While pro-North Korea or left-wing NGOs remain silent, left wing Sogang University professor Sohn Ho Cheol has asserted that South Korean progressives and left-wingers should step forward into the North Korean democracy movement.
Professor Sohn asserted in an article released today by a South Korean left-wing internet newspaper, “Criticizing the pre-modernist moves of the North Korean leadership such as the power succession may be ‘anti-Kim Jong Il’, but it is not ‘anti-North Korea.’ It is, rather, sincerely ‘pro-North Korea’ that we can love the North Korean people who are being oppressed by these a-historical moves by the North Korean leadership.”
He added that even though left wingers harshly criticized former Minister of Foreign Affairs and Trade Yu Myung Hwan for the scandal that led to his recent resignation, people have kept silent about the North Korean third generation succession, which is one hundred times worse than that. He said they should throw away their double standards whereby it is possible to advocate the North Korean situation on the basis that it was inevitable due to the special Korean situation.
He confessed, “I had once refrained from criticizing the North Korean regime based on Sartre’s theory, but a few years ago I stated publicly that North Korean problems had already exceeded an acceptable level.”
French existentialist Sartre offered an excuse in 1950s that his criticisms of the communist Soviet Union would be used to conceal capitalist problems; therefore he focused on criticizing French capitalist issues.
He concluded, “Progressive North Korean democratization movements should focus on a way to help the North Korean people… so that they can be encouraged in order to empower the North Korean people’s democratic capacities.”
Meanwhile, Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights (NKnet) released a statement criticizing North Korea’s succession yesterday, asserting, “The Kim Jong Il regime should stop this historically extraordinary comedy show now. We urge them to banish the feeling that they can extend the life of the dictatorship system through the third generation succession and take the policy direction of reform and opening for the people.”
