KOREA CRISIS OF THE PARK REGIME by O. OZUKA The final liberation of Saigon and the victory of the three Indochinese revolutions in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos meant the total defeat of the U.S. counterrevolutionary intervention in Indochina. This defeat has deep and direct implications for the Pacific Asian re-
U.S. imperialism had build up its counterrevolutionary military structure in the region during and after the Korean War around three main axes: a) hostility toward the new Chinese workers state with a direct military threat against China in order to block the liberation of Taiwan; b) confrontation with the Indochinese revolution through propping up the openly counterrevolutionary Diem puppet regime; c) confrontation with the North Korean, Chinese, and Soviet workers states in the Korean peninsula through direct U.S. military presence in South Korea and the maintenance of the South Korean puppet regime as a military semicolonial state serving as a military outpost. The whole complex of military treaties between U.S. imperialism and other countries in the region was uniformly under U.S. hegemony. All the U.S. military bases and armed forces, as well as the U.S. Seventh Fleet, were deployed in keeping with this structure of the U.S. confrontation sfrategy in the Pacific Asian region. In spite of the intense pressure of U.S. imperialism, the South Vietnamese liberation struggle made the first revolutionary breakthrough in the struggle for power since the Korean cease-fire and the Geneva accords. In the middle of the 1960s, the struggle between revolution and counterrevolution in South Vietnam became a decisive international confrontation between the Indochinese liberation struggle and U.S. imperialism, which mobilized its entire politico-military structure in the region for its direct intervention in Indochina and thus committed this structure to a real test of strength By 1967-68 it became clear that U.S. imperialism was unable to halt the Vietnamese revolution and by 1972 it was clear that the Vietnamese liberation struggle had established a relationship of forces favoring the final victory of the Indochinese revolution. With the crisis of the U.S. counterrevolutionary intervention in Indochina in 1972, the U.S. made a turn in its policy toward China, dropping its past policy of hostility and making an active approach to Peking. U.S. imperialism granted de facto recognition to the People's Republic of China, sealed by Nixon's trip to Peking in 1972. The Chinese bureaucracy thus sacrificed the support of the heroic struggle of the three Indochinese peoples to its own narrow national interests. But the U.S. recognition of the People's Republic of China was above all a by-product of the victorious struggle of the Indochinese peoples. The change in U.S. foreign policy toward China was a clear confession on the part of U.S. imperialism of the basic failure of the counterrevolutionary confrontationist policy it had been carrying out in the region since the outbreak of the Korean War. The policy of hostility toward China had in fact been broken by the advances of the Indochinese liberation struggle in 1972-73. The smashing of the Indochinese axis of the U.S. counterrevolutionary structure in the Pacific Asian region by the victory of the three Indochinese peoples in 1975 has created an entirely new situation throughout Southeast Asia. The U.S. military forces have become a stra-
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KOREA tegic rearguard for the neocolonialist regimes of ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations, which includes Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, and the Philippines). The retreat of the direct U.S. counterrevolutionary intervention has meant that the Southeast Asian neocolonial regimes are now the front line facing both the newly rising popular movements in the grea and the victorious Indochinese revolution. Thus, of the three axes of the traditional U.S. counterrevolutionary structure in the region, the anti-Chinese axis had been drastically altered and the Indochinese axis had been destroyed. Only the Korean axis remained as before. And now, with the deep crisis of the dictatorial Park regime in South Korea, this third axis of U.S. imperialist strategy is radically shaken. IL. Since the Korean War, the Republic of Korea (ROK) has served U.S. imperialism as a military neocolonial state. Its neocolonial essence reflected in its lack of any real socioeconomic base, its total suppression of the population, and its complete sacrificing of the livIng conditions of the toiling masses in favor of its deadly anticommunist politico-military confrontation with the North Korean workers state; in this confrontation it is backed up by its 600, 000-strong army and the U.S. military presence, U.S. imperialism has given substantial financial aid to the ROK to enable it to maintain Its repressive apparatus and especially its army, while the South Korean economy is in full decay. The dictatorial regime of Syngman Rhee was overthrown in 1960 by an uprising of the urban masses initiated by the students, Throughout 1960 and 1961 broad social mobilizations continued against the "liberal" govemment of Chon Myan that had come to power after new elections. The development of this broad social mobilization of the South Korean urban toilers, initiated and led by the student movement, threatened the very financial structure of the military neocolonialist state, which was completely dependent on the support of Washington. A strong process of political centralization occurred among the mobilized urban masses, expressed in the central slogan for a "peaceful unification of all Korea. " The campaign for unification on the part of the South Korean masses, although deeply pacifist and populist, was a clear and fundamental challenge to the very nature of the military neocolonialist state and its role in the U.S. anticommunist and counterrevolutionary structure in the Pacific Asian region. The unification of Korea is possible only through the breaking of the neocolonial subordination of South Korea to the U.S. imperialist military structure, the dissolution of the couterrevolutionary army of the ROK, and the destruction of the military neocolonial state itself. In May 1961 a group of army officers around Park Chung Hee organized a preventive coup d'état aimed at defending the military neocolonialist nature of the ROK 44 and established a military dictatorship. One of the reasons for the downfall of the Syngman Rhee regime in 1960 had been the decrease in U.S. "free economic aid" to the ROK during the late 1950s. As a military neocolonialist state divided from the North, South Korea has no indigenous economic base. Despite this, the ROK army has to be maintained as the core of the state. This was the real objective basis of the crisis of the ROK in the early 1960%. The solution adopted by the Park dictatorship later in the 1960s was an attempt to transform the military neocolonial state into a genuinely neocolonial one, that is, to attempt to build up an industrial economy as a supplement to the military neocolonial aspect of the state, infroducing foreign credits and capital into South Korea. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Japanese imperialism and its expanding economy played a vital role in the Park dictatorship's economic project. Under the Syngman Rhee regime in the 1950s, there had been no official relations between the ROK and Japan, and trade between them was minimal. In 1965, against the strong and persistent resistance of the South Korean students and urban masses, the Park regime and the Japanese government signed a treaty opening official relations. The ROK-Japan treaty was denounced by the opposition as on attempt to perpetuate the national division of Korea through a new neocolonial subordination of the ROK to Japanese imperialism. This is exactly what happened. The ROK economy realized significant initial industrialization, at least quantitatively, as a result of its position as a fringe-economy of the Japanese economy, which was rapidly expanding in the international capitalist market in the late 1960s and early 1970s. ROK exports of industrial products such as textiles, transistors, electrical appliances, plywood, etc., Increased very rapidly from almost negligible amounts in the early 1960s. These exports went mainly to the United States and Japan. The development of the ROK export industries in those years covered the decrease in direct U.S. financial support, but with an accompanying increase of international debt and without contributing to improving the general living standard of the South Korean toiling masses. Thus, the rather extensive industrializafion in the ROK has not produced any new popular social base for the regime, but hos renewed a strong anti-Japanese consciousness among the South Korean masses. Finally, the economy of the ROK has become definifively dependent on the Japanese imperialist economy and extremely vulnerable to the ups and downs of the international capitalist economy. III. While the ROK developed its economic subordination to the Japanese imperialist economy in order to produce its "modern" export industry as a means of financing the army and the state, it remained dependent on the general confrontation policy of U.S. Imperialism against "Asian Communism, " which is the fundamental basis for the existence of the South Korean army.
The worldwide application of the new U.S. international policy initiated by the Kennedy administration reached its culmination in U.S. imperialism's direct military intervention in Indochina, which mobilized the entire politico-military structure established in Pacific Asia, including combat units of the South Korean army. The first result was the impasse of the U.S. military intervention in 1967-68, a reflection of the historic limits finally reached by U.S. imperialism in its counterrevolutionary capacity against the totality of anticapitalist forces in the world, including the workers states, led by the armed liberation struggle of the peoples of Indochina. This historic turn in U.S. counterrevolutionary capacity opened a new period in the basic crisis of the Park regime, signalled by the reappearance of the South Korean student movement in 196869, whose opposition to the Park regime received the sympathy of the urban masses. The second stage of the crisis of U.S. military intervention in Indochina was the great spring offensive of the liberation forces in 1972, which forced Washington to drop its policy of hostility to China and to send Kissinger to Peking in search of the traitorous diplomatic support of the Chinese government. Kissinger's Peking trip was a shock to the anticommunist Park regime, Park immediately sent his top agent to the "enemy capital" of Pyongyang and a joint statement of the governments of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the Republic of Korea was issued in which both governments
K2 MAO & KIM granted de facto recognition to each other and agreed to discuss the question of national reunification. This joint statement of 1972 was a clear indication that even the Park regime had recognized that the fundamental change in the relationship of forces between U.S. imperialism and the East Asian revolution meant that the U.S. counterrevolutionary structures in the Pacific Asian region were not strong enough to support the ROK indefinitely.
For the South Korean toiling masses, openly posing the question of national reunification in the joint statement inevitably raised the question of the military neocolonial nature of the ROK itself. The crisis of the South
Korean regime entered a higher stage, and the Park dictatorship declared the "October Restoration" and the presidenfial emergency decrees, highly concentrating administrative executive powers in the hands of "President" Park and strengthening brutal secret police repression against all opposition movements and individuals, both inside and outside South Korea. The total victory of the Indochinese revolution further deepened the crisis of the Park regime. Immediately after the liberation of Saigon last year the dictatorship unleashed a hysterical anticommunist campaign and declared a "war-time emergency" rule. The entire male population under fifty, including all male students, have been forced to serve in civil military units; that is, they have been placed under the military discipline of the regime and are deprived of any semblance of democratic rights. IV. The last axis of the U.S. confrontationist military structure in the Pacific Asian region is now in full crisis. The South Korean state has been maintained on the assumption that U.S. Imperialism would succeed in preserving its role in the forefront of the counterrevolutionary drive against "Asian Communism. " Now that U.S. Imperialism has been forced to retreat from this role, it is absolutely out of the question that Japanese imperialism can replace it as a prop for the ROK, despite the enormous growth of the Japanese economy. Faced with this new situation, U.S. imperialism is now searching for a means by which to "decrease hostility" between South and North Korea and to "disengage" its military forces from South Korea. The general outlines of Kissinger's solution to the Korean question are quite clear: to expand the U.S. "détente" policy with China and the Soviet Union to include the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, to grant international recognition to the DPRK from the imperialist camp in exchange for recognition of the Republic of Korea by the workers state in the North, to "normalize and pacify" relations between the ROK and the DPRK. Finally, within that international framework, the aim is to change the character of the ROK from a military neocolonial state to a "normal" neocolonial state, which means keeping South Korea in the international capitalist camp through the domination of its economy by Japanese imperialism and perpetuating the national division of Korea through the international framework of détente between the capitalist world and the bureaucratized workers states. In principle, the Soviet government has no objections to the general formula of a détente-type solution to the Korean question. If is a matter of timing and de-
KORDA pends on the capacity of Washington and Tokyo to resolve the present crisis of the Park regime. Recently, the Soviet government has granted USSR entry visas to South Korean sports figures and semi-official representatives of the ROK. As for the Chinese government, its position on the Korean question is very contradictory. The Chinese government is shaking hands simultaneously with Washington and with the Kim Il Sung government of the DPRK. Washington is hard at work trying to persuade the Chinese government to help U.S. and Japanese imperialism resolve the Korean question in the neocolonialist and détente direction. On the other hand, Kim Il Sung and officials of the DPRK visited Peking last year, and o joint Chinese-North Korean statement was issued at the time of the liberation of Phnom Penh and Saigon. Although in 1972 the Kim II Sung leadership accepted the joint statement with the Park regime, now the North Korean leadership is reorienting itself in anticipation of the new situation in South Korea that would appear with the downfall of the Park regime. Recently, the DPRK struck out against U.S. imperialism by recognizing the People's Republic of Angola proclaimed by the MPLA, in spite of the fact that Peking continues to center its aftacks against Soviet "social imperiolism" in Angola. The Chinese government supports the North Korean side in the United Nations, as does the USSR, but at the same time Chinese policy objectively works in favor of the interests of U.S. and Japanese imperialism by giving de facto recognition to the U.S. military presence in East Asia, to the U.S. - Japan security treaty, and to the Japanese imperialist "Self-Defense Forces. "But even the Chinese government cannot provide U.S. imperialism with the immediate and effective support on the Korean question it needs in face of the North Korean government and the present crisis of the ROK. Kissinger's entire Pacific Asian policy for U.S. imperialism is a genuine historic turn from the former confrontationist politico-military strategy that was applied during and after the Korean War. The significant decline of U.S. imperialism's international counterrevolutionary capacity, caused by the victorious Indochinese revolution, and the consequent decisive turn of U.S. strategy in this region are the fundamental factors accounting for the present crisis of the ROK. As a miliFary neocolonial state, the ROK has no future in the new Pacific Asian strategy of weakened U.S. imperialism, and that is why the Park regime is now making its final, desperate efforts to maintain itself. The South Korean masses perceive this decisive change in the relationship of forces in the region and the weakened infernational position of the Park dictatorship. Despite the rather rapid development of the South Korean export industries linked to the expansion of the Japanese economy, the Park dictatorship has never produced a popular social base for the South Korean 46 regime. The popular desire for national unification of Korea has never decreased; on the contrary, it has deepened, broadened, and gained strength among the South Korean toiling masses. The neocolonial subordinafion of the ROK to Japanese imperialism has served to renew anti-Japanese consciousness among whole layers of the South Korean toilers. In the rural areas, the severe poverty and deep indebtedness of broad layers of the peasantry have not been alleviated despite the "New Villages Campaign" sponsored by the regime in recent years. Strong discontent is now penetrating the army. Despite the strong press control and the severe military-police suppression in the barracks, several soldiers revolts have been reported in the last two or three years• Because of the crisis of the international capitalist econamy, and especially the Japanese recession, the rapidly developed South Korean export industry and the balance of payments of the ROK are now in severe crisis. This economic crisis makes the neocolonial subordination of the ROK to Japanese imperialism even more vital for the Park regime. At the same time, the Japanese economy has lost the perspective of continuous growth and expansion that it enjoyed in the 1960s, and the Japanese political situation is no longer characterized by the relative stability of the past. The crisis of the traditional bourgeois Liberal-Democratic government is deepening, and the coming explosions in South Korea will have an enormous impact on Japanese politics, intensifying the crisis facing the Japanese bourgeoisie. The critical political situations facing the ROK and Japanese imperialism are very closely interrelated, especially since the victory of the Indochinese revolution. The popular militancy of the South Korean masses has never been completely liquidated by the Park regime in spite of the long years of military-police dictatorship and the repeated severe repression against the student, intellectual, and other opposition currents ever poet Kim Chi Ha
since the May 1961 coup. While massive expression of popular militancy has been violently suppressed by the military-police regime, this repression has not been able to establish counterrevolutionary political hegemany over the masses as was the case immediately folTowing the Korean War, Ever since 1963, the South Korean urban masses have expressed this continuing opposition to the Park regime through the presidential and parliamentary elections and through the repeated outbreak of mass actions by students even under the prevailing conditions of severe repression. In the 1960s, the South Korean masses were not afforded a favorable international relationship of forces for a total political confrontation with the dictatorship, but now the situafion has changed decisively in favor of the masses. Now, poet Kim Chi Ha and other oppositionists in Park's jails are strongly convinced of the coming downfall of the dictatorship. Even the liberal Christian oppositionists are now talking about popular violence to overthrow the regime. An important process of political differentiation is developing inside the South Korean opposition. This takes the form of a polarization between the bourgeois-liberal opposition as represented by the former presidential candidate of the opposition, Kim Dae Jung, who was kidnapped by the South Korean police while in Japan and who has many contacts with so-called liberal elements in U.S, and Japanese political circles, and left-populist militants who are seeking a base among the workers and poor peasants, whose orientation is reflected in the popular poems of Kim Chi Ha. In face of these developments, the Park regime has no future, and is only digging its own grave with all the repressive emergency decrees, the KCIA secret police rule, the execution of young anti-Park fighters, and so on. The only realistic political perspective is now the violent explosion of the South Korean toiling masses and the final downfall of the Park dictatorship. Even if a military coup against the Park regime were to occur, such a coup would only open a violent social and political mobilization of the masses. VI. The fact that neither Washington nor Moscow nor Peking nor Pyongyang can control this explosion of the South Korean masses is the Achilles heel of the "solution" to the Korean question now being sought by U.S. Imperialism. Nobody can predict the exact timing of the coming explosions and the downfall of the Park regime. But the immediate task of the international working class, and especially the Japanese working class, is to fight against U.S.- Japanese support to the Park dictatorship, to organize international solidarity with all the anti-Park fighters, and to denounce the brutal repression carried out by the regime. The Japanese and international working class must prepare for the new situation in Korea and Far East Asia as a whole that will follow the overthrow of Park, a situation for which U.S. and Japanese imperialism are already preparing. The uprising of the South Korean masses and the fall of the Park regime will trigger a strong explosion of the deep and popular desire for national reunification of Korea as well as a rapid development of class struggles by the workers, urban masses, and peasants. The fall of the regime will pose the anti-imperialist national question of the reunification of Korea and the class question of the struggle of the workers and peasants against the neocolonial bureaucracy, bourgeoisie, and landlords. A class polarization will develop. On the one side there will arise a genuine neocolonial bourgeois tendency, which will seek to preserve neocolonial relations with the Japanese and other imperialist bourgeoisies and which will be ready to accept some kind of weak "Federal" relations with North Korea under the protection of U.S. and Japanese imperialism. On the other side, a working-class tendency will develop which will try in an empirical way to put an end to the entire antiNorth-Korean politico-military structure of U.5. Imperial ism and the ROK, to abrogate the ROK-Japan treaty, to nationalize Japanese and all other foreign capital, to expropriate the ROK neocolonial bourgeoisie and landowners, to destroy the ROK army, to found a South Korean workers, peasants, and soldiers government, and to fight for immediate economic cooperation with the DPRK and for the popular and democratic reunification of Korea based on the will of all the Korean worken and peasants. The fall of the Park regime and the explosion of broad and powerful popular struggles will pose the question of a specific Korean permanent revolution. The Japanese and international working class must be prepared for the coming struggle of the Korean Proletariat. The fall of the Park regime and the powerful upsurge of the South Korean masses will pose a real threat to the very existence of South Korean neocolonialism. The North Korean regime will attempt an active political intervention into the South Korean situation, not without fearing that the deeply democratic mass upsurge of the South Korean workers and peasants might profoundly shake its own bureaucratic rule over the North Korean workers state. U.S. and Japanese imperialism will make every effort to intervene in the South Korean situation in order to "rescue" South Korean neocolonialism from this mortal threat. The entire military structure of U.S, and Japanese imperialism will be mobilized for this purpose, and the U.S. is likely to threaten the DPRK with its nuclear arsenal in order to control and limit the actions of the DPRK in South Korea. Thus, the unfolding of the struggle of the South Korean workers and peasants for popular national reunification of Korea will bring about new and historic tension and will unleash a decisive confrontation against the joint forces of U.S. and Japanese imperialism in For East Asia. February 21, 1976
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