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South Korea: Pak Dictatorship Shakey

By VVAW

The struggle of the people of South Korea against the dictatorship of Pak Jung Hi continues to grow. Pak, like other US backed and financed dictators in Asia (Lon Nol in Cambodia, Thieu in South Vietnam) find his control over the people growing more and shakier.

Two related elements in the life of South Korea are creating the real bind in which the government now finds itself; the first is Pak's politics of repression and terror, a tactic used by his government since it was first installed by the US. Second is the rapid deterioration of the economy caused by the slowdown in foreign aid, investments and trade. Foreign capital flows slowly into South Korea because the people of the world will no longer stand for Pak's repression, and their governments know it. But when Pak tires to improve his image and lighten the repression at home, the Korean people are in the streets, ready to throw out the dictator?s dictatorship.

In a recent attempt to making high-handed rule a little easier to swallow, Pak rescinded 2 "emergency decrees" under which over 200 people have been sentenced to long prison terms since January, simply for criticizing the Pak government. (Shortly afterwards, one of Pak's courts upheld the 3-year prison term for 77-year-old former President Yun Po-Sun, one of the 203 prisoners jailed under these decrees). The changes in the laws, however, do not show that Pak is becoming less repressive, but is the direct result of economic pressure from outside the country.

Since the end of the Korean War, the economy of South Korea has been financed by the US and, in recent years by Japan. In August, a Korean resident of Japan was accused of killing Pak's wife during an assassination attempt on the President. To give the pretense of national unity, Pak inflamed demonstrations against Japan (even paying convicts from $125-375 to slice off their fingers to protest). He then used these protests to demand that Japan repress Chongryun, the General Association of Koreans in Japan, a group which favors North Korea. Japan refused and threatened economic reprisals (which Pak could not afford); the US government made it clear to Pak that, given public repression of dissent, the US government could not afford to come to his rescue if Japanese aid stopped. Pak back down.

For all the apparent prosperity in South Korea over the past 10 years, it is clear that foreign economic domination hasn't allowed any real growth. Now, with the aid slowing down, the crumbling economy is rushing toward disaster. The Seoul marketplace, while full of goods, is empty of people because they cannot afford to buy. Consumer prices are up 21% since January and, with an average wage of $120 per month, the economic crush is on working people. The people are angry; in the shipyard on the southeast coast of Korea, 2000 workers demanding better pay and working conditions were met recently by police. The result was 2 days of riots with 40 workers and 30 police injured.

Economic hardship combined with Pak's repression is now bringing people into the streets, in their first unified action in many months, student sit-ins and fasts have demanded release of fellow students and other political prisoners from Pak's jails. A small student demonstration of 150 people was gassed in the streets of Seoul. 15,000 Catholics, gathered for a protest mass, heard a reining denunciation of Pak's repression; 5,000 of them went from the rally into the streets where they were met by Pak's riot police, equipped with Motorola radios, US Army gas masks, and American pepper-gas sprayers.

Pak has good reason to fear his own people; in 1960, student demonstrations marked the beginning of the end for the corrupt, dictatorial government of Syngman Rhee, another US favorite. The 38,000 US troops now in South Korea are a major source of Pak's continued control, yet his fascist tactics are under heavy criticism from people in the US and around the world. The United Nations, under whose sanction US troops fought the Korean War, is discussing removal of that sanction, thus destroying any semblance of legitimacy to the presence of US troops. And Pak's longstanding technique of blaming all his problems on the communists (as in the case of the assassination attempt) has been consistently shown up for the fraud it always has been; the People's Democratic Republic of Korea continues to work for peaceful reunification of their country and withdrawal of foreign troops. Japan, seeking to improve its economic position, has begun to trade with North Korea -- more evidence of the collapsing structure which Pak has built for himself in the South.

Though the lifting of the decrees was aimed at the US, the US government can no longer bail Pak out because with the defeats US imperialism has already suffered in Southeast Asia, and because the American people won't allow it. And, despite the repression, the violent reaction to any dissent, the tactics of terror which Pak has used to stay in power, the people of Korea will continue their struggle to get US troops out of their country and to decide their own future.