans of freedom. The first target of post-1945 struggle was the
communists in the north, while freedom was understood mainly within the
context and notion of anticommunism and equality in economy.

To realize freedom in terms of these three meanings, as I examine below,
Korean anarchists decided to establish new organizations, including a
political party of their own. But they met various obstacles in realizing
the goal of “retaking freedom” in the south, chief among them the
undemocratic dictatorial state. Not only for their survival from the
suppression of the state but for the success and accomplishment of their
goals, they gradually accommodated themselves to the new political climate
under the dictatorships of Syngman Rhee and Park Chung Hee, both of whom
placed anticommunism as the nation’s founding principle. In short, Korean
anarchists knew they were placed in the unease and unfavorable situation
and, as a result, as I argue below, even reconceptualized anarchism to deal
with the new political environment under the Cold War in the peninsula. In
this sense I think it may be unfair to describe Korean anarchism after 1945
as “an aberration from original anarchism,”[506] or to say that it was
wedded and reduced to nationalism, due to its support for the
nation-building or silence to the dictatorship. What seemed to happen was
that Korean anarchists approached and understood the postwar situation
dialectically and found their answers to the post-1945 questions,
emphasizing the nationalistic and anticommunist aspects of Korean
anarchism. Most importantly, in doing so, they redefined themselves and
gradually deradicalized their version of anarchism to envision a new
society that was placed in the future. The status of anarchism was
accordingly shifted from a revolutionary principle to a social movement
idea. This does not mean at all that they abandoned anarchism. It rather
simply explains a dialectical understanding of the relationship after 1945
between nationalism and anarchism and their subsequent application of the
latter to the situation they had to cope with under the political climate
they unpleasantly situated in.

Under Pressure: Searching for a New Anarchist Direction

 
In an effort to find an answer to the perplexing questions Korean
anarchists faced after August 15, 1945, a conference was convened shortly
by those who had remained inside the peninsula, along with some of those
who had just returned from abroad. It was the conference of Korean
anarchists in Northern and Southern Gyeongsang Provinces held in Busan from
February 21 to 22, 1946. Its main organizers and participants were from the
two provinces, although almost all Korean anarchists thus far had returned
from abroad also attended it. Its main purpose was to find their answers to
the above-mentioned questions to cope with the foreign occupation and
division of Korea. The declaration adopted at it announced that Korea had
just entered “the stage of national democratic revolution,” where the
liberation of “producers” (i.e., workers and farmers) as well as the
national struggle to overcome its backwardness emerged as two essential
tasks of Korean anarchists. The declaration reiterated that the sources
that had exploited the producers stemmed mainly from two problems, that is,
national and class problems, which were in fact interrelated because class
struggle had much in common with the struggle for national economic
liberation. To solve the two problems, according to the declaration, it was
imperative to establish a government first under which all the production
means had to be managed and operated by those who were engaged in
production. And to overcome economic backwardness, Korean anarchists had to
set national development as their focal task. Since national struggle was
still more important than class struggle in the post-1945 period, they
perceived the former in the context of economic autonomy and even saw it as
a precondition for genuine national liberation. Economic autonomy of the
nation was a crucial issue for them to lay out an autarkic economic system
in Korea, which could make the country truly independent. In short, what
was discussed and decided at this meeting was to place the accomplishment
of “national democratic revolution” as their new task.[507]

A follow-up, much larger conference was soon held two months later from
April 20 to 23, 1946, at Yongchu Buddhist Temple in a small town called
Anui in Southern Gyeongsang Province. Titled the National Convention of
Korean Anarchists (Jeon-guk anarchist daehoe) or the National Convention of
Anarchist Representatives (Jeon-guk anarchist daepyoja daehoe), it was the
first national convention and initiated by Yu Rim.[508] At it, ninety-seven
anarchists were registered and present, and it marked a turning point in
the history of Korean anarchism in terms of its direction after 1945.
Attendees included almost all of those who were affiliated with two major
Korean anarchist organizations at the time, the Free Society Builders
Federation (FSBF, Jayu sahoe geonseolja yeonmaeng), organized in Seoul by
Yi Jeonggyu and Yi Eulgyu after Japan’s surrender, and the General
Federation of Korean Anarchists (GFKA, Joseon mujeongbu juuija chong
yeonmaeng), which probably was renamed from the Korean Anarcho-Communist
Federation (KAF) that had been established in 1929 in Pyongyang during the
colonial period. Yu Rim and Bak Seokhong had been the leaders of GFKA, and
Yu had participated in the Korean Provisional Government in China as a
representative of the GFKA. Yu had returned to Korea after 1945 with the
GFKA as an independent anarchist organization. Many Korean anarchists who
attended the convention were affiliated with both organizations
simultaneously, mostly maintaining dual memberships. The convention was
chaired by Yu Rim, Yi Jeonggyu, and Sin Jaemo, and lasted for three days.
It was of cardinal significance in that Korean anarchists now formally
began to identify themselves not just as anarchist but, just like Yu Rim
called himself, as “one who favors an autonomous government” (jayul
jeongbu juuija),[509] distinguishing themselves from conventional
anarchists who were usually believed to negate the state. This was an
identification constituted a major breakthrough to post-1945 anarchist
activities.

In fact, Korean anarchists were frequently asked after 1945 about their
position regarding the idea of setting up a Korea state. Since anarchists
were widely believed at the time to have rejected the state, they needed to
clear up any misunderstandings or prevalent suspicion that they were
opposed to and thus would overthrow the state. The first reaction came from
Yu Rim who, on his return to Korea, strongly denied that he was a person
with “no-government principle,” and emphasized that he rather was “an
anarchist who rejects compulsory power.” He then explained further about
what it meant to be an anarchist. According to him, anarchists rejected
only “heteronomous governments” (sic; tayul jeongbu) but not
“autonomous governments” (jayul jeongbu). His support for the
“autonomous government” was, he continued to explain, a product of the
shift made after World War I by many anarchists who attested to the
importance of having their own “practical organization,” for which, in
his case, he had participated in the Korean Provisional Government in
China, which he believed was an autonomous government. After 1945 he now
wanted to support a newly established Korean government, as long as it was
built with the principle of autonomy.[510] To put it differently, since
anarchists were only against “monopolistic naked-power” and strove for
the realization of “democracy [that guarantees] equality,” their
eventual goal was to create a world where all mankind would labor and live
freely under maximum democracy.[511]

On the first day of the convention, two reports were delivered to the
attendees, one on the international situation prepared by Bak Seokhong and
the other on the domestic situation by Yi Jeonggyu. In his report Bak
characterized the world after 1945 as the postcolonial struggles by former
colonies for their respective independence. Unfortunately, however, he
lamented, Korea, unlike these former colonies, had not yet achieved
independence, and the efforts to establish a unified government of Korea
had not been undertaken either in a democratic way, not even autonomously
by the Korean people. Worse, Bak continued, Korea seemed to be going in the
opposite direction against the unification of the Korean peninsula, that
is, genuine national liberation.[512] Following Bak’s report, Yi Jeonggyu
presented his assessment of then-domestic situation in Korea, in which he
basically agreed with Bak’s appraisal of the international situation and
Korea’s place in it, stating that all the efforts to set up a government
in Korea after August 15, 1945 had been done neither autonomously nor
democratically, not to mention without a united action of Korean
people.[513] Both reports emphasized incomplete independence of Korea as of
April 1946.

The first item on its agenda for the second day of the convention was the
attitude of Korean anarchists toward the establishment of a Korean
government, given the international and domestic situations the two reports
analyzed. They also discussed what principles they could apply, if they
favored building a central government in the south of divided Korea. These
were important issues, because, just like Yu Rim, many returned anarchists
to Korea from abroad after August 1945 had been continuously facing a
question as to their understanding of and attitude toward the state,
usually portrayed in media not as anarchists but predominantly as
“believers in no-government” (mujeongbu juuija). To answer the question
collectively, the anarchists at the convention adopted a resolution that
stated they would strive for the establishment of an autonomous,
democratic, and unified government in their liberated fatherland. The
resolution further explained unequivocally that the goal they had pursued
had been a complete liberation of Korea, which in turn was in need of one
unified government. Koreans needed the unified government not just because
they were a unitary people with their own rich cultural traditions but also
because Korea couldn’t be developed economically unless it became a
unified country under the unified government. Accordingly, the role of a
central government that would govern unified Korea was highly evaluated as
important for the goal of national development. Here, we can see again
Korean anarchists’ preoccupation after 1945 with economic autonomy and
development as crucial in their quest for genuine national liberation.[514]

Korea had agricultural areas in the south, but the abundant materials and
sources for its industrial development were mostly concentrated in the
north. Therefore, the resolution pointed out that without unification under
a central government Korea could not develop itself into an industrialized
country. The unified government which Korean anarchists strove to set up,
however, was not simply a centralized government. It was expected to allow
local autonomy as well along with autonomy in working places, and the unity
of all the autonomous entities under the unified central government would
be formed on the basis of the spontaneous alliance principle. Finally, it
was made clear in the resolution that Korean anarchists were not
“non-governmentists” (sic) (mujeongbu juuija, i.e., believers in
no-government) but “non-heteronomous-governmentists” (sic) who were
“autonomous governmentists” (sic), that is, “the ones who believe and
favor an autonomous government” (jayul jeongbu juuija).[515] The newly
adopted collective identification Korean anarchists enabled them to unload
their anxieties and fears about anarchism being accused of a “dangerous
thought,” which didn’t last long, though.

Another important point in the resolution was that they favored the
unification of and a unified government of Korea. Making a new definition
of their identity, Korean anarchists now took their first and important
step toward a “Koreanization” of anarchism, in which it was redefined
to serve at once the Korean situation after 1945, that is, prevention of
the division of the Korean peninsula and the establishment of a unified
government. In another resolution passed on the second day of the
convention, Korean anarchists urged all revolutionary groups and
individuals, who had shown some visible accomplishments during the national
liberation struggle before 1945, to seek along with them for a chance to
establish an interim, autonomous, unified government in South Korea first
until the genuine unification of Korea with the north.[516]

Another immanent and important issue discussed at the convention was the
question as to whether anarchists needed their own political party. It was
a moot question but was raised in connection with the question about the
liberation of producers, which was raised already two months earlier. The
discussion revolved around how the power and voice of workers and farmers
as main producers could be considered and reflected in politics to promote
national development in economy. Before 1945, Korean anarchists had
generally been indifferent to or had developed a cold attitude toward
political movement and political parties. Likewise, they had always
believed that political movement or political party’s movement in a
colony was meaningless, or at least bore the stigma of treason. This agenda
as to an anarchist political party was brought up at the convention, due to
the analysis of the domestic situation in Yi Jeonggyu’s report on the
first day of the convention. The post-1945 situation made Yi conclude that
the most urgent task at hand was not social revolution but rather the
completion of national liberation, because of the division between north
and south and even the possible trusteeship in the Korean peninsula under
the UN. The future of Korean society seemed to hinge on whether anarchists
could successfully undertake the task of nation-building and lay out basic
foundations for a new, autonomous country at its inception, no matter how
political their task could be.[517]

Indeed, there was a growing consensus among anarchists that a revolutionary
or independence movement itself was in a sense a political movement at a
higher level, and thus that the establishment of a unified government was
much needed in the postbellum situation in order to complete national
liberation. What an anarchist needed to do then was: (1) to remove both
powers, the United States and the Soviet Union, from the peninsula; (2) to
eradicate all the forces against autonomy, democracy, unification, and
nation-building; and finally (3) to participate actively in the
foundational works for a new country.[518] After a long deliberation,
Korean anarchists made a unanimous decision to support the idea of
organizing their own political party on the basis of the necessity to
accomplish the above-mentioned three tasks and also to reflect the
organized power of workers and farmers in politics. It was strongly advised
by the attendees, however, that the proposed anarchist party “follow the
basic principles the convention has adopted.” Joining the party would be
up to “each individual member’s spontaneous will,” and those who
decided not to participate in it “will support [the party] with their
thought movement [sasang undong].”[519]

Yi Jeonggyu was one of the attendants who had an opposing view, although it
was his report that generated the sense of urgency for their political
involvement. In his opinion a more important task Korean anarchists faced
at the time was to lay out a foundation successfully for a coming anarchist
society through the efforts to raise the ability of workers and farmers,
rather than to organize their own political party to represent the power
and voice of workers and farmers in politics.[520] This was one of the
reasons why Yi had already established the Federation for Rural Autonomy
(FRA, Nongchon jachi yeonmaeng) and the Federation for Worker’s Autonomy
(FWA, Nodongja jachi yeonmaeng) immediately after August 1945. A major
difference between Yi and other anarchists like Yu Rim who favored
establishing a political party of their own, seemed to rest on the issue of
how to assess the potential of Korean society in terms of its readiness for
a social revolution. Yi seemed to be more forward-looking and favored
delaying an anarchist revolution to the near future, while Yu was more
interested in pursuing an anarchist revolution aggressively without delay,
even with the help of an anarchist political party. The attending
anarchists at the convention voted for Yu Rim’s idea. Since they had
already identified themselves as “those who favor an autonomous
government,” it was quite an obvious, logical decision for them to seek
for a chance to establish a government of their own or at least participate
in the making of national policies and programs through their political
party, which was expected to implement anarchist ideals and principles in
politics.

Also discussed and then passed at the convention were three basic
principles Korean anarchists were expected to uphold, even when
participating in politics: (1) to respect and guarantee individual freedom,
(2) to safeguard peace and reject all kinds of invasive forces, and (3) to
give the ownership of productive means to producers. In regard to the last
principle, Korean anarchists particularly suggested that the factories and
mines that once had been owned by Japanese colonizers during the colonial
period be returned to and then owned by workers unconditionally. The
workers were deemed to deserve the ownership, for they had all paid the
Japanese with their exploited labor before 1945. For the same reason, it
was also suggested that Korean farmers gain their ownership of land, which
had been owned by Japanese and Korean collaborators before 1945.[521] At
this point Korean anarchists could have further suggested and implemented
the equal distribution of land to farmers, but they refrained from
mentioning it at least for now, possibly due to the political attack from
others toward them for being communists, although it would be one of the
policies their party would put forward soon.

On the last day of the convention another important agenda item was placed
on the discussion table: how to rearrange and reorganize the Korean
anarchist camp after 1945. There had existed the KAF since 1929 in Korea as
the first national organization of Korean anarchists, albeit without any
actual activities under Japanese colonialism. There had been the GFKA in
China which Yu Rim had represented before and after his return to Korea in
1945. The FSBF was additionally organized in Seoul in September 1945 by Yi
Jeonggyu, who had stayed in Korea since he had been extradited from China
to colonial Korea in December 1928 for his trial. As of April 1946, many
Korean anarchists, with the exception of some leading figures, had all
joined two main organizations, the FSBF and the GFKA, having dual
memberships. The main issue in question at the convention, in other words,
was how they could avoid any potential confusion about their membership and
affiliation after 1945.[522] It seems that rather than resolving the
membership issue, Korean anarchists decided to concentrate their effort and
energy in the political party they were to organize together. In sum, the
first national convention set the basic direction of Korean anarchist
movement after 1945, a direction that was mainly a product of the post-1945
political environment surrounding the Korean peninsula. And the direction
was tested first by Yu Rim with the experimental political party, and later
modified by Yi Jeonggyu with his idea of rural village-based social
transformation.

Anarchists in Politics: The Independence Workers and Peasants Party
(Dongnip nonong dang) and the Democratic Socialist Party (Minju sahoe dang)

 
Following the conclusion of the first national convention, an anarchist
political party was organized in July 1946, and named the Independence
Workers and Peasants Party (IWPP, Dongnip nonong dang). Yu Rim, a veteran
anarchist who had been a member of the Korean Provisional Government, was
appointed as chairperson (wiwonjang) of the party’s Executive Committee,
which consisted of Yi Eulgyu, Yi Siu, Yang Ildong (1912–1980), Sin Jaemo,
and Bang Hansang (1900–1970), in addition to Yu. The party was launched
with an expectation from other anarchists that it was “to make the
foundational framework [in politics and society] to build a new country
from scratch.”[523]

As mentioned, the decision to build a political party of anarchists was
based on the consideration that their most urgent task was national
liberation, when there was a widely shared sense of crisis that Koreans
might be unable to build their own free, autonomous country and government,
if Korea remained divided into north and south. The sense of crisis, along
with the newly perceived task, didn’t go unheeded, as Korean anarchists
willingly postponed the goal of social revolution for the sake of complete
national liberation, this time not through the united armed struggle but
through an anarchist political party. Peter Zarrow notes that after the
1911 Revolution of China, Chinese anarchists like Li Shizeng, Wu Zhihui,
and Cai Yuanpei might have “feared that as political revolution [i.e.,
the 1911 Revolution] had failed to remake China, so anarchism, which must
begin as political revolution, was fated never to arrive.” Neither did
they want to risk another revolution and another failure, so that these
Chinese anarchists “chose to pursue revolution by redefining it.”[524]
It is possible that Korean anarchists too thought similarly in the face of
a new challenging situation after 1945, and defined the goal and ideals of
anarchists much broadly so as to organize their own political party and
pursue their anarchist goal through parliamentary politics.

Evident in the anarchist party’s platform were the sustained emphasis on
and prioritization of national liberation over social revolution. In it the
IWPP’s goals were explained: (1) to achieve perfect autonomy and
independence of the Korean people; (2) to accomplish the utmost welfare for
peasants, workers, and ordinary working people; and (3) to reject any
dictatorship and collaborate with genuinely democratic domestic forces on
the basis of mutually beneficial and equal principles. Sharing the general
concerns other anarchists had about the situation at the time, the party,
in its declaration also assessed the situation in Korea as of July 1946 as
serious, because Korea’s independence had not practically been achieved
due to the division of it and the possible trusteeship by the United States
and the Soviet Union, respectively, under a resolution of the UN.
Therefore, the declaration asserted that, since the Korean people had
possessed their unitary cultural tradition, they have the right to make a
demand for a social system of their own to be set up in Korea. And it
reiterated that for Koreans it was absolutely necessary to have such a
system that could fit Korea’s national condition, guarantee internal
freedom and equal happiness to all individuals, and contribute to peace and
progress of the mankind after taking back its autonomous independence and
internationally acknowledged sovereignty.[525]

The IWPP certainly aimed at political independence of Korea but ultimately
and unquestionably fostered a social revolution through anarchist
principles, which they anticipated to take place in the end. This is quite
evident also in the party’s principle policies that were decided in
correspondence with the goals reiterated in the platform and declaration.
Among the policies two stood of importance. First, the equalization of land
through the distribution of cultivatable land to the tillers, and, second,
the establishment of an autonomous body at every factory and working place,
which would be deemed responsible for managing and running them
accordingly.[526] Compared to policies of other political parties of the
time, these were quite radical in the sense that they were aiming at the
changes in social and production relations. Because of the radical nature
and direction of the policies and platform of the IWPP, a Korean anarchist
later remembered that it was not so much a conventional political party as
a revolutionary organization.[527] To intersperse its policies and the news
and information about it the IWPP started to publish its own biweekly
newspaper from August 3, 1946. In major cities and locations the party’s
branch organizations and offices were also subsequently set up.

The road ahead for the IWPP was, however, quite bumpy and even
unpredictable. First, the anarchist party was crippled from its inception
by some members who decided to participate in the national election in
1948, which was held just before the establishment of the government of the
Republic of Korea in August of the year, against the party’s decision to
boycott it because of the party’s concerns that the establishment of a
separate state in the south might possibly perpetuate the division of the
peninsula. In addition, the accomplishment of Korea’s liberation through
the anarchist party and the subsequent plan to realize the anarchist ideals
through its policies were not easy tasks. The efforts by the party proved
to be a failure in the end. The reason for it can be explained from many
different angles. As mentioned, many anarchists ran for the National
Assembly in the 1948 election against the party’s decision to boycott it,
which resulted in the internal division of and their subsequent expulsion
from the party. What made the situation worse was that some of its core
members took office in the Rhee’s regime against the party’s
denunciation of it.[528] The anarchist party failed to gain a seat in the
National Assembly after the May 30, 1950 election.

In the case of Yu Rim, he suffered from consistent political suppression of
the Rhee regime, beginning first in 1951 in the wake of the Korean War and
continuing throughout the 1950s. In addition, during the course of the
three-year-long Korean War, many anarchists were either kidnapped or killed
by North Koreans, which, to be sure, significantly lowered the level of
human resources of the party and thus affected deeply its capability as a
political party, let alone as a revolutionary organization, exacerbating
its already waning fate. Most importantly, the general mood in South Korea
increasingly marched toward antisocialism and antiradicalism, obviously due
to the experiences and memories of the brutal war with North Korean
communists for three years and the Rhee regime’s subsequent political
maneuvers to use the issue of anticommunism and turn the postwar situation
in its favor. The war ended not only with the ruins and destruction of
South Korean society but also with the rising state-led terrorism against
anyone sympathetic to socialism, including anarchism.

In the 1950s, Korean anarchists painfully witnessed their society not only
destroyed and drifting away from their ideal society but becoming
unfavorable and even hostile to their belief. A new decade finally arrived
but only with the tragic news of the death of Yu Rim on April 1, 1961, and
his passing, it turned out, signaled the end of various new anarchist
undertakings under his leadership after 1945, particularly the
experimental, but unsuccessful, anarchist political party. Under the
storming tide of anticommunist purges in the 1960s, anarchists reconsidered
their means and ways to achieve their ultimate goal of an anarchist
society, this time without their own political party and the unflinching
leader, Yu. And as the new decade began, the political atmosphere was
worsened with the rise of a new military dictator, Park Chung Hee, which
impaired further profoundly Korean anarchists’ revolutionary efforts to
build an anarchist society and forced them in the end to deradicalize their
anarchism further and modify their direction once again.

What Korean anarchists envisioned through the anarchist party was,
according to Yi Jeonggyu’s explanation, the realization of a social
organization with the spontaneous alliance principle intact. Once it was
realized, the organization (i.e., society) was expected to employ the
system of joint production and joint consumption, and the function of
politics in it would remain occupational in nature. Korean anarchists after
1945 were, Yi further explained, in agreement that democracy must not
become a disguise of false freedom and equality in the modern society where
colonies were liberated and capitalism was being transformed or revised; it
must correspond to the genuine anarchist values of freedom and equality.
Therefore, to accomplish the ideal anarchist society filled with freedom
and equality, Korean anarchists in the party decided to rely on
parliamentary democracy while maintaining their principles of political
spontaneous alliance and decentralization of industry in their
platform.[529] The efforts to realize their anarchist ideals through this
anarchist political party under the leadership of Yu Rim, however, ended
empty-handed. In retrospect, the Korean War altered the whole political map
of South Korea into one that was about to turn out to be a nightmare for
Korean anarchists.

Around the time when the IWPP gradually disappeared from the political
stage, Yi Jeonggyu began to discuss and envisage the future of anarchist
movement in South Korea in consideration of the hazy political aura of the
1950s. His discussion revolved around two main issues many Korean
anarchists grappled with in the midst of Rhee’s strengthened dictatorship
and anticommunist policies after the Korean War. The first issue Yi took up
was the prospect for Korean anarchist movement, in a series of his writings
contributed to Masan Daily (Masan Ilbo) from May to June 1957. To no
one’s surprise, Yi was concerned with the question of how socialists in
general had to cope with the political environment of South Korea under
Rhee’s dictatorship and antisocialist policies. Given the wrongdoings of
the Rhee regime and their possible social consequences, Yi predicted that
the sociopolitical condition of then–South Korea might allow the
emergence of a Communist Party with the possible support from workers and
farmers as their response to the repressive regime. Nevertheless, he firmly
believed that it would be impossible to see the rise of a Communist Party
in South Korea at that time, because communism would ultimately be rejected
by Koreans. If that was going to be the case, an alternative party that
could receive the support from both workers and farmers in place of the
Communist Party was a “social democratic party” (sahoe minju dang), Yi
assumed. The social democratic party, however, would not be able to surface
either as a legitimate political party in South Korea, Yi forecasted.
Rather, a Communist Party, making use of the opportunity for the social
democratic party to emerge, might instead arise after camouflaging itself
as a “social democratic party.”[530] Among the political parties at the
time, Yi indeed thought that the Progressive Party of Jo Bong-am was a
pro-communist social democratic party, which to Yi was an undesirable
phenomenon in South Korea.[531] What he seemed to imply was that the rise
of a socialist party was inevitable in South Korea under Rhee’s
dictatorship. Its wrongdoings and their consequences in society would
condition the rise of a socialist party which, in his belief, must be
neither a communist nor a social democratic party.

Yi’s next discussion was focused on the question about how anarchists
could cope with then-unfavorable political climate in South Korea, and
where they needed to head toward. Admitting that both the IWPP and the FSBF
had all been in hibernation since the Korean War, he placed a new hope to a
newly proposed political party of Korean anarchists he had just organized
with others a year ago in 1956, the Democratic Socialist Party (DSP, Minju
sahoe dang). According to Yi, anarchists had always maintained and
advocated two principles they thought to be of essence in all aspects of
human life, that is, freedom and equality. And since the anarchist notions
of freedom and equality bore economic meanings, they could be combined with
the principle of democracy, which he believed usually denoted political
freedom and equality. The new anarchist political party, in other words,
was to become one that could combine in its activity and program the
economic meaning of freedom and equality anarchists had always emphasized
with the general political meaning of democracy. If the combination was to
take place successfully, its outcome would be what anarchists had always
wished and advocated for, Yi firmly believed. Therefore, if the anarchist
critique of communism could be further expanded and the interpretation and
meaning of democracy could be widely shared in South Korean society at
large, particularly in their respective economic implications, the DSP
would emerge as a political party that could accomplish democracy
completely in both political and economic senses. And if this were to
happen, it in turn would mean a completion of socialism, Yi concluded. And
the ideology of the party must be defined accordingly, therefore, as
“democratic socialism” (minju sahoe juui), apparently different from
“social democracy.”[532]

If we consider that Yi had not been in full agreement with Yu Rim and
others at the national convention of anarchists in 1946 on the issue of
organizing an anarchist party, it may seem incomprehensible that Yi now was
one of the driving forces and advocates of the DSP a decade later. An
explanation for the change in his attitude may be found in what Edward S.
Krebs explains about the Chinese anarchists’ appropriation of Communist
terminology in 1925, such as “mass revolution” and “workers’ and
peasants’ revolution” in order “to counter the successes of their
great rival,” “which produced a change in the way in which revolution
was conceived and described.”[533] This was the case when Chinese
anarchists were debating with the communists and had to cope with the
situation where their movement waned with the rise of the CCP. Similarly,
Yi could have shifted his view of an anarchist party after the
consolidation of the dictatorial regimes in two Koreas, particularly after
witnessing the stabilization of the communist regime in the north. This is
particularly the case if we recall what he stated after 1945 that the
communists in the north were one of two enemies still left after the demise
of Japanese colonialism, and that he attempted (and would continue to do
so) to organize workers and farmers into anarchist-led organizations to
counter any possible penetration and influence of the communists into them.
His shift was in a sense also a reaction to the possible ascendancy of the
communists in 1950s South Korea, in particular given his prediction of the
rise of a Communist Party in South Korea as an inevitable consequence of
the state’s wrongdoings.

A question then arose: was “democratic socialism” the same as
anarchism? Under the political and social environments of 1950s South
Korea, Yi diagnosed, socialist movement as a “thought movement” (sasang
undong) had no bright future, while a socialist party in the form of
political movement still could have some favorable conditions. The examples
from other countries had demonstrated that “thought movement” had
usually preceded political movement, which had been the case in terms of
both theory and reality. However, in South Korea, he unequivocally
predicted, it would be the opposite in this regard because of the dominant
antisocialist aura in society generated by the state. He therefore
suggested that Korean anarchists consider anarchism in its Koreanized form
and context, in particular, by thinking of its “democratic socialist”
(minju sahoe juui jeok) version, which, he explained, placed its emphases
on anticommunism and the political meaning of democracy combined with the
anarchist notion of economic freedom and equality. This “democratic
socialist” version of anarchism was supposed to be the path for
anarchists to follow and realize anarchism in South Korea, Yi
concluded.[534]

It must be noted that the concept of “democratic socialism” Yi coined
and used was quite different from “social democracy” in many ways, and,
in addition, the concept was not solely Yi’s. Jeong Hwaam in his memoir
also introduces the same concept along with an explanation of how he came
across it and how he and Yi Jeonggyu endeavored together to form the DSP in
1956, with many progressive political figures at the time, chief among them
Jo Bong-am. Jeong recalls that he became aware of the term democratic
socialism when he was in Hong Kong before his return to Korea after 1945.
According to Jeong, it was a Chinese scholar named Ding Zhou who researched
and published writings on the concept of “democratic socialism” in
various newspapers and magazines in Hong Kong sometime before 1950. Finding
similarities with his own understanding of anarchism as he read Ding’s
writings, Jeong became readily interested in the concept and scrapped
Ding’s writings to utilize them later, thinking that he might decide
later to be in politics. After returned to South Korea, Jeong found out
that other anarchists like Yi Jeonggyu, Choe Haecheong, and Yi Honggeun all
had also studied about and endeavored to conceptualize the same term.[535]
It is not clear, though, who Ding Zhou was, and what and how he wrote about
democratic socialism, because Jeong never answers these questions in his
memoir. Nevertheless, what seems important to the current study is that
Jeong found the affinities between his version of anarchism and Ding’s
concept of democratic socialism, and, given what Jeong writes in his
memoir, Yi Jeonggyu’s explanations of the concept mentioned above must
have been similar to Jeong’s understanding of anarchism, which in turn
was probably the theoretical base of the new anarchist party Yi and Jeong
attempted to organize together in 1956.

It is necessary here to look into the party much in detail to grasp how Yi
Jeonggyu wanted to concretize in reality his “Koreanized” version of
anarchism, that is, “democratic socialism,” which was also Jeong
Hwaam’s understanding of it. On November 15, 1956, Korean anarchists,
including Jeong Hwaam and his old comrades, Yi Jeonggyu, Han Hayeon, Choe
Haecheong, Oh Namgi, and Kim Seongsu, proposed together the establishment
of the DSP. Jeong was appointed as chairperson of the preparatory committee
to organize the party. Unfortunately, however, it was never actually
established, due, it seems, mainly to financial difficulties it had in the
process of the formal formation of it.[536] The political pressure, either
visible or invisible, from the Rhee regime could have possibly been another
reason. Fortunately, Yi Jeonggyu left two writings on the party from which
we can have a glimpse of how the participating anarchists wanted to
concretize their version of anarchism through this party.

Yi’s first writing on the party was written in October 1956, a month
before the party was formally proposed by the above-mentioned committee. It
could have been Yi’s proposal to other anarchists to recommend setting up
the preparatory committee. In this very abstract writing to explain about
the party’s two organizational principles, Yi emphasized first that the
term democracy in democratic socialism must be understood as the principle
in social and economic life as well as in international relations, not to
mention as a political principle. In democratic socialism, therefore,
democracy itself was its goal and means, which, Yi asserted, was the
peculiar use of the term democracy and thus distinguished the party’s use
from those appropriations of the term in other conventional understandings
and in other socialisms as well. Since “social life” had made humans
continue to evolve, mutual dependency (i.e., mutual aid) was an important
aspect for sociability (sahoe seong) of humans and was also one of the
organizational principles of the party, Yi added.[537] It is quite obvious
that the party was proposed to be organized with the two principles,
democracy and mutual aid.

Next, Yi discussed the DSP’s ideological line. He first reiterated mutual
aid and mutual dependency as an element for human progress. Then he moved
to a discussion of the pros and cons of both capitalism and socialism. In
his understanding capitalism in general had done harm to the human society,
such as the destruction of culture and economic inequality, rather than any
meaningful contributions to it, although it no doubt had been extremely
capable of maximizing human productivity. Socialism, on the other hand, he
believed, had ensured economic freedom and equality to all humans, while it
counterproduced “communist injustice,” such as the enslavement of the
people (gungmin). The mission of democratic socialism, therefore, Yi
emphasized, was to place and add the socialist, rather than capitalist,
economic ideas to the general meaning of democracy.[538] Of course,
democracy here meant to him democratic practices both in economy and
politics.

With this socialist line, according to Yi, the proposed DSP, if
successfully established, would be able to materialize the “spirit” and
“idea” of the Korean nation-building, both of which had been developed
to embrace the “socialist idea,” as well as the “democratic idea of
freedom and equality.” The founding “spirit” and “idea” of the
Korean nation, in other words, Yi argued, had been formulated in order to
establish a “democratic welfare state” on the premise that it would
utilize the socialist idea. Of course, the capitalist idea of the ownership
of private property too was to be allowed for the establishment of such a
democratic welfare state.[539] Accordingly, having a “democratic
socialist party” in Korea, Yi expounded, was of significance in that the
“spirit” and “idea” of the Korea’s nation-building, which were
reiterated in the Korean Constitution, corresponded to those of democratic
socialism, not to mention that having such a party itself had been a world
trend at the time. Yi then pointed out that there was a prevailing argument
that South Korea as an underdeveloped country (hujin guk) must go through a
capitalist stage of development and must promote its own national capital
(minjok jabon) as well, which was an anachronistic understanding of the
meaning of development. That is, capitalism was a suit of “clothes”
that other countries now wanted to take off, while socialism had become a
new suit of “clothes” that all wanted to wear, because it fit their
“bodies,” as exemplified in the cases of the countries like India,
Burma, Indonesia, Sweden, Norway, and so forth, Yi euphemistically
explained. This new world trend, Yi believed, gave Koreans a chance to
observe and reflect on the reality of the world and then to pursue a new
economic and social system in Korea. Although socialist in economy, private
enterprises and their various rights would be guaranteed and allowed in the
new system of the new democratic welfare state. And under its new economic
and social system, some key industries as well as other industries were to
be either public-owned or nationalized, for they were essentially related
to people’s livelihood, Yi added. With the public-ownership or
nationalization a planned economic system would become possible
particularly in all national, public, and private economic sectors, and, as
a result of this new economic system, a perfect social welfare system too
could be placed in operation in the society, Yi concluded.[540]

In response to many doubts raised by those who were skeptical about
socialism, particularly about these two systems combined in economy and
social welfare, Yi enumerated some advantages of the systems he saw. First
was the strengthening of provincial (i.e., local) economy. He thought that
the socialist economic system would strengthen provincial autonomy in
economy, which in turn would prevent the centralization of power and, as a
result, preclude any dictatorship of the regime or the consolidation of its
naked power. Second, in his reply to a question that socialist policies
were possibly carried out only well in a “backward country” (hujin guk)
with no previous industrial development, Yi simply stated that the planned
economy of socialism was much more needed in the economically backward
countries. Yi knew that some would also claim that the capitalist idea of
free competition was of more efficiency and even could promptly work for
the backward countries in order for them to overcome swiftly their economic
backwardness. Answering to this follow-up question, third, he recapitulated
that the establishment of the socialist economic system was much needed and
also had to be secured in such backward countries. Last, knowing that
democratic socialism could potentially be attacked as a communism of some
sort, Yi defended democratic socialism on the grounds that it was a
“practical theory” (silje iron) that had been formulated as a result of
many yearlong experiences of various kinds of socialists, who had long
struggled to establish an economic order that could set and guarantee
economic equality along with human rights to protect freedom and political
equality. To support his claim, Yi further listed in his writing and
compared the similarities and differences between communism/social
democracy and democratic socialism to promote the latter.[541]

Since democracy was the goal and means of democratic socialism and thus
must be respected as the primary principle of it, the “natural”
completion of democracy meant to Yi the completion of socialism in reality.
And this was why the term democratic socialism was chosen, Yi
emphasized.[542] Yi’s understanding of the meaning of democracy at the
time seemed to be shaped basically from its definition made at the first
Congress of the Socialist International held at Frankfurt from June 30 to
July 3, 1951, not to mention his adoption of the term democratic socialism.
To him, the word “democratic” in democratic socialism denoted the
realization of a socialist society through parliamentary politics of the
West, which, he believed, would employ democratic means and method for
political democracy. To be sure, democracy was understood by Yi, again, in
two senses, both political and economic, and his understanding of democracy
was formulated by a symbiosis of its meanings in both socialist economic
and capitalist political democracy. Yi specifically identified five goals
as something that must be fulfilled by the DSP to realize democracy in
South Korea, and they were: (1) provincial autonomy under a cabinet system
in politics; (2) construction of a democratic welfare nation; (3)
consolidation of new social ethics in society, such as cooperation,
mandatory labor for all (gaeno), autonomous (jaju), and creativity
(chang-ui); (4) protection and promotion of national native cultures and
active absorption of foreign cultures in order to contribute to the
creation of a world culture based on the harmony between Eastern and
Western cultures; and (5) realization of the world-as-one-family idea
(segye ilga) as a member of the United Nations and the Socialist
International.[543] As for the third point, Yi later further expressed
again his own anxiety about losing the country again if such ethical values
in society were to be lost among the Korean people.[544]

In order to accomplish these five goals Yi then proposed and enumerated the
party’s possible various policies, which intended to cover a wide range
of problems and issues in South Korean society, from its cultural and
economic to political and social aspects, including the accomplishment of
the planned economy system and the allowance of workers’ rights to
participate in the management. Culturally, in particular, the DSP aimed at
transforming into new social ethics such bad Korean national traits as
“serving the big” (sadae), “blind following” (buhwa),
“idleness” (anil), and “passivity” (soguek). Besides this cultural
project, one of the party’s proposed policies deserves our special
attention. It was on agriculture, and undoubtedly reflected an anarchist
idea regarding the combination of agriculture and industry. In the policy,
the party was manifested to carry out the mechanization of agriculture and
the correction of the bad effects (pyehae) of the cultured population’s
concentration in cities, in order to promote the idea of combining
agriculture and industry in rural villages. At the same time, the policy
also set a goal to expand cultural and welfare facilities in rural
villages. The rationale behind this rural-based goal lay in the fact that
farmers in rural villages occupied 70 percent of the whole South Korean
population at the time, and the expansion of cultural and welfare
facilities in rural villages thus were regarded as necessary for the
promotion of the majority’s welfare.[545]

On the other hand, Yi was now in fervent opposition to any violent
revolutionary as well as dictatorial means practiced in both the Soviet
Union and North Korea, although he obviously wanted to keep certain
socialist ideas that embraced the general spirit of economic democracy.
Speaking highly of the declaration announced at the first Socialist
International in 1951, Yi briefly summarized what was affirmed at the
Congress as the goal and duty of “democratic socialism”: the critique
of communism and the expanded and advanced interpretation of the meaning of
democracy. Following the goal and duty defined for socialists at the
Congress, Yi proclaimed that the enemy to the members of the proposed DSP
in South Korea was not so much capitalism as communism. Yi thus suggested
that they all subsequently denounce dictatorship and authority, therefore,
and begin a new movement for democratic socialism that was
“international” and “anti-orthodox” in its character.[546]

To be sure, Yi’s proposal to Koreanize anarchism through the concept of
democratic socialism was made out of consideration of the sociopolitical
conditions of South Korea in the 1950s, backed by the declaration made at
the first Socialist International in 1951. Internally, however, he also saw
some peculiarities in the socialist movement of Korea. In regard to
anarchism, Yi correctly understood that anarchism in Korea, unlike that in
the developed country, had been from the onset a part of national
liberation movement or, more broadly, independence movement, at least until
1945. According to his explanation, in other words, while Korean anarchists
agreed with the immediate goal of Korean independence movement, that is,
political liberation of Korea, they at the same time had always sought for
economic liberation as well to retake the right for the economic survival
of Korea.[547] This had long been a characteristic and determinant of the
direction of Korean anarchism, and the liberation of Korea in two meanings
had been a shared ultimate goal of Korean anarchists who had always pursued
a social revolution first over a political revolution. What mattered was
how to achieve the goal.

The Korean anarchist experiments with two political parties, first with the
IPWP and later with the DSP, from the late 1940s to the mid-1950s, all
seemed to be unsuccessful due to many reasons, chiefly the unfavorable
sociopolitical environment for the realization of anarchist ideals,
particularly various political barriers which they had faced since 1945.
The deradicalization of anarchism by conceptualizing it as democratic
socialism was not successful either, as the party using the term socialism
was, it seems, neither even formally established nor participated in an
election after its proposed establishment.[548] Korean anarchists seemed to
make every effort to avoid any accusation of being communists and/or
advocates of no-government or anarchy. They deradicalized the goal of
anarchism by underscoring national development through an alternative
developmental strategy that combined capitalist notions of development and
democracy with socialist ideas of equality and freedom. When one of their
close socialist comrades, Jo Bong-am, who participated in the discussion of
rebuilding a new socialist party in 1956 with many anarchists, was
baselessly accused of being a spy for North Korea, and then arrested,
tried, and finally hanged in 1959 in the name of the National Security Law
(gukka boan beop) by the Rhee regime, they seemed to simply “give up
everything” “without regret” and began to concentrate on the movement
to promote “cultural enlightening” and “education for the next
generation,” according to Lee Mun Chang.[549] And soon under the military
dictatorship of Park Chung Hee who aggressively set anticommunism as the
supreme national policy from the 1960s, there seemed no room and options
left for anarchists to propagate their ideals and programs because of the
groundless accusation and prevalent stigma of “being Commies.”[550] It
was no wonder that Korean anarchists either kept silent and their distance
from the totalitarian politics of the Park regime in the 1960s through
’70s or further accommodated and deradicalized anarchism into a more
suitable idea for social movement.

Rural Problem and Industry in National Development

 
Korean anarchists had long been attentive to the “rural problem”
(nongchon munje) since the 1920s. Yi Jeonggyu was one of them. He was
reluctant to join the first anarchist party and moved away from politics.
He instead heeded his attention to rural villagers and workers not to
organize them into an anarchist party but to educate them in preparation
for a coming anarchist society. In fact he had already established in 1945
the FRA and the FWA, respectively. Yi’s independent move away from the
IWPP to form his own anarchist organizations for social movement is also
revealing in that there were internal divisions and tensions, and even
possibly a rivalry, between Yi’s and other anarchists led by Yu Rim, over
a concrete means to realize their anarchist ideals, as well as over how to
cope with the political climate in South Korea.[551] An examination of
Yi’s activities and thoughts after 1945 particularly reveals interesting
aspects of a deradicalized version of Korean anarchism and how Yi and other
anarchists endeavored to build an ideal society through the revival of
rural villages in post-1945 South Korea.[552]

A month after Japan’s surrender to the Allied Powers in August 1945, Yi
established the FSBF and then organized in the same year the FRA and the
FWA. In a detailed explanation of the FRA’s platform and declaration,
written in March 1946, Yi pointed to the main task he believed Korean
anarchists were expected to do first after Korean’s independence: “to
revive (gaengsaeng) our Korea as a free and pleasant country.”[553] To
fulfill the first task, Yi suggested that rural villages (nongchon), which
occupied most parts of Korea, be revived first. According to him, the
farmers living in rural villages represented “the whole country
itself,” as they consisted of 90 percent of the Korean population. To Yi,
farmers in rural villages obviously were the main, unique force to
construct a new Korea. To revive rural villages, however, Yi continued,
farmers should first broaden their knowledge, and their life must be
reformed so as for them to raise their ability and qualifications to be
part of the independent and free country.[554]

To materialize this idea, Yi organized the FSBF immediately after Korea’s
independence, with his brother, Yi Eulgyu. At its inaugural meeting on
September 29, 1945 in Seoul, Yi Eulgyu announced in his opening remarks
that the enemy of Korean anarchists, Japanese imperialism, had disappeared.
He nevertheless admitted that the colonial conditions of dependency still
lingered in Korea, because, he warned, Korea’s independence was not
accomplished by Koreans themselves. The colonial conditions, he suggested,
therefore, not be treated lightly in the effort to build a new country of
free society in Korea.[555] The FSBF embraced almost all Korean anarchists
into it in order for them to partake in the task of building a new country
with a hope for them to offer their “constructive roles.” It
particularly aimed at constructing a society in which “the tillers own
land and the workers own factory.” To accomplish the aim the FSBF decided
to establish two more additional organizations, the FRA and the FWA, which
would lay out a foundation for a coming future society they wanted to
build.[556] Briefly speaking, the former was organized with a plan to raise
the farmers as the owners of the new country, and the latter with a plan to
remove any potential class struggle at workplace by institutionalizing the
participation of workers in the management of factory.

The FSBF was the first nationwide anarchist organization in Korea that
began its activity publicly and openly, with the manifested two goals its
members would strive to achieve. First was to take a constructive part in
building an independent Korea, and, second, to put forward a proactive and
concrete plan to help construct a new country.[557] As is clear, the FSBF
placed the nation-building first over social revolution as its goal and was
a future-oriented anarchist organization with a forward-looking vision. Its
members believed a successful nation-building after 1945 would eventually
promise and guarantee their pursuit and activities for an anarchist society
in Korea. Yi Jeonggyu was to deliver a similar analysis at the forthcoming
national convention of Korean anarchists in 1946, in which he saw the place
of social revolution secondary to the task of building a new Korea and
pointed to a necessity for anarchists to participate in the national
construction in order to envision their own social revolution in the near
future, if not immediately. In a sense, the establishment of the FSBF was,
as stated in its declaration, a sign of “unmasking” anarchists as
nation-builders and “resurfacing” them from the underground they had
been hiding in during the Japanese colonial rule, under which they had not
been allowed to speak out openly about their own cause and doctrine as
nationalists as well as anarchists.[558]

The FSBF passed at its inaugural meeting its concrete goals as follows: (1)
to reject dictatorial politics and strive to build a Korea of perfect
freedom, (2) to reject the collective economic system and strive to realize
the principle of decentralized local autonomy (jibang bunsan juui) in
economy, and (3) to strive for an embodiment of the ideal that sees “all
mankind as one family” on the basis of mutual aid. In short, a new Korea
the FSBF would build was one that was transnational in its ideal and had a
system of local self-governments in its practice with the principles of
spontaneous alliance among them to form their central government, and of
individual freedom among its constituencies. Three major principles for the
construction of such a new Korea would be “autonomy” (jaju),
“democracy” (minju), and “unity” (tong-il). And the role of
anarchists in realizing the new Korea was to collaborate with
“revolutionary leftist nationalists,” in order to fight their two
enemies, the “native, feudal capitalist elements,” which had been in
collaboration with Japanese imperialism before 1945, and the “pseudo,
reactionary dictatorship-worshipers” (i.e., communists).[559]

The FSBF’s anticommunism was not novel, given the antipathy anarchists
had long held against the communists since the 1920s, but the meaning and
implication of the “native, feudal capitalist elements” as their enemy
were quite vague. By circumscribing the definition of “native, feudal
capitalist elements” within those who had exploited their compatriots
economically in service of Japanese imperialism, the FSBF’s members moved
away from the universal social problems under capitalism itself. Yi
Jeonggyu even saw the “feudal forces” as a more serious problem than
capitalism itself. In his thinking the universal values such as freedom,
equality, and mutual aid had all been undermined not only by Japan’s
colonization but also by the Korean society’s internal, native forces.
Therefore, when Japanese colonialism had already been overthrown, the
construction of a new society with the values in Korea after 1945 seemed to
hinge only on whether or not Korean anarchists were able to eradicate the
remaining “native, feudal capitalist elements” and the “pseudo,
reactionary dictatorship-worshipers,” together.[560]

Korean anarchists in the FSBF like Yi Jeonggyu didn’t necessarily oppose
or want to overthrow capitalism itself after 1945, as long as it had no
ties with Japanese colonialism, although they never stopped criticizing
it.[561] They were either deaf to the voices from the ongoing struggles
against colonialism and capitalism in post-1945 years in the other parts of
the world or more concerned with nationalist aspiration for a new Korean
state and its economic development. While the communists in the north would
remain their arch enemy, the identity of the second enemy continued to be
unclear and even vague. The vagueness, as I will demonstrate, allowed Yi
and his fellow anarchists to be relatively silent about the dictatorial
regimes and their policies from 1948. They were even willing to treat
“nationalists with genuine national conscience” as their “friendly
force” (ugun),[562] in addition to “revolutionary leftist
nationalists,” in the effort for national construction, no matter how
undemocratic or silent they were about dictatorships. Avoiding the
fundamental question as to inevitable social divisions in capitalist
society, the FSBF under Yi’s leadership defined its goal as the
establishment of an equal and free society in Korea where tillers own the
land and workers own the factory after removing the vague “native, feudal
capitalist elements” and the communists. Of course, it rejected any
compulsory power in the society that could create an environment of
domination by a class over other classes and by a people over other
peoples. It also denounced any invasive war and the possession of armed
forces more than enough for self-defense.[563] The point here is that
capitalism was not explicitly included on the list of their new enemies,
when anarchists had always been attentive to and even cautious of a
possibility to create a condition of domination and inequality under
capitalism. This seeming passivity toward the question of capitalism, it
seems, had much to do with Yi’s idea of national development.

The FRA, one of the FSBF’s two sister organizations, as Yi Jeonggyu
explains, was founded particularly in response to the threat of communism.
After August 1945 Yi feared that the communist propaganda of “tillers
owning land” could undermine the healthy development of a new Korea, if
farmers listened to and favored that idea. To avoid that possibility in the
situation posterior to the year 1945, Yi actually rushed to organize the
FRA.[564] The idea behind the FRA about organizing and educating farmers
had long been sustained, proposed, and even openly experimented by Korean
anarchists, including Yi, as this study demonstrates. In the declaration of
the FRA, the place of farmers and rural villages in the course of
constructing a new Korea was now reconsidered more important than ever
before. Rural farming villages in Korea had been the object in the past of
the “feudal” extortion of heavy taxes as well as the Japanese
exploitation during the colonial period. But the farmers in rural villages
had been the preservers and maintainers of Korea’s distinctive culture as
well as tradition of “good morals and manners.” Their life, however,
had long been no better than that of animals, because of which it had been
of no use to speak to them about Confucius, Mencius, Buddha, or the God,
the FRA’s declaration pointed out. To make things worse, the declaration
further explained, modern achievements and technologies introduced by the
West and Japan since the late nineteenth century, such as railroads,
telegrams, and telephones, had only made their life “more painful and
more starved.” On the top of that, there was a prevailing “rural
problem” that small-income farmers had only been able to make their
living after borrowing a loan at high interest rate. The declaration thus
indicated that this “rural problem” had become a serious and
fundamental problem and immediately turned into a social problem of Korea
after 1945. Since “farmers are the owners of Korea” and the revival of
rural farming villages would depend on whether the life of small-income
farmers could be revived, the regeneration of Korea as a new country would
be determined by whether farmers and rural areas were eventually able to
regain together their vitality.[565] The first step toward the revival of
farmers must be taken to ensure their economic independence, for which they
must be given opportunities to make extra income. If offered some extra
works, in other words, farmers could make some extra income which in turn
would assist them to be independent economically. The extra works not only
offered them an opportunity to earn extra income to make them independent
economically but could also promote the idea of “natural cooperation”
among them, which, as a result, could absorb surplus labor in rural areas
and allow them to work together.[566] The core of the rural problem rested
on the economic hardships of small-income farmers, which could be solved by
offering extra works to them for extra income.

The idea of providing farmers with extra works for extra income in rural
villages as a means to solve the “rural problem” was to be further
elaborated on later in the 1960s and ’70s in “the Movement to Receive
[Orders] and Produce [Goods]” (Susan undong) launched by Yi’s other
organization, the Institute for the Study of National Culture (ISNC,
Gungmin munhwa yeon-guso). I will discuss about it below. Suffice it to say
here that Korean anarchists, in particular Yi Jeonggyu and his close
associates, seemed to believe that the key for their ideal anarchist
society in Korea lay in rural villages and accordingly their regeneration
through economic independence. Indeed Yi was deeply interested in removing
poverty in rural villages, but was indifferent to the unequal social
relations in rural villages. In short, empowering rural farmers in economic
senses as the main constructors of a new Korea was the main task assigned
to anarchists. When the task was complete, rural villages could be a part
of “the civilized world” (munmyeong segye) and eventually could develop
into “the abode world of perfect bliss” (geungnak segye), where “good
morals are realized and rural villages are in mutual cooperation and
help,” Yi predicted.[567]

Yi’s emphasis on farmers and rural villages had much to do with his idea
of nation-building. To him independence didn’t mean national liberation
in the socialist sense but denoted Korea’s self-reliance and
self-identity that could ensure that Korea become “the most civilized and
wealthiest country.” And self-reliance would be achieved by developing
rural villages and improving farmers’ livelihood, which in turn would
allow Korea to be identified as “the most civilized country.” Since
farmers had preserved the “beautiful, pure and affectionate Korean
customs,” they were “the only ones to endeavor to construct a Korea,”
Yi believed.[568] If there would come to exist a utopia-like world in
Korea, where people could find a comfortable living from generation to
generation, farmers would be able to make a living as humans.[569] Of
course, there was another reason for him to underscore rural villages: to
combat the communists whose attempts might mobilize and organize farmers.
To Yi, therefore, to organize farmers into the FRA of which he was the
leader was an extended endeavor on his part, to accomplish the
“Nation-Building Movement” (Geon-guk undong).[570]

Despite his huge emphasis on the revival of rural villages and an
economically improved life of farmers as crucial to construct a new Korea,
Yi Jeonggyu fundamentally believed that the development of rural villages
must be accompanied inevitably by industrial development. Ostensibly, Korea
had gained political independence when the Japanese surrendered in 1945,
but Yi believed that political independence might leave Korea remaining
“extremely unhealthy and superficial,” and without economic autonomy.
To be autonomous in the economy as well as politically, therefore, Yi
continued, Korea could not afford to rely only on agriculture for economic
development, given the precedents and lessons from the developed countries.
It was indeed unthinkable and even nonsensical for him to foster national
economic development only with agriculture, because of the fact that, he
claimed, during the thirty-six-year Japanese colonial rule, Korean
agriculture had not been able to make any technological progress that could
be utilized for national development after 1945. In order to plan on
developing agriculture, it was indispensable, in his thinking, to have
industrial development as well, at least for technological progress in
agriculture. In other words, Yi assumed that industrial development was a
decisive condition for economic independence of Korea, given the historical
experiences of the developed countries and the colonial situation Korea had
been placed in.[571] In short, to Yi, the best developmental strategy for
Korea was the combination of industrial and agricultural developments
through the revival of rural villages. And, in the end, this would bring a
genuine national liberation to Koreans in both political and economic
senses.

Yi admitted, however, that his proposed developmental strategy would not be
workable at once, since “Our country has no industrial capital and
technology,” not even the experiences of industrial management.
Therefore, Yi continued, it was necessary for Korea first to examine
carefully the traces of the developed countries in the past in order to
identify the reasons for their “success” as well as any
“side-effects” and “irregularities” in their developmental
strategy. After examining and taking the lessons from those developed
countries, Korea would be able to plan on its own path to “the
nation-building through industry” (san-eop ipguk), Yi forecasted. If the
experiences of the developed countries were taken into consideration, in
other words, Yi thought that Koreans in the end would be able to preclude
the influence of communism and any irregularities in economic management
that might have prevented increased efficiencies and technological advance
in production. Furthermore, he believed that taking lessons from the cases
of the advanced countries would additionally help Koreans be better
prepared for the problems that had already occurred in those countries,
such as the gap between the rich and the poor, the concentration of wealth,
and the labor-management disputes, all of which had been typical and
conspicuous in social unrest and industrial monopoly under modern
capitalism.[572]

What Yi suggested as a preemptive solution to the problems of
industrialization was one that challenged the notion of development in
terms of capitalist developmentalism and reflected anarchist concerns as to
national autonomy and social justice in economy and national situations in
the course of development. Specifically, Yi was certain that Korea, while
developing its industry, had to endeavor to realize the co-ownership of
factory by the state and individuals (i.e., workers). And this was of
importance if workers were to have a perception that factory owners were
not the target of their struggle but rather the ones with whom they needed
to share a common fate. In other words, workers would endeavor to possess
the status of and qualifications to be the co-owners of factory so that
their representatives could participate in the management of factory along
with its other owners, ultimately sharing the factory’s profits.[573] Yi
expected that the FWA would also be able to become a spontaneous anarchist
organization that could do away various contradictions in the capitalist
society and correct the problematic collectivist nature of communist
society.[574]

For the realization of an anarchist society with national development,
there were important conditions on the part of workers, Yi stated. First
was to organize workers’ unions, not according to occupations but
according to industries. Second, workers must possess the qualifications
and status to be able to serve as the co-owners of factory. Third, workers,
representing their respective union, must be given the right to participate
in the planning and management of their factory, whether owned by
individuals or the state. Fourth, workers must receive dividends in every
quarter from the factory.[575] In addition, workers were not just workers
but also the “nationals” (gungmin) of Korea, a democratic country that
entitled them to enjoy the right and opportunity for their free and equal
individual development. They must be able to see themselves as a pillar to
build a new country for which they would have a sense of mission. And they
would also take responsibility for the promotion of economic autonomy of
Korea and work with courage and motivation at the forefront of its
industry, Yi contended.[576] In short, if the FWA’s slogan of “the land
to farmers, factories to workers!” was finally realized, “although it
will be viewed as a capitalist country, the newly-born Korea will in fact
become a country where in farming villages there are no tenant farmers or
agricultural workers, at urban factories no wage-workers are employed, and
[finally in society] no confrontations and struggles,”[577] Yi predicted.
Simply speaking, Korea would become a uniquely alternative capitalist
society where an alternative modernity on the basis of its national
conditions was accomplished through his proposed alternative developmental
strategy.

Notable here were growing signs of Yi’s move toward a deradicalization of
Korean anarchism. In the declaration of the first post-1945 anarchist
organization, the FSBF, there was no mention of capitalism itself as a
source of social problems or as a target of anarchist struggle to build an
ideal society in Korea. As mentioned before, the declaration only accounted
for the successful removal of their former enemy, Japanese imperialism,
after 1945 and the emergence of two new enemies, communism and any remnant
feudal forces in the post-1945 society that had collaborated with Japanese
capitalists since 1910. Here Yi limited the capitalists to both Japanese
and their Korean counterparts who had exploited Korean workers and farmers
and still were believed to be at work after 1945, labeling them “remnant
feudal forces.” By doing so Yi seemed to distinguish the “feudal
forces” from those whose role and responsibility as “national
capitalist” were of essence for the alternative national development he
envisioned. This kind of recognition came to take shape rapidly as part of
the framework of Korean anarchism after 1945, due to the priority given by
Yi and his followers to political unity and national autonomy of Korea.
This means many Korean anarchists gradually lost their revolutionary bent,
at least in terms of their emphasis placed on national liberation over
social transformation. In fact, it may have been necessary and even
inevitable when Korean anarchists after 1945 were all basically concerned
with how to gain and maintain complete independence without any political
and economic interruption or exploitation from the developed countries.
Their focus, in other words, was not on how to remove the social ills under
capitalism and develop Korean into a new ideal society but rather on how to
develop Korea as an autonomous country with minimum social problems that
had been prevalent in the capitalist countries and at the same time without
communist intrusion.

In this respect, the Korean War from 1950 to 1953 was, in hindsight, a
turning point in the direction of Korean anarchism after 1945. The
post–Korean War years witnessed a political environment much more hostile
to anarchists with the Rhee regime’s anti-communist stance along with the
height of the Cold War, all of which culminated in the baseless trial and
execution of Jo Bong-am, leader of the Progressive Party. Personal survival
once again became an issue for Korean anarchists who would conclude that it
was “unthinkable,” in the words of Lee Mun Chang, to speak something
against the Rhee regime and its successors under their “dreadful
control” and suppression of their political foes with willfully
fabricated evidence and stories to arrest and torture them and any
socialism-inspired intellectuals and politicians. What Korean anarchists
could do was to “hold their breath” before the brutal, merciless
regimes.[578]

Against the State-Led Modernization: “The Nation Thrives only if Rural
Villages Thrive”

 
One of the main reasons why Korean anarchists turned their eyes more
closely to rural villages from the 1960s and 1970s can be found in the
undertakings of rapid modernization of South Korean rural villages driven
by the developmental dictatorship of Park Chung Hee, often symbolized by
his “New Village Movement” (Saemaeul undong). Contrary to what was
propagated by his military regime, Korean anarchists believed that the
state-led rural movement in fact had seriously undermined the very
foundation of Korean rural villages and, as a result, pushed the rural
population to migrate to cities.[579] To deal with the situation, some
Korean anarchists launched various “non-compromising” and
“nonresistant” movements of their own against the state-driven
modernization for rural villages, which included a movement for autonomous,
self-defensive rural villages and a cooperative movement that aimed at
organizing urban consumers.[580]

Most of these anarchist-led movements were undertaken and/or guided by the
Institute for the Study of National Culture (ISNC, Gungmin munhwa
yeon-guso) Yi Jeonggyu had established in the spring of 1947. Strictly
speaking, the Institute was not an anarchist organization per se, because
its members included not only anarchists but some conservative nationalists
in their political orientation. Participants in and members of the
Institute, who had joined the ISNC since 1947, included, among anarchists,
Yi himself, some of the second-generation Korean anarchists, and the
third-generation Korean anarchists who had just graduated from college in
the 1960s, with growing interest in anarchism.[581] In addition, there were
some “pure nationalists” (as opposed to “communist nationalists”)
participated as members in the ISNC, albeit the majority in its membership
and activities were anarchists who welcomed “pure revolutionary leftist
nationalists” in joining them as their “friendly forces” (ugun).[582]
In many respects the ISNC was Yi Jeonggyu’s own venue to embark on his
own cultural and economic projects to build a new anarchist society in
South Korea.[583] The Institute was an example of how seriously Korean
anarchists, in this case represented by Yi Jeonggyu and his associates,
took Korean traditions, national culture, and farming villages after 1945
in realizing their anarchist vision in South Korea, as well as in thinking
of national development. This is evident in the mission of the Institute,
which stated its goal as uncovering the “national essence” (bonjil) of
Korea and the “capability” (yeongnyang) of Koreans by way of conducting
researches on Korean culture.

After its establishment in 1947, the ISNC, however, had not been active,
but in the years after the end of the Korean War in 1953, it became a
little active again with the shift of its main focus to the recovery of the
destroyed national economy of South Korea after the war, with an aim to
help stabilize people’s devastated livelihood in the postwar situation.
In the postwar years both economic recovery and stabilization were deemed
to be the keys to solve all the cultural and social problems prevalent
after the war in then–South Korea. Therefore, the ISNC increasingly
shifted its focus to research and works that could make contributions to
the much-needed immediate economic reconstruction of South Korea from the
ashes of the war, for which it particularly paid attention to farmers and
thus initiated a movement in the ensuing years to support them in dire
situation, as I examine below. Simply speaking, the two main issues the
ISNC was manifested to tackle in its postwar activities were rural culture
(i.e., “national essence”) and how it could be promoted and developed
(i.e., rural culture’s “capability”). To put it differently, the
ISNC’s ultimate task was to achieve South Korea’s viability as an
independent, autonomous country, by identifying “broadly-defined overall
cultural capability of Koreans” and utilizing their own unique rural
culture.[584]

To fulfill the task, the ISNC was involved in various activities and
projects that reflected its name, Institute for the Study of National
Culture. Due to its unequivocal emphasis on the nation (minjok) and/or
nationals (gungmin) in its quest for an ideal anarchist society in Korea,
which no doubt sounds quite contradictory if we consider the universal
messages and goals of anarchism and the transnational character of Korean
anarchism I have argued for, the ISNC’s name itself often brought to mind
images that seemed unlikely for an anarchist institute. The choice of the
Institute’s name, the Study of National Culture, was probably based on a
certain awareness among anarchists that Korea’s national liberation was
not accomplished yet, which invited a new prioritization of complete
national liberation over social revolution in a universal sense, as their
continuous task even after 1945, as Lee Mun Chang explains.[585] What I
think important was their willingness to respond proactively to the
national environment in the process of realizing their ultimate anarchist
ideals. Another possible reason for adopting and using such a name was to
avoid any misunderstanding and/or political accusations as to the identity
and underlying ideology of the ISNC and its activities.

The main subject of the ISNC’s research activities was “the promotion
of the Korean nation’s subjectivity (jucheseong) and the establishment of
an autonomous and cooperative [cultural] structure for the people’s
life,”[586] while its two major goals that served as its principles to
build a new society were, first, the completion of autonomy and
independence of Korea, through which Korea’s unification could be finally
realized, and, second, the realization of a “free community” (jayu
gongdongche) in society through spontaneous cooperation among its members.
The institute’s immanent role then was to place “foundational layers”
(gicheung) in society to build a free society of which the masses were the
subject (juche). And the foundation for such a new society would only be
laid out by an autonomous, self-regulating communitarian life of the
masses.[587] To put it differently, in the words of Lee Mun Chang, the
immediate task the nation faced was the realization of national liberation,
not only in the sense of political independence but in the sense of having
a “free society” composed of “communities of autonomous cooperation
through direct democracy” by the people who were “the real owners of
the land.”[588]

What Yi Jeonggyu found most bothersome in the late 1960s and early 1970s
when South Korea was in its early phase of modernization, was the loss of
the subjectivity among his fellow Koreans. To him, South Koreans at that
time seemed to have become oblivious of who they were and what they had
lost and forgotten from the past. Criticizing the path South Korea had
taken thus far for modernization and how Koreans had lost themselves during
the modernization process, Yi rewrote the ISNC’s mission statement around
that time, which further underlined the importance of “seeking
ourselves” through the investigation and research of “our culture,”
which he identified with “the living culture of general, common people”
(ilban seo-min cheung ui saenghwal munhwa). This “living culture” had
to be developed and promoted in order for Koreans to have a clear
understanding of their raison d’être, so that they could inherit the
cultural traditions from their ancestors and finally could also receive and
digest foreign cultures with which they could form and develop a new
“culture of mine,” both individually and nationally. Making such a new
Korean culture out of the symbiosis of traditional Korean rural culture and
foreign cultures became the ISNC’s new mission by the early 1970s. And
the newly made culture was supposed to be antielitist and antiurban in its
character.[589]

What was taken into account in the propagation for the new synthetic
culture was a Korean traditional social practice of production and
consumption. Determinant in the formation of the new culture, in other
words, was social relations in Korean society that had been shaped from the
prevailing culture of production and consumption in society. Hence, what
the ISNC suggested was the control of consumption with reference to
production in terms of the latter’s efficiency and artistic aspect.
Underlying importance was placed on the control in society of consumption
so that a culture of ethical production and consumption could be urgently
formulated along with the formation of an autonomous and cooperative
lifestyle among Koreans, in order to consolidate “our tradition of
people’s culture.”[590] This synthetic culture was to empower Koreans
“to embody a spontaneous, cooperative free community and a free society,
both of which would strive for complete, autonomous and independent
unification of the nation.”[591] And the “commoners” (baekseong) who
were “the owners of the land” would enable the realization of “a
direct democratic, autonomous and cooperative community.”[592] In order
to achieve such a free society of the commoners, as Lee Mun Chang explains,
the ISNC endeavored to lay out “a basic layer of the free society” of
which the masses (minjung) were the main body. The anarchists in the ISNC
expected to found such a society on the basis of an autonomous and
self-regulating communal life and understood their immediate task in the
national liberation movement of gaining complete and autonomous
independence of Korea.[593]

What we can see here is the emphasis Yi Jeonggyu and his fellow anarchists
like Lee placed on the importance of a cultural transformation of
individuals in the process of building an anarchist society in Korea, in
this case, farmers themselves who were viewed as the preservers of native
culture and genuine “owners” of Korea.[594] Means to be used for the
transformation were tradition (or national culture) and education, as Yi
Jeonggyu underlined the importance of tradition in search for a new culture
and national development and the role of education in the creation of such
new individuals for a new society. And Yi explained that traditions, good
or bad, could all be constructively succeeded, if they were able to be
turned into something positive; the tradition of struggle, resistance, and
overthrow from the past could be rendered into more constructive,
cooperative elements in society. Such Korean traditions as understanding,
yielding, cooperation, forbearance, mutual aid, and so on could be
inherited for the constructive succession of tradition in the modern
society.[595] It is notable here that Yi’s suggested means for a new
society was tradition, but his goal was not the restoration of a
traditional society but the construction of a modern society that could
combine certain positive aspects of both traditional and modern societies.

Yi also set the goal of education not as its revival of traditions but as
its availability and utility for humanity. More specifically, education was
to serve the construction of a democratic society in Korea, which could in
turn contribute to the construction of common welfare for the whole
mankind: the ultimate goal of higher education in Korea was to breed
“individuals who can devote themselves to the welfare of mankind”
(hongik ingan).[596] These individuals, after successfully finishing their
higher education, would possess a consciousness as a “free person”
(jayu in) and, at the same time, as a responsible member not only of the
Korean society but of the whole human society. And as a faithful citizen of
the world as well as of Korea, these individuals would promote native
Korean culture and would play a role simultaneously as a bridge for the
cultural exchanges between the East and the West. By doing so they would
begin to improve the quality of Korean life in both material and emotional
aspects, and consequently scheme to integrate all the nations of the world
into “one world,” both materially and emotionally.[597] Two principles,
freedom and equality, were to be upheld in the course of constructing
“one world” where common welfare would be realized for the all
mankind.[598]

For all the above tasks and goals, the main target of the ISNC’s
activities was rural farming villages, which subsequently gave rise to the
focal question as to how to balance development between rural and urban
areas, as mentioned above. Korean anarchists in the late 1960s and early
1970s widely shared the anxieties and concerns about the unbalanced
development led by the state. As of the early 1970s, they even deeply
believed that there had been a crisis in Korean society. Yi Jeonggyu,
then-director of the ISNC, expressed the concerns and anxieties in his
keynote speech delivered on November 17, 1971, at a seminar for rural
leaders, held at and by YMCA in Seoul. In the speech, titled “Issues in
Making Rural Villages Autonomous,” Yi made it clear that he had perceived
a serious crisis in politics and economy in South Korea at the time. He in
fact called for special attention to the “rural problem” which,
according to him, fundamentally stemmed from the gap in development in
then–South Korea between rural and urban areas. Modernization through
industrialization had been pushed hard by then–South Korean military
regime and, as a result, factories had been built and cities had been
expanded for economic development under the state’s policy with the
influx of rural population into cities as workers. All these phenomena, Yi
analyzed, had entailed and impaired the impoverished conditions of the
rural population in farming villages.[599] What made him more concerned and
caused him to lament were the obvious polarizations, first, into
differences in wealth between rural villages and cities and, second,
subsequent cultural differences that were described as “civilization”
versus “barbarism.” Development in cities should have never been
pursued at the expense of rural villages, but the impoverishment in rural
villages unfortunately had been prevalent, an outcome of which was the
ostensible modernization achieved in the cities of South Korea, Yi noted. A
healthy society, however, he believed, could only exist with a balanced
development between cities and rural villages.[600] In short, South Korean
rural villages as of the early 1970s were, in Yi’s view, so “empty”
and the reason for that lay in modernization and urbanization pushed by the
state.[601] This was deemed a national crisis, and to overcome it, Yi
believed, Koreans needed to understand an important fact, that “the
nation thrives only if the rural villages thrive.”[602] The future of the
nation would be determined decisively by the prosperity in rural villages,
and Yi wanted all Koreans to grasp it, if they were to overcome the
national crisis of the 1970s.[603]

In his criticism of the impoverishment of South Korean rural villages,
however, Yi didn’t raise any questions regarding the responsibility and
accountability of the then–South Korean military government. Neither did
he criticize the government and its policies directly. Rather, Yi posited
that in South Korea some economic issues surely could be prioritized and of
importance as well to avoid any economic setbacks, but, without internal
political stability and national unity, the country in the end would be
unable to deal with the rural problem and cope with the ever-changing
international situation. His emphasis on political stability and national
unity may explain, in part, why Yi was silent about the military
dictatorship that usually brought political unity within, albeit under
coercion and thus usually fragile. Yi nevertheless believed there would be
no stability whatsoever, both internally and externally, without “making
rural villages autonomous” (nongchon jajuhwa), especially in economy.
Neither were “democratic autonomous forces” able to grow in South
Korea. Hence, Yi proposed that the leaders of the rural movement use the
slogan that read “The nation thrives only if rural villages
thrive.”[604]

While criticizing the state’s urban-based policies, Yi often maintained
harsh attitudes toward rural farmers themselves for not possessing a sense
of responsibility as “the owners of the land.” More important than the
state were, according to him, rural leaders who needed to realize “the
rural problem” and understand farmers, whose willingness to live a better
life was crucial. In particular, rural villagers should have trained
themselves to be democratic citizens, but they had rather been passive in
attitude and often relied on the authorities for the training. Farmers
themselves, as well as rural leaders, thus were just as responsible for the
“rural problem” as the political leaders and government were, Yi
contended. Farmers might have made insufficient efforts, but now they had
to be determined and make efforts to have “mental readiness” with a
strong will to live well and endure “today’s hardships,” Yi
noted.[605]

The training of farmers and, as a result, their increased knowledge
wouldn’t solve the rural problem. Their self-criticism was also much
needed for them to become “democratic citizens.” And their
self-criticism could begin with the effort to overcome a tendency among
them to rely on the government officials in solving the rural problem. If
there were “weaknesses” and “loopholes” in rural villages, these
had to be corrected autonomously and made up for by farmers themselves, Yi
insisted. As the state-led modernization had proceeded, rural villages
would increasingly face various challenges they had to deal with. The first
challenge was to place “modern functions in the rural structure,” which
Yi believed could ensure the seamless workings of democratic, autonomous
functions of the modern in rural areas. The second one was the spread of
“the urban consumption trend” that could cause various difficulties in
the rural life. The third challenge was “urbanization” that accompanied
“civilizational pollution” in rural villages, which must be avoided at
all costs in order to prevent the same side-effects as seen in the city
from happening in rural villages. And the final challenge was related to
“the question as to how to guide the youth” in rural villages, who
could have been swayed by modernization in the city but nevertheless needed
to be raised as a backbone of rural construction.[606]

Anarchist Solutions: The Movement to Receive and Produce (Susan undong) and
the Council of the National Leaders for Rural Movement (Jeon-guk nongchon
jidoja hyeopuihoe)

 
As mentioned earlier, Yi Jeonggyu believed that the solution to the rural
problem exclusively hinged on how to revive the life of low-income rural
farmers who were able to make their living only after gaining a loan of
high interest. Attempts had been made to resolve the dire situation of the
low-income rural farmers, such as expansion of cultivatable lands,
commercialization of farming lands, and collectivization of farming
villages. However, all seemed to have failed to take care of the “rural
problem.” The keys to solve it, in fact, Yi hinted, were elsewhere, and
they would be made available if two questions were answered. The first
question was whether farmers in general could be offered additional sources
of income, and the second one was whether surplus labor the farmers might
be able to offer could be used and incorporated into the “natural
cooperative works” in rural villages. The point, in other words, was
whether farmers, especially low-income farmers, could be offered
opportunities to make some extra earnings with which they could make their
living better. The opportunities could be made available, Yi claimed, by
gearing up “the natural cooperation” among farmers and absorbing any
surplus labor forces in rural farming villages into it.[607] With this
basic idea the ISNC launched “the Movement to Receive [Orders] and
Produce [Goods]” (Susan undong), which intended to provide rural
villagers on the basis of the spirits of self-reliance and cooperation with
some extra work during the time when they couldn’t till the land, to
start their own small-scale domestic industry to improve their living
standards and eradicate poverty by their own effort with additionally
earned income.[608]

Here again, the “rural problem” was perceived as basically economic in
its nature, rather than as a product of complex social and political
problems associated with the conventional vertical, exploitive
socioeconomic relations that had existed in rural villages, for example,
between tenant farmers and landowners or farmers and the state. Neither
were they seen as a product of class divisions in capitalist society or of
modernization. Anyway, the movement, without any analysis of the origins of
the rural problem, simply viewed poverty and starvation as two main sources
of the “chronic rural problem”[609] in South Korean society, which had
only resulted from the lack of or insufficient income farmers could make.
Simply speaking, the movement was intended to give as many jobs as possible
to farmers (and fishermen in fishing villages) through promoting a
small-scale domestic industry in every rural village, which did not require
any huge capital investment from the state and any specialized skills on
the part of farmers.[610] The basic underlying principle of the movement
was that “those who work shall gain income and the profit shall belong to
all” (noja yugeup iik gwijeon). And this principle, according to Lee Mun
Chang, was framed after Kropotkin’s idea of “fields, factories and
workshops.”[611] In short, if an appropriate domestic home industry could
offer some additional jobs and works to low-income farmers, it was expected
to solve the “rural problem” from the bottom up and, as a result, to
promote and develop an “appropriate home industry” in all rural
villages. The idea was first materialized and experimented in a small town
called Jin-geon in Gyeonggi Province, a province surrounding the capital
city, Seoul. The first successful home industry factory was open there in
1965, where farmers were trained gradually as labor-intensive skilled
workers and then were provided with some extra jobs during the slack season
(particularly winter), mainly to boost their income. The factory was called
“the Jin-geon Center for Receipt and Production,” where sweaters,
children’s wear, handcraft articles, and other such products were made by
farmers and shipped out for sale.[612]

A close look at the movement reveals that it was also launched with a
vision of alternative national development and social stabilization in
Korean society. In the words of the initial drafter of it, Dr. Son Useong,
the movement was expected from its inception to “serve as a means to
shorten the national itinerary for economic autonomy as well as to improve
practically the overall livelihood of Koreans.”[613] Hence, its two
ultimate goals were to distribute national income equally to all Koreans in
order to improve their livelihood and subsequently to help national economy
continue to grow at a high rate. To achieve successfully the goal of
national economic growth, low-income families in rural villages were
particularly urged to voluntarily participate in and join the movement.
That way, the movement could aim at utilizing the unemployed human
resources to promote labor-intensive local/regional small-scale industries,
such as domestic home industry and at the same time to develop rapidly
national productivity and supplying-power for export. With the increased
income of Koreans, particularly rural villagers, the movement was expected
to contribute to the growth of national economy and the founding of social
stabilization.[614] In short, while having the long-term goal to contribute
to national economy and social stability, the movement tackled immediately
the issue of dispelling poverty or at least alleviating the level of it in
farming and fishing villages by providing villagers with extra jobs
available from the domestic home industry.[615]

Besides the economic and social aspects, the movement was also expected to
entail broad cultural impacts in South Korea, which eventually would
nurture and grow the national culture of “mutual support” (sangho jiji)
and “mutual cooperation” (sangho hyeopdong) in life through the actual
practice of forming a cooperative body voluntarily inside the domestic home
industry factories in farming and fishing villages. The Movement to Receive
and Produce would even be able to correct the dominant social ethos like
mutual distrust that was a trait of the contemporary capitalist
society.[616] The cultural aspect was apparent in the program introduced at
the Jin-geon Center, which envisioned through training the youth in the
area a new future when everyone would grow to become central and
independent figures for the restoration of their native place, as well as
for the “purification” of local society. Besides the youth in the area,
another important object of the movement in this regard was college
students who came down annually to rural villages during their summer
vacations to give a hand to the farmers. These college students from cities
were expected to go through a training that could help them study about the
masses in rural villages and develop practical attitudes and understanding
that were deemed required for future national leaders.[617]

Yi Jeonggyu’s own assessment of the movement also attested to this
cultural intention. To Yi, the movement no doubt was a venue for both
farming and fishing villagers to participate voluntarily in the
“nation-building through industry” project by helping the nation to
consolidate its autonomous economy. What seemed to be of greater importance
was that by doing so they would go through a phase of “life training,”
in which the villagers would come to realize how much more beneficial a
life with mutual cooperation and mutual aid could be to them. Their
realization then would become of significance as an acquired habit for
their life and ultimately as an immeasurable benefit for the future of the
nation. And there was an additional cultural benefit; the final products of
the domestic home industry in rural villages would all be branded with
Korean national characters and “spirits,” enhancing the prestige of
Korean national culture. In short, unlike those produced by mass production
of the machine industry, the goods from the domestic home industry under
the Movement to Receive and Produce would bring in far more important,
various cultural outcomes to individual Koreans and their nation, Yi
concluded.[618]

With all the anticipated visible, meaningful outcomes from the movement,
the ISNC under Yi’s directorship planned on soliciting support for its
cause from a wide range of social and political stratum in South Korea. In
doing so it strongly disclosed its nationalist intention in the movement.
For example, it held an invitational gathering on July 2, 1968, where Yi
reiterated to the participants the various meanings of the movement
clearly. As he made it clear, the movement had no intention to seek
passively to promote extra earnings for farming families or attempt to
decentralize the manufacturing industry; its ultimate plan rather was to
pave the way to “modernization in rural farming villages” for the sake
of “the nation’s one-hundred-year grand plan.”[619] His call for
support seemed successful at least for the time being, since many centers
in the name of the movement were built in various locations to function as
a main venue for farming villagers in their respective rural location to
manufacture their home-crafted products for export. They were also slated
to serve as a “vanguard organization for the modernization of rural
villages” and as an “autonomous [jayul jeok] and communal [gongdong
sahoe jeok] cooperative body” in rural villages.[620]

To sum up, the Movement to Receive and Produce clearly took aim at
assisting the idea and project of the “nation-building with industry,”
while offering extra jobs readily to rural villagers for their economic
need. In this sense, the ideal behind the movement could be labeled as
“modernist anarchism” that saw industrial development as inevitable and
even indispensable for national liberation in economy. Seen from a
different angle, however, it disclosed the elements of “antimodernist
anarchism.” The ultimate direction of the movement was toward the revival
of rural population and their life against the state-led and urban-based
modernization. Also, its main agenda was its search for alternative
development, and its principles were undoubtedly mutual aid and mutual
cooperation, an explicit sign of anarchist ideals, particularly of
Kropotkin. These principles were used as a response to the
competition-based ones of the modern society and the state-driven
modernization project that placed its emphasis on cities.

Likewise, the society the movement intended to build in the end was
surprisingly similar to the one the prewar Japanese “pure anarchists”
strove to construct. John Crump notes in his study of Hatta Shūzō and
Japanese pure anarchism that Japanese pure anarchists before 1945
envisioned building “a decentralized society of largely self-supporting
communes engaged in both agriculture and small-scale industry.”[621] Yi
Jeonggyu’s emphases on rural villages and on farmers as the owners of the
country, it seems, also shared much in common with the Japanese pure
anarchists like Hatta, who saw and understood “the sheer size of the
agricultural population” that “account[s] for a majority of the [whole]
population and occup[ies] a vast area of land”[622] in Japan. Korean
anarchists like Yi in his emphasis on the importance of farmers and farming
rural villages had openly criticized since 1945 that they had suffered from
the “double exploitations” by cities and “feudal forces,” and their
Japanese counterparts in the 1930s seemed to have already echoed in advance
this later observation by their Korean comrades.[623] There is no evidence
that shows any direct links and ties between the Movement to Receive and
Produce and the prewar Japanese anarchist ideas. But it is safe to say that
there were some conspicuous transnational linkages between Japanese prewar
anarchism and postwar Korean anarchism in thinking of an alternative
development trajectory based on rural villages against the urban-based
development of the modern society.

The Movement to Receive and Produce seemed to be successful for a while, as
it bore its fruit not only with the completion of the Jin-geon Center but
also with the construction of the Institute for Skill Training to Receive
and Produce at the town of Geumgok (Geumgok susan gisul hullyeonwon) at
which rural youth and women were trained as skilled workers and produced
sweaters as well for export.[624] It is unclear, though, when and how the
movement ended, since there is no explanation about its fate even in the
volume published by the ISNC for its own history.[625] It is nevertheless
possible to say that the strengthened dictatorship of Park Chung Hee and
his state-led modernization drive in the 1970s could have prevented the
movement from further developing and growing.[626] The abrupt and unknown
end of the movement, however, didn’t stop Yi Jeonggyu and his fellow
anarchists at the ISNC from experimenting other undertakings to organize
and train rural farming villagers during the decade.

An undertaking was launched by the ISNC in the early 1970s to form an
organization of rural village leaders and college students. Yi Jeonggyu was
at the center of it, who initiated a meeting on November 10, 1971 of
representatives of some college student groups as well as some “rural
movement” (nongchon undong) leaders from various rural villages. All
attendants agreed to accept the basic idea underlining the slogan it
adopted as the guiding principle for the revival of rural villages, “The
nation thrives only if rural villages thrive.” As a follow-up decision,
the next meeting was accordingly scheduled to discuss the possibility of
organizing the Council of the National Leaders for Rural Movement (Jeon-guk
nongchon jidoja hyeopuihoe). And subsequently the mission of the Council
was penned at a preliminary meeting held later to organize the Council: to
revive the cooperative “potential energy” (jeo-ryeok) rural villages
naturally possessed and to promote the autonomous functions of communal
life in rural villages, so that a balanced development between urban and
rural areas and a stable foundation for people’s social structure could
be accomplished in South Korea. Also decided at this preliminary meeting
was that the Council would consist of those who had worried about economic
collapse and cultural degeneration in rural villages.[627] The point of
departure for this Council was, just like the Movement to Receive and
Produce, the revival of rural villages as a precondition for national
development.

Yi Jeonggyu continued to play a special role in the establishment of the
Council as its main sponsor, because he disagreed profoundly with the
state-led modernization and urbanization that had been processed and was
unhappy with the negative consequences they had entailed in rural villages,
which he believed had an important but undesirable effect on the plan for
national economic development. His disagreement, however, again was not
necessarily lifted to a critique of then–South Korean military regime and
its overall modernization policies or developmental strategy. On the
contrary, Yi wanted to make the Council as a practical backbone or an
assisting body for the success of the New Village Movement, although many
rural leaders in the Council, including him, were deeply concerned with the
top-down structure of the state-led movement that was managed and dominated
by the governmental administration,[628] as well as with certain social and
cultural negative consequences it had left in South Korean society.

The formal formation of the Council was initially scheduled in December
1972, a year after its first meeting, but had to be postponed because of
Park Chung Hee’s bloodless coup in October 1972 to introduce a new
constitution that allowed his lifetime presidency, for which the martial
law was proclaimed in October 1972 and all the political and other
activities were prohibited. Next year the Council was finally organized at
its inaugural general assembly held from March 25 to 26 at Ehwa Women’s
University in Seoul. Bak Seung-han, who had been affiliated with the ISNC
and was one of the second-generation anarchists,[629] was appointed as
Chair of the Council. It was allowed to be held and organized under the
martial law. At the inaugural meeting the Council openly identified itself
as an organization of farmers and also announced that the “symptoms of
capitalism” had appeared in South Korea as a consequence of
modernization. Visible among the symptoms the Council identified were the
growing passive speculation and commercialized production in rural
villages, a higher rent for tenancy, the increased number of absentee
landowners, and finally an emergence of possible two new classes in society
like “agricultural workers” (nong-eop nodongja) and “enterprise
owners” (gieop-ga). And Bak pointed out that these symptoms had caused
many subsequent problems: absorption of rural economy into urban economy,
stagnation in rural villages, migration of farmers to cities, and, as a
result of all these, rapidly growing population in cities. The state-led
New Village Movement, however, could not take care of these symptoms, Bak
contended. In his view the state-led movement had been concentrating mainly
on “material increase in income” of rural villagers, rather than
promoting autonomy, self-support (jarip), and cooperation in rural
villages.[630] This concern as to the material-based modernization was
shared with Yi Jeonggyu, who gave an address at the meeting to congratulate
the launching of the Council, when he pointed out that the “rural
problem” was to be taken care of by farmers themselves and not by those
who had nothing to do with them or rural life.[631]

The Council seemed to be involved in many social movements in rural
villages, such as the rural autonomy movement, the consumers’ cooperation
society movement, and so forth.[632] The Council, however, seemed to be
unable to develop those movements further and rather would remain passive,
eventually being dissolved in the early 1980s under the Chun Doo Hwan
military regime.[633] The emphases placed on agriculture and farmers/rural
villages by the ISNC from 1946 had evidently survived until the 1970s. This
time, its main activities were led by some of the second-generation
anarchists who had diverse backgrounds but had no prior experiences in the
pre-1945 national struggles. The Council obviously pointed to the emergence
of capitalist ills in South Korea as a result of the state-led
modernization but still didn’t attack capitalism itself, yet worried only
about the negative consequences of it.

A Forgotten Path: The Federation Anarchist Korea (Han-guk jaju in
yeonmaeng)

 
Around the time when the discussion of the formation of the Council of the
National Leaders for Rural Movement was on its way, a group of Korean
anarchists, numbered about one hundred, gathered at Jin-gwan Buddhist
Temple in Seoul on June 22, 1972, to embark on a new nationwide anarchist
organization,[634] possibly with an aim to revive their movement
collectively. Established at the meeting was the Federation Anarchist Korea
(FAK, Han-guk jaju in yeonmaeng). Unlike its original English translation,
its Korean name literally means “the Korean Federation of Autonomous
Persons.” The organization’s name in Korean didn’t include the word
anarchism, probably to avoid any unnecessary impression about it as a
violent or an antigovernmental socialist organization under Park’s
military regime and its anticommunist policies. Of course, the term
autonomous person (jaju in) had long been adopted after 1945 to describe
the identity of Korean anarchists not as those who negated the state but as
those who favored an autonomous government and upheld the principle of
spontaneous will of individuals, not to mention freedom and equality.
Participants in the FAK included veteran and senior anarchists such as Yi
Jeonggyu, Yi Eulgyu, Jeong Hwaam, and Choe Gapryong, in terms of their
careers and experiences from the colonial period. Choe was appointed as
executive secretary of the FAK, along with four other secretaries. The FAK
was initially organized with hope to succeed the IWPP that had been forced
to be resolved in May 1962 in the wake of the military coup led by General
Park Chung Hee. If the ISNC had been Yi Jeonggyu’s individual
“think-tank” for the realization of his version of anarchism, the FAK
was basically formed as a renewed national organization of Korean
anarchists, with an expectation to succeed and inherit mainly the anarchist
ideals of the IWPP, particularly its leader, Yu Rim, who died in April 1,
1961, chief among his ideals being anarchist participation in politics
through the formation of a political party and the importance of mass
movement and education.[635]

At the inaugural meeting the FAK’s goal was defined “to strive for the
concrete realization of the Federation’s platform and the construction of
an anarchist ideal world in order for all mankind to have a peaceful and
autonomous life.”[636] To realize the goal the FAK also passed its
platform on its inauguration day, which demonstrated its transnational
ideals as well as many anarchist principles it had inherited from the
pre-1945 anarchist movement. The platform first described the FAK’s
members as “autonomous persons” who strove to construct a spontaneous
society as an outcome of their unity formed with spontaneity. Second, it
defined equality as something “uninterruptable” and then rejected any
political appropriation of it as a concept that might divide humans into
the ruler and the ruled. The FAK seemed to be concerned more with equal
social relations. Third, it denied that any kind of action that could end
up taking away someone else’s works without one’s own labor. Fourth,
“the principle of economic life” was adopted in the platform to ensure
an anarchist principle that everyone would work according to ability and
consume according to needs. Fifth, the FAK envisaged that a society that
would be realized after applying the above-mentioned principles must be
open to a possibility to have various patterns of life according to various
regional and occupational peculiarities. Obviously, the FAK made sure of
local differences and diversities in the practice of anarchist principles
in building a new society. Last, the FAK would respect and value the
traditional culture each nation had historically inherited and strive for
world peace under which various cultures of the nations could remain in
harmony.[637]

After the inaugural meeting in 1972, however, the FAK became inactive and
even in hibernation for a long time. Four months after the FAK’s
inauguration, the Yushin Constitution was announced by Park Chung Hee,
which enabled him to be lifetime president of South Korea and possibly
prevented the FAK from beginning its various planned projects and
activities. The brutal suppression of any communism-inspired or
antigovernmental organizations throughout the 1970s continued in the 1980s
under a new military dictatorship, which must have also hindered the FAK
from rejuvenating its activities. The FAK was able to awake from its long
winter hibernation and hold its convention again on August 21, 1987,
fifteen years after its inauguration, in the wake of the 1987 June
Democratization Movement that swept the country, at the auditorium of
Keimyung University in Daegu, with attendance of fifty anarchists. On the
second day of the renewed convention, their venue was moved to the
auditorium of Anui High School in the town of Anui to continue their
convention. Called “the holly place [seongji] of anarchism,” Anui had
hosted the first national convention of Korean anarchists in 1946, and was
the hometown of many second-generation anarchists, where schools were
established after 1945 by some of them to realize their educational
ideals.[638] The FAK has been inactive again since 1987 for unknown
reasons.[639]

Post-1945 Korean Anarchism

 
The activities and ideas of Korean anarchists after 1945 shifted from
accomplishing a social revolution through anticapitalism and
anticolonialism to educating/organizing farmers and workers in order for
them to be qualified and prepared to be the leading forces in the
construction of a new Korean nation-state, as well as to accomplishing a
rural area-based national development by combining industry and agriculture
for the nation-building with industry. They even organized political
parties of their own, but ended up realizing the wall standing between them
and politics. The shift finally was accompanied by a sign of
deradicalization of anarchism. As Lee Mun Chang notes, Korean anarchists
after 1945 gave up their goal of revolution and have mainly focused on
“extremely ordinary” works such as “educating the next generation”
and advocating “cultural enlightenment.” Unlike pre-1945 Korean
anarchism, which had the transnational linkages with regional anarchism in
search of a social revolution that was both national and transnational in
its goal and scope, post-1945 Korean anarchism can be characterized with
its nationalist concerns and deradicalized practice in terms of the
decreased concerns with the social, in favor of the national goal of an
alternative development on the basis of national unity and political
stability.

The shift was not a sudden one but was a continuation of the emphasis
placed on the national problem since the national front was proposed and
formed by Korean anarchists in 1930s China, as I demonstrated in chapter 4.
The shift may indicate Korean anarchists’ retreat from their radical
advocacy of the 1920s and ’30s, when the task of “constructing an
anarchist communist society” in Korea was propagated and deeply shared
among them and with other anarchists. But it occurred in the process of a
Koreanization of anarchism after 1945, to meet the concrete conditions in
South Korea under which Korean anarchists pursued economic development with
emphasis on rural villages and national culture in an attempt to realize
their anarchist ideals in South Korea.[640] This is quite obvious if we
consider that after 1945 they didn’t want to or at least were reluctant
to mention or take up the questions of imperialism, colonialism, or
capitalism critically and seriously, making them targets in their postwar
struggle and movement for the completion of national liberation. In fact,
rather than struggles against capitalists or imperialists, cooperation and
responsibilities of farmers and workers in the course of “constructing a
new Korea” with national capitalists were usually more preferred and even
underscored by Korean anarchists. The reason they refrained from mentioning
capitalism as their target of struggle was probably due to their primary
goal to achieve national development through industrialization, an idea
that can be called a kind of “modernist anarchism,” in the sense that
it saw industrialization as indispensable and even essential for the
realization of anarchist ideals in terms of economic autonomy. They also
gradually began to shift their attention away from workers who were now no
less under control of the state-backed union than independent workers’
unions.[641]

To Korean anarchists national development became the most important task
when Korea’s independence didn’t seem to be complete. To them national
development was the only way to make Korea an autonomous modern
nation-state and ensure its economic independence in the world of
capitalism, and it couldn’t be done without reconstructing rural
villages, increasing farmer’s living standards, and rediscovering
national culture. Awakening and encouraging farmers and workers in order to
make them self-reliant were therefore regarded as the first step toward the
goal of national liberation and development,[642] which could be achieved
through a development strategy that stressed national voices. To many
Korean anarchists Korea’s economic independence was an important element
that would in turn guarantee its political independence in the
international arena under capitalism.

But economic independence couldn’t be pursued simply by following the
already known developmental trajectory of the advanced countries. It needed
to avoid the mistakes the developed countries had committed and further
required the reconstruction of rural villages, especially through an
increase in farmer’s living standards and rediscovering national culture
that could make up for the shortcomings of the urban-focused modernization
of the advanced countries. National development with combination of
industry and agriculture would ensure Korea would avoid all the problems of
the capitalist industrialization. In a word, a “balanced development of
industry and agriculture”[643] was the best developmental strategy for
South Korea, as Yi Jeonggyu believed.

When the state-led modernization seemed to be going in a wrong direction,
destroying rural villages and thus impoverishing rural population in the
1960s and 1970s under the “developmental dictatorship” of Park Chung
Hee, Yi Jeonggyu and his associates attempted to remind Koreans of the
importance of preserving and learning from Korea’s own past, including
native culture and tradition, mostly of rural villages. They envisioned a
society in post-1945 Korea, which can be described as a “genuinely ideal
society” built through the revival of rural villages that could be
realized by the “Free Community Movement” (jayu gongdongche undong), a
movement that aimed at constructing “spontaneous free communities” in
society and strove for “the completion of autonomous independence and
unification of the [Korean] nation[minjok].”[644] Awakening, encouraging,
and educating farmers and workers in order to have them possess the senses
of the “owners of the land” and of self-reliance were regarded as an
important step toward genuine autonomy and development in both political
and economic senses.[645]

In the years before and after the Korean War, the political and military
tensions from the Cold War were at their peak and clouded the Korean
peninsula. What followed was the strengthening of dictatorship in both
Koreas, which reached its peak in the 1950s through ’70s and, as a
result, impaired the already worsening political situation of divided
Korea. As Yi Jeonggyu stated after the Korean War, there seemed for him no
other way after the war but to ask for foreign aid, because of all the
material and spiritual losses caused by the “Communist Bandits’
Rebellion.” Proposing a new life movement to overcome the losses in the
postwar years, Yi thus suggested that Koreans think more about their place
than themselves and also more about the whole country than their own place.
In other words, the nation’s survival and stability had increasingly
become much more important to Yi after the Korean War, because, he thought,
there was no way to save the devastated Korean nation if there was no unity
of all Koreans. The emphasis here was placed on the national reconstruction
with unity and stability. Much needed for the nation were cooperation among
individuals without internal conflicts and their cultural transformation to
form new habits, values, and attitudes, as well as their
anticommunism.[646]

Korean anarchists seemed to fear that their anarchist ideals would be fated
to fail under the situation where anarchism was considered “without any
good reason”[647] “a cousin of communism.”[648] “Sandwiched”
between two different political systems in two Koreas, both hostile to
their belief, they could do nothing but “hold their breath” for
survival to avoid possible arrest and potential torture, albeit the
condition in general has gotten better in South Korea since the 1990s.[649]
As Yi Jeonggyu states, due to the political climate after 1945, Korean
anarchists decided “to cooperate with those who were on the side of
freedom and democracy in order to suppress the Communist rebels,”[650]
and to make every effort to foster Korea’s complete independence.
Accordingly, many anarchists complied with the political aura of South
Korea under the Cold War and dictatorship. In short, they practiced and
deradicalized anarchism after reflecting the sociopolitical conditions of
post-1945 South Korea.

The passing of Yi Jeonggyu in December 1984 drew the end of a long era in
the history of anarchism in Korea, which began in foreign soils in the
early 1920s for the cause of national liberation and social revolution, and
thus marked the end of a revolutionary anarchist movement that aimed at
radical social transformation for a new society with anarchist principles
that had been deeply shared with many other anarchists in the region. In
terms of political democracy and national development, it is possible,
though, for Yi and his associates to think that there have been some
measurable successes in South Korea, given the political changes toward
democracy since 1987 and the economic prosperity since the 1990s, although
these were hardly the outcome of their activities.

Conclusion

 
This study calls into question the conventional use and notion of “Korean
anarchism,” if it is understood, first, within the context of the
geographical and historical boundaries of Korea and, second, as an
ideological principle that has been practiced in unity and with uniformity
among all Korean anarchists. As I have demonstrated in this study,
anarchism in Korea can best be understood, above all, as a product of the
interactions, both direct and indirect, between Korean anarchists and their
Chinese and Japanese counterparts, among others, in such cities as Beijing,
Shanghai, Quanzhou, Tokyo, and Osaka. Their interactions were quite intense
and substantial and entailed mutual influence and inspiration among
themselves, which in many cases led to their common discourse/language and
joint activities, either organizational or publication, for the universal
goal of anarchism as well as their respective national goal. What is
important here is the transnational character and regional elements
embedded in Korean anarchism as a result of such interactions that
accompanied a movement of Korean anarchists and their ideas from one to
other locations in the region, followed by a production of various
place-based practices. The spatial movement and, as a result,
transnationality in Korean anarchism can’t be understood and confined
within the physical and historical contexts of Korea that we conventionally
know, and, therefore, I argue, must not be underestimated in the study of
“Korean anarchism.”

Scholars have always constructed the history of Korean anarchism within the
national context that it served the goal of independence against Japanese
colonialism. The nationalist line of interpretation is misleading, however,
because of the transnational and regional linkages in Korean anarchism this
study demonstrates, which culminated in the idea of social revolution that
was widely shared with other anarchists from its origins in the 1920s and
in its subsequent development in the later decades. Although most Korean
anarchists readily saw the question of independence as their immediate
goal, their ultimate goal was social revolution bent on anarchist
principles. They usually remained in conflict with nationalists and against
their movement, which they thought would aim only at political independence
of Korea without solving social problems prevalent in capitalist society.
They believed that there would be no genuine national liberation without
social revolution. Anarchism’s transnational messages such as freedom and
equality on the basis of mutual aid and spontaneous alliance were to be
crucial in the Korean acceptance and subsequent practice of it.

Simply speaking, the study of Korean anarchism must consider its origins in
foreign soils, that is, China and Japan. And I think the emphasis needs to
be given to the fact that East Asian anarchists, including Korean, were
closely connected to one another through their readings of various
anarchist texts, their common discourse and concerns shared with one
another, the understanding of and the solution to the national and world
problems, and, in many cases, their joint actions and organizations to deal
with the problems they faced and identified. The process of their sharing
often forged common radical culture and language among themselves and
formulated their shared vision and joint actions. And I argue that we need
to consider this process of interactions and sharing in our understanding
of Korean anarchism that was a product of much broader transnational
discourse and activities of regional anarchists. This is what nationalist
historiography has missed.

This study demonstrates the existence of some kind of transnational radical
networks of discourse and practice that connected regional anarchists and
radicals. And the transnationalism in Korean anarchism was a product of the
networks in which such locations as Tokyo and Shanghai served as their
nodes. To put it differently, Korean anarchists before 1945 were constantly
on the move within the “ecumene” where the intense and sustained
interactions among East Asian anarchists occurred in those metropolitan
cities of Eastern Asia. And as a result, Korean anarchism emerged as a part
of regional anarchism, more broadly regional radicalism, and the history of
Korean anarchism, therefore, needs to be understood and constructed within
the history of regional anarchism and vice versa. Although Korean
anarchists developed their own different versions of anarchism from those
of their regional counterparts who nevertheless shared much in common in
terms of their solutions to the problems of their contemporary society and
world.

The transnational and regional character of Korean anarchism I argue for,
however, doesn’t necessarily deny or even minimize the role of
nationalism in its history and development. This book, rather, suggests a
dialectical and nuanced understanding of the relationship between
nationalism and anarchism and underlines the process that Korean anarchists
read anarchism with their understanding of immediate national goal and,
conversely, articulated that goal with their understanding of anarchism in
particular settings. The transnational character underscores the close
relationship (and often tensions) between national consciousness as a
motive to fight foreign colonialism and anarchism as a longing to resist
national boundaries and pursue universal goals. A Eurocentric understanding
of anarchism as an idea that rejects any form of government misses this
kind of tension or ambiguity in the relationship in colonies and
semicolonies. Anarchism in Korea had its both nationalist and transnational
dimensions, which were not necessarily viewed as contradictory by Korean
anarchists. This was the vagueness that explains why they fought for
national liberation and joined the Provisional Government, despite their
poignant criticism of various nationalist movements before 1945. They were
even doubtful many times of such terms as “the state,”
“fatherland,” and “patriotism,” and usually found and identified
themselves as part of the “oppressed peoples” of the world under
capitalism. They had to grapple with the tension and maintain the ambiguous
attitude between the ideals of freedom and equality and the national goal.
To them, anarchism appeared as a promise not only for freedom and equality
in a new society but for national survival and autonomy, both politically
and economically. The ambiguous relationship and tension between
nationalism and anarchism were to be crucial in Korean anarchism. And
unlike many South Korean scholars, I have moved away throughout this study
from separating anarchism from nationalism.

Next is the question about the understanding of “Korean anarchism” as a
principle practiced in unity among all Korean anarchists. Throughout this
study, I have used the term Korean anarchism, but refrained from describing
it as a principle Korean anarchists have practiced with uniformity, no
matter where they were and no matter when they did. In fact, as I have
demonstrated, there were many different practices of anarchism among
themselves, according to their location and environment. Anarchism was
generally accepted by Koreans with reference to their common national
aspiration but, in applying it to their activities and programs, they
considered local conditions and demands, as well as the national and
transnational goals. This exactly was the main reason for the diverse
directions and methods they have taken in experimenting and implementing
anarchist ideals and principles at different locations and times.

To be sure, place was important in the practice of anarchism among Korean
anarchists in two major locations, China and Japan. Korean anarchist
organizations in Japan were products of study-abroad students, mostly
“poor work-study students,” in search of higher education, while their
counterparts in China were organized by exiled Koreans there, working for
independence. The Japan-based Korean anarchists were, in general, more
interested in the social aspects, due to their intense interactions with
Japanese “pure anarchists,” and had more chances to publish their own
journals and newspapers, albeit they were short-lived and/or under strict
censorship. And their activities were often part of the latter’s
movement. Given the wide range and depth of the interactions between Korean
and Japanese anarchists, it is safe to say that Korean anarchists in Japan
were equipped more with theoretical understanding of anarchism and their
movements were guided more by its social revolutionary principles.
Important to their understanding of it were the works of Ōsugi Sakae, as
much as those of Kropotkin.

Even among Korean anarchists in Japan, there were visible signs of
different practices of anarchism, according to location. While Tokyo as a
concentration place of regional radicals nurtured various anarchist
movements and became a node of regional anarchist networks, Osaka appeared
as a location where Korean anarchists had to deal with the prevailing labor
issues among Korean workers there with a local-based application of
anarchism. The Osaka-based Korean anarchists obviously were more mindful of
the labor and “life-related” issues in the industrializing city, such
as the improvement of working conditions at factory, and usually refrained
from using the word black, the color that was associated with anarchism. As
Go Sunheum’s case demonstrates, the activities of Korean anarchists in
Osaka had something to do with supporting the livelihood of them and their
compatriots, who were often from the same province, most notably Jeju
Island, utilizing a kind of “place-based networks” in the Korean
community there. Also, they seemed to have less conflicts and tensions with
both nationalists and other socialists and, for their movement, made use of
national consciousness as much as social consciousness among Koreans there.
On the contrary, Korean anarchists in Tokyo, receiving consistent and
strong support and sponsorship from their Japanese comrades, continued to
propagate anarchism and put the word black in the name of their
organizations and publications, as if they were not afraid of the Japanese
police surveillance, even during the 1930s, as exemplified in the
publication of Black Newspaper. As a result, the Tokyo-based Korean
anarchist movement was overall in close relationship with Japanese
anarchist movement. Targeting liberation, both national and social, the
Korean anarchist movement in the two cities, nonetheless, was basically a
social revolutionary movement, rather than just a political or mass
movement for national liberation.

Korean anarchists in colonial Korea were more attentive to the social
problems of their colonized compatriots under the direct colonial
condition, deprioritizing the political question of independence, which
would only bring in further suppression and subsequent hardships on them
and their families. They even utilized in their activities a new term the
destitute and humble class Yi Hyang coined in consideration of the colonial
situation of Korea, rather than property-less class or proletariat, and
focused on the “livelihood struggle” in industrializing northern Korea.
They had to directly face and deal with the colonial rule and responded
accordingly to it with consideration of the demands and necessities of
their compatriots in different locations. Accommodations followed. Evidence
indicates that the rise and development of anarchist movement in colonial
Korea was largely a product of and even dependent on those who had returned
from Japan to the peninsula throughout the 1920s. But there certainly was
an independent and unique practice of anarchism in colonial Korea, as
exemplified in the invention of the term. And many Korean anarchists in
colonial Korea also maintained their contacts with those in China as well,
including those in Manchuria. There were some visible internal divisions as
well among those in colonial Korea over the focus of activities.

Similarly, Korean anarchists in Manchuria too adopted a place-based
approach and were more concerned with the livelihood of Korean migrants
there. Their priority was given to the issue of economic survival of the
migrants in the treacherously harsh land, which denoted no strong
attachment to the question of national liberation in their movement, at
least temporarily. And moreover, anarchists in Manchuria seemed to be in
line with those within colonial Korea in terms of avoiding words like
independence or black in their activities, at least for their own survival,
as well as the pressing issues they had to deal with.

The national front idea proposed by Korean anarchists when Japan invaded
China in the 1930s was a reflection of their situation in wartime China,
where they confronted the question of both individual and national
survival. Enjoying relative freedom of activity with the support of Chinese
anarchists and the National Government of China, they were willing to be
flexible in their attitude toward nationalists and even communists, and
accordingly prioritized the national goal over their anarchist goal, which
marked a turning point in the Korean anarchist movement in China. The
national front idea and the subsequent proposal for armed struggle against
Japan in league with the Chinese were, to be sure, a logical outcome under
the wartime situation in China, but also a reflection of the long-held idea
to make alliance with the Chinese for their shared transnational goal.
Korean anarchists in 1930s Japan, unlike their counterparts in China of the
same decade, were not able to involve in any kind of armed struggle for
independence, but rather had to go underground or were forced to remain
silent with their Japanese comrades until 1945, unless they gave up their
anarchist faith and converted to worship the Japanese emperor. An exception
was Black Newspaper, which carried its own resilient struggle against
Japanese imperialism by delivering to its readers the issues related to
colonial Korea and the information and news about Korean anarchists in the
region, with no sign of fear of suppression by Japanese police.

Among the China-based Korean anarchists, there was a seeming consensus that
their efforts to build an anarchist society in Korea would be meaningless
if Korea did not even exist. This was the main rationale for them in
proposing the national front idea and shifting their emphasis to national
unity and independence. In fact, they might not have even thought that it
was a shift in their movement, if we consider the role of national
aspiration in their acceptance of anarchism. Japan’s invasion of China
since 1931 had them rethink their priority gradually, and formulate their
plan for both national and transnational goals. Their national front idea
was backed by those who had moved to China during the “combat period”
from colonial Korea, Japan, and Manchuria to avoid the Japanese police
arrest and harsh torture. The relative freedom available in China enticed
many Korean anarchists to migrate to China from the late 1920s throughout
the 1930s.

It is possible that the China-based Korean anarchists might have been
influenced by the GMD anarchists like Li Shizeng and Wu Zhihui, in their
anarchist thinking and activities, especially with regard to the national
front idea. This might also explain the reason why the post-1945 anarchist
movement in South Korea under the leadership of Yu Rim and then Yi
Jeonggyu, both of whom had maintained their relationship with the Chinese
counterparts in China, moved toward the question of national liberation and
national development. Under their leadership, Korean anarchists since 1945
didn’t seem to be interested in answering the question of radical
transformation of Korean society, and endeavored to experiment their
anarchist ideals through anarchist political parties and social movements.
Anarchism in Korea after 1945 was deradicalized under their leadership.
Anarchists even defined themselves as “autonomous persons” and
“believers in an autonomous government,” not as social revolutionaries.
By mid-1950s they used a new name for anarchism, “democratic
socialism.” The new definition and name were coined by former China-based
anarchists, most notably Yi Jeonggyu and Yu Rim. The latter, who had
already attempted to implement “Koreanized [han-guk jeok] anarchism” by
participating in the Provisional Government of Korea in China,[651]
emphasized the goal of establishing an autonomous Korean state, and hoped
to realize the anarchist ideals of freedom and equality through an
anarchist party as well as an autonomous government with mobilized workers
and peasants. He tested their realization with the IWPP. This “Yu Rim
Line” defended unflinchingly the ideals against the undemocratic,
dictatorial state.[652] As Yu’s undertaking with the IWPP was foiled
under the Rhee regime’s suppression, many anarchists under the leadership
of Yi Jeonggyu and his associates increasingly turned their eyes to the
question of national development through reviving rural villages. They
began various social movements for modest social and cultural changes.[653]
This “Yi Jeonggyu Line,” which seemed to assign the major role of
solving social problems under capitalism to the state, didn’t receive the
dictatorial regime’s suppression and, it seems, was well received from
many Korean anarchists in the 1960s and ’70s, when they were forced to
“give up” their radical ideals unwillingly. What happened after 1945 in
the anarchist camp symbolizes the retreat from its original plan to build
an anarchist communist society with freedom and equality guaranteed in
society, which was no doubt stated in the declaration of the KAF in 1928
and in the platform of the LKYSC in the 1930s.

Yi Jeonggyu’s national development strategy was deemed more suitable in
the postbellum situation of Korea, which stressed training and educating
farmers in rural villages after accommodating the political climate of
South Korea. If Yu Rim was more focused on the realization of freedom and
equality in society against the Rhee’s dictatorship through anarchist
participation in politics, Yi seemed to understand it within the national
context in which national survival in unity through national development
and economic autonomy was underscored more than the social. To Yi, of
course, the economic backwardness of South Korea hindered it from
developing into an autonomous country without economically driven social
problems. With his deradicalized anarchism, anarchists might have been able
to assist the realization of national autonomy in politics and economy but
certainly had to witness the idea of freedom and equality slipping away and
placed in the far distant future. However we evaluate the two different
lines, they at least vindicate that Korean anarchists after 1945 were not
in unity either and rather had diverse visions for and approaches to the
realization of an anarchist society in Korea.

After 1945, anarchism as a social revolutionary idea and vision for a
radical and fundamental transformation of society lost its vitality and
acceptability in South Korea, whether by force or voluntarily. When the
state-led modernization through industrialization in the 1960s and ’70s
turned out to be disastrous to rural villages, Korean anarchists like Yi
Jeonggyu, rather than leading a challenge to the state, passively reminded
Koreans of the importance of protecting rural villages and learning from
Korea’s own past, culture, and traditions in the course of
“constructing a new Korea.” And they emphasized cooperation and
responsibility of farmers and workers in national development, while
decoupling anarchism with any radical struggle against capitalism of which
social problems in then–South Korea were evidently a product. What
followed was their pursuit of an alternative national development with the
slogan of “the nation thrives only if rural villages thrive” to avoid
the shortcomings of capitalist industrialization, which were conspicuous in
the advanced countries. And they launched the Movement to Receive and
Produce to solve the rural problem and lay out a foundation for Korea’s
economic autonomy in the world of capitalism. It was perceived by many
anarchists as essential to achieve the goal of Korea’s genuine national
liberation. In doing so, Korean anarchists believed that they had to fight
the communists in the north and the “feudal forces” that had survived
in the south from the colonial period, to realize genuine national
liberation in the sense of both political and economic autonomy.
Overthrowing capitalism was not considered by them, therefore. In short,
they set their post-1945 goal as “nation-building through industry,”
with special emphasis on rural villages and their role in the cultural
changes in the future.

An examination of the Korean anarchist movement since the 1920s reveals
that social revolution was its common answer to the problems in colonies
like Korea and in post-1945 Korean society, which was no doubt shared with
their Asian counterparts. The anarchist ideas of freedom and equality were
most attractive to them. Mutual aid was, not surprisingly, a widely
accepted principle for both the progress of mankind and a social revolution
in Korea, not to mention for Korea’s independence, possibly due to the
affinity of it to such an existing idea practiced in Korean rural villages
as mutual cooperation. Their shared idea and vision of social revolution
were to help Korean anarchists transcend their national boundaries and
share the transnational concerns and solutions in their struggle for
independence and liberation of Korea after 1945. The shift made after 1945
to the idea of national development didn’t necessarily entail the loss of
their transnational longing for a cosmopolitan world but was indicative of
their search for an alternative development with the anarchist principles
intact. In any case, Korean anarchists always seemed to be unwilling to be
in unity and conformity in their thinking and practice of anarchism,
possibly due to their deep faith in such anarchist principles as
spontaneity and individual freedom, no matter where they were.

Many Korean anarchists must have been delighted with the recent economic
development of South Korea, since it has been at least a sign of
accomplishment of the goal of national development they have endeavored.
And yet, they must have realized that it has been achieved only at the
expense of political freedom and economic equality. To many Koreans
anarchism still means and represents an idea of freedom.[654] And it has
provided others with “an anarchist sensibility” that underlines its
egalitarianism in their fight against the neoliberal globalization.[655]
Now, the task to realize the two ideals has been handed over to the new
generation of Korean anarchists who, facing the deepening and widening
inequality between haves and have nots and witnessing the violations of
individual rights and freedom, have to arm themselves with a new practice
of anarchism, in alliance with the like-minded others.

This task is quite evidently recognized by some Korean anarchists who are
keen to the importance of the emerging issues of social alienation and
inequality under globalization. They plan on dealing with them as South
Korea becomes a “multicentered society” (da jungsim sahoe) and make
sure of creating an environment where the participation of “various
social elements” (i.e., the masses) in politics is guaranteed. They are
particularly attentive to the fate of the self-employed and the alienated
labor forces, such as irregular and part-time workers in South Korea,
including non-Korean migrant workers, under the regime of globalization.
Some of these anarchists are weighing in on the revival of an anarchists
party, this time based on and in collaboration with the newly defined
masses and the civil societies working for them.[656] On the other hand,
some other anarchists seems to think that their main task lies in bringing
the pre-1945 activities of Korean anarchists back to the memory of Koreans
and honoring them properly, before any other new anarchist projects for the
future can be planned and launched. Their concern and target seems to be
the trend in Korean politics toward conservatism. These anarchists focus on
mobilizing and educating Korean youths for the changes projected in the
future.[657] As is clear, there are still slight divisions and
disagreements among Korean anarchists over the question of what to do in
this new century to inherit and concretize their previous generation’s
endeavors.

Despite such differences, Korean anarchists need to revive the ideals from
the earlier years and regroup themselves to resist together the current
state’s disastrous policies under neoliberalism, which have destroyed
rural villages once again and taken away the two long-cherished anarchist
ideals, freedom and equality. Their initial goal of independence has been
slipped away, and the chance to achieve genuine national liberation with
political and economic autonomy has thus become slimmer under the
neoliberal globalization. In this situation, the precious ideals and vision
for an ideal society that Korean anarchists used to uphold before 1945 have
been washed out and their nationalistic experiences and sacrifices for
independence are only highlighted and honored by the current state. It may
be a time for Korean anarchists today to look for a new kind of struggle
and solidarity with their domestic, regional, and global comrades and come
up with a new place-based approach to overcome the forces, both national
and global, that have deepened the pains and sorrows of the weak, and
finally to get closer to the realization of their cherished ideals and
vision. At least, it seems that, just like before, they all still share the
same fate and issues with their comrades in the region and the world.

Notes

 
The following abbreviations are used for notes. All other abbreviations are
indicated in the notes.
 

 CMUK 
 
 Chōsen minzoku undōshi kenky [Studies on the History of Korean
National Movement] 
 
 CMZ 
 
 Choaxian minzu zhanxian [The Korean National
Front] 
 
 CYD 
 
 Chaoxian yiyongdui [The Korean Volunteers Unit] 
 
 HMUY

 
 Han-guk minjok undongsa yeon-gu [Studies on the History of Korean
National Movement] 
 
 HNJ 
 
 Huainianji [Collection of Cherishing
Memories] 
 
 HQ 
 
 Hanguo qingnian [Korean Youth]
 
 
 HS 
 
 Heuksaek
sinmun [Black Newspaper] 
 
 JRS 
 
 Jiy rengō shimbun [Spontaneous
Alliance Newspaper] 
 
 NT 
 
 Namhwa tongsin [South China Correspondence]

 
 QLXX 
 
 Quanzhou liming xueyuan xinxi [News on Quanzhou Liming
College] 
 
 TS 
 
 Tongsin [Correspondence] 
 
 YWH 
 
 Yeoksa wa hyeonsil
[History and Reality] 
 


     From : TheAnarchistLibrary.org

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     Chapter 5 -- Added : January 07, 2021

     Chapter 5 -- Updated : January 17, 2022

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