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A victory for democracy in South Korea?
At 11 p.m. on December 3, President Yoon Suk-Yeol declared martial law during a televised address, which he said was necessary to protect South Korea “ from the threat of North Korean communist forces, to eradicate the despicable pro-North Korean anti-state forces that are plundering the freedom and happiness of our people, and to protect the free constitutional order” (...) “the opposition party [the Democratic Party - editor's note] has paralyzed the government, for the purposes of impeachment, special investigations and to protect its leader from prosecution”. This was the first time martial law had been declared since 1980 and the subsequent Gwangju massacre…
The decree on the state of emergency issued shortly afterwards stipulated a ban on all political activity, the dissolution of the National Assembly and local councils, control of the media by the army, a ban on meetings, demonstrations and strikes, the possibility of arrests and searches without warrants, and so on. A list of people to be arrested had been drawn up, including not only Democratic Party officials, but also certain leaders of the PPP (People's Power Party, the ruling party) who were critical of the President, certain Supreme Court judges, and so on. The special forces responsible for assassinating North Korean officials in the event of war had been mobilized: it seems that the plan was to assassinate several key figures and blame the crimes on North Korea…
But the deputies, who had managed to meet during the night despite the army blockade, voted unanimously (190 present out of 300) against the state of emergency, and the president finally backed down: a few hours later, he announced the lifting of martial law and the withdrawal of the army. The next day, the Minister of Defense resigned (he was arrested a little later and attempted suicide in prison), and impeachment proceedings were launched against the President. Tens of thousands of people demonstrated to demand that Yoo step down.
The international media could then rejoice that Korean democracy had worked well and demonstrated its ability to resist the irrational and desperate initiative of a president who had “lost his mind”.
However, Yoon Suk-Yeol's “unexpected” attempt at a self-coup was anything but a whim; if it was carried out in a haphazard fashion, it had probably been planned for several months, at least since July according to military officials.
Yoon Suk-Yeol, a former prosecutor renowned for his uncompromising condemnation of corruption, including among the highest political and economic figures, was nominated as the PPP's candidate in the May 2022 presidential elections on a platform that included promises of deregulation, a tougher policy towards North Korea, closer ties with the United States and reactionary measures such as the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality (despite the fact that the country has the highest wage gap between men and women in the OECD). He was elected by a narrow margin over the Democratic Party (center) candidate ; as he did not have a majority in parliament, he had difficulty implementing the anti-proletarian measures demanded by employers.
The PPP had hoped to win the parliamentary elections in the spring of 2024, but suffered a resounding defeat. In July, the KCTU (the country maim union) called for a 15-day mobilization (demonstrations, sectoral strikes) against the proposed reforms of labor, pensions and education, and the repression of workers' struggles; what aroused the most anger was the legalization of the 69-hour work week.
The KCTU's action did not stop authoritarian measures against strikes and the media, to which were added criminal proceedings against opposition figures. The President vetoed some twenty laws passed by Parliament, while the Democratic Party tried to impeach the judges who were hostile to him, and denounced the corruption of Yoon Suk-Yeol's wife. The vote on the 2025 budget was blocked...
* * *
With a population of 51 million, South Korea ranks among the world's leading economic powers: it is the world's ninth-largest GDP producer, sixth-largest industrial producer, eighth-largest exporter and fifth-largest producer of high-tech products.
This wasn't always the case; after the ravages of the Korean War, until the early 1960s South Korea was an underdeveloped country, poorer than North Korea and largely agricultural: over 60% of the population lived in the countryside, compared with 5% today. Under the military dictatorship of Park Chung-hee (at the head of the country from 1963 to 1979), South Korea underwent rapid industrialization, thanks in particular to funding from the United States, anxious to facilitate the economic development of its protégé in a strategic region facing North Korea and its Russian and Chinese sponsors. The geo-strategic situation has been, and remains to this day, a determining factor in South Korea's policies, including its domestic policy, as a result of inter-imperialist confrontations. The Vietnam War (in which 350,000 South Korean soldiers took part) (1) gave the country's economy a boost.
In 1979, Park Chung-hee was assassinated at the headquarters of the South Korean CIA, and another general took his place. To put an end to the anti-dictatorship protests at a time when the country was in the grip of a severe economic crisis, in May 1980 the military government decreed martial law throughout the country; following police and army exactions, a veritable insurrection took control of the southern city of Gwangju, and the movement spread to other towns in the region, as far as the major port of Pusan. But the petty bourgeois democrats at the head of this spontaneous uprising were fundamentally pacifists, and were unable to organize any defense against the army, which went on an orgy of repression, killing between 1,000 and 2,000 people.
Towards the end of the '80s, with economic growth in full swing, the ruling class found itself faced with a situation of rising social tensions and workers' struggles. The death of a student leader under torture triggered a wave of mass demonstrations for democracy in June 1987. After initial concessions from the military, strikes broke out, mostly spontaneous and therefore illegal, and often fiercely repressed. Starting in large companies, they rapidly spread throughout the country, rising from 276 in 1986 to 3,749 in 1987; hundreds of workers' protest actions (walkouts, strikes, occupations, hostage-takings, demonstrations) were recorded every day during the summer; more than 3,000 new unions were formed that year, whereas until then there had been no independent trade unions. Over a million workers were involved in this wave of strikes. The central demands were higher wages, shorter working hours, improved working conditions and an end to barrack discipline in the factories.
As repression proved ineffective, it was high time for the bourgeoisie to “democratize in order to stabilize” the country: election of the president by universal suffrage, adoption of a new constitution, and so on. In 1988, the Sixth Republic was officially born. In the years that followed, workers' struggles declined sharply, testifying to the anti-proletarian effectiveness of democracy, which did not eliminate the repression of workers' struggles.
In December 1996, anti-labor laws were passed by parliament on the sly to facilitate lay-offs (at a time when the system of lifetime employment predominated in large companies), authorize the use of scabs during legal strikes, extend the workweek to 56 hours, “flexibilize” working hours, prohibit payment for strike days, and ban the newly-formed KCTU trade union confederation until the year 2000. The unions immediately launched calls for protest strikes, which met with “unexpected” success; within 3 days, more than 300,000 workers went on strike, initially in the metal industry (shipyards, automobile) before being joined by workers in other sectors (hospitals, transport, etc.), despite the fact that the government had declared the strikes illegal.
The movement lasted three weeks, reaching 1.5 million strikers by mid-January, forcing the pro-government FTKU trade union confederation to call for workers to join the movement, before the KCTU first decided that there would only be strikes one day a week and then “suspended” the strikes to facilitate negotiations with the government.
In the end, the results were minimal: the new version of the law, approved by the unions, differed little from the old one. Above all, the KCTU was granted semi-legal status (it was legalized in 1999), as the capitalists saw its role as a safeguard against proletarian anger. Nevertheless, this general strike remains historically the biggest movement of the young South Korean proletariat: almost 3 million proletarians took part in the struggle.
Thereafter, there was no comparable movement. The so-called “candle revolution” in 2016 which, after weeks of peaceful demonstrations every Saturday by hundreds of thousands of people, saw the impeachment of President Park Geun-hye (daughter of the dictator Park) was a cross-class, politically petty-bourgeois movement caused by Park's corruption (2) and not by her anti-worker policies: banning the teachers' union, raising the retirement age coupled with a pay cut for workers over 56, and so on.
The South Korean working class is confronted with a ruthless bourgeoisie that never ceases to impose harsh conditions of exploitation and repressive measures, whether under democratic or dictatorial rule. Yoon's coup attempt is just another demonstration that the ruling class will not hesitate to use dictatorial means to achieve its ends and crush the proletariat. South Korean proletarians know from experience that democracy is just as anti-proletarian as dictatorship.
But this is not the opinion of the KCTU, which on 4/12 called for an unlimited general strike until Yoon leaves power (a call apparently little heeded). After the parliamentary vote in favor of the president's impeachment, the KCTU lifted its call on 17/12 ; the statement issued by its president added: “ In the end, democracy won, the workers and citizens won, and the KCTU won. (...) let's dedicte ourselves to fighting for democracy and workers' rights” - this ‘struggle’ consisting of pushing for Constitutional Court's to validate Yoon's impeachment, etc. (3)! In fact, Yoon has not given up; protected by the Presidential Guard, he was even seeking to mobilize his supporters until he was finally arrested on January 15th.
Democracy will never protect proletarians from the rapacity and repression of capitalists; but those who spread bourgeois lies about the benefits of democracy and call on proletarians to fight for it will never be able to really organize the struggle to advance workers' emancipation. Breaking with pro-democracy political orientations, refocusing struggles on the exclusive defense of proletarian interests, using classist methods of struggle rather than parliamentary and institutional “struggle”, is necessary if proletarians want to be able to defend themselves against the bourgeoisie and its regime, whatever it may be.
This means breaking with all forces advocating class collaboration, and striving to build a class party whose objective is not the victory of democracy, but its defeat by proletarian revolution!
(1) They will be guilty of various atrocities, such as massacres of civilians, rape and so on.
(2) She was implicated in a huge corruption scandal involving tens of millions of dollars. She was also found guilty of a whole series of abuses of power, such as the use of the secret services against opponents, and so on. She was sentenced to 24 years in prison, before being pardoned by the next president, a member of the Democratic Party.
(3) https://www.facebook.com/kctueng, 17/12/24.
January, 15th 2025
International Communist Party
Il comunista - le prolétaire - el proletario - proletarian - programme communiste - el programa comunista - Communist Program
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