[Chapter 1] The Korean Peninsula in Danger of Falling Victim to the Imperialist Hegemonic Confrontation Again
 
1) Deepening Capitalist Contradictions Underlying Imperialist Hegemonic Confrontations and War Crises
Since the 1980s, neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization have swept the world. Neoliberalism, which came to a head with the establishment of the WTO in 1995, along with the reform and opening up of China and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc in 1989-91, created a US-led single world order. It was characterized by the creation of a single supply chain through the globalization of production and a single market through the globalization of markets. Global capitalism was reorganized along two axes: Chinese production and American consumption. This was accompanied by financialization, which led to a massive expansion of the financial sector. In the United States, the total assets of financial institutions as a percentage of GDP rose from 110.3% in 1985 to 224.2% in 2007. Through financialization, capital has compensated for the lack of profit through the exploitation of surplus value with financial extortion.
However, the expansion of unbridled financial extortion led to the 2008 financial crisis. After the 2008 financial crisis, astronomical bailouts, quantitative easing, and ultra-low interest rate stimulus averted a major depression but instead ushered in a prolonged major recession. The growth of a few big tech and platform companies during the major recession created an "optical illusion" that capitalism was recovering, but in reality, capitalism as a whole was accumulating contradictions toward a larger crisis, with extreme disinvestment in industry.
As a result of the contradictions inherent in globalization, the forces of anti-globalization have grown stronger. As the wage gap between developed and emerging economies has narrowed, reshoring has occurred, and protectionism has come to the fore, absorbing the energy of working people in the developed world who have experienced a sharp setback in their lives since 2008. The rise of protectionism, fueled by xenophobia, has led to the growth of all kinds of far-right forces based on various forms of minority phobia.
While the real economy has been stuck in stagnation and low growth since the 2008 financial crisis, the stock and real estate markets have been booming, especially in the United States. Global capitalism is now in a much bigger bubble than before the 2008 financial crisis. In Q4 2007, just before the crisis, global stock market capitalization as a percentage of global GDP peaked at 115.5%; but, in Q4 2021, it was 128.1%. Capitalism has reached a point where it cannot survive without continued financial extortion.
As the contradictions of globalization and financialization intensified, coupled with supply chain shocks from the COVID-19 pandemic and the climate crisis, inflation began to return globally. In 2022, 43% of the world's countries experienced inflation of 10% or more.
The difference with the 1970s was that this inflation came at a time when global capitalism should have kept ultra-low interest rates and quantitative easing at full capacity for continuous financial extortion. Central banks, including the US Fed, have faced an unanswerable contradiction: whether to raise interest rates and risk panic, or to lower interest rates and risk hyperinflation. The current structural inflation has created a fatal dilemma for the global economy. Neither raising nor lowering interest rates is the answer. Fiscal expansion, ultra-low interest rates, and quantitative easing, which were critical in avoiding a major depression, are now on a collision course with inflation.
The intensification of the US-China hegemonic confrontation and the deepening of the war crisis are developing on the basis of this structural contradiction of capitalism. The only way for capitalism to resolve this structural contradiction and escape from the economic and systemic crisis is through mass destruction and mass murder through small and big wars.
 
2) The War in Ukraine: Weakening US Hegemony and Strengthening the Sino-Russian Alliance
Intensified US-China hegemonic confrontation was underlying the break out of the war in Ukraine. The United States had sought to compensate for its declining economic power by strengthening its military power, which was the reason for NATO's continued eastward expansion. Meanwhile, as the rise of China undermined US hegemony, Russia had sought to counterattack offensively by building up power in the Middle East and Africa.
The war in Ukraine led to a realignment and rearmament of the US-led Western imperialist alliance. NATO was revived, providing massive arms shipments to Ukraine and promoting imperialist proxy wars. Spurred by a shaky world order, the Western powers embarked on an aggressive rearmament program. Germany and Japan announced plans to increase their military spending to 2% of GDP.
The concerted response to the war in Ukraine seemed to have succeeded in reasserting US hegemony. The Biden administration campaigned on "restoring alliances" instead of "America first," but then followed through with a strong protectionist policy that stabbed allies in the back in the middle of a war. In line with his own America First platform, Joe Biden implemented the CHIPS and Science Act, which provides subsidies to companies that produce semiconductors in the United States and divest from China, and the Inflation Reduction Act, which provides subsidies to companies that move EV and battery production to North America. In addition, US energy companies have been exporting gas to Europe on behalf of Russia, reaping huge profits from Europe in a time of war. In response, Europe has stepped up its protectionism, pushing for an EU version of the Semiconductor Act, a Carbon Border Tax Act, and a Critical Materials Act.
These triggers are undermining US hegemony over Europe. However, the United States will probably have no choice but to continue to increase bipartisan protectionism in the face of worsening economic conditions. European countries will be forced to push back more aggressively, and at some point, the United States may lose its hegemonic power over the European powers.
Another important outcome of this war is the formation of an alliance between Russia and China. This is an unexpected consequence of Russia's strategic failure in the war. Russia is now unable to survive without China. China's trade with Russia reached $218.1 billion in November 2023, up 26.7% from the previous year. With China buying its energy and providing it with goods, Russia has maintained a stable growth rate despite massive economic sanctions from the West.
In other words, if China cuts ties with Russia, Russia dies. In the past, alliances were difficult to form because of the lack of clear dominance between the two powers, but the war in Ukraine has created the conditions for a Sino-Russian alliance with China as the dominant power.
Important countries such as India, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and South Africa have responded positively, extending the influence of China and Russia throughout the so-called Global South. Indeed, countries representing three-quarters of the world's population have boycotted sanctions against Russia. Alongside this is the rise of the BRICS as an alternative to the G7 and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) as an alternative to NATO. The BRICS is expanding its influence, with Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates joining in January 2024.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization has some dissonances, such as India's refusal to join China's declaration of support for the Belt and Road Initiative at the July 2023 SCO summit, but apart from India walking a tightrope between the United States and China, the organization is strengthening its position as a security cooperation organization that can stand up to NATO.
There are also cracks in the Sino-Russian alliance. China has not officially supported Russia in the war in Ukraine. The age-old border dispute between India and China is also a variable. India walks a fine line between the Sino-Russian alliance and the Quad (US-Japan-Australia-India).
In this situation, the world is not likely to be reorganized into a bipolar order between the United States and China, but rather into multipolar confrontations among new and old powers with the US-China hegemonic confrontation. A deepening major economic crisis is likely to strengthen the far right in each country and increase its tendency to rise to power. And protectionism, militarism, and expansionism are likely to come to the fore. In addition to the US-China hegemonic confrontation, the intertwined ambitions of Western powers such as Germany, France, Britain, Italy, Spain, and Japan, and emerging powers such as Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Turkey, Israel, Brazil, Nigeria, Egypt, and Indonesia are likely to form various power blocs and clash with each other, and the world is likely to be engulfed in small and big wars.
 
3) The US-China Hegemonic Confrontation Moving from Economic Warfare to Military Warfare
The US-China trade dispute escalated in 2018 as protectionism and the far right grew. The percentage of US imports from China subject to tariffs increased from 1% to 66%, and the average tariff rate rose from 3.1% to 19.3%. In 2019, the United States declared high-tech restrictions and began sanctioning Huawei, a major Chinese tech company. The trade and technology dispute led to a political dispute over responsibility for the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020.
The US-China hegemonic confrontation is particularly fierce in the semiconductor industry, a key industry. The United States is attempting to reorganize the semiconductor supply chain to exclude China. In August 2022, the United States passed the CHIPS and Science Act, which effectively prohibits the expansion of semiconductor production in China if factories are built and subsidized in the United States. In October 2022, it restricted exports of advanced semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China. It also restricted exports by companies from third countries, including the Netherlands and Japan, by banning exports if more than 10% US technology was used. Additional export controls were imposed on AI semiconductors. Although the US Semiconductor Association, which was hit hard by the restrictions, issued a statement in July 2023 calling for a "reconsideration of the policy," there is strong support from both Democrats and Republicans for the Biden administration's policy of "reorganizing the semiconductor supply chain."
China is not standing still and is fighting back. Xi Jinping has taken the lead in pushing for semiconductor equipment independence. In May 2023, it began controlling US Micron products; in July 2023, it developed 28-nanometer lithography equipment; in August 2023, it began controlling exports of gallium and germanium; and in December, it began controlling exports of graphite.
China has surpassed the United States in exports and FDI, and the gap in economic power between the two countries has narrowed. But when it comes to military power, the gap remains wide. As of 2022, military spending as a percentage of GDP is 3.5% in the United States and 1.6% in China, with the United States spending $876.9 billion on defense compared to $291.9 billion in China.
To compensate for this military disadvantage, China has long been engaged in a major military buildup. In 2023, China increased its defense budget by 7.2% over the previous year. China's defense spending has grown by more than 10% year-over-year almost every year since 1989, topping 1 trillion yuan in 2017.
Geopolitical tensions between the United States and China have been steadily rising over the long term, going through phases of seemingly temporary easing. "Our policy approaches are not designed to harm China nor do we seek to thwart China's economic progress and development," the participants in the May 2023 G7 meeting said in a joint statement, adding that they would pursue "de-risking" rather than "de-coupling" from China. At the same time, however, they took a hard line on the Taiwan issue, to which China, not surprisingly, reacted strongly.
Military tensions escalated again in early June 2023, when a Chinese destroyer twice crossed in front of a US destroyer conducting Freedom of Navigation operations in the Taiwan Strait. On November 15, 2023, the United States and China met on the sidelines of APEC and attempted to create an atmosphere of de-escalation, but on December 6, 2023, one month before Taiwan's election, US P-8A maritime patrol aircraft flew over the Taiwan Strait as part of a Freedom of Navigation operation, leading to a renewed escalation of tensions between two great powers.
 
4) Taiwan: A Powder Keg in East Asia
What is the significance of Taiwan in the US-China hegemonic confrontation? From a geopolitical perspective, Taiwan serves as a natural bulwark against China's expansion into the Pacific (via the ROK-Japan-Taiwan-Philippines line). Conversely, for China, Taiwan can be a key base in its quest to dominate all of East Asia by securing unfettered access to the Pacific.
On the industrial side, Taiwan is home to TSMC, the world's most advanced semiconductor company. This is related to Taiwan's decisive role in the technology war between the United States and China. Taiwan dominates the global semiconductor industry. Taiwan produces 65% of the world's semiconductor chips, especially 92% of the most advanced chips.
Symbolically, Taiwan is the touchstone for the completion of Chinese unification. No capitalist government in China, let alone Xi Jinping, would tolerate Taiwan's independence. Taiwan's independence would severely undermine the Chinese government's ability to contain the centrifugal forces in its periphery and increase pressure to break away from Beijing's control in Hong Kong, Xinjiang, Tibet, Inner Mongolia, and elsewhere. For Chinese imperialism, the Taiwan question is a question of the survival of the Chinese state and capitalist rule, and the success or failure of its repression of internal contradictions.
This conflict is also very important for the United States. The current US strategy is aimed at further consolidating the dominance it has maintained since 1945 over the Indo-Pacific region (a crucial region for global capitalism in the 21st century). For US imperialism, the loss of Taiwan (i.e., China's domination of Taiwan) would be a historic defeat with consequences far greater than the humiliation it suffered in the Vietnam War. Such an outcome would force a dramatic realignment of power relations throughout the Indo-Pacific region in China's favor, downgrading the status of the United States from world hegemon to one of several imperialist powers.
With the election of the Democratic Progressive Party candidate for Taiwan's presidency on January 13, 2024, Taiwan's cooperation with the United States is likely to intensify more. While the conflict between the United States and China over Taiwan is in a temporary cooling phase, tensions over the island are bound to intensify as the global economic crisis deepens.
China must control Taiwan to become the world's strongest power. The United States must prevent China from taking control of Taiwan if it wants to remain the global hegemon. Who wins the Taiwan conflict will be the decisive factor in the outcome of the US-China hegemonic confrontation.
 
5) The Middle East Crisis Sparked by Israel's Genocide
Since October 7, the Israeli genocide has continued. As of January 12, 2024, more than 23,000 people have been killed in Gaza, according to the Gaza Health Authority. The death toll in the West Bank also continues to rise.
The US strategy of de-escalation in the Middle East, pursued along with its "Pivot to Asia," is in disarray. The United States had been pushing to normalize relations between Saudi Arabia and Israel, following the normalization of Israel's relations with the UAE and Bahrain in September 2020, but Hamas' attacks and Israel's genocidal war have thrown a wrench into the plans. The US history and present of supporting Israel for its imperialist interests has led to the legitimate resistance of the people in the Middle East and hindered the US plan to stabilize the Middle East.
Given the dynamics of the Middle East, the current situation is unlikely to be resolved in the short term. The far-right Netanyahu government has continued the genocide and sought to expand the war to a wider region in order to prolong its political life. The Biden administration, facing a presidential election, has shown an inability to control the escalation from Ukraine to the Middle East. Restoring the Iran nuclear deal, which the Trump administration unilaterally decertified in 2018, has also become impossible. The prospect of normalizing relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia, which was brokered by China in March 2023, is also unclear. As the Israeli slaughter continues, the likelihood of the Middle East crisis escalating into a regional war increases.
Russia and China welcome the United States re-drawn into the Middle East. A US military buildup in the Middle East and more support for the Israeli military means fewer US military, financial, and diplomatic resources to support Ukraine and its Asian allies (against Chinese pressure). China and Russia hope that the Israeli war will frustrate US plans for the region, including the India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor.
Both countries blame the United States for the war in Gaza and call for an immediate cease-fire. Of course, this is rhetoric, and it is clear that China and Russia are not interested in the cause of Palestinian liberation. Russia has developed a close relationship with Israel to expand its influence in the Middle East and China has continued its quiet cooperation with Israel's military industry, including drones and surveillance technology.
 
6) Establishment of a US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK Confrontation Configuration around the Heavily Militarized Korean Peninsula 
Like climate disasters, the global economy, political terrains, and international relations are headed for disasters. The global economy is heading for a major financial depression accompanied by hyperinflation. Far-right forces are spreading like wildfire around the world. As time goes on, we will see more far-right regimes and fascist forces emerge and spread. The alternative that these fascist and far-right forces will choose to escape catastrophe will be something similar to World War II.
It's not just a US-China hegemonic confrontation, but a number of minor powers will take advantage of the weakening of US power to consolidate their own power. With climate catastrophe striking the globe, over a global economic meltdown, a tangled web of wars of mass destruction by authoritarian, far-right, and fascist regimes will threaten to engulf the world. In such a global trend, the clouds of war are once again looming large over the Korean Peninsula, which was devastated by the tragic three-year war in 1950 as a proxy war between the United States and the Soviet Union.
After the end of the Cold War, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was isolated as the Soviet Union collapsed and China pursued a reform and opening-up policy. North Korea, like China, wanted to transition to a market economy and integrate into the new world order, and it began to develop nuclear weapons as a bargaining chip to get an agreement from the United States. For the United States, however, it was much more useful to isolate North Korea as an Axis of Evil and use it as a rationale for building a Missile Defense system in East Asia and encircling China, rather than to integrate it into its world order. North Korea's rulers realized five years ago, with the "Hanoi no-deal" between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un, that there was no possibility of stable and secure integration into the US-led world order.
North Korea blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in June 2020 and has continued to take a hard line ever since. North Korea has now made it clear that its survival depends on solidifying its position as a clear subordinate partner in the China-Russia-DPRK alliance.
On October 19, 2023, the Russian foreign minister visited North Korea and met with Kim Jong-un, where they talked about "faithfully implementing the agreements of the Russia-DPRK summit and building a new era with a century plan." Already in October, a sharp increase in Russia-DPRK freight train traffic was observed, suggesting North Korea's supply of ammunition to Russia. As announced at the September summit, North Korea is seeking "satellite development cooperation" from Russia in exchange for ammunition supplies to upgrade its nuclear capabilities. China has not publicly commented on the Russia-DPRK summit, but given its history of de facto support for Russia in the Ukraine war, it has no reason to oppose the formation of a China-Russia-DPRK bloc.
Meanwhile, on December 30, 2023, Kim Jong-un told a plenary meeting of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (North Korea’s ruling party) that "the North-South relationship is no longer a kinship relationship or a homogeneous relationship, but is completely stuck as a relationship between two hostile nations and two belligerents in a state of war." This is in stark contrast to the 1991 Inter-Korean Basic Agreement, signed by the governments of North and South Korea, which stated that "the relationship between the two sides is not a state-to-state relationship between countries but a special relationship provisionally formed in the process of pursuing reunification." Then, on January 15, 2024, the Supreme People's Assembly of North Korea declared that "the Constitution should stipulate the Republic of Korea (South Korea) as the first hostile country and the unchangeable main enemy." Rather than a bargaining chip to get something in return from the United States and South Korea, this appears to be an expression of North Korea's confidence in its ability to make its own way in a new international order with the support of Russia and China.
The US-Japan-ROK alliance is also strengthening. The Camp David Joint Statement of August 2023, a de facto declaration of military alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea, which states that the three countries "strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the Indo-Pacific waters," represents the emergence of another encirclement network against China after AUCUS and Quad. The regularization of the US-Japan-ROK joint military exercises will undoubtedly escalate military tensions with China, Russia, and North Korea and will be a key pillar in intensifying the arms race on the Korean Peninsula and beyond.
South Korea's Yoon Suk-yeol government has never hesitated to align itself with US imperialism. The government has taken blatant steps to strengthen the trilateral alliance, including deceiving victims of forced labor in the name of trilateral security cooperation, acquiescing to US wiretapping, and tolerating the release of contaminated water from the destroyed Fukushima nuclear plant.
Under the US-Japan-ROK alliance, provocations such as the "Freedom of Navigation Operation through the Taiwan Strait" and massive joint military exercises have become routine. On the other side, in the China-Russia-DPRK alliance, China has stepped up military exercises near Taiwan, and North Korea frequently launches missiles with threatening words. Similar to the proxy war in Ukraine, a proxy war of imperialist hegemonic confrontation on the Korean Peninsula is becoming more and more possible.
As geopolitical tensions in East Asia continue to escalate, East Asian socialists face difficult and urgent tasks. What positions should the working class in each of these countries take? How should they organize their movements? How should the working class in South Korea, an ally of US imperialism and a country facing China and North Korea, find a way out of the danger of war? What positions should the South Korean working class take to build real unity with North Korean workers? And where should we begin to build international unity of the working class in East Asia?
 
 
[Chapter 2] The South Korean Capitalist Government Plunging into the Flames of Imperialist War under the US-Japan-ROK Triangular Alliance
 
1) Japanese Imperialist Colonization and the Establishment of the Republic of Korea Government in 1948 with an Anti-communist Ideology
The Korean Peninsula, which lies directly on the Chinese mainland, was never free from the massive influence of the Chinese empire throughout its history. However, the Korean people managed to maintain their independence for two thousand years without being absorbed into the Chinese empire. While more than half of the modern Korean vocabulary is derived from Chinese characters, all Koreans use their own script, Hangul, to communicate, with different pronunciation and grammar from Chinese. This is a symbolic representation of the history of the Korean Peninsula, a region that has been in the magnetic field of Chinese civilization, yet has developed independently.
The independence of the Korean Peninsula from China was achieved, on the one hand, through several armed struggles (the battles that repelled the Chinese invasion are celebrated as a proud piece of national history in both North and South Korea), and, on the other hand, through a high degree of diplomatic skill. For the successive dynasties of the Korean peninsula, "Sadae" (a term similar to voluntary subordination) to the Chinese empire was a process of acknowledging the universality of Chinese civilization while identifying themselves as part of that universal civilization. It also meant a collective security order in Northeast Asia. This was exemplified in the late 16th century, when Japan's Toyotomi Hideyoshi, with his powerful military forces, attempted to conquer the Ming Dynasty (China) through Joseon (Korea), the Ming Dynasty sent reinforcements to Joseon.
The last feudal dynasty on the Korean Peninsula, Joseon, failed to make the transition to a modern capitalist state and was forcibly annexed by Japanese imperialism in 1910. The Korean people's fierce resistance to Japanese imperialism was not surprising given the long history of independent development on the peninsula. The struggle for national liberation was waged in various ways, including armed struggle by partisan units, terror such as the assassination of imperialist officials and the bombing of key colonial institutions, and mass struggles such as workers' strikes and tenant farmers' strikes.
Especially after the March First Movement of 1919, which was sparked off by the Russian Revolution of 1917, the feudalist idea of restoring the monarchy quickly faded away in the national liberation movement. The national liberation movement was largely divided between the right-wing republican movement, represented by the Korean Provisional Government, and the left-wing movement, represented by the Korean Communist Party (led by Stalin's Comintern). Although the KCP was disorganized under the harsh repression of the Japanese police, with repeated arrests of its leadership, socialists continued to work among the workers to rebuild the KCP until liberation.
There were also left-wing partisan militants who fought alongside the Chinese Communist Party in China's northeastern provinces adjacent to the Korean Peninsula. Among them was Kim Il-sung, whose raid on a Korean border post in 1937, the Battle of Bocheonbo, resonated with the colonized people. In 1940, Kim fled to the Soviet Union to escape Japanese repression and became a captain in the Soviet army. His experience as a captain in the Soviet army was a major advantage in his rise to the leadership of North Korea over the Yanan faction, which continued to fight alongside the CCP in northeastern China in the 1940s, and Park Heon-young, who led an underground movement to reestablish the KCP at home.
In the 1930s, Japanese imperialism had consolidated its militarist fascist regime, culminating in the Sino-Japanese War in 1937 and the Pacific War in 1941. During this period, the right wing of the national liberation movement, except for a few, abandoned the perspective of national liberation, and the left wing of the movement, which continued to fight for the reconstruction of the KCP or the armed struggle, took the initiative in the national liberation movement. Moreover, the devastating experience of the wartime looting economy in the late Japanese colonial period pushed the majority of the people towards socialism. Even the Korean Provisional Government, a representative of the right-wing camp, had to call for the nationalization of land and the main means of production as its founding principles.
This atmosphere was reflected in the rapid growth of labor unions and peasant unions in August and September 1945, immediately after liberation following the surrender of Japan in World War II. Most of the labor unions took over and self-managed factories run by Japanese capitalists, while the peasant unions fought to oust landlords or lower land rents. "The South is best described as a powder keg ready to explode at the first spark," the US military's political adviser wrote to Washington on September 15, 1945, adding that "Communists in favor of the immediate seizure of Japanese property could threaten law and order" and that "a well-trained agitator could disrupt our region to support Soviet 'freedom' and domination and oppose the United States."
Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that socialist forces along the lines of Stalinism would have come to power throughout the Korean Peninsula had it not been for the direct intervention of the US Army Military Government in Korea. The US military, which entered the Korean Peninsula south of the 38th parallel to disarm the Japanese forces based on the agreement with the USSR, began to forcibly implant anti-communism in the southern part of the peninsula in line with the onset of the international Cold War. In May 1946, the US military government outlawed the Korean Communist Party, which had been reestablished in 1945, by fabricating the Jeongpansa banknote forgery case, and violently suppressed a general strike in September 1946 and a popular uprising in October. In August 1948, Syngman Rhee, an American-style Christian, with the strong support of the US military government, established the government of the Republic of Korea covering only the south with an anti-communist platform. Syngman Rhee's government made extensive use of the notorious Korean figures of the ex-Japanese police to maintain power, which became a strong basis for North Korea's claim to ethnohistorical orthodoxy.
Around the same time, in North Korea, the Soviet-backed government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, with Kim Il-sung as prime minister, was inaugurated in September 1948. In the immediate aftermath of the division, both sides made no secret of their intentions to restore their counter regions by force. All-out war began when Kim Il-sung, with Stalin's approval, launched a surprise attack on June 25, 1950. The immediate intervention of the US military, followed by the entry of the Chinese People's Liberation Army, led to a stalemate on all fronts, and the Korean War ended in an armistice after three years of heavy casualties.
The Korean War confirmed that the Korean Peninsula was a geopolitical flashpoint between the United States and the USSR. The Korean War also wiped out leftist forces in the South and established violent anti-communism as a national ideology. This was exemplified by the massacre of 200,000 members of the Bodo League, a group of converts from leftist movements, shortly after the outbreak of the war. In the pre-democratization period before the late 1980s, participation in leftist movements in South Korea meant personal and family ruin. Of course, this anti-communist violence is still enshrined in the National Security Law to this day.
Meanwhile, the Korean War served as the rationale for the return of US imperialist troops to Korea after their withdrawal from the peninsula in 1949. Since then, the United States has also exercised Wartime Operational Control over the South Korean military. In July 1950, shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War, Syngman Rhee transferred "operational command" to UN commander MacArthur, and in October 1953, the US-ROK Mutual Defense Treaty transferred "operational control" of the ROK armed forces to the UN commander and then to the US-ROK Combined Forces Command (commanded by a US four-star general), which was established in 1979. In 1994, Peacetime Operational Control was returned to the ROK military, except for Wartime Operational Control. While the Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008) and Moon Jae-in (2017-2022) administrations announced plans to return Wartime Operational Control to the ROK military and used it as a rationale for military buildup, the subsequent Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) and Yoon Suk-yeol (2022-) administrations have treated it as an unnecessary ideological issue. With the recent sharpening of the US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK confrontation in East Asia, the return of Wartime Operational Control is likely to be a distant memory. About 28,500 US troops are currently stationed in South Korea, and the country remains unable to exercise basic military sovereignty.
 
2) The Growth of South Korean Capitalism, First Rapidly as an Anti-communist Outpost, Then Steadily as the Closest Economy to a Rising China
South Korea became a Cold War outpost to block the expansion of the Stalinist system in East Asia and defend the international order of US imperialism. As the so-called "showcase of capitalism," South Korea received massive aid from the United States to rebuild its economy. In the 20 years from 1945 to 1965, South Korea received nearly $12 billion in aid. According to another analysis, the $6 billion in economic aid and loans South Korea received from 1945 to 1975 was close to the $6.8 billion in total US aid to the African continent and just under the $7.6 billion in USSR economic aid to the Third World. The $6.5 billion in US military aid to South Korea from 1950 to 1975 was more than double the $3.2 billion in aid to both Latin America and Africa.
After seizing power in a military coup in 1961, Park Chung-hee embarked on a policy of rapid economic growth. Stalin's economic development policies were the historical prototype for the five-year plans that Park's government implemented several times. As a soldier in Manchukuo, Park had seen firsthand the results of Japan's 1936 Five-Year Plan for Industrial Development in Manchuria. Park established the Economic Planning Board, modeled after Japan's Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which devised an export-led industrialization strategy.
The economic growth policy of the Park Chung-hee government was characterized by low grain prices, low wages, long working hours, violent suppression of labor movements, and concentration of capital based on government privileges. In short, it was a process of primitive accumulation of capital with state violence as an indispensable element. Park Chung-hee's government then embarked on heavy and chemical industrialization in the 1970s, which marked the formation of monopoly capital known as Chaebol in South Korea. The monopolies formed in the shipbuilding, automobile, and steel sectors are still highly competitive in the global market. Since then, South Korean capitalism has continued to grow despite some setbacks, including the economic crisis of the late 1970s and the currency crisis of the late 1990s.
In the mid-to-late 1980s, popular protests for democracy and workers' struggles erupted in Korean society. This led to the introduction of procedural democracy, such as the direct presidential election system, and the democratic labor union movement gained citizenship. This was, of course, the result of a massive popular struggle, but it was also the result of Korean monopoly capital, which had come out of its immature stage, embracing change with confidence.
The Roh Tae-woo government, which took office in 1988, followed the global trend of détente and began to establish diplomatic relations with Eastern Bloc countries that had previously been categorized as enemy states. South Korea established diplomatic relations with Hungary in 1989 and with the Soviet Union in 1990, shortly before its collapse. This shows the determination of Korean monopoly capital to keep up with the global trend of the dissolution of the Cold War and the expansion of the neoliberal order.
The establishment of diplomatic relations with China, a former belligerent in the Korean War, was particularly symbolic. During the Cold War, South Korea and Taiwan had been anti-communist allies, facing common enemies, China and North Korea, and this had not changed after the establishment of US-China diplomatic relations in the 1970s. But China, with its huge market and cheap labor of 1.3 billion people, was now too big to pass up for South Korean monopoly capital. Anti-communist ideas took a back seat to the profit motive of capital. On August 24, 1992, the Taiwanese embassy in Seoul lowered its Blue Sky with a White Sun Flag and the next day raised the Chinese Five-star Red Flag. (The embassy building itself was transferred from Taiwan to China.)
South Korean capital, which had a technological advantage, rushed to set up factories in China after the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and South Korea, and made huge profits by supplying intermediate and capital goods to China's export industries. Even during the global financial crisis of 2008, South Korean capitalism managed to survive the crisis with positive growth thanks to the increase in exports to China, which was a great boost for South Korean capital. Specifically, the trade balance with China, which had a surplus of $14.4 billion in 2008, jumped to $32.4 billion in 2009 and $37.0 billion in 2010. Of course, it should not be overlooked that the strong competitiveness of South Korea's export industry during the financial crisis was largely a result of the surge in the number of irregular workers (temporary workers, dispatchers, subcontractors) in the early and mid-2000s, which increased the overall rate of exploitation. In particular, the long hours and low wages of unorganized subcontracted workers in large factories were an open "trade secret" of South Korean monopoly capital.
This period also saw a surge in the export of cultural products, known as the "Korean Wave," which gave South Koreans a great deal of confidence in China. It is not an exaggeration to call the period from the 1990s to the mid-2010s "an unprecedented time in the two-thousand-year history of the Korean Peninsula when Koreans felt superior to the Chinese."
A symbolic moment in China-ROK relations at that time was the participation of Park Geun-hye, a pro-US right-wing president, in a military parade on the Victory over Japan Day in China in September 2015. In 2015, when signs of a US-China hegemonic rivalry were already emerging, South Korea was the only pro-Western country whose leader participated in the parade. Park Geun-hye took a seat next to Xi Jinping with Vladimir Putin in the middle, despite US objections, and her participation was supported by 70% of South Koreans.
The phrase that circulated at the time was "America for security, China for economy." The idea was that in a military confrontation with North Korea, South Korea would use the military power of the United States, including US Forces Korea, while securing the profits of capital through the Chinese economy. It was a pragmatic attitude that Korean capitalism could maximize its profits by walking a tightrope between the United States and China.
The tendency of Korean capitalism to emerge from decades of immature subordination and begin to look for its perspective was also expressed in the August 2012 visit to Dokdo by another right-wing president Lee Myung-bak, Park Geun-hye's predecessor. US imperialism never wants Japan and South Korea, its subordinate partners in East Asia, to come into conflict. However, there are many historical conflicts between Japan and South Korea that stem from imperialist colonial rule, and the Dokdo territorial dispute is one of them. Despite its effective control over Dokdo, South Korea had not publicly asserted its sovereignty over the islands in order to avoid a Japan-ROK conflict in the face of US concerns. Under these circumstances, Lee's visit to Dokdo demonstrated his administration's willingness to sour relations with Japan in order to prevent the strengthening of the US-Japan-ROK alliance and to continue its partnership with the Chinese economy.
 
3) China's Clear Pursuit of "Rise as a Great Power" and The Spread of Anti-China Sentiment in South Korea
Walking the tightrope between the two great powers was only possible when the US-China hegemonic rivalry was not in full swing. In 2016, the United States pushed for the deployment of the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system in South Korea as part of its Missile Defense system. The rationale was to defend against North Korean nuclear missiles, and the Park Geun-hye administration bought into it, but the real reason for the deployment was to deter China's strategic nuclear missiles. China reacted fiercely, and in 2017, when the THAAD deployment was implemented, it imposed economic retaliation. South Korean capital in China suffered significant losses. For example, Hyundai Motor's local joint subsidiary in China, Beijing Hyundai, saw its revenue shrink from KRW 20.1 trillion in 2016 to KRW 4.9 trillion in 2022.
There's no denying that China's economic retaliation against South Korea is also driven by a traditional sense of great power. During the 2017 US-China summit, Xi Jinping reportedly told Donald Trump that "Korea was part of China," referring to thousands of years of history. This was enough to stir the wariness that South Koreans had traditionally toward the Chinese empire.
Conversely, anti-China sentiment in South Korea has grown rapidly. In 2015, 37 percent of South Koreans had an unfavorable view of China, but by 2022, 81 percent had a negative view, the highest among the 56 countries surveyed. Anti-China sentiment is also high among younger South Koreans, who cite "dictatorship and suppression of human rights" as a significant reason for their anti-China sentiment. The more progressive young people perceive themselves to be, the less favorable they are toward China. In 2019, South Korean university students got into verbal fights with Chinese students while supporting the Hong Kong protests. This suggests that in order for the working class in East Asia to realize international solidarity, they will have to address the issue of China's authoritarian rule head-on.
South Koreans are also frustrated that China, a country that can exert influence over North Korea, has effectively turned a blind eye to its nuclear program. While China has officially opposed North Korea's nuclear program, it has not imposed any real sanctions on the country. On the one hand, China is uncomfortable with North Korea escaping its control, but on the other hand, it needs North Korea as a buffer against the US-Japan military alliance. Therefore, China has continued to provide economic support to Pyongyang under the radar, even while voting for international sanctions against North Korea. (After 2020, when the imperialist hegemonic rivalry intensified, China and Russia now officially oppose further sanctions against North Korea.)
When North Korea conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, it was thought to be a problem that could be solved through peace negotiations such as the Six-Party Talks (US, Japan, China, Russia, North Korea, and South Korea). However, in 2016 and 2017, North Korea's nuclear arsenal became a real and irreversible threat to the workers and people of South Korea as it announced the "completion of its national nuclear arsenal," including the miniaturization and lightweighting of its nuclear warheads and the success of its intercontinental ballistic missile development. However, China's failure to impose any real sanctions on North Korea's nuclear program has exacerbated public sentiment in South Korea.
(Of course, it's only fair to mention that the people of North Korea have also long lived under the threat of US imperialism's terrifying nuclear arsenal. After deploying nuclear weapons to the US Forces Korea in 1958, the US military withdrew its tactical nuclear weapons only in 1991, leading to the North-South Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, which took effect in 1992. However, US-ROK military exercises on the peninsula have not stopped, and as recently as 2023, the leaders of the United States and South Korea decided that a strategic nuclear submarine carrying 24 nuclear missiles would make regular visits to South Korea.)
 
4) The Dependence of South Korean Capitalism on the US, Demonstrated by Its Powerlessness over the Deadlock in US-DPRK Relations
Since the armistice in the Korean War in 1953, North and South Korea have made some progress in peace negotiations. These include the adoption of the 1992 Inter-Korean Basic Agreement and the 2000 Inter-Korean Summit. The latter was the first inter-Korean summit and the event that earned liberal South Korean President Kim Dae-jung the Nobel Peace Prize. Kim Dae-jung believed that the so-called "Sunshine Policy" could lead North Korea to reform and open up. Kim openly spoke of a "North Korean Special Opportunity" that would surpass the "Middle East Special Opportunity" and open the way for tremendous capital accumulation, especially for small and medium-sized enterprises with weak competitiveness. (This was partially realized with the establishment of the Kaesong Industrial Complex in 2004, but the Park Geun-hye government shut it down in 2016 because it was the North's window to foreign currency.)
However, Kim Dae-jung's "Sunshine Policy" was effectively derailed by the election of George Bush in the November 2000 US presidential election. As Bush stepped up pressure on North Korea, citing the "axis of evil," the North Korean regime gave up hope of improving relations with the United States and began full-scale nuclear development.
That the South Korean government's efforts to improve inter-Korean relations always have to be approved by the United States is evident in the way the September 19 Inter-Korean Declaration, the outcome of the 2018 Inter-Korean Summit, has fizzled out. South Korean President Moon Jae-in promised his North Korean counterpart, Kim Jong-un, that he would normalize economic cooperation projects such as the Kaesong Industrial Complex "as conditions permit." By conditions, he meant the United States lifting economic sanctions on North Korea. However, the Trump-Kim summit in Hanoi, Vietnam, in February 2019 ended in a "no deal," and the South Korean government was unable to fulfill any of its agreements with North Korea.
In June 2020, a disgruntled North Korea blew up the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in the Kaesong Industrial Zone, which had been built after the 2018 inter-Korean summit. In a uniquely North Korean fashion, it declared a rupture in inter-Korean relations. In fact, from December 2018 to January 2024, there has been no dialog between the two sides. The bombing of the Inter-Korean Liaison Office was a symbolic event that signaled a policy shift by the North Korean regime, which no longer relied on improving inter-Korean or US relations. But it also sparked widespread anti-North Korean sentiment among South Koreans. Young people, in particular, have come to believe that the North Korean leadership is an irrational one that ignores even the most basic principles of diplomatic relations and will not hesitate to use nuclear weapons to maintain its regime.
For South Korean monopoly capital, which is facing a declining population due to low birth rates and declining profit margins, North Korea's natural resources and cheap labor, especially those who speak the same language, represent an irresistible profit-making opportunity. Even years after the Kaesong Industrial Complex closed in 2016, more than 90 percent of the companies with factories in Kaesong expressed their intention to return if the complex reopened, as the excess profits from using North Korean labor far outweighed the security risks. Thus, for South Korean capital, improving relations with North Korea is directly in its interest.
Nevertheless, the South Korean capitalist government has been trying hard to follow the US policy on inter-Korean relations. First, this has to do with the high dependence of the South Korean economy on foreign trade. In 2022, the ratio of South Korea's exports and imports to its nominal Gross National Income reached 100.5 percent. According to the OECD, in 2020, the United States had a ratio of 31.4 percent, Japan 37.5 percent, and France 66.1 percent, all of which are much lower than South Korea. Moreover, the majority of South Korean capital is still technologically dependent on the United States. Therefore, for the South Korean capital to break away from the US imperialist-dominated world order and go its own way is a gamble that could severely damage foreign trade and ruin the country's economy.
It is also difficult to imagine South Korea, which still cedes military sovereignty to the United States, pursuing its own interests at the expense of deteriorating relations with the United States. The cost to South Korean capital of being outside the security umbrella of the overwhelming military power of the United States is enormous, so South Korea is willing to pursue its own interests to a limited extent as long as the United States allows it to do so but hesitates and retreats when it has to step outside the boundaries drawn by the United States. This is why the former Moon Jae-in administration was unable to actively improve inter-Korean relations, as the United States refused to lift economic sanctions against North Korea.
 
5) The Yoon Suk-yeol Government Going All Out for the US-Japan-ROK Triangular Alliance with the US-China Hegemonic Confrontation Coming to a Head
As the US-China hegemonic confrontation has intensified, South Korean capital has been forced by the United States to choose between the United States and China. For example, in the case of semiconductors, one of South Korea's major exports, the US CHIPS and Science Act prohibits South Korean semiconductor manufacturers from expanding in China by more than 5% over the next 10 years if they receive subsidies from the United States. In addition, Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, both of which have semiconductor plants in China, effectively need permission from the US government to bring US-made equipment into their Chinese factories.
As a military crisis over the Taiwan Strait is likely to erupt in East Asia, the trilateral military alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea is being strengthened. In August 2023, a trilateral summit was held at Camp David, the US presidential vacation house. On that day, the leaders of the capitalist governments of the United States, Japan, and South Korea again took direct aim at China, calling its so-called "actions inconsistent with the rules-based international order." They said that "we strongly oppose any unilateral attempts to change the status quo in the waters of the Indo-Pacific" (i.e., the Taiwan Strait) and "unlawful maritime claims by the People's Republic of China in the South China Sea," and pledged to "enhance strategic coordination between the US-Japan and US-ROK alliances" and to "hold annual, named, multi-domain trilateral exercises on a regular basis."
Prior to that, the Yoon government engaged in criminal behavior to violently shake off internal factors that hindered the strengthening of the US-Japan-ROK triangular alliance. This was the issue of forced labor, which is one of the contentious historical issues in the relations between Japan and South Korea. During the Japanese imperialist colonial period (1910-1945), Japanese capital forcibly recruited Korean workers and forced them into slave labor. An estimated 1.5 million forced laborers were brought from Korea to Japan, where they were paid less than half the wages of Japanese workers and subjected to 10-14 hours of heavy labor per day. In 2018, the South Korean Supreme Court upheld a ruling that forced labor company Shin Nippon Steel must pay damages to the victims, but Japan countered that the 1965 Agreement Between Japan and ROK extinguished all claims. In March 2023, the Yoon government announced that it would finally resolve the issue by having a third party (a foundation composed of South Korean companies) pay the victims regardless of the Supreme Court's ruling. This was unacceptable to the victims, who had been demanding an official apology and compensation from the Japanese government and capital.
The violent brushing off of colonial history as an obstacle to strengthening the trilateral alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea was also seen in the 2015 Japan-Korea Comfort Women Agreement by the Park Geun-hye administration. During World War II, the Japanese imperialist government forcibly dragged civilian women from occupied territories such as colonial Korea to wartime "comfort stations" and forced them to have sex with soldiers to "comfort" them. Japanese right-wingers have been denying the history of this massive war crime and sexual offense at every opportunity, claiming that there was no coercion. However, in December 2015, the Park Geun-hye government reached an agreement with the Japanese government to compensate the victims through a foundation established by the South Korean government and declared that the issue of comfort women had been "resolved finally and irreversibly." The United States, which was believed to have pushed for the 2015 agreement behind the scenes, praised it as a "commitment to forging a more productive and constructive bilateral relationship," but more than half of South Koreans, including former comfort women themselves, considered it humiliating.
The question is, why the Yoon administration, which came to power in 2022, is betting everything on the US-Japan-ROK triangular alliance? As the US-China hegemonic confrontation has intensified, some in the South Korean capitalist political establishment have argued that South Korea should conduct a balanced diplomacy between the two great powers. This is because the 2017 THAAD retaliation has already shown that a deteriorating relationship with China does not serve the interests of the South Korean capital. However, the Yoon administration has been at the forefront of the triangular alliance, holding the US hand between the two great powers at the risk of a Chinese backlash. The US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK confrontation configuration is clearly taking shape in East Asia, but the Yoon government is unconcerned.
Of course, this attitude of the Yoon government cannot be understood apart from the personal characteristics of the core members of the regime, who are mostly pro-American right-wingers. Their ideologues are mostly US-educated and have experienced the growth of South Korean capitalism under US auspices. They are obsessed with the factional logic that Kim Dae-jung's and Moon Jae-in's "appeasement policy to North Korea" or "pro-China policy" must be opposed at all costs, and that this is a winning electoral strategy.
On the other hand, and more fundamentally, the intensification of the US-China hegemonic confrontation means that the middle ground between the two great powers is shrinking. Since the confrontation between the two great powers for world hegemony cannot be resolved peacefully, the Korean monopoly capital and the capitalist government representing it are forced to take sides. In a situation where the factionalization around the two powers is becoming clearer, especially in terms of the reorganization of the supply chain, the Korean monopoly capital, which is centered on manufacturing exports and needs to increase the proportion of foreign trade with the Global South in the future, seems to have decided that it is safer to side with the United States, which has a much greater military power, than with China, which will be a competitor in the Global South's market.
It is also worth noting that the United States exercises Wartime Operational Control over the South Korean military. South Korea still has to rely on US military power in a military confrontation with North Korea. (This has worked to South Korea's advantage in the past, allowing it to reduce military spending and focus on economic growth.) With South Korea's military sovereignty ceded to the United States, it is very difficult for South Korean capital and government to avoid siding with an increasingly assertive United States against China. This is because being excluded from a security alliance with the United States means that South Korean capital will have to pay much more to maintain a military force to protect itself.
However, this means that in the event of an imperialist hegemonic war between the United States and China in East Asia in the future, the people of the Korean Peninsula will inevitably be dragged into the middle of the war. In the event of a war between the United States and China, the United States would have no choice but to mobilize the US Forces Korea as an offensive force, and China would surely launch missile attacks on the USFK bases in response.
It cannot be completely ruled out the possibility that in the future the Korean capitalist state, representing the Korean monopoly capital, will reveal its inherent desire to become an imperialist power by taking advantage of the emergence of a multipolar system following the intensification of the US-China hegemonic competition and the further weakening of the US hegemony. However, given the aforementioned factors, it seems more likely that the Korean monopoly capital will take the safe way of aligning itself with the dominant US-centered international order for some time to come.
 
 
[Chapter 3] The North Korean Regime, Its Nuclear Program, and the China-Russia-DPRK Alliance Today
 
1) Stalinist System Implanted from Above without Revolution from Below
After liberation from Japan, the system that emerged in North Korea was established without a revolution from below. The United States, the Soviet Union, and the United Kingdom decided at the Yalta Conference in February 1945 to establish a trusteeship over the Korean Peninsula. The decision was not implemented, but the result was the same. Immediately after liberation, the United States and the USSR divided the Korean Peninsula into South Korea and North Korea along the 38th parallel and imposed military rules for three years. North Korea was placed under the jurisdiction of the Soviet Union and South Korea under the jurisdiction of the United States. The division of Korea into North and South was carried out according to the global interests of the United States and the Soviet Union. As the victorious powers against Japan and Germany, the United States and the USSR divided the Korean Peninsula (along with the East-West divide in Europe) to bring it under their respective spheres of influence, like dividing the spoils of war.
In August 1945, when Japanese rule ended on the Korean Peninsula, there was a high potential for the emergence of an independent people's regime. The right-wing groups lacked popular credibility because of their history of service to the Japanese, while the left, which had waged an uncompromising armed struggle against the Japanese, enjoyed strong popular support. In addition to the communists who had fought in the anti-Japanese war in China, some communists had operated clandestinely on the Korean peninsula. If these left-wing forces had been united in a people's revolution from below, there would have been ample opportunity to establish an independent people's government on the Korean Peninsula.
However, the possibility of an independent national liberation of the Korean Peninsula through the power of the workers and people, with the communists playing a leading role, was thwarted by the division of the peninsula by the United States and the USSR and the subsequent imposition of their provisional military regimes. This divided all the movements into South and North Korea. Through the military regime, the United States and the USSR stifled and controlled the independent organizations and movements in the South and the North. In both the South and the North, the composition of the governments was almost entirely in accordance with the wishes of the United States and the USSR. The difference was that in the South the government was centered on the far right while in the North it was centered on the left. However, the right of self-determination of the workers and people was denied in such compositions of governments and the interests of the United States and the USSR and the closeness to the officers of the United States and the USSR were decisive.
North Korea became an instrument for the global expansion of the USSR Stalinist bureaucracy. In establishing the North Korean regime, the USSR Stalinist bureaucracy was concerned with who would faithfully represent the interests and needs of the USSR bureaucracy. As a result, Kim Il-sung was chosen as the leader of the North Korean regime because of his career as an officer in the USSR army and his ties to the USSR bureaucracy. Communists who had participated in the anti-Japanese war in China or who had operated clandestinely in Korea under the Japanese were excluded from the core power and, after the Korean War, eliminated through purges.
North Korea became an instrument for the global expansion of the USSR Stalinist bureaucracy. In establishing the North Korean regime, the USSR Stalinist bureaucracy was concerned with who would faithfully represent the interests and needs of the USSR bureaucracy. As a result, Kim Il-sung was chosen as the leader of the North Korean regime because of his career as an officer in the USSR army and his ties to the USSR bureaucracy. Communists who had participated in the anti-Japanese war in China or who had operated clandestinely in Korea under the Japanese were excluded from the core power and, after the Korean War, eliminated through purges.
The system created by the Kim Il-sung regime in North Korea was a direct imitation of the Stalinist system of the USSR. Formally, there were People's Committees modeled on their USSR counterparts, but they were merely puppets of the party bureaucracy, just as in the USSR. The self-organization institutions of the workers and people were stifled before they could properly emerge, and their bureaucratic variants were subordinated to control from above. The People's Committees were required to unilaterally submit to the decisions and instructions of the Party, which was controlled by the USSR bureaucracy. The prospect of a revolution from below by the working class and people, and of a permanent revolution in which a national liberation revolution develops into a socialist workers' revolution, was closed before it had even begun. Radical measures such as the "free confiscation and free distribution" of the landlords' land were taken, but these were measures from above to consolidate control over the peasant masses, not a revolution from below. There was no revolution from below in any form in North Korea after 1945. The system established in North Korea after 1945 was a Stalinist system without revolution, copied from the USSR for the interests of the USSR bureaucracy.
 
2) The Adventurist Korean War That Ended a Revolution on the Korean Peninsula from Below
The 38th parallel, a military demarcation line drawn by the United States and the USSR, became the border between North and South Korea. North Korea accelerated its military buildup to the point of overwhelming the South. The international situation also changed dramatically. On March 17, 1949, a military secrecy agreement was signed between the USSR and North Korea. On the Chinese mainland, the revolutionary government of Mao Zedong was established in October 1949, and a mutual defense treaty was signed between China and North Korea. In the South, the withdrawal of US troops from Korea was completed in June 1949, and in January 1950, Secretary of State Acheson announced the exclusion of South Korea and Taiwan from the US defensive perimeter in Asia, which ran from Japan through the Ryukyus to the Philippines. Encouraged by these developments, Kim Il-sung finalized a plan for armed reunification at the Central Political Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea (North Korea's ruling party) in early April 1950, after Stalin had approved his war plan for the Korean Peninsula.
The Korean War, which began in June 1950 with a preemptive strike by North Korea, was an adventurist gamble that closed off the possibility of a revolution on the Korean Peninsula through the unity of the workers and people of North and South Korea. The Korean War was a tragedy born out of pessimism about the possibility of an independent revolution among the workers and people of South Korea and fueled by the mistaken belief that a revolution could be "exported" militarily. The South Korean left, already weakened by the ruthless repression of the US military government and the subsequent far-right government, was completely isolated among the masses and decimated in the course of the Korean War. This was because, in the eyes of the South Korean workers and people, the Korean War was simply a war of aggression by the North.
In the end, the Korean War became a proxy war between the United States and the USSR. Contrary to the expectations of Kim Il-sung and Stalin, the United States became fully involved in the Korean War in order to block the USSR's southern march. The war situation was reversed, and Stalin, burdened by an all-out war with the United States, abandoned direct intervention. Instead, China's Mao Zedong stepped in, as the newly revolutionary Chinese government was extremely reluctant to have American influence operating right under its nose. Now the Korean War became an international war involving the United States and China. Eventually, a balance of military power was achieved and the war ended in an armistice in July 1953, with the 38th parallel being replaced by the armistice line.
The armistice line, geographically not so different from the 38th parallel, divided the workers and people of the Korean Peninsula dozens of times more than the 38th parallel. The 38th parallel was a wall of division imposed by a foreign power. The workers and people of the Korean Peninsula still believed that they were one and should be reunited one day. However, the workers and people of North and South Korea were torn apart in a massive war of kinship murder in which millions were killed. In this great tragedy, the South Korean working class was hijacked by far-right forces and US influence. The North Korean army was seen not as a liberator but as an invading army slaughtering South Koreans, while the United States was seen as the blood brotherhood that saved the South Korean people. The far right took complete control of the South, and the leftist movement was virtually wiped out by massacres of leftists and even suspected leftists. The adventurism of the Kim Il-sung regime ended in disaster.
 
3) A Bureaucratic System Based on the Elimination of All Opposition and the Personality Cult to Completely Block the Self-Organization of the Working Class
The tragic legacy of the Korean War was not limited to the South. Faced with a war that cost millions of lives and ended with nothing to show for it, North Korea's Kim Il-sung regime needed to find a scapegoat to take the blame. Furthermore, the Kim regime sought to consolidate its bureaucratic control by cracking down on dissent. He executed Park Heon-young, a symbol of the communist movement under the Japanese, under the guise of being an American spy, and similarly purged the Yanan faction. In 1958, the ruling Workers' Party of Korea was completely taken over by the Kim Il-sung faction. This brutal dictatorship was justified by the political ideology of defending the country from US imperialism.
The North Korean-style Stalinist bureaucracy, which eliminated all opposition, evolved endlessly. The personality cult of the Stalinist system in the USSR was copied in North Korea. Under the heavy surveillance of the secret police, every aspect of society was controlled by Kim Il-sung's bureaucracy. No self-organization of the workers and people was allowed, except for the ruling Workers' Party of Korea and its puppet organizations, in which Kim Il-sung's bureaucracy gathered. There was no democracy within the party, and basic political rights were completely ignored throughout society. Even elections were a mere formality filled with 100 percent approval. The politics of the personality cult eventually merged with the Confucian culture of East Asia to create a hereditary system of supreme leadership. (Of course, this system operates on a different historical basis than the feudal hereditary monarchy. In North Korea, the hereditary system of supreme leadership functions as a structural device for stable rule by the bureaucracy as a collective capitalist exploiting the working class.)
The North Korean bureaucracy, symbolized by the hereditary system, has completely blocked all the pores of self-organization of the workers and people, and replaced them with a dense network of repressive intelligence and surveillance apparatus and bureaucratic administration. The huge cogs of the bureaucratic apparatus have blocked the self-organization of the working class and atomized the working class. The main ideological veneer of this vast system of bureaucratic surveillance and control has been the defense of the "socialist" state against US invasion, but its essence has been to promote the stability of the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy.
 
4) Massive Famine and the Spread of the Market Economy
North Korea's bureaucratic ruling system faced a major challenge after the 1980s: the crisis of the system of bureaucratic state capitalism.
Until the early 1970s, the North Korean economic system had an advantage over the South Korean system. Under Japanese imperialism, major heavy industrial production was concentrated in the north of the peninsula, giving North Korea an economic advantage over the South for a considerable period. North Korea was also able to gain significant support from both the USSR and China through tightrope diplomacy in the rift between the two.
However, this economic advantage faded in the 1970s as industrialization took hold in the South with the full support of the United States. The North Korean bureaucracy continued to devote a large portion of its social resources to military spending. The bureaucratic command economy, which had nothing to do with democratic planning with the active participation and self-control of the working class, proved increasingly limited in its ability to rationally organize the economy. Fictitious plans that put the accumulation logic of the system ahead of the lives of the masses became increasingly crude in the face of competition among bureaucrats, and the organic harmony between industries was destroyed. In the 1980s, the economic superiority between North and South Korea was reversed.
The real crisis in North Korea's economy came in the early 1990s when the collapse of the USSR sharply weakened external support for the regime. The heavy and chemical industries, which relied heavily on trade and support from the USSR, were hit hard. Along with the energy crisis, other industries that supported the agricultural infrastructure were weakened.
The years after 1994 were marked by natural disasters such as droughts and floods. With social coping capacities exhausted, the natural disasters were catastrophic. The economic standard of living of the masses plummeted, and hundreds of thousands starved to death. A massive famine engulfed North Korean society.
The massive famine of the 1990s shook North Korea's bureaucratic state-capitalist system. But the system did not have the means to deal with the crisis. The bureaucratic command economy had no real capacity to cope with a social crisis. As the existing economic system came to an end, the market economy expanded spontaneously. Small black markets called jangmadang (meaning "marketplace") expanded throughout the country, and many daily necessities were traded through these black markets. For many commercial transactions, the Chinese yuan circulated as the de facto currency replacing the official North Korean currency.
 
"Among the jangmadangs that have developed with the North Korean people's struggle for survival, as of February 2018, there were more than 480 authorized general markets in North Korea, along with many other markets such as alley markets and night markets. North Koreans use these markets to meet eighty to ninety percent of their daily needs. ... There are more than a million North Koreans working in various types of trading spaces. If you include their families, more than one-third of North Koreans get more than two-thirds of their income from the jangmadangs. At the base of this is private banking, mainly run by the wealthy, which acts as a financial company." (Joo Sung-ha, 2018, Encyclopedia of Capitalism in Pyongyang, Bookdodoom Press, p. 40, no foreign translation published)
 
The spread of the market economy was not limited to the small informal markets of the jangmadangs. A more important channel for the spread of the market economy was in the formal economy in the form of "public-private partnerships" and "foreign trade."
 
"Since the mid-1990s, the North Korean government has been in a state of almost complete economic failure. ... Due to this lack of central funding, government organizations have, essentially, been left to their own devices. ... The ad-hoc solution has been for officials to start quasi-private businesses under the umbrella of their organization. ... A member of a government entity ... with good political connections and permission to travel abroad will seek out joint ventures or import-export opportunities in China, or even further afield. Food, agricultural supplies, medicine, and consumer luxuries are considered particularly important areas. ... Only some of the proceeds go to the state, though. ... A highly profitable firm can, therefore, very easily be turned into a modestly profitable one, allowing those who run the business to pocket around 60-70 percent of the earnings, with the rest going up the department, and higher-ups who need bribing." (Daniel Tudor et al, 2017, North Korea Confidential, Biabook Press, pp. 38-40, quoted from the English original)
 
"The snowball of marketization in North Korea continues to gain weight and speed, to the point where it has been suggested that the country is becoming a 'country of chaebols and conglomerates' like South Korea. The military-owned Koryo Airlines now produces processed foods such as cola and canned goods, and operates a taxi service in Pyongyang (competing with seven other companies for fares in the city). A conglomerate called Naegohyang, whose true owners have yet to be identified, not only produces cigarettes for domestic use in North Korea, but also exports them to Iran under the brand name "Morning." The company also owns a baking company, and produces feminine hygiene products and sports clothing. ... There are no credit cards yet, but several banks are competing for debit card services. A company called 'Star' has also emerged in the cell phone service market, competing with Koryo Link." (Daniel Tudor et al, 2017, North Korea Confidential, Biabook Press, pp. 8-9, quoted from the preface of the Korean translation)
 
"The state-owned stores failed to operate normally, and small merchants, who eventually became 'money lords,' invested in them, giving rise to 'quasi-private enterprises,' a variant of the market economy. ... Of course, they cannot run the stores under their private names, so they put their names in the state institutions paying a certain fee. The money lords are responsible for the production and sale of goods, the hiring and firing of employees, etc. Profits are also taken by the money lords. ... The money lords of quasi-private enterprises have now gone beyond investing in state-owned stores, and are directly connected to the foreign-currency-earning agencies to supply goods to the jangmadangs. Their expertise in the entire process of receiving and releasing goods, bookkeeping, financial statistics, and transportation is at the level of 'enterprise management' beyond 'merchandising'." (Joo Sung-ha, 2018, Encyclopedia of Capitalism in Pyongyang, Bookdodoom Press, p. 44, no foreign translation published)
 
The ruling bureaucracy has benefited from both profits from the formal economy and profits from the informal jangmadang in the form of bribes. These profits have been distributed according to bureaucratic status that is linked to control over the black market and jurisdiction over public-private partnerships and foreign trade. As a result, the ruling bureaucracy has been the group that has benefited most from the expansion of the market economy.
 
"After taking power, Kim Jong-un abandoned market controls. Instead, he reoriented his policies toward deregulation and the promotion of jangmadangs. As a result, the North Korean market has become frighteningly large and sophisticated in its division of labor. Like the trade officers, the money lords of the jangmadangs also contribute a certain amount of money to the state in the name of the Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il Funds and other support projects, thus earning the title of 'hardworking heroes.'" (Joo Sung-ha, 2018, Encyclopedia of Capitalism in Pyongyang, Bookdodoom Press, p. 36, no foreign translation published).
 
"If you count the people who make money from real estate, it's all the high-ranking cadres of the central party. But since they can't do it, their wives make the moves, and their wives put forward another smart guy. To build an apartment, you have to get seven stamps of approval, and the bribes for each one are huge. You can't get a good site unless someone in power is involved, and the cadres who receive the money take care of everything behind the scenes." (Joo, Sung-ha, 2018, Encyclopedia of Capitalism in Pyongyang, Bookdodoom Press, p. 30, no foreign translation published)
 
From within the official bureaucracy, directly or indirectly, a group of emerging capitalists called the "money lords" ("donjoo") has emerged. They have not been separated from the existing bureaucracy but, as in the USSR and China, have emerged under its aegis and as an organic part of it. Alongside the bureaucracy as a "collective capitalist" serving "accumulation for accumulation's sake" that emerged in the old bureaucratic state capitalism, an emerging capitalist group organically linked to it has emerged in the expansion of the market economy. In North Korea, however, these two groups have become completely intermingled and formally indistinguishable. This is because the money lords, who operate under the complete control of the traditional bureaucracy, are either a direct part of the traditional bureaucracy or at least closely connected to it.
When the bureaucratic state-capitalist system revealed its decisive limitations during the famine, the ruling group's way out was to acquiesce the market economy to spread. Since then, the informal market economy, such as jangmadangs, has provided the solution to the survival problems of the masses that the formal system could not. By creating and encompassing emerging capitalist groups, the bureaucracy has monopolized the fruits of market economy expansion and maintained its cohesion.
However, this expansion of the market economy came at a time when North Korea was facing severe international isolation due to the collapse of the USSR and the reform and opening up of China. North Korea's ruling group sought to normalize relations with the United States, as China and Vietnam had done during their transitions to market economies, in order to ensure the regime's security and gain economic support. To bring the United States, which has been consistently hostile to North Korea, to the negotiating table, North Korea played the nuclear card.
 
5) Nuclear Armament as a Brinkmanship Bargaining Tool to Ensure the Security of the Bureaucratic Regime
After the US Forces Korea deployed nuclear weapons in South Korea in 1958, North Korea consistently called for "making the Korean Peninsula a nuclear-free peace zone." In 1991, the US military withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea, and in 1992, the governments of North and South Korea adopted the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. However, after the Joint Declaration, which realized its long-standing claims for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, North Korea began a nuclear development policy toward nuclear armament.
The collapse of the USSR in 1991 had a profound political and military impact on North Korea. The North Korean regime, which had built a shield against US aggression under the military umbrella of the USSR, was forced to seek its own military survival strategy in the face of the USSR's collapse. Forced to rule out the real solution of revolutionary unity of the working class in North and South Korea because of its anti-working-class nature, the North Korean bureaucratic ruling class pushed its adventurist gambit to even greater extremes. The solution it sought was a policy of nuclear development.
In the early to mid-1990s, the North Korean government pursued its nuclear program, seeking military security guarantees and significant economic assistance from the United States and South Korea in exchange for abandoning it. Walking a tightrope, the North Korean ruling group tried to choose the most beneficial option in terms of regime protection. The key card in the game, of course, was to push the accelerator on the nuclear program as hard as possible to raise the stakes.
But the North Korean bureaucracy was unable to extract sufficient commitments from the United States. For the United States, which had cemented its position as the sole dominant power in global capitalism after the collapse of the USSR, North Korea's nuclear card was not seen as serious. At that time, North Korea's nuclear armament was a plan and a rhetoric, not a reality. Moreover, the United States wanted to use North Korea's threat of nuclear development as a rationale for building a Missile Defense system. In the end, the 1994 Agreed Framework signed in Geneva between the United States and North Korea did not work out and was then abandoned. The deal was not struck.
However, the North Korean bureaucracy's options were extremely limited. This had a lot to do with the desperate need to find someone to blame for the famine that swept through the country in the mid-to-late 1990s. Positioning US aggression, including the economic blockade, as the sole cause of the famine was an essential ideological tool for the North Korean bureaucracy to absolve itself of responsibility. The famine became one of the decisive factors that forced the North Korean bureaucracy to press the accelerator on its nuclear adventurism for the time being.
Meanwhile, in the context of the widespread spread of market economies from below after the famine, the formal transition to a market economy and the reforms that were to accompany it could have seriously threatened the dominance of the North Korean bureaucracy. The North Korean ruling system operated through a strong policy of control and an anti-American ideology, which could have been significantly weakened by reform and opening up. The North Korean bureaucracy therefore sought to follow the example of China in the 1970s and Vietnam in the 1980s, which normalized relations with the United States before reform and opening up to ensure the security of their regimes. (However, the United States, which had actively pursued normalization with China and Vietnam to isolate the USSR before 1991, had little interest in normalizing relations with North Korea now that the USSR had collapsed. Rather, the United States, which desperately needed virtual enemies to keep its vast military complex running after the fall of the USSR, wanted North Korea to remain one of its few adversaries.)
On the other hand, for the North Korean ruling group, nuclear development had a greater strategic value beyond its military implications. It could be used as a bargaining chip to secure full economic support from the United States through the big deal.
As such, nuclear development was an adventurous bargaining chip sought by the North Korean ruling class as a way out of a regime that was no longer stable by conventional means. Having already lost the ability to stop the spread of the market economy, having lost confidence in the bureaucratic state-capitalist system, and having become the biggest beneficiaries of the expansion of the market economy, they were ready to take even more drastic steps.
Eventually, in the early to mid-2000s, the North Korean bureaucracy came to the disastrous conclusion that, in order to bring the United States to the negotiating table, it had to push the accelerator of its nuclear armament harder and harder and reach a level that would actually put pressure on the United States as quickly as possible. Achieving a nuclear arsenal capable of striking the US mainland as quickly as possible became the motto of the North Korean bureaucracy. Most of the society's surplus began to be devoted to nuclear development.
North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003, and conducted its first nuclear test in 2006, formalizing its nuclear development program, followed by a total of six nuclear tests through 2017. In November 2017, North Korea officially declared the "completion of nuclear armament" after successfully test-firing an intercontinental ballistic missile, the Hwasong-15, demonstrating the potential to strike the US mainland with a nuclear weapon.
North Korea's completion of its nuclear program finally led to serious nuclear negotiations with the United States, centered on the 2018-19 summit between Donald Trump and Kim Jong-un.
For the North Korean ruling class, the key to negotiating a nuclear deal with the United States was to obtain firm guarantees that the regime would remain in power, along with massive economic support to back it up. But the United States, suffering from chronic economic decline, could no longer afford to provide that kind of support, nor did it have the incentive to make significant concessions.
The core of the US government's approach to negotiations with North Korea was simple. It was to realize US strategic interests on a global scale. During the Trump administration, when the US-China confrontation began in earnest, these strategic interests centered on gaining the upper hand in the imperialist competition with China and encircling it.
For the United States, the strategic formation for encircling China in the North Pacific already existed through the US-Japan-ROK alliance, and the benefits of adding North Korea to it were not attractive. Rather, it was preferable to use North Korea's nuclear capabilities to raise military tensions on the Korean Peninsula and use them to increase the military buildup of Japan and South Korea, while combining the military assets of US forces in Japan and South Korea to encircle China. The 2016-18 deployment of THAAD in South Korea, which actually targets Chinese military power under the pretext of responding to North Korea's nuclear program, was part of this strategy. If anything, the de-escalation of tensions on the Korean Peninsula could have been an obstacle to the strategy of militarily encircling China and the military rearmament of Japan.
The United States wanted to achieve one of two things in the negotiations. The first was to leave North Korea's nuclear arsenal alone, but to keep it at a level that would not threaten the US mainland by preventing further nuclear development under the pretext of negotiations. By keeping only South Korea and Japan in range, the United States would use North Korea's nuclear arsenal as a lever to strengthen the US-Japan-ROK military alliance and keep military tensions on the Korean Peninsula high to pressure China from time to time. The other was to strike a deal with North Korea if it was willing to dismantle its nuclear program and become a fully pro-American state. This, however, was on the condition that the economic support for North Korea would be borne entirely by the South Korean government.
North Korea had no reason to accept such a deal. Although it had devoted an enormous portion of its social resources to its nuclear program, the deal would have little to show for it. Moreover, for North Korea, abandoning China and embracing the United States was not an easy choice. Given North Korea's geopolitical position, severing economic ties with China would be a huge risk. The best strategy for North Korea's rulers was to engage in tightrope diplomacy between the United States and China to ensure the regime's security and to gain support from both to rebuild the North Korean economy. (This tightrope diplomacy strategy by North Korea was exemplified by the fact that in 2018-19, in addition to two summits with Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un had five summits with Xi Jinping in China and one summit with Vladimir Putin in Russia.) In the end, the deal between the United States and North Korea fell through.
The adventurist tactics of using nuclear development as a lever to maintain the North Korean regime further weakened the unity of the workers and people of the Korean Peninsula and increased military tensions throughout East Asia. As North Korea's nuclear program expanded, the far right in the South gained ground, Japan's military rearmament and the US-Japan-ROK military alliance grew stronger, and the international unity of the working class weakened. Also internally, the military squandering of social resources has made life more difficult for North Korean workers and people.
 
6) The War in Ukraine and the Building of the China-Russia-DPRK Alliance
In the end, the nearly 30 years of US-DPRK nuclear negotiations remained in the same place, repeating a series of partial agreements and breakdowns. North Korea completed its nuclear program, but it still had no security guarantees or economic support from the United States. However, the upheaval in the world situation that came with the war in Ukraine opened up a new space for North Korea.
Since 2019, when the Trump-Kim deal collapsed, the international situation has changed dramatically. The hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China has intensified, the unipolar US-centric order has faltered, and the multipolar tendency to challenge US hegemony has intensified. Against this backdrop, the confrontation between the West and Russia erupted into a war in Ukraine in 2022.
Russia's strategic defeat in the early stages of the war in Ukraine forced Russia to rely on Chinese economic support, which paradoxically led to the establishment of a solid Sino-Russian alliance against the United States and the West. While the world is witnessing an intensification of the hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China, with small and middle powers not belonging to either camp seeking their own ways, the situation in East Asia around the Korean Peninsula is overwhelmingly dominated by the US-China imperialist confrontation.
The rapid realization of a confrontational configuration between the two camps around the Korean Peninsula has opened up a new way out for the North Korean ruling group. North Korea's geopolitical position, with its role as a buffer for Sino-Russian imperialism against the US-Japan-ROK military alliance, has become increasingly important as the US-China hegemonic confrontation intensifies. If necessary, North Korea can be used as a proxy in a war against the US imperialist camp to protect the Sino-Russian homeland, and its military might alone can be of great value in protecting Sino-Russian imperialism in Northeast Asia. In this regard, North Korea's nuclear arsenal could now be a great advantage for China and Russia. Indeed, China and Russia have consistently opposed further sanctions against North Korea in the UN Security Council since 2020 (as opposed to until 2017, when they actively supported sanctions against North Korea's nuclear program). Moreover, the productive capacity of North Korea's military industry in terms of conventional weapons is an irresistible temptation for Sino-Russian imperialism. In fact, North Korea is supplying a large amount of artillery shells and missiles to Russia, similar to South Korea being the largest supplier of artillery shells to Ukraine in the Western world.
North Korea's abundant mineral resources and floating ports have also made it important to the Sino-Russian imperialist camp in the process of reorganizing global supply chains. North Korea's bureaucratic ruling class can now count on significant external support through its alliance with China and Russia. Taking its place in the Sino-Russian supply chain would offer North Korea the possibility of economic breathing space.
This shows the paradox of the US-China imperialist confrontation for global hegemony. The US-China hegemonic confrontation, which has sharply escalated since the Trump administration, has lowered the value of North Korea for the United States but raised it significantly for China. This trend is driving the North Korean bureaucratic ruling class deeper and deeper back into the Sino-Russian embrace. With the war in Ukraine as a turning point, North Korea has been able to break out of its long isolation since the early 1990s and build a China-Russia-DPRK alliance. The North Korean ruling group will now seek to survive under the economic and military umbrella of the China-Russia-DPRK alliance, not on its own.
(China has not yet officially confirmed the China-Russia-DPRK alliance. This has led some observers to believe that China may be uncomfortable with the rapid development of Russia-DPRK relations. But they overlook the important fact that since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, a strong Sino-Russian alliance has been forged with China in a superior position, even though China has not officially supported Russia in this war. China's strategy is to build and strengthen the China-Russia-DPRK alliance as quietly as possible so as not to give the United States an excuse to strike back.)
North Korea now has the backing of Sino-Russian imperialism, as opposed to the extreme isolation it faced from the 1990s until recently. Its economy is also improving as economic trade and assistance with China and Russia expand. Confident, North Korea has responded to joint US-Japan-ROK military exercises with aggressive military actions since the second half of 2022. Since the end of 2023, North Korea has also issued aggressive rhetoric, characterizing the relationship between the two Koreas as that of "two hostile belligerents" and announcing its readiness for "a major event that will pacify the entire territory of the Republic of Korea with nuclear weapons." With the acquiescence of China and Russia, North Korea's nuclear program will become bolder.
Of course, it's not impossible that North Korea could try to negotiate with the United States again in the future. However, the chances of reaching an agreement would be much lower because the United States would have to pay a much higher price. In any case, there is only one key factor that governs the ever-changing policies of the North Korean bureaucracy: the survival, stability, and prosperity of the North Korean bureaucracy around the hereditary supreme leader.
However, the escalating US-China imperialist hegemonic confrontation, which is beginning to determine the world situation today, will be a force stronger than any subjective will of the North Korean bureaucracy and will plunge the Korean Peninsula and East Asia into turmoil. The intensifying contradictions of the global capitalist system, expressed in the confrontation between the US and Chinese imperialist camps, and North Korea's adventurist nuclear program, will accelerate the war clouds over the Korean Peninsula, which will inevitably lead to a major war.
 
7) For a Socialist Korean Peninsula
The intensification of the imperialist hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China in East Asia will inevitably lead to a huge imperialist hegemonic war. The international unity of the working class is crucial to transform the imperialist hegemonic war into a revolutionary civil war of the working class. The unity of the working class on the Korean Peninsula against the imperialist hegemonic war is the starting point. This is the only way to save the workers and people of North Korea from the threats of US imperialism and the South Korean far right. But the North Korean ruling bureaucracy has no will to go there because it is the ruling class that exploits and oppresses the working class. Unable to choose the path of international unity of the working class, the real way out is closed to the bureaucracy. Therefore, it has no choice but to resort to adventurist gambles, such as the expansion of its nuclear arsenal.
Despite the dizzying array of policies pursued by North Korea's ruling bureaucracy, the consistent goal running through them is the maintenance of the ruling system. Whether it is the preservation of a bureaucratic state-capitalist system, the full embrace of a market economy, or some combination of the two, all economic policies are based not on the cause of so-called "socialism" but on the need to stabilize the ruling system and maintain its authority. If this need is met, they are willing to accept any economic system, and in any economic system, the fruits will be attributed to that very ruling bureaucracy. Likewise, its nature as a system of exploitation and oppression of the working class will remain the same. The same goes for foreign policy. Foreign policy is guided by a single practical objective: the maintenance of the North Korean ruling system.
There is another point of clarity. The North Korean bureaucratic ruling system and US imperialism are diametrically opposed to each other, but they are two heads sharing one body, the global capitalist system. The two ruling systems fight each other to the death, but they can be friends at any time, and they have a symbiotic relationship in which each provides the other with the basis for its existence and the legitimacy of its rule. The US policy of containment and threats against North Korea gives the North Korean bureaucracy impunity for its adventurist military policy and nuclear armament. Conversely, North Korea's nuclear policy provides a rationale for US aggression against North Korea, the US-Japan-ROK military alliance, and the rise of the far right in South Korea. In this respect, the threat of an attack on North Korea by US imperialism and the South Korean far right is an important driving force that sustains the North Korean bureaucracy. Therefore, the struggle against the North Korean bureaucracy and its nuclear policy must be accompanied by the struggle against the attack of the US imperialism and the South Korean far right on North Korea. And vice versa.
The only way to save the workers and people of the Korean Peninsula from the great catastrophe looming over the Korean Peninsula and East Asia is a socialist revolution on the Korean Peninsula. This revolution can only be pursued through the unity of the working class for peace and liberation. The only alternative is an internationalist alliance of the world working class, not a China-Russia-DPRK alliance or a US-Japan-ROK alliance. A socialist system, not a bureaucratic state-capitalist system in North Korea or a private capitalist system in South Korea, is the only alternative. Only workers' revolutions in both the North and the South, not nuclear adventurism, can realize true sovereignty for North Korea. "Turn the imperialist war into workers' revolution!" "For a socialist Korean Peninsula!"
 
 
[Chapter 4] Towards Building an International Workers’ Solidarity in East Asia Against Imperialist Hegemonic Confrontation and Spreading Wars
 
1) International Workers' Solidarity Against the US-China Imperialist Hegemonic Confrontation
The deepening capitalist crisis has intensified the competition and confrontation between the imperialist powers, culminating in the confrontation between the United States and China for global hegemony. With the world increasingly plunged into a vortex of imperialist wars since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine, the working class must respond to the imperialist hegemonic confrontation and spreading wars with an international workers' solidarity struggle based on "revolutionary defeatism."
Clarifying that the confrontation between the United States and China is an imperialist hegemonic confrontation is essential for understanding and projecting the situation. The view of some "leftists" who see China as a socialist or workers' state and a progressive force against U.S. imperialism is not only a serious misreading of the current world situation, but also a grave error in that it ignores the vast numbers of workers and people inside and outside China who are exploited and oppressed by the capitalist power of the Chinese Communist Party. On the other hand, the view that China is capitalist but not imperialist fails to fully understand the nature of the US-China confrontation as an imperialist hegemonic confrontation that is bound to escalate into sharp conflicts and wars as the capitalist crisis deepens.
While China is not yet a comparable adversary to the United States in many respects, it has emerged as the next great power in terms of economic strength, military power, and geopolitical influence, and it aspires to replace the United States as the world's leading superpower in the future. China has become the largest importer of raw materials from and the largest exporter of goods to most of the Global South, and is rapidly becoming the largest exporter of capital to a growing number of countries. In addition, China's claim to 90% of the South China Sea and its bullying of weaker states in Southeast Asia are blatant manifestations of its imperialist expansionist policies. China's rise and aspiration for global hegemony is a classic example of capitalist imperialism in that it is driven by the tendency that high capital accumulation inevitably leads to surplus capital exports and geopolitical expansion.
Meanwhile, Russia, as a military imperialism (one that lags behind in capitalist development but has significant military power and an expansionist policy), is once again playing a secondary (but leading in terms of intensifying the confrontation) role in the imperialist hegemonic confrontation centered on the capitalist imperialisms. Even in World War I, when the most advanced capitalist countries - Great Britain, France, Germany, and the United States - as capitalist imperialisms confronted each other for the imperialist world hegemony, Russia played a role in the imperialist hegemonic confrontation as a military imperialism. In the current imperialist hegemonic confrontation, which is centered on the rivalry between the United States and China, Russia is again playing a similar role as a military imperialism. In particular, Russia is playing a leading role in the escalation of inter-imperialist conflicts and wars by waging a proxy war against the US-NATO alliance in Ukraine.
Of course, along with identifying China and Russia as imperialisms, we also clearly recognize the enormous crimes that Western imperialism, today led by the United States, has historically committed and continues to commit. Western imperialism has perpetrated hundreds of years of enormous oppression and expropriation against the Global South, and continues to commit countless crimes today, both inside and outside of its imperialist states. In particular, Western imperialism, above all the United States, continues today to support Israel's genocide and ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Western imperialism, led by the United States, is the main culprit in bringing capitalism to this point.
Meanwhile, the very fact that China is challenging US global hegemony makes another war for imperialist global hegemony an inevitable prospect. The process of determining whether China can overtake the United States and become the world's strongest power will not be a peaceful one. Although a war for imperialist global hegemony may not be imminent, it is an inevitable reality that the war is getting closer and closer. Since both China and the United States are suffering from serious crises, whichever side is pushed into a decisive crisis first in the future is likely to be the provocateur who pulls the trigger. However, since both the United States and China are facing serious crises, and many factors of the crises are intertwined, it is also likely that they will move toward war provocations at about the same time.
The position of the working class in the face of the imperialist hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China should be international workers' solidarity based on "revolutionary defeatism" that does not support either imperialist power but seeks to turn the imperialist war into workers' revolution through the defeat of both. This position must be applied to the factional confrontation between the US-led alliance and the China-led alliance.
 
2) How to Confront the Threat of Imperialist Aggression: International Workers' Solidarity, Not Nuclear Armament
In the imperialist era, the relations between the countries are manifested in two forms: on the one hand, the hegemonic confrontations between the imperialist powers and, on the other hand, the aggressions and oppressions of the imperialist powers against the weaker nations. Today, the imperialist aggressions and oppressions against the weaker nations are still going on in many parts of the world, and the workers and people of the weaker nations are suffering the most. The working class should strongly support the resistance of the workers and people of the weaker nations against the imperialist aggressions and oppressions.
Since the armistice in the Korean War in 1953, the United States has constantly threatened imperialist aggression against North Korea. Even after the end of the Cold War, the United States reneged on the 1994 Geneva Agreed Framework and continued massive war exercises and sanctions against North Korea. In 2002, George W. Bush's State of the Union address to Congress publicly targeted North Korea by labeling it an axis of evil along with Iran and Iraq. Even in 2023, the United States, along with Japan and South Korea, conducted several large-scale joint military exercises against North Korea.
We strongly condemn US imperialism's massive war exercises and sanctions against North Korea and call for international workers' solidarity struggle against them. However, it is not the reactionary system or regime of North Korea that we defend against US imperialism, but the workers and people of North Korea. In particular, we oppose the nuclear armament of the North Korean regime, which seriously hinders the international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity of the workers. The mass struggle of the workers and people in international solidarity is the only way to expel imperialism and realize peace on the Korean Peninsula.
Before the transition to a market economy began in the 2000s, the existing North Korean system was bureaucratic state capitalism. Without a workers' revolution like Russia's in 1917, or even a peasant revolution like China's around 1949, North Korea had a Stalinist system implanted from above by the USSR-backed Kim Il-sung regime in the late 1940s. The North Korean bureaucracy, which monopolized privilege and wealth in the bureaucratic state-capitalist system, collectively played a role as the de facto capitalist class, exploiting and oppressing the working class.
In North Korea, as in the Soviet Union and China, the bureaucratic state-capitalist system, in which workers' democracy and self-management were crushed, operated as a bureaucratic command economy that had nothing to do with a planned economy, and over time, due to its inefficiency, eventually fell into a state that could not guarantee even the basic survival of the workers and people. In North Korea, as in China, the desire of the workers and people to escape hunger and poverty was the most decisive driving force behind the restoration and expansion of the market economy from below (replacing the bureaucratic command economy that had failed to ensure even basic survival). (Of course, in both China and North Korea, the expansion of the market economy, while reducing absolute hunger and poverty by expanding the size of the economy, has led to greater disparity and inequality between the rich and poor.)
North Korea's bureaucratic state capitalism, which not only exploits and oppresses the working class but also fails to ensure the basic survival of the workers and people because of its bureaucratic inefficiency, has nothing to do with socialism. It is also absurd to call North Korea's bureaucratic state-capitalist system a "workers' state" when there has never been any form of workers' revolution and the working class has never been the owner of state power, workplaces, and society. The task of the working class against the bureaucratic state-capitalist system should be to overthrow it through workers' revolution, just like normal capitalism. Then to build a workers' state that advances toward true socialism that abolishes all exploitation, oppression, and discrimination, a system in which the working class is the real owner of state power, workplaces, and society.
While in the past, under bureaucratic state capitalism, the North Korean regime was a power of bureaucrats as a collective capitalist class, now, in the transition to market capitalism, it is a composite capitalist power that includes both traditional bureaucrats and emerging capitalists. It is equally clear that today's reactionary North Korean regime is also not worth defending by the working class.
The reactionary nature of the North Korean regime is also expressed in its choice of nuclear armament as a means of confronting the threat of US imperialist aggression. What makes nuclear weapons crucially different from conventional weapons is that they are indiscriminate weapons of mass destruction that target civilian populations. The atomic bombs dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 killed 210,000 people and left a horrific legacy for hundreds of thousands and their descendants. North Korea's nuclear armament poses a threat of indiscriminate mass destruction to the workers and peoples of South Korea, Japan, and the United States, and thus has a very negative impact on building international workers' solidarity with them against the threat of US imperialist aggression. Just as we support the resistance of the Palestinian people against Israeli oppression but oppose the indiscriminate attacks on civilians by Hamas, we support the resistance of the North Korean workers and people against US imperialism but oppose the nuclear armament of the North Korean regime that poses the threat of indiscriminate mass destruction.
The North Korean regime's nuclear armament is also contrary to its past claims. Nuclear weapons were first deployed on the Korean Peninsula in 1958 by US forces in South Korea. As of 1991, 100 US tactical nuclear weapons were deployed, including being mounted on F-16 fighter jets based at Kunsan Air Base. Throughout this period, North Korea consistently called for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. In 1980, it issued a joint declaration with the Japanese Socialist Party on the "Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," and in 1985, it joined the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), calling for "the Korean Peninsula to be a non-nuclear peaceful zone."
The US military's nuclear weapons were withdrawn from South Korea in 1991. A major factor was the changing world situation. Following the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the USSR from 1989 to 1991, the United States negotiated with Russia to take a series of actions (the Presidential Nuclear Initiatives) to reduce tactical nuclear weapons. This included the withdrawal of tactical nuclear weapons deployed in South Korea. In December 1991, upon completion of the withdrawal of US tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea, the South Korean government declared the "absence of nuclear weapons on the territory of the Republic of Korea." The governments of North and South Korea then agreed to a "Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula," stating that they would "not test, manufacture, produce, receive, possess, store, deploy, or use nuclear weapons," which was formally put into effect at a high-level meeting in Pyongyang in February 1992.
The withdrawal of US tactical nuclear weapons from South Korea and the Joint Declaration on the Denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula were not only due to changes in the international situation. This is evidenced by the fact that a significant number of US tactical nuclear weapons remained in Europe.
 
"In 1991, the United States had nuclear weapons deployed in eight countries - Belgium, Britain, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, West Germany, and South Korea, ... only the nuclear weapons deployed in South Korea were fully withdrawn. ... Why was the complete withdrawal of nuclear weapons only in South Korea? ... The fact that nuclear weapons were completely withdrawn only in South Korea suggests that nuclear weapons security issues stemming from South Korea's domestic political instability and international security threats may have been an important consideration in the US decision to withdraw its nuclear weapons." (Hong Jung-jae, 2017, Analysis of Factors for the Withdrawal of Nuclear Weapons Deployed Abroad, Master's thesis, Seoul National University, pp. 27-28)
 
When the United States withdrew its nuclear weapons prior to the return of Okinawa to Japan in 1972, and when it withdrew its nuclear weapons from South Korea in 1991, US policy decisions were clearly influenced by the strong anti-war and anti-nuclear movements that had developed in Japan and South Korea in earlier periods. In Japan, a powerful popular struggle against the US-Japan Security Treaty and the US military bases on Okinawa in 1959-70 was led by the student and labor movements. In South Korea, which had been stifled by a long military regime, anti-war, anti-nuclear, peace, and reunification demands erupted in tandem with demands for democracy beginning in 1986, mainly in the student movement, and spreading to the democratic trade union movement after the Great Workers' Struggle of 1987.
However, North Korea, which had previously called for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, ironically pursued nuclear armament after the joint declaration of denuclearization. In 1994, North Korea and the United States signed the Geneva Agreed Framework, which promised North Korea's denuclearization in exchange for diplomatic relations and the provision of alternative energy by the United States, but it was never fully implemented and was officially abandoned in 2002. North Korea then withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) in 2003 and conducted its first nuclear test in 2006. North Korea followed up with atomic bomb tests in 2009, 2013, and 2016, and hydrogen bomb tests in 2016 and 2017. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), nine countries in the world possess nuclear weapons as of January 2023: Russia (4,489), the United States (3,708), China (410), France (290), and the United Kingdom (225); the five permanent members of the UN Security Council, Pakistan (170), India (164), Israel (90), and North Korea (30).
Some argue that North Korea's nuclear armament should be defended as a necessary right of self-defense against US imperialism. Considering that Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya, which did not have nuclear weapons, were destroyed by the United States, North Korea's nuclear armament is a necessary right of self-defense. But this argument is blind to the fact that Vietnam, which had no nuclear weapons, won its war of national liberation against the United States, and that the USSR, which had a huge nuclear arsenal, collapsed on itself.
The key to Vietnam's victory over the United States was its ability to sway American workers and youth with the cause of national liberation (represented by the strong will and precious sacrifice of the Vietnamese people) and to turn American society upside down, pushing the war to an unsustainable crisis point. But North Korea's nuclear armament does the opposite, maximizing the rationale for war. If war is "the continuation of politics by other means," then North Korea's nuclear armament is based on bad, reactionary politics. It is not nuclear weapons that can truly guarantee North Korea's independence, but the international solidarity struggle of the workers and people against imperialism and war, and the right politics to make that possible.
The working class in South Korea must organize a broad international solidarity struggle with the workers and people of North Korea and the world (including Japan, China, Russia, and the United States) for the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea, the realization of a peace system and free movement on the Korean Peninsula, and the abolition of all nuclear weapons in the world (especially in the United States, Russia, and China).
 
3) International Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Solidarity of the Workers Against Both the US-Japan-ROK Alliance and the China-Russia-DRPK Alliance.
When the configuration of imperialism vs. weaker nations is drawn into the imperialist hegemonic confrontation to become a collateral part of it (as the war in Ukraine has shown), the working class must respond by centering on international workers' solidarity based on revolutionary defeatism.
A war for global hegemony between the United States and China would most likely be fought primarily over Taiwan. Whoever wins the conflict over Taiwan will have a decisive advantage in the Asia-Pacific region, which in turn will have a decisive impact on the overall confrontation for global hegemony.
However, if there is a war over Taiwan, or if the conflict escalates, the Korean Peninsula will inevitably be deeply involved. A war between the United States and China over Taiwan would be like a world war because it would determine the direction of global hegemony. The United States would try to actively use the US-Japan-ROK alliance in this war, while China would try to expand the front by using the China-Russia-DPRK alliance to disperse the power of the US-Japan-ROK alliance. When the front is expanded as both the United States and China desperately mobilize their resources, the first point should be the Korean Peninsula. Therefore, the Korean Peninsula is becoming the second most affected region after Taiwan in the imperialist hegemonic confrontation between the United States and China, and this trend will be intensified in the future.
The Korean Peninsula has long been a space of large-scale military confrontation since the Korean War, as evidenced by South Korea and North Korea becoming powerful ammunition suppliers for NATO and Russia, respectively, in the war in Ukraine. In addition, the Korean Peninsula is now becoming the site of a sharp confrontation between the imperialist camps, US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK, with the United States and China at the center.
The emergence of the China-Russia-DPRK alliance on the other side of the strengthening US-Japan-ROK alliance, especially after the war in Ukraine in 2022, marks the end of the period since the early 1990s when North Korea was isolated even from China and Russia and practically alone in facing the threat of US imperialism and the transition to a period when North Korea has the strong backing of China and Russia. Thus, the configuration of US imperialism vs. weak North Korea is being sucked into the configuration of the confrontation between the imperialist camps and becomes a secondary factor. With the US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK confrontation now engulfing the Korean Peninsula, our response should focus more on organizing international workers' solidarity based on revolutionary defeatism against the hegemonic confrontation between the imperialist powers with the US and China at the top, than defending the North Korean workers and people against US imperialism.
As the US-China imperialist hegemonic confrontation is materializing as a confrontation between the US-Japan-ROK alliance and the China-Russia-DPRK alliance over the Korean Peninsula, the working class of South Korea must build an international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle with the working class of East Asia and the world as soon as possible.
 
4) Towards an International Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Solidarity of the Working Class in East Asia
The imperialist hegemonic confrontation is a product of the greed of the capitalist class to maintain and expand its wealth and power endlessly. The capitalist class tries to compensate the declining rate of profit due to the decay of capitalism by exporting surplus capital and over-exploitation, and the imperialist powers representing the interests of the capitalist class have been competing for the expansion of their spheres on a limited planet, clashing with each other and eventually going to war. In these clashes and wars of the imperialist powers for the greed of the capitalist class, workers and people have been killed on the battlefield and deprived of their livelihood and rights.
But just as capitalism cannot function without an exploited and oppressed working people, imperialist wars cannot be waged without the participation of the working people. In order to mobilize the workers and people for the imperialist war, the capitalist class spreads chauvinist ideology and demonizes its opponents. The workers and people, captured by the chauvinist ideology of the capitalist class, find themselves in the miserable position of pointing guns at their equally exploited and oppressed sisters and brothers for the benefit of the capitalist class that exploits and oppresses them.
The way forward for the working class is exactly the opposite. As the capitalist class escalates the war crisis by strengthening imperialist military alliances, the working class must organize international anti-imperialist and anti-war mass struggles across national borders. We must organize working class resistance from within the imperialist powers and their allies that are fomenting the war crisis to create ruptures in their systems. We must organize anti-imperialist and anti-war mass struggles on a massive scale, based on international working-class solidarity, to block and stop the imperialist war and turn it into a workers' revolution.
Unfortunately, the workers' movements in East Asia as a whole are in a very fragile state today. The South Korean workers' movement has been the strongest in the region in recent decades, but today it suffers from narrow trade unionism, bureaucratization, and reformism. The Japanese workers' movement has been severely weakened since the 1980s and has not recovered. In China, regime repression has prevented the formation of an independent workers' movement, and the Taiwanese workers' movement has not been able to overcome its fragility. In North Korea, the most severe regime repression has prevented any elements of an independent workers' movement from emerging.
However, the accumulated contradictions of capitalism over time have fundamentally imprisoned the lives of workers and people throughout East Asia. Capitalist "economic miracles" throughout East Asia have led to stark disparities between rich and poor and chronically precarious work. The deepening tensions and war crises caused by the imperialist hegemonic confrontation could, on the one hand, strengthen the far right and lead to the rise of fascism, but on the other hand, it could also be a trigger for the massive expression of the accumulated suffering and anger of workers and people throughout the region. Building international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggles is the only way for the working class in East Asia to respond to this urgent challenge. Even if the movements begin with small participants, they have the potential to erupt into massive workers' struggles.
The international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity of the working class in East Asia could ultimately be realized through the international solidarity among the anti-imperialist and anti-war workers' movements built as large mass movements in each country. However, since the workers' movements across the region are in a very weak state at the moment, we need to actively prepare for the eruption of huge mass movements, by growing the anti-imperialist and anti-war workers' movements under the leadership of the socialist organizations in each country on the one hand, and by developing the exchange and solidarity among the socialist organizations in the region on the other hand.
The growth of the anti-imperialist and anti-war workers' movement is inseparable from the overall growth of the workers' movement as the subject of the class struggle. An international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle of the working class can only emerge from the self-organization and struggle of the working class from below for its rights and liberation, only from a far-sightedness beyond economism and reformism, and only from a militant and revolutionary dynamic against the repression of capital and state power.
 
  
[Chapter 5] How to Build an Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Workers' Mass Struggle in South Korea?
 
1) Criticism of the Positions of the Political Forces Within the Korean Workers’ Movement
(1) National Liberation faction
The National Liberation (NL) faction, which constitutes the majority of the South Korean progressive movement, sees China and North Korea as a kind of socialist states and as part of the anti-imperialist camp fighting to defend their revolutions against imperialist encirclement. This perception misleads the confrontation between the imperialist camps as "the struggle of the anti-imperialist camp against the imperialist camp", the struggles of the working people of these countries as "counterrevolutionary riots", and nationalist-capitalist mobilization ideologies such as "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics" and "Socialism of Our Style (North Korea)" as liberation ideologies, to block the international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle. It is necessary to liquidate their fictitious "anti-imperialist camp" theory and revive socialism from below.
The argument of the NL faction boils down to the defense of a particular state (North Korea) and camp (the China-Russia-DPRK). It is irrelevant to the essence of socialism as the self-liberation of the working class. Their "anti-imperialist camp" theory prevents the internationalist revolutionary movement from advancing from below and rationalizes the possession of nuclear weapons of mass destruction and the buildup of armaments, reinforcing negative public perceptions of socialism and exposing the entire movement to anti-communist attacks.
The pro-China, pro-DPRK line is also the source of the NL faction's pursuit of the popular front strategy. The idea of forming a popular front government in partnership with the liberal capitalist party to defend a particular state (North Korea) has itself stunted the development of the Korean workers' movement and subordinated it to the liberals. The nationalists who control the majority of the Korean workers' movement have routinely allied themselves with the liberal capitalist party, the Democratic Party of Korea, in key elections under the guise of "critical support," and have extended the line of class collaboration in the trade unions. This is nothing more than a repeat of the history of the Stalinist USSR, which subordinated the revolutionary movements of other countries and the Comintern to the defense of itself.
According to the "anti-imperialist camp" theory of the NL faction, the antipathy of the people towards the "anti-imperialist camp" of China and North Korea can be explained only by the ignorance of the masses, i.e. the acceptance of the black propaganda of the imperialist powers by the masses of "neocolonial" Korea. The label of "socialist state" for China and North Korea is a fallacy. The "neocolonial" label for South Korea is also a fallacy. It is also a fallacy to attribute public antipathy to China and North Korea solely to the ignorance of the masses. The pro-China, pro-DPRK line of the NL faction isolates and weakens the anti-imperialist and anti-war movement.
(2) Stalinist Left
Similar to the NL faction, the Stalinist left, which is only a tiny part of the Korean workers' movement, sees the world according to an "anti-imperialist camp" theory. They consider North Korea, China, Russia, Cuba, Iran, Venezuela, and other countries in conflict with the United States and the Western imperialist bloc as an "anti-imperialist" bloc. According to them, North Korea is a socialist country struggling under the siege of the US imperialist forces. Similarly, China is not capitalist, let alone imperialist, and Russia is a neo-colony that is far from being capitalist or imperialist.
Based on this position, they argue that North Korea's nuclear armament is justified as a measure of self-defense against US imperialism. They see the war in Ukraine as Russia's self-defense against NATO's eastward expansion. In the so-called "Socialism with Chinese Characteristics," they see nothing wrong with the consolidation of Xi Jinping's monopoly of power, the intensification of the mass repression and surveillance system, and the capital-export imperialism centered on the "Belt and Road Initiative." They do not support the popular resistance within the so-called "anti-imperialist camp", such as the Hong Kong democracy movement, the Myanmar uprising, and the Iranian hijab protests, and they see imperialist forces involved in these movements themselves. Of course, they are completely silent about why China, a socialist country, is so keen on free trade with imperialist powers, or why Russia wanted to join NATO until the early 2000s.
The NL faction, which deeply embodies parliamentarism through its Progressive Party, refrains from making explicit statements because it knows that arguments based on the pro-China, pro-DPRK line and the "anti-imperialist camp" theory will not help it win seats and because it has faced state repression such as the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party. But the small Stalinist groups, which have little influence in the real movement, are more openly stating such arguments. Recently, they also praised the Niger coup force as an anti-imperialist force against French imperialism. As the struggle between the imperialist powers intensifies, their misleading perception based on the "anti-imperialist camp" theory will intensify.
(3) Recognizers of the US-led world order
The Justice Party, the People's Solidarity for Social Progress (PSSP), and the "Center" faction in the workers' movement criticize the China-Russia-DPRK bloc from the standpoint of the US-led world order. In particular, the PSSP criticizes Russia's invasion of Ukraine from the perspective of a "rules-based international order". It assumes that the US-led liberal world order is the only possible order today and says that we should find possible institutional solutions within this framework. The same perspective is applied to other issues, including the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, the Taiwan Strait issue, and the Korean victims of forced labor.
Under the stipulation that the US-led world order is the only possible order, they present the reservation of the status quo of the liberal world order as their only alternative. In fact, they are representing the positions of the US and Korean ruling classes within the movement and suppressing the development of class struggle against imperialism and war. Their assimilation into the existing system has been rapid and will only accelerate as the struggles between the imperialist powers intensify.
 
2) The Reunification of the Korean Peninsula as a Result of the Workers’ Revolutions in Both Koreas Based on the International Anti-imperialist and Anti-war Solidarity Struggles in East Asia
The state of division of the Korean Peninsula strengthens statism, militarism, and anti-communism to suppress the workers' struggles. In this sense, the reunification of the Korean Peninsula is the task of the working class. The question is how and what kind of reunification is to be achieved. Reunification is impossible as long as the confrontation between the imperialist powers around the Korean Peninsula persists. Since the division of the Korean Peninsula is the result of the imperialist world order, the reunification of the Korean Peninsula will be achieved as a result of the struggle of the workers and people of East Asia against the imperialist world order.
We seek the reunification of the Korean Peninsula from the standpoint of the working class, rejecting the liberal absorption attempts and nationalist illusions of "one state two systems." Avoiding all demands and movements for reunification as a reverse bias to liberal or nationalist theories of reunification is an act of self-abandonment of the anti-imperialist struggle. Recognizing that reunification is possible only as a result of workers' revolutions in the two Koreas based on the struggles of the working people from below, we must expand the struggles for the abolition of the division system on the Korean Peninsula under the banner of the mass struggle program.
We seek the reunification of the Korean Peninsula from the standpoint of the working class, rejecting the liberal absorption attempts and nationalist illusions of "one state two systems." Avoiding all demands and movements for reunification as a reverse bias to liberal or nationalist theories of reunification is an act of self-abandonment of the anti-imperialist struggle. Recognizing that reunification is possible only as a result of workers' revolutions in the two Koreas based on the struggles of the working people from below, we must expand the struggles for the abolition of the division system on the Korean Peninsula under the platform of socialists for the workers’ struggle.
 
3) Struggle Against the US-Japan-ROK vs. China-Russia-DPRK Military Alliances and Large-Scale War Exercises
The US pivot to Asia has strengthened the US-Japan-ROK alliance. A naval base has been established on Jeju Island and a THAAD system in Seongju. The US military base moved from Yongsan to Pyeongtaek is the largest in Asia and the closest to China. With the acquiescence of the United States, Japan has proceeded with the neutralization of its peaceful constitution and its transformation into a belligerent state. Between Japan and South Korea, this was accompanied by the conclusion of negotiations on the issue of the comfort women of the Japanese army and the conclusion of the Agreement on the Protection of Classified Military Information. This sequence of events led to the Camp David Joint Statement of August 2023, a de facto declaration of military alliance between the United States, Japan, and South Korea. The statement reads "Our three countries announce today that we intend to hold annual, named, multi-domain trilateral exercises on a regular basis to enhance our coordinated capabilities and cooperation."
In line with the stance of the United States and South Korea to complete the Extended Deterrence System, the deployment of US strategic assets (weapons that provide deterrence) on the Korean Peninsula is expected to be expanded. Strategic bombers and strategic nuclear submarines will cover the Korean Peninsula, and the THAAD missile defense system against China, Russia, and North Korea is likely to be expanded. US strategic assets were deployed 17 times in 2023 alone, including the first SSBN (nuclear-powered strategic nuclear ballistic missile submarine) to enter Busan in 42 years. Considering that the number of strategic asset deployments in 2022 was five, the risk of war on the Korean Peninsula is becoming routine.
The US-Japan-ROK and China-Russia-DPRK military alliances are the rationale and lever that support each other. Therefore, the platform of the socialists for the workers' struggle against the US-Japan-ROK and China-Russia-DPRK military alliances aims at expanding the struggle against imperialism and uniting the workers and people of the North and South; The denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, the end of the Korean War and the establishment of a peace system, the dissolution of the US-Japan-ROK and China-Russia-DPRK military alliances, the withdrawal of US troops from South Korea, the guarantee of freedom of movement for the people of the North and South, and massive disarmament, including the abolition of all nuclear weapons in the world.
 
4) Struggle Against South Korea’s Military Expansion and Large-Scale Arms Production and Export
The arms race in East Asia is intensifying, with the US pivot to Asia and the imperialist rise of China at its center. With China, Japan, North Korea and South Korea all undergoing major military expansion amid the tightening US blockade of China and the escalating Taiwan Strait crisis, the struggle against South Korea's military expansion is an important task for the working class in South Korea.
Under the Moon Jae-in administration (2017-2022), military spending was in the mid-2% of GDP, up from the low 2% of GDP under the Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003), Roh Moo-hyun (2003-2008), Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013), and Park Geun-hye (2013-2017) administrations, and the Yoon Suk-yeol administration (2022-) is continuing this trend. With the revision of its defense strategy, the Kishida government has doubled its defense spending target from 1% to 2% of GDP, and if this trend continues, Japan will become the third largest military power after the United States and China. China is building up its military under its "Deam of Powerful Military" to build a world-class military surpassing that of the United States by 2049, and North Korea has enshrined its policy of strengthening nuclear armament in its constitution.
The current arms buildup is not only deepening the war crisis in East Asia, but also attacking the right to survival of the working people, including cuts in social welfare budgets. Therefore, we should seek international solidarity against the arms buildup under the banner of dismantling the US-Japan-ROK alliance, dismantling the China-Russia-DPRK alliance, and opposing the arms buildup in East Asia.
South Korea is deeply involved in imperialist wars, expanding its arms exports to countries in direct conflict, such as Yemen, Ukraine, and Israel. Specialized defense companies like Hanwha are rapidly growing into a state-sponsored military-industrial complex that encompasses land, sea, and air defense. This is an extremely dangerous situation, but one that is accepted by the majority of the population as a means of promoting national prestige. Calls for an end to arms exports should urgently be expanded alongside internationalist anti-imperialist and anti-war movements.
 
5) How to Overcome the Limitations of Narrow Trade Unionism and Economism in the Workers’ Movement, Where and How to Start?
It is a fact that the majority of the Korean working class does not accept the anti-imperialist and anti-war struggle as its task. The reasons for this reality are as follows. First, due to the persistent state repression since the founding of the Republic of Korea, the Korean workers' movement has been under historical conditions that have made it difficult for it to take up political struggles, including the anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle, as its own. In addition to public security crackdowns under the National Security Law, the Labor Law has strictly prohibited political strikes. Of course, the narrow trade unionism and economism of the Korean workers' movement are related to the weakness of the socialist political movement to raise political struggle as a task of the workers' movement, and the two are mutually reinforcing conditions. Secondly, the camp theories in the workers' movement are presenting wrong directions, conflicting with each other. The NL faction criticizes only the US-Japan-ROK military alliance based on the "anti-imperialist camp" theory and considers the China-Russia-DPRK alliance as an alternative force. Other factions based on the "rules-based international order" theory represent the efforts of the ruling class to strengthen support for the US-Japan-ROK alliance within the workers' movement. Under these conditions, the Korean workers' movement has not been able to expand its mass struggle against imperialism.
The Korean socialist political movement must begin by correctly explaining the intensifying imperialist hegemonic confrontation and its dangers, and raise the issue of international anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle as a task for the entire workers' movement. We must take the initiative to practice internationalism, such as solidarity with the Palestinians, and work hard to explain in detail how the war in Ukraine, the war crisis in the Middle East, the crisis in the Taiwan Strait, and the arms race are related to the struggle for the right of the working class to survive. In doing so, we must increase the number of workers and workers' organizations that see the anti-imperialist and anti-war solidarity struggle as their task, and organize anti-imperialist and anti-war political strikes in conjunction with broader people's organizations.