[KS] Is there one full good source in English on Korean Left(s), past and present?

Wed Sep 13 05:34:36 EDT 2006

Many thanks to Frank for this fascinating glimpse
of a world of which I for one am far too ignorant.

Besides tracking down primary sources, for the wider public
- and those of us who to our shame are linguistically challenged
- does there exist in English an uptodate book, or books, which
gives a comprehensive and trustworthy overview of the many
currents of Korean resistance and oppositional movements?

-- Especially to Japanese occupation. But at least in the ROK, one
could and probably should extend it at least to 1953 - and maybe
right through to the present day?

Particularly, I'm fascinated by those strands - eg anarchist or Trotskyite - 
for whom Liberation did not end the struggle, since neither the ROK nor
DPRK meant or permitted their kind of freedom. Were they ever numerous?
- or just a few intellectuals, swiftly suppressed on both sides of the 
38//-DMZ?

The news - to me, anyway - that Korean anarchism is now being recovered
in Taegu, of all places, raises a further question. While that may be a 
purely
academic exercise (is it?), I've often wondered whether more recent leftisms
in Korea - above all the 386 Marxist turn of the 1980s, and its internal 
splits
into NL and ML factions, etc - had any organic connection to earlier 
movements?
Or did they spring up anew in fresh soil, as if from nowhere?

My hunch is the latter. Not only because the earlier struggles were (I 
assume)
so thoroughly crushed that it would be hard for the 386ers to know of them.
But also these new Lefts, from the little I know, seemed to adopt cruder and
frankly implausible standpoints - either pro-NK, or Leninist revolution -
compared to my sense of more nuanced, thoughtful and original analyses in
earlier decades. In the 1980s South Korea seemed a late-Marxizing country,
with most of its far left ideological discourse sounding like ill-fitting 
imports
- at the very time when such blinkers were largely being discarded elsewhere.

But this may be a jaundiced view. Is there even a full account of ML vs NL
- I realize that even this way of putting it is oversimplified, and perhaps 
wrong -
in English, including their own texts? Surely there must have been PhDs on 
all this by now; some perhaps by (ex-)participants? I'd love to know.

Of course, thanks to Google we can all practise self-reliance now. I swiftly 
found:

http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/talks/korea.html
http://www.mashada.com/forums/index.php?az=printer_friendly&forum=22&
topic_id=32859
(a Kenyan revolutionary learning admiringly from his Korean comrades)

But a full, neutral, authoritative account(s) would be better.
I humbly request enlighenment, or at least guidance.

Fraternally,
Aidan

AIDAN FOSTER-CARTER
Honorary Senior Research Fellow in Sociology & Modern Korea, Leeds University 

Home address: 17 Birklands Road, Shipley, West Yorkshire, BD18 3BY, UK 
tel: +44(0)  1274  588586         (alt) +44(0) 1264 737634          mobile:  
+44(0)  7970  741307 
fax: +44(0)  1274  773663         ISDN:   +44(0)   1274 589280
Email: afostercarter at aol.com     (alt) afostercarter at yahoo.com      website: 
www.aidanfc.net
[Please use @aol; but if any problems, please try @yahoo too - and let me 
know, so I can chide AOL]

___________________

In a message dated 13/09/2006 01:55:39 GMT Standard Time, frank at koreaweb.ws 
writes:

> Subj:Re: [KS] About Park Ryol 
> Date:13/09/2006 01:55:39 GMT Standard Time
> From:frank at koreaweb.ws
> Reply-to:koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> To:koreanstudies at koreaweb.ws
> Sent from the Internet 
> 
> 
> 
> Park Rrrrryol, that doesn't exactly conform with 
> the Republican transcription system, does it? You 
> can take the term  t'ujaeng quite literally, 
> meaning combat, fight -- used to refer to fights 
> with military means, or later, in mainland China, 
> also to ideological struggle (e.g. against 
> political enemies within). You will find many 
> Communist leaflets from the 1930s and 1940s with 
> "t'ujaeng" in the title, and there are even a 
> couple of "Bloody Struggle Histories of ..." the 
> anti-Japanese movement that were published in 
> South Korea between 1945 and 1949. After that the 
> term has rarely been used in the South, but 
> continued to be in high regard in the North and 
> in Mao's China. Although I would not associate 
> the term to Hitler's book. "Kampf" may well be 
> translated as "t'ujaeng," that seems a good 
> choice, in this case. Then again, "Kampf" is a 
> much more neutral word in German, not at all as 
> defined as "t'ujaeng," and by no means 
> necessarily referring to military or militant 
> means.
> 
> I doubt that Pak Yôl published a text with such 
> title, _Naûi t'ujaeng_, at least not in South 
> Korea or during the colonial period. The 
> anarchist journals and publications that the 
> circle around Prof. Ha Ki-rak (I think he passed 
> away) is publishing in T'aegu would sure have 
> reproduced such text, but I never even saw a 
> reference to it. The title would indicate that 
> the text, if it exists, was likely published in 
> North Korea. Am I wrong? Then again, I doubt it 
> is a book -- maybe just a short article. Pak was 
> not an intellectual, not a leader either, he 
> didn't write much. There are others who did, like 
> mentioned Ha Ki-rak or Chông Hwa-am, or Yu 
> Cha-myông from the Korean minority in China. Even 
> Yu Su-in who was once Ba Jin's Esperanto teacher 
> and who returned to North Korea (from China) in 
> the 1950s has left a long trace of publications 
> in both Chinese and Korean from the 1920s to his 
> death. (His grandson once showed me a 5000 pages 
> manuscript about the anarchist movement that he 
> had written.) Pak, on the other hand, had his day 
> of fame when he and his lover Kaneko were picked 
> by the Japanese authorities after the Kanto Earth 
> Quake to go on trial -- as a representative for 
> all Koreans in Japan, and as an indirect 
> justification of the massacres that had happened 
> in the aftermath of the earth quake.
> 
> All there seems to be by Pak Yôl himself are 
> poems he wrote in prison, published  in the 
> popular left-wing magazine _Samchôlli_ (no. 14, 
> December 1949) [just saw the reference, haven't 
> seen them yet]: "Naûi okchung chap'yông" 
> (Miscellaneous poems from my time in jail). The 
> term "chap'yông," by the way, seems to be a 
> neo-Japonism. I could only find it in a Japanese 
> dictionary.
> 
> Since you mention Kaneko Fumiko (1903-1926) -- 
> her autobiography, written in prison, for the 
> trial, as was usual in the Japanese legal system 
> at the time, is a full-fleged book (250 pp. in 
> English translation). It is an absolutely amazing 
> account! Very well written, extremely mature for 
> a twenty year old woman, a woman who grew up 
> under depressingly poor circumstances in Japan 
> and Korea, and as sensitive and politically 
> engaging as an autobiography can possibly be.
> --> _The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman_ (ISBN: 0873328027)
> 
> Best,
> Frank
> 
> 
> >I was interested to see that KBS recently 
> >prepared a documentary drama about Kaneko 
> >Fumiko, the 'lover' of the Korean anarchist Park 
> >Yol. I have heard that Park published an account 
> >of his activities (I assume after being freed 
> >from prison in 1945?) and some give the title as 
> >'na ui tujaeng' (the same Korean as Mein 
> >Kampf!!!) but I am unable (with my meagre 
> >patience) to track this work. Can I ask if 
> >anyone knows of it, and where it mmight be 
> >found? I would be most grateful.
> >
> >Brother Anthony
> >Sogang University, Seoul
> >http://hompi.sogang.ac.kr/anthony/
> 
> 
> -- 
> --------------------------------------
> Frank Hoffmann
> http://koreaweb.ws
> 

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