How North Korea tried to subvert the ROK democracy movement

As I mentioned at the end of my previous post, Kang Chol-hwan cut his lecture short and gave about a third of his allotted time to another defector. While I did not hear him give any specific dates for his work in North Korea’s Unification front, the content of his lecture suggests that he was there from the 1980s through the late 1990s or had access to files from that period.

The man did not give his name and asked not to be photographed.

I once worked for the Unification Front, part of North Korea’s Worker’s Party.

The Unification Front worked to influence democracy groups in South Korea. It did not support democracy but wanted to introduce instability in South Korea. The North Korean government believed that the democracy movement would weaken South Korea.

After the failure of the revolutionary movements [related to low intensity warfare between the North Koreans and USA/ROK forces in the mid 1960s], the North Korea created the Unification Front to undermine South Korea politically. They were able to get many South Koreans to work for them. Not all South Koreans who work(ed) for the Unification Front in South Korea were spies or agents. Some were threatened into cooperating.

The Unification Front was divided into several bureaus. The ‘101 Bureau’ had about one hundred writers who wrote anti-American books in South Korea vernacular. Those books were sometimes sold in major book stores like Kyobo. The ’26 Bureau’ tried to influence South Korean radio stations. The ‘813 Bureau’ made leaflets and pamphlets from Japanese materials and distributed them around Gwanghwamun [near the Blue House and the USA Embassy in central Seoul].

There were many other bureaus in the Unification Front. It had between 3,000 and 5,000 workers.

About 30% of the people involved in the South Korean democracy movement were either North Korean agents or under their influence of North Korean agents. A couple of the leaders of the Gwangju uprising were working for North Korea….

If the files of the UF can be opened, you will find the names of many SK democracy leaders on their lists. There are still some remnants of pro North Korean people in South Korean leftist groups.

My thoughts
When he says that a couple of the leaders the Gwangju uprising were working for North Korea, that should hardly be surprising. It should be about as shocking as hearing that China has spies in the USA (and the USA has spies in China). Pyongyang saw the democracy movement as a way to destabilize the Seoul government and supported it solely for that reason. They did not start the democracy movement nor did they control most of its leaders.

Having said that, I would suspect that there are a lot of people on the Korean left (including some in the current government) who want the files at the Unification Front to never see the light of day.

Further reading
Despite Pyongyang’s hostility to democracy, they and pro-North Korean groups (see here and here) continue to use Gwangju as a means to push the party line.

You can read a little more on the Unification front’s activities here and here.