Fifth Column Watch

I haven’t really had time to follow the story of the United Progressive Party as carefully as I’d have liked; South Koreans who are avowedly pro-North are a constant source of fascination to me. In South Korea, political parties break up, re-form, and re-brand every election season. During the most recent National Assembly election, the far left was represented by the UPP, which occupies approximately the same position as the former Democratic Labor Party.

The largest UPP faction is openly sympathetic to North Korea, and perhaps not surprisingly, that faction has a thuggish streak. For example, UPP Representative Kim Sun-dong, “who detonated a tear gas canister inside the National Assembly’s main chamber to protest the ratification of the Korea-U.S. free trade agreement last November,” is a member of the pro-Pyongyang faction and wants to be his party’s Floor Leader. South Korea’s pro-North faction is numerically small, but has gained disproportionate influence within South Korea’s classrooms, labor unions, and society.

In the most recent election, held April 11, the UPP won a total of 13 seats — seven from geographical districts and six by proportional representation.

One of the hottest issues in the new National Assembly is the entry of two left-leaning UPP members who were previously convicted of involvement in an anti-state organization linked to Pyongyang or violation of the anti-communist National Security Law.

The two, Reps. Lee Seok-gi and Kim Jae-yeon, have been under intense fire following revelations they are key members of a UPP faction comprised mainly of former student activists who followed and acted under North Korea’s ruling ideology of “juche,” or “self-reliance.”

Conservatives, including the ruling party, have called for the pair’s ouster from parliament over fears that, as lawmakers, they would have easy access to confidential information on national security and such information could be passed to the regime in Pyongyang.

Their party, now under control of a rival faction, has also pressured them to quit their parliamentary seats over relations primary voting to select the party’s proportional representation candidates, including the two, was seriously rigged. [Yonhap]

The Korea Herald explains those allegations:

The party succeeded in winning 13 seats in the 300-member National Assembly in the April 11 elections ? seven in district elections and the remainder by proportional representation. Among them are six from a pro-Pyongyang faction accused of blindly following directives from the North Korean communists, which had the party under its control at the time of the elections.

Alleged fraudulent practices range from proxy voting and multiple voting to voting by unidentifiable persons and pressure exerted on party members to vote for certain candidates. No less serious is an allegation that the online voting system was so poorly managed that it was given unauthorized access three times when the vote was being carried out. [Korea Herald]

This would not be the first time pro-North Korean politicians have been accused of conspiring to manipulate a South Korean election to gain power.

Our friend Chris Green has found a compelling way to tell the story of Lee Seok-Gi, contrasting him with a former comrade:

Interestingly, it was then the very same Lee Seok Gi who acted as Minhyukdang’s representative in South Gyeonggi Province. Nobody knows, or is saying, whether he ever joined the Chosun Workers’ Party as Kim and Ha had done, but Gyeonggi Province Governor Kim Moon Soo is one of a number of people who allege that he did, and the way he went into hiding for three years after Kim Young Hwan publicly revealed the party in 1999 has done nothing to inspire public confidence since.

The antics of the far left have been a gift to Korean conservatives. President Lee also addressed the issue of North Korean sympathizers in the South recently, saying:

It was the first time Lee, who has tried to avoid ideological remarks, has openly criticized those sympathetic to North Korea by using the word, “jongbuk,” which means “blindly following the North.” Pro-Pyongyang followers are criticized as jongbuk forces in South Korea.

Lee made the criticism in his biweekly radio address, saying North Korea has made “wild assertions” denying its involvement in attacks on South Korea, including a 1983 terrorist bombing targeted at the then South Korean president in Myanmar and the 2010 sinking of a South Korean warship.

“The North has repeatedly made such wild assertions, but what is more problematic are some pro-North Korea groups within our society,” Lee said. “Just as the international community is demanding the North change, those people who unconditionally support North Korea must change; they are, after all, living in the Republic of Korea that has joined the ranks of advanced countries.” [Korea Times]

But as the expression goes, you can’t reason someone out of something he wasn’t reasoned into. The more illogical a view, the more likely it is to be motivated by emotion — a sense of belonging, a feeling of strength, or a hunger for power or revenge. Chris’s post proves that hard-core ideologues can change, but when they do, they tend to go to other extremes.

The good news story here is that whereas in the past, the Korean right would have wanted men like Lee Seok Gi jailed, they are now doing what they should have done all along — making an issue of their views, attacking them on substance, and making them look ridiculous. That’s certainly an improvement over making martyrs of imbeciles.