[KS] assessing historical meanings - Mr. Yoon

[Frank Hoffmann]

Dear Vladimir:

Yes, sure -- but below you are clarifying 
something that was not stated otherwise. Korean 
communists have indeed succeeded to create their 
very own little "purges" and "work camps" -- 
quite independent from Moscow, totally localized 
ones. (Irony intended.) And they started to work 
on this early on, already during the colonial 
period in Manchuria. ...Wasn't Helen Foster 
Snow's (Nym Wales) romanticizing book on Kim San 
(Chang Chirak) just mentioned here two weeks ago? 
It has the sub-title A Korean Communist in the 
Chinese Revolution. And what happened to Kim San, 
and why so?

In any case, what you say below is certainly not wrong.


Best,
Frank



>There is, however, one principal point on which I will it difficult to
>agree with your position. It is the question of the relationship between
>the world-historical phenomena and their local - that is, Korean, -
>incarnation. I would view this relationship as rather dialectic (in the
>Marxist sense of the word) than simply mechanical - that is, would rather
>pay more attention to the quantitative (and resulting qualitative) changes
>these phenomena undergo in the Korean context. After all, as even
>postcolonial studies tell us, all things are being negotiated, and the
>"locals" are not simply recipients of global teachings or trends - they
>have the agency of their own. You, for example, probably agree with the
>statement that Christianity, while hardly seen as a progressive force in
>late 19th C. Europe or USA, did play a certain progressive role in
>pre-colonial or early colonial Korea - by promoting female education, for
>example. Then, why should we overlook the possibility of the independent
>agency in the Korean Communists' case as well? After all, there
>programme-minimum including mostly the points on which their potential
>electorate would enthusiastically agree (radical land reform, 8 hours
>working days etc.), regardless of any Comintern or Stalins' wishes.
>Absolute majority of Communist-led strikes were fought on local, concrete
>demands, first and foremost. And Pak Hônyông's dim view of nationalist
>diehards and the ideological dangers their bomb-throwing tactics might
>imply - could not it be as much a product of his own experience in dealing
>with this sort of public as it was an outcome of Moscow-produced theories?
>
>Best wishes,
>
>Vladimir/Noja

-- 
--------------------------------------
Frank Hoffmann
http://koreaweb.ws
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