South Korea was bloodily created by America 1945 successEuly derended against revolution by America in 1945 and the United Nations in the war of 1950-53. It now has per head the largest army in the world. It is a brutal puppet regime propped American capitalism. But cracks are beginning to appear in tne facade of stability. Street fighting is escalating as President Pak moves to amend the consultutIon to give nim a third term. The Times chose this moment (June 18th 1969) to produce a supplement on South Korea that was disgusting insult to both the Korean and British peoples. With only three of the eight Times presented a misleading and comprehen- explicitly marked advertisement sive package of political propaganda on behalf of one of the most vicious military dictatorships in the World.
From Park to Park the Page' any other part of the East Asian world, that promotes reflection on how this world has been sundered in the last century": in the supplement itself Harris contributed a piece, 'Legacies of 20-year Cold War, which performs the incredible feat of failing to state how Korea was divided in 1945 or how the 1950 war was caused. Indeed Harris even states that "Korea had its colonial period until Japan's defeat in 1945, but the alien rule is not a western colonialism and hence it has not left the country with any strong anti-western feeling." is ignored by the Times. Apart from the illiterate tenses. this is just gibberish. Both Britain and the US connived at the Japanese seizure of Korea - Britain actively endorsed it under the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, and the US with the Taft-Katsura deal of 1905. The Western powers refused to let Korean independence be raised at Versailles, thus consigning the country to Japanese rule. At the Cairo Conference in 1943 Britain actually opposed the idea of independence for Korea after the end of the war altogether. The division of Korea was a unilateral move by the Americans in August 1945 to sabotage Korean Revolution: this revolution did take place; a functioning representative regime based on the Preparator Committee for Korean ndependence existed nationwide by the time he first American troops arrived in earl September 1945. The Americans kept on the Japanese administration. rearmed Japanese guerrillas and from late 1948 to June 1950 there was a constant guerrilla war in the South. Just as in Vietnam, the division of the country was an imperialist device to try and wreck a revolution; the division of Korea has no justification whatsoever: it is a pure imperialist con.
The 1950 war grew out of the revolutionary struggle against The right of the Koreans north of the artificial dividing line to come to the help of their countrymen in the south cannot be questioned. June 1950 was the escalation an existing and its internationalization by the US via a stooge United Nations. In 1948 the US had used the UN 'verify a rigged election designed to establish the ROK (South Korea). The appeal back to the UN in 1950 was essentially a response to the defeat imperialism had suffered in Korea itself. Even after the war had escalated, the New York Times (August 24, 1950) pointed out that the Americans could arulyer a lan cecuon take place as u ommunists would probably win it. MacArthi himself admitted that one-third of his troops ere tied down in late 1950 fighting guerrill hind the front line. The head of the RO Army early in the war was the ex-head of the pecial squad of the Japanese Imperial Arm ho had been detailed to Manchuria in 1937 t lestroy the Korean revolutionaries operating there under Kim Il-sung. Thousands of Japanes British, South African imperialists against the Korean people. All this World's Largest Army The opening article of the supplement Crucial Problem of Presidential Succession' l Henry Scott Stokes - claims that South Korea's foremost problem is "the need to secure continued strong leadership"; Pak (who ingratiatingly changed his name to parkin he best efforts of President Park, the corru problem"; Harris (June 13) indulges in some of the same: "Whatever may be said about his government, President Park Chung Hee carns a broadly the south.
..is respected for his patriotism, his dignity, and his incorruptibility. This is just more gibberish. First, Pak started his career in Riot police in Seoul attack students protesting against President Pak's attempts to fix the constitution and ensure a third term of office.
evidence of this? Prima facie, why should an incorruptible president STUL purge corrupt subordinates? Second, what about the colossal scandals that have erupted under Pak - such as the CIA Stock Exchange Scandal manipulated by Pak's brother-in-law in 1963 or the great fertilizer-saccharine scandal in September 1966 (when an MP dumped a bag of human shit over the government front bench?) what about the succession of rigged elections in 1963 and 1967? The latter were cenounccu by the extremely cautious New Democratic Party as million-strong militia "the most viciously rigged in the history of our country" - worse than the last Rhee election!
Times might note have been consistently announced that there had been "about 1,600" allows, violations of the election law -and yet Pak called Pak "the mastermind of the election rigging" was promptly arrested.
goes so far as to pretend that Pak's intention of Tune 1 yet a it wile that so far there is on indication what the Park regime will do about the succession"; yet on May 25th this year the Sunday Times already was writing that "In South Korea it is now taken for granted that the national constitution will be amended.
even "run for"). Buried away under the 'In 1969) one can read tiny items under rubrics like "100 students held in S. Korea riot" and "385 hurt in riots" - the second of these even 961) is given a propaganda boost: "In spite of fails to mention that the obiect of the so-calle "riots" was Pak's plan to stay on illegally as tion of some of his subordinates remain a President. It is not an exaggeration to say that the reporting in the supplement is plai "problem" is not tability. it is democrac Vast armed camp trained personnel. Second, it is a huge bloate parasite of some 620,000 men feeding off th South Korean people in the tirst place, an oppressing the Vietnamese people at the sam time The ROK has contributed 49,000 out e the 66,000 of the armed lackeys on th American side in Vietnam - at a cost to the U of $1.25 per day, as compared with $45.57 pe day for a GI (1968 figs.).
The mass of the troops is completely unreliabl Philip Shabecoff (p.iii) notes that the are issued only wit wooden rifles, and that the US maintain "operational control" over ordnance availabl After nationwide popular protests (which the to the South Korean forces in Korea; "Th South Koreans have about enoug "The Korean soldiers are reportedl ruthless in hunting down communists and ar All this is occasionally accused of attacking innocen contradicted by the Times; indeed Scott Stokes people in order to kill suspected enemies.
Victory to Korea Shabecoff admits the ROK army functione badly during the 1950-53 war which another way of saying they did not want fight the war at all; now they have a higher "ki ratio" in Vietnam than the US troops. "Seoul Defence Ministry has found that Vietnar provides invaluable experience and comb training for its troops. It regularly rotates ti Brief columns of the Times (July 1 and 2, for one year. This is on keeping them thet " This is only another way saying Vietnam is a training ground in oppre sion. The fact is that South Korea is one vas armed camp: does the Times tell its reader there is a curfew in Seoul every night? Yes i does in an item entitled Bright future fo newest industry.: "Night-time pleasure is shor lived because of the four-hour curfew tha lishonest. Pak is a corrupt dictator running a begins at midnight, but every minute is spent La way unmatched anywhere else in the world. The role of the military is clear: in order to rul South Korea against a hostile revolutionar people, the Americans have simply financed tyrannical military clique which rests solely or a huge entirely militarized apparatus of repres
Ne Bok, equalities between the rural ectors and between the upper and lower of society remain as serious as ever"? In are even worse than the Times is the real income of peasants fell by 25% 1966 as against 1961 and that of overished peasants fell by 57%. Peasant btedness rose 9 times between 1961 and 1968. A correspondent of the Japanese newspaper, the Sankei Shimbun, described Seoul nd Pusan as "swarming with beggars... eighty cent of children go begging. The Times admits that "wages are still quite low, the earning less than $9 [under {4] a week. Until average WorKer in manufacturing industries 1967 wages lagged substantially behind price rises but the trend has now been reversed, reflecting a creeping shortage of skilled labour. How can the Times know this? What they are saying is that the real living standards of industrial workers fell during six of the eight years of the Pak clique's rule. Unemployment figures have consistently been falsified. The revision of the Farm Land Act about which the Times is so enthusiastic (p.vi) is merely a device to drive more poor peasants off the land: between January and October 1968, 14,000 These human characteristics produce industrial results." That was in May 1967: assuming a six-day week, that would still leave a textile worker's wage less than S4 dollars a week and an electronics worker's just over $5: if these had doubled in exactly two years the average would come to just about $9 surely the It is just delirious to claim (John Young, P.her "By standards many countries. Korean students do in fact enjoy considerable academic freedom. How there be academic freedom where it is a crime even to discuss the possibility of peaceful reunification? Why have the universities staged revolt after revolt? It is standing the world on its head for the Times unctuously to endorse the student and worker uprising which over threw Syngman Rhee (in which "officially" 183 people were killed and 6,259 wounded by rifle and machine-gun fire) and then claim there is academic freedom: student revolts against the Pak regime have been just as great as against the Rhee regime - for the simple reason that there is no freedom at all of any kind, political or "academic'. For example, this is how Keesings succession of such events (August, 1965): into Seoul university, beat students with rifle butts, hauled away many at gun-point, smashed doors, windows, and laboratory equipment, and threw tear-gas grenades into the library and the women's hall." The universities of South Korea have been closed on and off ever since Pak came into power.
The fact is that about the entire student body is Pak Tai In, with onc those arrested - all charged simply wit working for reunification. One place the Time might ordan population in the world, the have looked is Japan, with the majority of whom support the North. What has all this got to do with us? Britain played a key role in sabotaging the Korean revolution by opposing Korean independence in 1943, by giving backing to America's division of the country in 1945, and by participation in the imperialist war of 1950-53. Britain is still Prom the of the UN stooge group which - SUrVIVeS 1950-53 war. Even West Germany rotested about the Korean CA Kilpappingut not Britain which recently mental in returning an escaped Korean fo execution from Hong Kong. It is too much to expect the Times to change its spots, but it is not too much to expect people in Britain to know that the last Labour government con tributed actively to the suppression of a vast popular revolution, and to the installation of most brutal dictatorships in the one world and that the The hilos capture no and street battles continue. the Pueblo shows the way. Down with the Times and all running dogs of US imperialism Victory to the Korean Revolution!
Jon Halliday