Marxism in Asia (RLE Marxism) by Colin Mackerras & Nick Knight

Author:Colin Mackerras & Nick Knight [Mackerras, Colin & Knight, Nick]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781317501404
Google: w3RKCAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2015-04-17T11:08:30+00:00

6

THE JUCHE IDEA AND THE THOUGHT OF KIM IL SUNG

Colin Mackerras

The earliest Korean Marxist group, the Korean People’s Socialist Party, was formed in 1918, ironically not in Korea itself but in Khabarovsk in the far eastern region of Siberia. In January 1921 it was renamed the Communist Party of Koryo, and grew rapidly with branches, not necessarily united, in Siberia, Shanghai, Korea and Manchuria. In the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) of the 1980s, the Marxists of the early 1920s are branded as ‘pseudo-communists who indulged in empty talk and failed to strike roots among the masses’.1

Marxism was given an impetus by the famous March 1st Independence Movement, so called because on 1 March 1919 a declaration of independence was read seeking to free Korea from its status as a Japanese colony, which it had held since 1910. The March 1st declaration was followed by demonstrations which attracted thousands of citizens and students in Seoul and many other centres throughout the country. The movement was brutally suppressed but, like its May 4th counterpart in China, contributed to the deep roots of nationalist sentiment among the Koreans.

Although the Marxist movements were extremely factionalised in the 1920s this was a period of growing consciousness among the workers as well as students and peasants. Between 1920 and 1925 there were over 330 workers’ strikes, a particularly important one being the general (workers’) strike by over 5,000 transportation workers in Pusan in September 1921 in demand for better working conditions. The Comintern took some interest in the Korean revolution; Korean delegates took part in its Second and Third Congresses in 1920 and 1921 as well as in the First Congress of the Toilers of the Far East the following year. However, the role of the Comintern through the rest of the 1920s was not significant.2

Just as in other parts of Asia, the emergence of peasant guerrillas against the Japanese was a very important aspect of the growth of Marxism-Leninism in Korea. The communists found great support among the masses by fanning and exploiting an anti-Japanese feeling. The most important of the guerrillas, although not the only one, was Kim Il Sung, himself of peasant background and with revolutionary antecedents. With brief exceptions Kim lived in Manchuria from 1925 to 1945, but did build a major reputation as a focus of hostility to Japanese colonialism in Korea.

Kim himself wrote in 1965 that the armed struggle against the Japanese had caused Marxism-Leninism to become ‘intertwined with the realities of our country and the communist movement with the revolutionary struggle of our people for national and social emancipation’.3 This is really another way of saying that he saw himself as produced by the nationalism of the Koreans against Japan. Some Western scholars have taken a more cynical view. Gregory Henderson, for instance, writes that ‘the Soviets picked Kim, for reasons still obscure, to receive a hero’s welcome’ in Pyongyang on 10 October 1945, and goes on to describe Kim’s provisional administration founded at the end of the war as ‘obviously a puppet government’ of the Soviet Union.

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