> Three English abstracts of works by Professor Kwon Hyuk Beom
> (Daejon University, South Korea) href="http://dragon.dju.ac.kr/~kwonhb/index2_f.html">[->HOMEPAGE<-]
>
1)
> Anti-Communism of Korea - Semantic System and Its Political and Social
> Function 2) Examining the Circuit of Anti-Communism - Meaning of
> Anti-Communism in South Korea and Its Political and Social Functions 3)
> Slide: - What do the anti-Communist
> slogans on the streets try to tell us?
> Anti-Communism of
> Korea
-Semantic System and Its Political and Social Function
>
Hyuk-Bum Kwon (Political Science and Diplomacy, Taejon University)
>
This study investigates how and in what form the anti-Communist ideology
> exists in our everyday thinking, so as to examine further how the anti-Communist
> paradigm, that is at work in everyday life or during the crisis, has affected
> political and social functions of the South Korean society in 1990s. The
> ultimate purpose of the study is to elucidate how the anti-Communist ideology
> has functioned in the social integration of the South and the North.
>
This research necessitates the analysis of education, press, public
> relations, and personal communication that affect the formation and continuance
> of the anti-Communist ideology. The resources of the analysis will be the
> relevant parts of the moral education and the ethics textbooks, newspaper
> articles about North Korea and anti-Communism, anti-Communist slogans,
> interviews on anti-Communist problems, and the result of the survey.
>
Anti-Communism purports hostile logic or sentiment against Communism.
> Especially the concept in South Korea, stipulates the North Korean political
> system or the administrative authority as an absolute 'evil' and threat. The
> underlying assumption created here is the necessity of its exclusive elimination
> or collapse, naturally entailing hostile repression towards leftist inclinations
> within the South Korean society. The range of anti-Communism in 1990s, however,
> has narrowed in South Korea due to the collapses of the Soviet Union and Eastern
> European socialism, in tandem with the growing economic gap between the South
> and the North Korean society. The contents of moral education textbooks has
> changed from burning anti-Communist sentiment to emphasis on cooperation and
> peace. This does not mean, however, that anti-Communism has completely
> disappeared from the dominant paradigm. Such ideology can still be witnessed in
> military training textbooks. The contradicting contents between different
> textbooks reveal that the core of anti-Communist ideology has never changed,
> although the surface of it is covered with rational and objective understanding
> and criticism.
Anti-Communist slogans you easily encounter in everyday
> life, clearly show the semantic system of anti-Communism. The slogans lay stress
> on the necessity of the anti-Communism by presenting possible North Korean
> aggression and the loss and gain anti-Communism can entail. Additionally, those
> slogans urge people to be precautious about spies and leftists for the sake of
> the realization of anti-Communism. Through this mechanism, criticism towards the
> existing system, the state, anti-Communism, and ideology, become targets of
> "pro-Communist" suspicion.
What would be the political and social
> functions of the anti-Communist paradigm? First, anti-Communism severely
> represses the room for critical questions to emerge, by returning all critical
> thoughts and movements to the sphere of "leftist" or "impurity," closing up the
> formation of basic conditions required for the emergence of democracy. Second,
> anti-Communism has been deeply embedded into the South Korean people's way of
> thinking under the tension rooted in divided systems, which has lasted for about
> 40 years. Anti-Communism often converts to a practical power. It refreshes group
> consciousness of solidarity, emerging from the everyday consciousness upon the
> political, economic, and cultural crisis of the South Korean government. The
> circuit formed by the anti-Communist paradigm also gives rise to such ways of
> thinking at homes, schools, and in public sphere, outside of the political and
> security boundary. The anti-Communist paradigm has been reproduced through
> converting both the older generations' direct experience of the War and its
> interpretations into the 'first-hand experience' of the others by education,
> public relations, and personal communication, and also by emphasizing the
> conflicts among political powers of the South and the North that continuously
> took place in the 50s. As long as Communism actually exists in the Korean
> peninsula, anti-Communism cannot but last as well, and any individual who tries
> to challenge this ideology will likely be isolated from the society and be
> shackled.
The penetration of anti-Communism in everyday life has settled
> a nationalistic way of thinking, which aims to subordinate various values of
> human society under the theory of national security. It also slowed down the
> formation of the political culture in favor of the protection of modern human
> rights. The lack of this political culture hindered the development of
> participative democracy in Korean society, by strengthening the black and white
> theory in Korean society, fostering hatred towards the intended 'target,' and
> promoting violence as a means to resolve dispute and conflict in all fields.
> Today, these aspects work as critical obstacles in social and cultural
> integration, two basic premises of the desired peaceful unification, of the two
> Koreas.
>
Examining the Circuit of Anti-Communism
Meaning of
> Anti-Communism in South Korea and Its Political and Social Functions
>
Hyuk-Bum Kwon
The topic of the study is to elucidate the
> semantic system of anti-Communism and its political and social functions in the
> South Korean society. In doing so, anti-Communist slogans will be used as major
> data.
The meaning of anti-Communism has weakened in the 1990s South
> Korean reality, whereas cooperation and peaceful co-existence of the South and
> the North have been emphasized. Anti-Communism, however, did not disappear
> completely, but has just retreated from the surface of the dominant paradigm.
> The North Korea and Communism in the 1990s South Korea were recognized
> multiplely, multi-layeredly and contradictively.
Traditional
> anti-Communism is on the decline. The problem is, however, the wide-range spread
> of anti-Communism. Anti-Communism extended its boundary from the field of
> politics, military, and security to the common ways of thinking, resulting in
> the embeddedness of anti-Communism. This extended meaning of anti-Communism
> forms a kind of circuit that voluntarily and automatically induces particular
> political and social thoughts and actions, through the internalization process
> of the anti-Communist world view. Political and social thoughts and actions
> mentioned above are as follows: uniformity and certainty, propensity to mobilize
> military, exclusive monitoring attitude, anti-political monistic order(¹ÝÁ¤Ä¡Àû
> ÀÏ¿øÁÖÀÇ), and moralism. All critical thoughts go through the transformation process
> in the circuit. The immediate mechanism of association connects the following
> charges: unsound charge -> impurity charge -> leftist charge ->
> pro-Communist / pro-North charge -> spy charge. This burden keeps the members
> of the society on track, demanding them to be ideologically certain and sound,
> but not opaque or impure. This mechanism can further charge whoever is against
> established order or practise with impurity suspicion. This is an effective way
> to conceal internal problems by externalizing them. However, what is more
> important than this intended strategy is wide-spread self-monitoring and
> self-guarding tendency embedded in people's mind in the form of anti-communism.
>
South Koreans' mentality to report impure members of the society has got
> even stronger than that in the past. This fact blocks the formation of basic
> conditions required for the development of democracy by depriving the weak of
> their rights to raise critical arguments. The circuit, created by the dichotomy
> of dividing pro and anti-Communism, together with nation-wide anti-Communism,
> forces people to think in a uniform way, putting stress on the extension of
> meanings, and consolidation. The ordinary substance of anti-Communism is not
> antonym of Communism. It is rather an agreement with orders, fundamental
> principles, security, consolidation, prosperity, and power, which automatically
> creates the opposite sentiment towards the chaos, crisis, disorder, and
> disunion. It calls for the rebuilding of orders and authority, resulting in the
> reproduction of the military order system.
Through this anti-Communistic
> circuit, common thinking system, which is at work in everyday life, is
> restricted; the mechanism of monitoring and punishment forces to fit political,
> social and cultural imagination, in a small frame. The advent of
> multiple-faceted people, required in the transitional process towards the open
> and pluralistic democratic society, is hindered as well. Anti-Communism is no
> longer a denial or criticism against Communism. It is an effective rhetorical
> means that justifies, protects, and reproduces repressive and unequal order. Not
> only as a political symbol, which instigates nationalistic sentiment such as
> "patriotism", "national security", " and "the elimination of pro-North leftist,"
> but as a material of the circuit board that monitors and punishes the Communism,
> anti-Communism works as a part of everyday life belief system that conceals
> social resistance and conflict deriving from sex, class, and region inequality,
> reproducing profit-securing structure of the ruling elite.
In Korea, the
> anti-Communist ideology has been mobilized as a means to maintain its divided
> system. It can be called as "regulation of the divided country." It is hard to
> deny that the utilization of this anti-Communist ideology once has contributed
> to maintaining the identity of the Republic of Korea. Such ideology, however,
> functions as a repression to the members of the society
> today.
>
Slide: - What do
> the anti-Communist slogans on the streets try to tell us?
Hyuk-Bum
> Kown
This slide show was made as a supplementary material of the
> research paper 'The Semantic System of Korean Anti-Communism and Its
> Socio-Political Function' ({The Korean Unification Studies} 2(2), pp.7-42,
> 1998), which was a part of project. Thus
> whoevers want to use this material, I recommend that person to read papers on
> anti-Communism before referring to this slide. This slide show mainly presents
> anti-Communist slogans shoot in streets with the sub-title explaining political
> and social meanings and implications of them. The following is the major points
> of the script.
>
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>
"Although it has been over ten years since South Korea democratized,
> anti-Communism of the cold war era is still at work around us. Everywhere in the
> Republic of Korea, one cannot but face the tenacious demand of anti-Communist
> slogans. There are anti-Communist texts in subways (the second line of the Seoul
> metropolitan subway), restroom (Cheju airport), bath houses (Chungju), and by
> the roads (Kangwon-do). Those texts silently force people not to trust anyone,
> to always be aware and to monitor, not to loosen their tension, and not to harm
> national security-centered orders. It is natural to exhort spies to
> self-surrender, or to request people to turn spies in, under the divided system.
> Who can complain about to nationalistic and materialistic moral obligations,
> telling people: let's be patriotic and win the prize by reporting hidden spies.
> Though it is hard to recognize spy, you must report to 112 or 113 when you
> really recognize them. Recently, it became even more convenient to report spies
> due to the new collect call report service system (Kyungbu Express Highway). It
> is also interesting to think about the little boy who cried out that he hated
> both spies and Communists after the Korean War (Lee Syung-bok Memorial).
> However, are slogans on streets solely aim to catch spies and spread proper
> attitudes towards the North? It is necessary to critically examine whether or
> not those slogans aim to give general citizens particular political and social
> influence. According to those slogans, all critical words and actions are
> instantly linked to 'leftist,' 'impurity,' 'pro-Communism,' and 'pro-North'
> suspicions. Suspicious people and criticizers are hardly differentiated from
> 'impure leftists' or 'spies.' Those slogans warn people that leftist tendency,
> not to mention leftist words and actions, are no different from the crime on
> national scale in the South Korean society. Therefore, anti-Communism allows
> suspicions towards all kinds of 'words and actions' that do not adhere to the
> dominant order or law, by telling people that 'there are spies around you even
> at this very moment.' Whoever witnesses a seceder, he automatically doubt
> whether that person is 'from North' or is a 'Commi.' The obsession of suspicion
> and reporting is deeply penetrated inside South Koreans. They encounter
> checkpoints everywhere! They constantly have uneasy feelings though not guilty
> of anything!!! They are requested to be cautious, suspicious, and aware, and to
> report! Here, totalitarian mobilization structure to make all the people
> reporting agents can be seen. In this respect, there exists no big difference
> between the South and the North. In the South, the pressure urges people even to
> suspect democratic words and actions. The atmosphere constraining democracy has
> already gained its justification. Dichotomic ideological dispute aims at the
> same kind of effect that has already been mentioned. Under such atmosphere,
> everybody self-monitors oneself, since he is afraid of being named as
> 'pro-Communist.' 'Contamination of thoughts' seems really formidable when the
> degree reaches at this point. Do only persecution maniacs become timid coming
> across with these sorts of slogans? Or is it rather because when one is named as
> a 'pro-Communist,' unimaginable damages comes not only to oneself, but also to
> his family. What is really restricted under this mechanism is not only
> activities of spies or 'leftists' but all forms of words and actions against
> ruling orders. Under such oppression, is it possible for human rights and
> democracy, which should have liberty as an axis, to exist unharmed? However,
> anti-Communism doesn't only cause oppression towards particular words and
> actions in political and security sphere. It creates hostile feelings towards
> chaos, disunion, slackening, incautiousness, anxiety, and strife in general
> sphere. It is because these concepts are instantly identified with rebellious
> maneuver, North Korea's misjudgement and agitation, security crisis, and social
> unrest. This identification naturally extends political and social feelings to
> everyday lives of people, automatically calling for and strengthening the
> importance of harmony, order, stability, solidarity, and prosperity.
> Anti-Communism is no longer an antonym of Communism or North Korean political
> power. How much are we afraid of disunity and incautiousness? Who profits from
> such a mechanism? For whom do we strive for stability?
This frantic
> symptom of 'disunion fear' has internalized in people's hearts and minds as
> 'Korean sentiment.' Such a symptom forms political culture promoting
> adaptability towards the existing system, and justifies unequal hierarchical
> orders. This symptom suddenly emerges from inner consciousness at the time of
> crisis in the South Korean society, placing priority on unity and on national
> security, and stitches up the cleavage. Finally, it dismantles the power and the
> justification working against the ruling structure. I once took a picture of a
> anti-Communist slogan in the subway. At that time, I unconsciously got nervous
> and felt all the eyes turning upon me after I took the picture. Accordingly, I
> ended up taking several irrelevant pictures of other advertisement. Only after
> taking irrelevant pictures, people went back to their own business, and I was
> relived. However, I am not sure whether those suspicious eyes really turned upon
> me, or they were just the result of my pathological phenomenon. Will there
> possibly be unification when the wire entanglement still exists inside myself or
> ourselves? What kind of unification would it be, then? Can we now laugh
> wholeheartedly like a child in a happy picture?
Produced and Edited by:
> Hyuk-Bum Kwon
Graphic Works by: Young-ku Lee
This Slide Show has
> been produced as a part of the Project,
> sponsored by the Korea Research Foundation (November 15th, 1999).
> |
>