Comments on: History, or politics by other means

By: jiyulkim

jiyulkim — Sat, 04 Mar 2006 19:42:03 +0000

Vladimir, I completely agree which is why I wrote “Internally, a perception of flaying popular will toward development and modernization, moral corruption brought about by development, and social reactions to developmental projects such as the rising labor movement led to a real sense of crisis in the material-moral-cultural direction of SK state, nation and society” to balance the external threat/betrayal dimension. Indeed I believe that the internal aspects of the sense of crisis in the late 60s-early 70s was more important, because it affected or had the potential to affect ordinary lives. In comparison external crises were, for most ordinary South Koreans, abstract. This confluence of sense of crisis, top down and bottom up, must have been an important force for the consensus in what might be called popular/mass dictatorship or perhaps what you refer to as “peripheral fascism” (although I am not sure what that means exactly or where it comes from). Evidence for this comes from more recent work by Doh C.Shin based on democracy surveys in South Korea. As late as 2001 these surveys seem to show that democratic consolidation, far frombeing further consolidated, seem very fragile and that there is a deep and persistent approval for authoritarian national leadership, because economic well being takes precedence.

Jiyul

By: noja

noja — Fri, 03 Mar 2006 09:20:32 +0000

Yes, it may be possible to agree that the ruling stratum of S.Korea was in crisis by the early 1970s, but it may be only a half-truth to identify that crisis as simply generated by a combination of “North Korean threat and American betrayal”. No doubt, N.Korea, perceiving itself as economically and militarily stronger society with much higher level of popular cohesion than in the South (the perception at that point was not entirely unjust, I guess….), tried at some point to emulate N.Vietnam’s strategy, and no doubt, general weakening of USA’s worldwide hegemony after the defeat in Indochina did send alarm signal to Park’s clique. But the crisis had its internal side as well, I guess – Park undermined the nationlalist legitimacy of his rule by what was widely percieved as “sellout to Japan” in 1965, heavy concentration of the developmental investment in YOngnam area began to seriously alienate Honam by early 1970s, and the city poor were sizzling with resentment – as witnessed, for example, in “Kwangju Taedanji Soyo sakOn”, August 10, 1971. And the only real answer by the regime to the challanges was more control (chumin tUngnokchUng from 1968), more indoctrination (“chunghyo” campaign and so on), and more repression. I guess that is the reason Park’s regime was often classified as “peripheral fascism”.

By: jiyulkim

jiyulkim — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 16:45:40 +0000

A continuation. The most important point to my previous comment is that the sense of crises, external and internal, seem to have been shared by the people, the masses (subject of my current research), and that is why the top down “brain washing” and mobilization projects actually worked and succeeded. It seems to have been met by bottom up consensus.

By: jiyulkim

jiyulkim — Thu, 02 Mar 2006 16:38:27 +0000

I am sorry to be commenting on this posting so late. The notion of deprogramming is I think far fetched not the least of which is the question of deprogramming to what – the real truth? And what would that be? The discussion over the notion there was programming or brain washing in the 1970s seems to imply that somehow things that are false was espoused and implanted. Historically though it seems to me that there was a real basis to much of the “brain washing” project if that is how we should characterize it. The late 60s and the early 70s in particular was a period of real not imaginary national crises. Kim Il Sung’s change to aggressive operations to foment a SK revolution in the 2nd Party Congressin late 60s resulted in a dramatic rise of NK aggression between 67 and 69. The VN War was going to hell in a handbasket leading essentially to US defeat and withdrawal not only from VN but from Korea. Nixon’s visit to China and the perceived betrayal of Taiwan along with the perceived sell out of South VN in the Paris Accords generated a real sense of American betrayal and a crisis of security. Internally, a perception of flaying popular will toward development and modernization, moral corruption brought about by development, and social reactions to developmental projects such as the rising labor movement led to a real sense of crisis in the material-moral-cultural direction of SK state, nation and society. To look back now and to condemn is profoundly ahistorical and as distorted as the original effort to “brain wash” and mobilize the nation.

By: lirelou

lirelou — Tue, 07 Feb 2006 06:14:20 +0000

I’m not sure that de-programming us the answer to programming. Isn’t there a way to teach history that trains young minds to weigh the facts, and make judgements on their own? Is it not possible that some future generation of Koreans, weighing the results of both Japanese colonialism, Korean collaboration, post-war chaebol capitalism, and more than sixty years of “Kim Il-sungisn”, might judge that the three former did far more for Korea as a nation than the last placed? Perhaps the methods of teaching history should be based upon evidentiary legal precepts and analysis rather than theories of political indoctrination.