1. Chon Doo Hwan's military court sentenced Kim Dae Jung to death on September 17. The military judges also sentenced twenty-three codefendants to prison terms ranging from three to twenty years. The South Korean military under the new strongman, President Chon Doo Hwan, wants to physically eliminate Kim Dae Jung, the most popular liberal oppositionist.
Kim Dae Jung and his twenty-three codefendants were arrested, together with 1,200 opposition activists, by the military on May 17, when Chon Doo Hwan took full power through the imposition of emergency martial law throughout South Korea, just before the May 21 popular uprising in Kwangju against the military. The court-martial of Kim Dae Jung and his codefendants was nothing other than a continuation of the military's brutal suppression of the Kwangju masses.
An appeal court on September 5 upheld death sentences for Lee Jae Mun and Shin Hyan Shik, two of seventy-three persons accused of being members of the Liberation Front for the South Korean People. The Martial Law Command indicted 175 persons, who were arrested during the Kwangju insurrection, on sedition and other charges.
Chon Doo Hwan's military court is in full swing. The totally fabricated trial against Kim Dae Jung and his codefendants and the death sentence imposed on him are an essential component of the military's entire repressive operation against the South Korean masses.
Halt the murder of Kim Dae Jung, and defend his twenty-three codefendants! Repeal the September 17 sentences of the court-martial! Stop the military trial against the Kwangju 175! Release all political prisoners!
2. The massive Kwangju uprising in May has revealed the depth of the crisis of the South Korean dictatorial regime. The military/secret police regime faces a real threat from the broad masses of the oppressed urban population, among whom there are about 8 million workers.
The October 1979 uprising of the popular masses in the two southern cities of Pusan and Masan led the secret-police chief to assassinate his "master," Park Chung Hee. The political crisis of the dictatorial regime became generalized. Since the end of last year, broad layers of workers developed militant economic struggles, destroying the structure of the yellow company-unions.
In March and April the students joined the movement against the oppressive regime backed by the military, and by the end of April the student movement became the countrywide political strike-force of the popular masses. The showdown between the merging forces of the students, workers, and other oppressed urban masses on the one hand and the military on the other was the May Kwangju mass uprising and the military's bloody suppression of it.
The Kwangju uprising is not the end. The final account has not yet been settled between the mass movement and the dictatorial military in South Korea. Since the Kwangju insurrection, the South Korean situation has entered a new stage. It remains marked by the broad national uprisings of the preceding months and is overshadowed by the possibility of new sharp and direct confrontations between the military, led by Chon Doo Hwan, and the oppressed masses.
The central rallying call of all the oppressed—the workers, the vast urban poor, the students, and the rural poor—is for democracy. The principal enemy is the military regime under Chon Doo Hwan, who has now become the new strongman president.
3. Democracy is the immediate and fundamental demand of all the oppressed in South Korea. It is the central rallying call around which the popular masses will unite to overthrow the military dictatorship.
The victorious advance of the South Vietnam armed liberation struggle in 1968-72 was a major international blow to the Park Chung Hee military regime, which was established through the 1961 coup. Under the worsening international situation, the Park Chung Hee regime made feverish efforts in its export-oriented neocolonial industrialization. Until 1978, it was temporarily successful. South Korean exports expanded tremendously in the international capitalist market. Under the inevitable inflationary situation, the average level of annual wage increases was 32% between 1974 and 1978, according to the official statistics, and it is said that the proportion of national income going to wages rose from 40% to 46% in the same period. The Park Chung Hee regime thus bought time for its political survival.
But the export-oriented economy has entered a structural crisis since the end of 1978. This was the social and economic background to the rise of the militant new workers struggles since 1979. The crisis of the Park regime became generalized in 1979. Consequently, Park was assassinated by his secret-police chief.
The workers who conducted the struggles of 1979 and 1980 represent the new South Korean working class, which has been formed through the very process of the neocolonial industrialization since the end of the 1960s. Their major demands were for wage increases to compensate for high inflation and the right to form free trade unions, to freely negotiate labor contracts, and to strike. These demands are essentially democratic, but they are totally incompatible with the South Korean neocolonial regime and its export-oriented economy. The cry for democracy is the central political demand of the South Korean working class and the other oppressed masses. The popular overthrow of the military dictatorship under the cry of democracy will open the way for generalized mass struggles by the working class and other oppressed social layers.
End martial law! Down with the Chon Doo Hwan dictatorship! For freedom of the press, association, and opinion! For the workers right to form free trade unions and to strike! For convocation of a popular, sovereign constituent assembly! For a government of the oppressed and exploited; a goverment of the workers, peasants, and soldiers!
4. Korea has been divided between the workers state of North Korea and neocolonial South Korea since the time when Japanese colonial domination was overthrown at the end of World War II. The confrontation between the North and the South has continued since the Korean war of 1950-53. The neocolonial regime in South Korea relies heavily on U.S. imperialism militarily and on Japanese imperialism economically.
In South Korea, 39,000 U.S. troops are stationed along the cease-fire line in a direct confrontation with North Korea. The South Korean neocolonial state is backed up by the U.S. air force and navy, with their military bases in Japan. The Japanese armed forces are now an organic component of the whole imperialist military set-up in the Northeast Asian region, in confrontation with North Korea and the Soviet Union. When the Kwangju masses rose up and the South Korean military moved to suppress them, U.S. imperialism deployed two warning-control aircraft (AWACS) to Okinawa and two carriers of the Seventh Fleet to the Korean Strait near North Korea.
In addition, the South Korean export-oriented neocolonial economy is heavily dependent on the Japanese imperialist economy for financial capital, processed raw materials, engineering know-how, etc. The feverish export-oriented industrialization has not changed South Korea's fundamental dependence on the international imperialist economy, especially on the Japanese imperialist economy.
The United States, Japan, and South Korea form an organic imperialist-neocolonial set-up in Northeast Asia. It is a strategic edge of the global imperialist system in the present confrontation with the rising colonial revolution. The South Korean masses have the capacity to throw this set-up into a grave crisis, opening a new front in struggle against international imperialism, after the Iranian revolution in the Middle East and the Nicaraguan revolution in Central America. Thus, the stakes in South Korea are high, both for international imperialism and for the world proletariat.
5. The South Korean popular struggle to overthrow the military dictatorship is simultaneously a decisive part of the international struggle against U.S. and Japanese imperialism in the broader region of East Asia.
The popular overthrow of Chon Doo Hwan's military rule would have a direct impact on the masses of North Korea. We have not heard the independent voices of the North Korean workers and peasants under the bureaucratic bonapartist rule of Kim Il Sung for decades. But, as the dissident poet Kim Chi Ha, who is still in jail, once pointed out, "The spring in Athens will be followed by a spring in Prague, thus the whole Korean peninsula will be covered by the spring." The popular overthrow of the South Korean military dictatorship would give the Northern masses the opportunity to raise their heads against the bonapartist bureaucracy.
In Japan, the solidarity campaign in defense of Kim Dae Jung and his codefendants is now tending to become a workers' political struggle against the Japanese bourgeois government. The South Korean situation is directly influencing the Japanese workers movement.
In Taiwan, the broad masses have been raising their voices and expanding their opposition to the repressive mandarin-Chinese Kuomintang regime. The neocolonial regime in Taiwan is also heavily dependent on U.S. and Japanese imperialism. The popular overthrow of the South Korean military dictatorship would intensify the opposition of the workers and peasants to the Kuomintang regime. It would also strike a severe blow against the anti-Soviet, proimperialist international policy of the Chinese bureaucracy.
Japanese imperialism relies totally on the military regime in Seoul to defend its neocolonialist exploitation of the South Korean workers. Chon Doo Hwan's military dictatorship is the guardian of the neocolonialist interests of the Japanese bourgeoisie. Massive social struggles by the South Korean workers and other exploited masses, which would be encouraged by the overthrow of military rule, would develop against the whole neocolonial economic and social structure that was framed under the Park Chung Hee regime. South Korean workers will vigorously attack Japanese capital and their neocolonial exploitation. The struggle against neocolonialism will be closely combined with a struggle for national unification with North Korea.
The most fundamental task of all the Korean workers and peasants is their national unification. And Korean unification is only possible on a socialist basis, under genuine workers' democracy.
The South Korean military and U.S. and Japanese imperialism are the major obstacles to the unification of Korea. The popular overthrow of the military dictatorship is the decisive springboard of the struggle for national unification of Korea. The struggle for national unification will be conducted through the workers and peasants struggle for their own government, combined with the anti-imperialist struggle against the counterrevolutionary alliance of U.S. and Japanese imperialism with neocolonial South Korea.
The South Korean workers and peasants struggling for national unification will look for active support among their comrades in the north fighting against the Kim Il Sung bureaucratic regime. The unification of Korea, which is in the basic interests of the workers and peasants, will be realized through the combination of a proletarian revolution in the South and a political revolution in the North.
Down with the joint U.S.-Japanese military backing to South Korea! Immediate withdrawal of all U.S. troops from South Korea! Abrogate the U.S. and South Korean military treaties!
Confiscate Japanese capital and all other foreign capital! Expropriate all the monopolies tied up with the regime!
For immediate economic cooperation with North Korea!
For a workers and peasants government! Long live the socialist and democratic unification of Korea!
6. The U.S., Japanese, and other governments of the imperialist bourgeoisies are asking Chon Doo Hwan not to execute Kim Dae Jung. This is totally hypocritical on their part. All these governments agree about the "lack of a basis for democracy" and the absolute necessity for a military regime in South Korea. They are just asking Chon Doo Hwan to show a "slight leniency" toward Kim Dae Jung in order to give a cover for imperialist bourgeois democracy.
But this "slight leniency" is not slight at all for the South Korean military regime. It would mean showing a major weakness of military rule in face of the South Korean masses. It is a necessity for the military to physically eliminate Kim Dae Jung, who has become the symbol of the South Korean masses' struggle for democratic rights and their opposition to the military regime.
Build the international movement to halt the murder of Kim Dae Jung! Raise the banner of solidarity with the South Korean workers and peasants!