Unusual Suspects (1)
Update: I see Robert had pretty much the same reaction.
Maybe all that hand-wringing about a Lee Myung Bak dictatorship isn’t so exaggerated after all:
Oh Se-cheol, a professor emeritus of Yonsei University and prominent leftwing academic, was arrested on Tuesday on charges of breaching the National Security Law. Oh’s arrest is seen as a start of a government crackdown on leftwing organizations which grew and expanded their realm of activities under the Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun administrations.
Seoul Metropolitan Police said they received an arrest warrant and a search and seizure warrant for eight members of the Socialist Workers League of Korea, including Oh, and arrested seven of them on Tuesday. Police seized CDs, computers and diaries in their homes and offices. The SWLK was founded in February this year, and publicly proclaims its aim of building a revolutionary socialist labor party. It also aims for nationalization of business and financial groups and abolition of police and standing army. [Chosun Ilbo]
You’re shitting me. That’s it? The guy was arrested for attempting to build a political party? Wasn’t he at least a part of one of those North Korean spy cells, or some sort of violent fifth column agitator? Not exactly:
However, this does not mean the SWLK is pro-North Korea: on its homepage it calls the North “a hierarchical anti-worker society that is exploitative and repressive” and “a reactionary regime that must be overthrown by the workers.
The SWLK’s web site (google warns you that if you click, it will spam you) is full of stilted Marxist rhetoric; it might remind you of “Dennis,” the anarcho-syndicalist in “Monty Python and the Holy Grail.” It does advocate a “workers’ revolution” — whatever that means in practice — and sends greetings and “solidarity to fellow “revolutionary socialists [sic] militants” worldwide, but doesn’t directly advocate violence, not on its English language page anyway. On any given day, I can read things almost as dumb as this on the government-subsidized Hankyoreh. Will all purveyors of dumb ideas soon be dissidents, or just the ones who don’t have enough followers to start a significant backlash on the streets and press rooms?
Consistency matters. If you’re going to censor free speech, at least have the decency to give the people fair warning of the difference between what speech is legal and what speech isn’t. More to the point, why bother? The SWLK seems to be small and mostly harmless Marxist splinter sect. With the recent revelation that several powerful groups in South Korea were under direct North Korean influence, you have to wonder what Oh said that makes him a target. It sure as hell isn’t worse that what the leaders of South Korea’s largest labor organization, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions say, or what its thugs do on the streets (notwithstanding its receipt of government subsidies). It’s not more pernicious than what its subsidiary, the Korean Teachers’ and Educational Workers’ Union, is teaching the kiddies. It’s not more subversive than the Il Shim Hue spy ring — which was reported to have infiltrated government offices and had links to a Blue House advisor — before leftist former President Roh Moo Hyun suddenly fired the head of the National Intelligence Service and truncated its investigation. It’s not a greater threat to democracy than North Korea using the Democratic Labor Party as a puppet to manipulate elections. It’s not a greater threat to social order than this or this, or for that matter, than all those Chinese exchange students Lee decided not to prosecute.
Or perhaps the prosecution is using Oh as a test case. Yet going after what appears to be a fringe crank doesn’t exactly lend much credibility to what would follow.
Surely there’s much more to the story than this. What exactly makes this guy a threat to South Korea’s democracy or social order requiring the government to arrest him and prosecute him for the peaceful expression of his views? This is the sort of thing that really can and should backfire on Lee, absent some legitimate explanation of why this guy is dangerous. South Korea’s National Security Law ought to be about checking violence and preventing subversion by totalitarian powers, not suppressing unpopular or stupid ideas.
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POSSIBLY RELATED IN SOME REMOTE WAY: I’ve occasionally wondered why a country so riven by ideology and region hasn’t had more sectarian strife. But now, Buddhists are accusing Lee of favoring fellow Christians:
Police estimated that 60,000 people, including 7,000 monks clad in gray Buddhist garb, gathered Wednesday in front of Seoul’s City Hall.
“Oppose religious discrimination,” the crowd chanted on the grassy plaza as they urged Lee to offer a public apology and fire the head of the national police agency for what they claim is religious discrimination.
They warned they would intensify their protests unless the government takes “sincere steps.” [IHT]
Gee. I wonder what ever gave them that idea? The term I’ve coined is “confucio-evangelical.” It’s things like this that cause me to wonder if Lee, having been set up for a comeback, is just determined to blow it. Still, in fairness, the things that have the monks pissed off seem more like examples of petty vendettas and heavy-handed police work than nascent theocracy.
Anyway, we can be thankful that no self-immolations were reported.