Fifth Column Watch

Conspiracy theories always labor against a presumption of neurotic inspiration, but even paranoid people have real enemies, and some conspirators make the error of supporting such theories with their own words. (In the conspiracy business, Rule Number One is, “Be discreet.”)

Recently, I finally got around to compiling some of the public statements by leaders of South Korean labor unions and political groups that would support a reasonable inference that those groups were either willing servants of the North Korean regime, assets of its intelligence services, or both. Last week saw an outbreak of that strange affliction that causes one’s waist, knees, and ankles to lose all rigidity whenever the world’s least efficient, most repressive system of goverment is glorified. First up, the thugs and quislings of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions, accompanied by their nearest rival union group, the generally less radical FKTU:

Some 50 members of the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) and the Federation of Korean Trade Unions (FKTU) visited North Korea’s Revolutionary Martyrs’ Cemetery and paid a silent tribute during a trip on May Day. Among them, four officials including KCTU unification committee chairman Jin Kyung-ho laid floral wreaths at the communist monument, government officials said Friday.

“‘Tis nothing,” you may say. “Everyone over there is getting along so famously … why, the South Korean government might even have egged them on to do it.” It’s true, of course, that South Korea’s government goes far to please the North, and that the North herds visitors past its monuments. On this occasion, however, the visiting unionists were accompanied by a South Korean official and had to decide which Korean government they would ultimately obey:

Ministry officials accompanying the delegation stepped back as delegates formed a line for the tribute. “I don’t know what they said during the tribute,” the official said. The delegation was told about places the South bans its people from visiting before the trip and an accompanying government official pleaded with them not to visit the cemetery, according to the official, but in vain. He said Seoul warned them the visit could violate the National Security Law.

It suggests that the North Koreans and the unionists collaborated to embarrass the South Korean officials who authorized the visit to begin with. The government’s schizophrenic reaction is to consider prosecuting the union officials while continuing to subsidize the union itself:

Come July 19, the ministry gave the two umbrella unions W69.39 million ($1=W965) in subsidies for their North Korea tours.

From a separate Yonhap report, we learn that those unions will fork over an undisclosed amount of the workers’ (one could also say, the taxpayers’) wages to the Dear Leader. This is to replace a sum they were denied the privilege of delivering to the steps of his throne when the government denied them permission to send other, earlier delegations.

==============

Next up, our friends in the powerful Korean Teachers’ Union, who celebrated the 9/11 attacks, demagogued the Free Trade Agreement talks with evocations of Yankee colonialism, and most recently, were caught haranguing the rank-and-file with material lifted from the Big Red Book of Juche. Showing its characteristic respect for open debate and the development of critical thinking skills, the KTU is declaring war against the Chosun Ilbo for outing the collection of extremists at its helm:

A handful of seven or eight figures make all the important decisions on the direction and purposes of the hugely powerful, 90,000-member Korean Teachers and Education Workers’ Union. They are in charge of core departments under the executive committee, the union’s supreme decision-making body. A union source said Wednesday it is that group on the executive board who are responsible for the union’s pursuit of a “proletarian and democratic” ideology in the union’s struggles.

Interestingly, the article suggests that the pro-North Korean radicals of the KTU have parted ways with the leftist Democratic Labor Party, which has showed some signs of discomfort with North Korea’s repressive methods. By default, that suggests that the KTU and KTCU have no political home but more radical factions of the ruling Uri Party, now so bitterly divided and weakened by a series of election defeats that even President Roh may leave it (as he left the Millenium Democratic Party before). The union’s reaction, according to the Chosun Ilbo itself, was to call the article “‘a physical white-hot terror attack,’ ‘an obvious criminal act’ and “a frenzied assault,’ and threaten legal action.

==============

“Most laughable” goes to the “Korean Young Students Alliance to Unify the Fatherland” a splinter of the violent radical student group Hanchongryon. A month after North Korea’s diplomatically, economically, and technologically disastrous July 4th missile launches, the group helpfully explains why the Taepodong 2 failed just 45 seconds after launch:

“The U.S. deemed North Korea’s launch of a Taepodong 2 missile a failure, but the truth is that the North deliberately shortened the range” of the long-range rocket, which dropped into the sea like a stone 42 seconds after launch. “The North demonstrated its capability to develop intercontinental ballistic missiles without having to fly one 6,000 km near U.S. territory.

So there you have it. Members of the group disseminated this unique theory in the form of a leaflet at showings of “The Host,” the latest in a series of anti-American or anti-anti-North Korean movies to become hits in the South. This, amidst praise for the North’s launches:

North Korea’s missile launches are self-defense measures to protect the country from U.S. schemes to start a war on the peninsula and do not violate any international law….

For a more plausible explanation of the missile’s abbreviated flight, read this.

==============

On the Korean left, celebration of the North Korean launches was broad and immediate. Readers will recall that the site of Nosamo, an organization of President Roh’s dwindling core of supporters, hosted numerous comments of similar bent. Other usual suspects that expressed support for the launch include the “Citizens Movement for the Withdrawal of U.S. Forces in Korea,” “Solidarity for Practice of South-North Joint Declaration,” “Unification Solidarity for Attainment of 6.15 Joint Declaration,” and (of course) the rest of the goons at Hanchongryon. There are almost too many of these groups to count, but many of them are beating the same drum this week:

Articles praising North Korea’s Songun or military-first ideology have poured out on the homepages of pro-North Korean organizations like Solidarity for Unification, the National Alliance for Democracy and Reunification of Korea and the Pan-Korean Alliance for Reunification since late July. “The Songun ideology is a historic moment in the emergence of our nation in a new shape in the 21st century, putting an end to the woes of a weak nation,” says one article. “But for North Korea’s great military strength, the U.S. would have invaded the North and caused war in our country,” says another. The articles are signed by dubious organizations such as “Group of Seoul Citizens Supporting the Songun Ideology” and “Co-representatives of A Group of College Students Supporting the Songun Ideology.”