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South Korea: presidential elections end in defeat for US favourite
Workers Power Global, Vienna: 22 December 2002
The presidential elections in South Korea ended in a defeat of the right-wing candidate Lee Hoi-chang and the victory of the pro-government Roh Moo-hyun, who called for continued dialogue with North Korea and a revision of the military alliance with the US. Roh won 48.9 percent compared to 46.6 percent for Lee.
The elections outcome is not only important because of the South Koreas position as the 13th largest economy in the world but also because of its geo-strategic position on the frontier of one of the George Bush's "axis of evil" states - North Korea. As a historic "ally" of US-imperialism it is garrisoned by 37,000 US soldiers.
Thus it was no accident that these issues were central to the election campaign. US-imperialism always supported the military dictatorships which ruled the country from World War II till 1987 and played a role in the bloody Kwangju massacre in the popular uprising in 1980. Traditional anti-US imperialist resentments amongst the population exploded in the past months after a US military vehicle crushed and killed two Korean youths in a car accident. The US military are well known for their arrogant behaviour in public and their status as "untouchables". As ever the US army refused to deliver the soldiers responsible for a Korean civil trial. Instead they were charged in US military court where - (surprise! surprise!) - they were found not guilty.
This triggered a massive wave of mobilisations. Last weekend more than 50.000 people demonstrated against the acquittal of two US soldiers over the deaths of two schoolgirls and demanded a public apology from Bush, a retrial and changes to the country's Status of Forces Agreement with the US. Such demonstrations continuing for weeks, and anti-American feeling has very widespread. Many restaurants have signs saying "Americans not welcome".
Roh, who was trailing in the polls - far behind his rivals only a few weeks ago, managed a comeback by skilfully exploiting the popular anti-American anger. His rival Lee, candidate of the right-wing conservative Grand National Party - founded by the military dictatorship in the 1980s - strongly backed US president Bush and his aggressive anti-North Korean policy. But given the popular sentiments even he had to sign a petition calling for changes to the Status of Forces Agreement, which currently allows US servicemen to be tried by court-martial, rather than in a Korean court.
Roh supports the continuation of Kim Dae-jungs "sunshine-policy" of so-called constructive engagement with North Korea. This policy basically meant a shift of South Korea's stance towards Pyongyang: away from confrontation to dialogue and restoring links between the two Koreas. After September 11 this policy became an obstacle for George Bush's war drive which uses the bugbear of "rogue states" - armed with "weapons of mass destruction" - as a means to strengthen US-hegemony in the world.
However while popular support for appeasement with North Korea represents a progressive sentiment it has very different material interests when it comes from Roh and the sectors of South Korean ruling class who support the bourgeois government. For them providing economic aid is a means of opening up North Korea to investment and an opportunity for South Korean capitalists to exploit the country's cheap labour.
Thus it would sheer self-delusion to believe in Roh's "anti-imperialism". This was largely rhetoric for electoral purposes - like Schroeder's "antiwar" speeches which won him the German Chancellorship. Only a day after the elections Roh backtracked on his electoral pledges and declared his desire to visit Washington to forge a "mature" relationship with the US. "I will maintain a full co-operation with the United States to resolve North Korea's nuclear issue and we [South Korea] would play a leading role [in doing so]," he said.
Beside the rising anti-US-imperialist popular mobilisations there is also another positive development in South Korean: the growing support for the Democratic Labour Party. Its candidate Kwon Young-ghil won nearly 4 percent, up from 1.2 percent at the 1997 election. In the industrial city of Ulsan, Kwon, a former leader of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU), received 11.4 percent of the vote.
While the KCTU and the DLP clearly follow a reformist policy, often resulting in compromises with the bosses, the party's formation and growing support is a progressive factor since it reflects the drive of South Korean workers for political independence from the traditional bosses parties which dominate the countries political system. If it proves to be a democratic party, where the rank and file not union bureaucrats and parliamentarians call the tune, then it could enormously aid the return to militant class struggle policy against the mounting attacks on the gains of the working class.
Revolutionaries in Korea should struggle in the party's ranks for a militant anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist programme of action. They should fight for the immediate withdrawal of the USA's troops and for scrapping all military treaties with it. Certainly they cannot ignore the question of the North. The regime of the "dear leader" is indeed a vile Stalinist prison house for the workers and peasants.
But this cannot be put right by US imperialism or the southern capitalists. Indeed their economic and military siege is responsible to a major degree for its acute internal economic. But this can be solved only by the north Korean workers making a political revolution and their southern class brothers a social one and linking up to install workers democracy in the whole peninsular.
Meanwhile - besieged and threatened by the USA revolutionaries should stand for the unconditional defence of North Korea. This includes its right to possess nuclear reactors and to develop nuclear weapons, if it can. Certainly the US administration's rather restrained attitude to North Korea is due in no small part to the fact that - unlike the unfortunate Saddam Hussein, it may already have done so.
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