For the past week, South Korean society has been in tumult because of an investigation by state intelligence (the NIS, or National Intelligence Service) and prosecutors into a so-called “Revolutionary Organization (RO)” allegedly led by Lee Seok Ki, a sitting lawmaker, and lower-level officials from the Unified Progressive Party, a left wing political party with a minor presence in the South Korean National Assembly. Were war with North Korea to break out, the group allegedly planned to mobilize its members and affiliates to attack strategic targets and overthrow the South Korean government, and it was for this that some members were originally arrested, and Lee Seok Ki faces an arrest motion in the National Assembly this afternoon.
This incident is shocking for many because it means that a sitting National Assembly member is prepared to plot to overthrow the state. It is increasingly surprising for the South Korean people that anyone would continue to follow North Korea in this way, despite knowledge of the country’s dictatorship, suppression of human rights, and economic difficulties.
More than this, there is great curiosity that a “blind follower of the North” could become a National Assemblyman, a position that compels one to represent the interests of South Korean society.
The lingering remnants of that era have been completely unable to recognize the changing circumstances, and are clinging on to the ideologies of the past. During the last 30 years, as South Korea established a democratic system and achieved enormous economic success, North Korea passed power down through three generations, experienced economic collapse, and found itself singled out as one of the worst countries on earth for human rights suppression. But Lee and his group refuse to recognize these changes, and still regard North Korean socialism as a model for societal development.
This group participated in the students’ movement during the era of South Korean military rule, from which they learned a resistance mentality. This mentality encourages their fantasies and expectations about the superiority of the North Korean model to expand to extraordinary proportions. Thus they came to view contemporary South Korean society from a North Korean vantage point, tangling Kimilsungism and Korean ethnicity to emerge with a distorted view antithetical to international standards of human rights and democracy.
They tend to see South Korea as an American colony run by a military dictatorship. To them, General Kim Jong Il and Marshall Kim Jong Eun are the real heroes of the people, protecting Korean independence from under the yoke of American oppression.
We must be clear: very few people still adhere to these ideological beliefs. Those that continue to do so have simply closed their eyes and ears to reality. For them, changing tack would require abandoning thirty years conviction and mutual “us against them” solidarity. Not only would they be crushed; there would also be no space for them in South Korean society.
As a result, this group has clung to a way of thinking that is now decades out of date. To the present day they keep on planning for mobilization in pursuit violent revolution and a unified Korea under North Korean-style control. Their latest plan was to create a favorable environment for their activities by winning domestic power in South Korea during 2017. Lee Seok Ki allegedly claimed at a meeting of this revolutionary group, “The bridgehead of the revolution will be the National Assembly elections.” His concept was that the Unified Progressive Party would win a National Assembly majority at that time, thus securing it the political space to “expand the revolution.”
This kind of systematic planning was possible primarily thanks to the firm internal, vertical command structure existing in the underground movement. Loyal to the North Korean regime, they consider it the ultimate display of virtue to retain unconditional loyalty to North Korea.
