The South Korean dictator Park Chung Hee has exploited to the full the attempt on his life August 15 in which his wife was killed.
He has tried to blame the assassination attempt on the North Koreans, claiming that they masterminded the plot. He has pointed to the Japanese government, blaming it for allowing pro-North Korean political activity and for unwittingly issuing a passport to the assassin, who was identified by the Korean police as Mun Se Kwang, a Korean living in Osaka.
Anti-Japanese demonstrations were staged for days after the event in Seoul, Pusan, and Kwangju.
Attempts were also made to whip up feelings against North Korea. However, the South Korean police have been unable to produce any evidence showing North Korean involvement; and in fact the events are shrouded in a great deal of mystery and confusion.
For example, an early government version of the shooting claimed that the assailant rose from a seat in the front row of the National Theater during independence day activities, while later versions said that he ran down the center aisle firing a snub-nosed revolver. It isn’t explained either how a man supposedly conspicuously involved in anti-Park activities could have been let into the heavily guarded ceremony hall carrying a loaded pistol, or why a spy would go on an assassination mission leaving his apartment strewn with documents showing his relation with the government employing him.
In spite of the glaring inconsistencies in its case, the Park regime has seized the opportunity to try to revive its flagging anti-Communist witch-hunt.
At the funeral for Park’s wife August 19, Premier Kim Jong Pil asserted that “our First Lady fell victim to a diabolical bullet of a Communist.”
“The Communists are bent upon crushing our peace and prosperity,” he said. “We should give the late First Lady release by smashing the evil intention of the Communists while marching resolutely toward our goal.”
Two Decrees Lifted
Four days later Park lifted two of his “emergency” decrees. One of them, imposed January 8, banned all discussion, criticism, and demands for revision of the constitution, and the other, imposed April 3, prohibited all dissent against the government and its policies. They carried penalties ranging from imprisonment to death. Still in force are two decrees -- one giving the government extraordinary powers over the economy, and the other establishing secret courts-martial and permitting arrests without warrant.
Park stated that there would be no amnesty for those who had been arrested and tried under the two decrees that were lifted. Trials and the judicial process would proceed, he said.
The August 23 New York Times reported that a spokesman for Park, Kim Seong Jin, said the Seoul government had imposed the emergency measures, at the cost of some “misunderstanding” by South Korea’s friends, to alert the nation to the threat from Communist North Korea. According to Kim, the killing of Park’s wife had made the nation better understand the Communist threat and the necessity for the emergency measures. But since the nation had been warned about the threat of Communism, he said, the time had come to lift the emergency decrees.
The Park regime rests on a very shaky social base. Owing its origins and continued existence to U. S. military might, and dependent economically on infusions of U.S. and Japanese capital, it has had to keep the mass of the South Korean population in check through a balance of harsh repression and virulent anti-Communist propaganda. When the joint communiqué was signed on July 4, 1972, between North and South Korea pledging to ease tension and clear the way for eventual reunification of the country, one element in Park’s control of the population was undermined. The increased contact with the North laid bare the hollowness of his anti-Communist propaganda. Park has reacted by intensifying the repression, while at the same time trying to whip up an anti-Communist hysteria through spy scares and the like.
Repression Stepped Up
On October 17, 1972, Park declared martial law, dissolved the National Assembly, banned strikes and political activity, imposed censorship of the press, and suspended parts of the constitution. Shortly afterward he imposed a new constitution on the country intended to maintain his dictatorial rule indefinitely. This provoked demonstrations headed by students in the fall of 1973 that spread to broader layers of the population.
Park responded with ever harsher repressive measures. The victims have included prominent intellectuals, poets, writers, student leaders, politicians, and members of the clergy.
Two prominent individuals recently dragged before Park’s special courts-martial were Bishop Daniel Chi Hak Soun and Yun Po Sun, a former president of the country. On August 12 Bishop Chi was sentenced to fifteen years jail and his civil rights were suspended for another fifteen years. Yun Po Sun, who is seventy-six years old, received a three-year suspended sentence.
Also sentenced were Park Hyung Kyu, a Protestant pastor (fifteen years in prison and fifteen years suspension of civil rights); Kim Chang Kook, dean of the Yonsei Theological Seminary (ten years in prison and ten years suspension of civil rights); and Kim Dong Kil, a professor of American history at Yonsei (fifteen years in prison and fifteen years suspension of civil rights).
On August 7, the Ministry of National Defense, which is conducting the courts-martial, admitted that sixty more persons had been taken before the secret military courts in the previous week. On the following day it announced that an additional nineteen were being held. It was also announced that day that twenty-six defendants, mostly students, had received sentences ranging from three to fifteen years in prison.
On August 13, twelve more students were sentenced to ten to twenty years, and a prison guard received seven years for attempting to smuggle a student’s letter out of prison. On August 14, the day before the assassination attempt, it was announced that thirty-six more people had been sentenced to prison, with terms ranging from five years to life, and it was expected that another twenty-three would be sentenced the following day.
A total of 171 persons are known to have been convicted under Park’s decrees. The August 23 New York Times estimated that more than 300 persons had been arrested, tried, and convicted under the two decrees that were lifted.
A report prepared for Amnesty International by William J. Butler, a New York lawyer, and presented to the Foreign Affairs subcommittees of the U.S. House of Representatives, states that South Korea holds approximately 1,100 prisoners charged with, or convicted of, political crimes. The report says that prisoners have been tortured, held incommunicado for long periods, and denied the right to call witnesses in their behalf.
Mounting Opposition
In spite of the extreme personal danger involved in even hinting at criticism of Park’s regime or his decrees, there were sizable expressions of opposition, especially from Protestants and Catholics. Dissenters had to use very guarded language. The August 13 New York Times reported that after the sentencing of Bishop Chi and the Protestant leaders, services were held “in which political grievances were couched in the language of religion.”
“This morning, about 700 Protestants from the National Council of Churches, which represents half of Korea’s 3.4-million Protestants, gathered at the Saemunan Presbyterian Church, near the capital, to take part in a prayer meeting based on the Book of Isaiah -- ‘The King must repent.’
“While there was no direct reference to President Park, one minister pleaded; ‘However high a position he may have, if he makes a mistake against the Korean people, then please put him down, God.’
“That evening, the Times reported, about 3,000 Catholics climbed the steep hill to their cathedral in downtown Seoul and read a message posted by their bishops: “The violation of human rights is a fearful crime against God.”
Demonstrations against the Korean repression have been held in many cities around the world. Criticism has also come from various governments. The Belgian, French, and Italian ambassadors all called at the South Korean Foreign Ministry with expressions of concern. The Danish, Australian, and other governments have also protested.
Washington’s Role
It took a while before Washington hopped on the bandwagon of pious protest. The August 4 New York Times reported that “when a protest mass was held in the Seoul Cathedral last week to demand the release of Bishop Chi, [U. S.] Ambassador Philip C. Habib, a Catholic, was not there. Conspicuously, the French and Belgian Ambassadors did attend.
“An American official scoffed at their presence. ‘It is the only thing they can do. They have no leverage,’ he said. He did not answer the obvious question.”
However, the State Department later said, “We do not approve of actions depriving people of their human rights. The Korean Government is very much aware of our views on these issues.” President Ford also let it be known through his press secretary that he was “concerned” about political prisoners in Korea.
What the U. S. ruling class is really “concerned” about was explained in an editorial in the August 14 Wall Street Journal:
“In order to make sense of our military aid program, in Korea or elsewhere, it’s important to leave aside talk about democracy and ask whether such assistance is in America’s selfinterest. Secretary of State Kissinger rightly told a Senate appropriations subcommittee that Washington does not recommend Seoul’s domestic policy, but believes we have a national interest in what happens there. Critics may scorn such talk as a new domino theory, but South Korea’s political and military stability is important to the future of Japan and East Asia. Thus U. S. aid to South Korea represents an investment in Asian security, not an investment in General Park.”
‘An Investment in Asian Security’
The word “investment” was aptly chosen by the Wall Street Journal. The previous day the paper had run a long analysis headed “South Korea Economy May Suffer as Result Of Political Repression.” According to the article, businessmen “are beginning to reassess seriously the effect of present political measures on the nation’s long-term investment climate.”
The article concluded, however, that despite government harassment and corruption, “most foreigners admit they are making money and successfully repatriating profits. They generally praise Korean workers, who are well-educated (86% of the adult population is literate), energetic and still willing to work for $60 to $70 a month. Moreover, the government encourages construction of high-pollution industries, such as steel and petrochemicals, which other nations now shun.”
An article in the August 17 New York Times shed some light on why South Korean workers are so “willing” to work for $60 to $70 a month. It describes the superexploitation, and the repressive labor laws. Unions are legal, the article explains, but “union activity is hedged on all sides by legal restraints. To attract American and Japanese investment, for example, no union can be set up in a foreign-owned company without the management’s consent. Collective bargaining is permitted in theory, but the Government’s Office of Labor Affairs has the right to impose a settlement. Strikes are banned.”
Thus, translating the language of the Wall Street Journal into ordinary speech, we see that “America’s selfinterest means the interest of the American capitalists in exploiting the rest of the world, and an “investment in Asian security” includes, of course, political and military intervention to maintain that exploitation.
There are 38,000 American troops in South Korea. The U.S. force is still listed as the “United Nations Command,” in accordance with the United Nations resolution approving Truman’s decision to intervene militarily in Korea in 1950. The U. S. force includes an infantry division, a missile unit, an air defense brigade, and three fighter squadrons with about sixty F-4 Phantom jet planes. They are under the command of seventeen generals and admirals.
The August 28 New York Times stated that “part of that command structure is a leftover from the Korean war period, part results from the political requirements of the mission here and part reflects the role of American generals as commanders and advisers of South Korean forces.”
Setup Endangered by Overzealous Puppet
Thus criticism of Park’s excesses by some sections of the American ruling class merely reflects a concern that his overzealous methods might have counterproductive effects. Edwin O. Reischauer, former ambassador to Japan and now a Harvard professor, defended this position before subcommittees of the House Foreign Relations Committee. The July 31 New York Times reported that Reischauer argued that Park’s repressive policies “had so weakened South Korea that the United States should cut back on aid and perhaps withdraw some troops to press Mr. Park to liberalize his policies.”
This stand was endorsed by the New York Times in an editorial August 4. It was also supported by the Wall Street Journal editorial already quoted, which after reaffirming the American “investment in Asian security,” concluded:
“Nevertheless, this should not rule out a possible symbolic cutback in aid, or, as Edwin Reischauer recently suggested, a token withdrawal of some U.S. troops -- enough to convey American displeasure over Mr. Park’s increasingly authoritarian activities. As a general rule, noninterference in another’s domestic affairs is the wisest policy one government can adopt toward another. But some 35,000 Americans were killed in the Korean war and the U.S. has invested some $11 billion [milliard] in military and economic aid in South Korea, so it can hardly be argued that Washington should have no influence there. It would be foolish to expect a model democracy in return for our investment, but the U. S. has a right and an obligation to protest Seoul’s violation of civil and human rights.”
The “symbolic cutback” was voted for in the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on August 14. The committee set the figure at $140 million instead of the $157 million approved for the last fiscal year. Whether Congress will accept this cut remains to be seen.
Source: https://www.themilitant.com/Intercontinental_Press/1974/IP1231.pdf#page=15&view=FitV,35