(The following article is from the March 16-31, 2009, issue of People's Voice, Canada's leading communist newspaper. Articles can be reprinted free if the source is credited. Subscription rates in Canada: $25/year, or $12 low income rate; for U.S. readers - $25 US per year; other overseas readers - $25 US or $35 CDN per year. Send to: People's Voice, c/o PV Business Manager, 133 Herkimer St., Unit 502, Hamilton, ON, L8P 2H3.)

By Sean Burton, Busan, South Korea

I must admit that the global crisis afflicting capitalism today took a while to register in South Korea. I had heard of some concerns, like fellow foreigners worrying over the diminished value of the currency, but also the fears of private school owners that student enrolment would decline. Reading the English‑language news told me that the South Korean government was doing comparatively little in response to the crisis. President Lee Myun Bak's statements seemed to mirror the confidence of Stephen Harper back in October of 2008. Perhaps it just took a little longer for South Korea's capitalists to feel the pinch.

     Lee held his first of a handful of emergency economic meetings in January. It was such an emergency that it apparently warranted holding the meeting in a brand new underground bunker of Cheongwadae, the 250,000 square meter presidential estate. Lee's big suggestion was setting up 50 trillion won (about 33 billion USD) in loans for businesses. Yes, what a surprise: business gets a break and, once the corporate adjustments begin, workers go broke (or must deal with stiffer working conditions). It was claimed that the meeting was held in such a fortified location because it was wired to concentrate economic data, and surely not due to the violence that has become commonplace between South Korean politicians. Whatever the case, the venue is a strong symbol of the divide between the South's rulers and its people.

     It is now the first anniversary of the Lee administration. Lee's pro‑corporate policies have earned him great praise from the business community. They say that he has dealt with the crisis effectively, and taken principled stances on other issues, including the mass protests against his government last summer. The media also claims that Lee has restored "a sense of identity and order in Korean society after 10 years of leftwing rule", as an editorial in the English edition of Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported.

     That rather glowing assessment of Lee's first year in office is at odds with other statistics mentioned in the very same editorial. A recent poll suggests that 75% of South Koreans did not think Lee had achieved anything. Only 28% agreed with the assessment quoted above, and even fewer people think he is handling the economy well. The fact that several protesters were killed during a clash with anti‑terror police units several weeks ago has only infuriated the people further.

     As reported in previous months, disgust for Lee is widespread in South Korea. This is a country where workers' rights face an uphill battle, where real history is suppressed as "too left wing", and where significant numbers of school children can't afford a lunch. The suicide rate is one of the highest in the world, and most families live in cramped conditions due to high living costs. Even civic groups that are not in line with the new government agenda are having funding scrapped. Those are not random facts: they are related to the very system of capitalism in South Korea itself. Many Koreans are at least partially aware of this. The country's history of working class militancy is proof enough.

     South Korea's rulers, as well as the country's social democrats, like to distract the people from fighting the established order by pointing to North Korea. They could always say, "North Korea tried to create a worker's state, look at how horrible and tyrannical it is".

     That is simple anti‑communism. One should, I think, follow Michael Parenti's suggestion to consider having "a receptive but not uncritical mind" vis a vis the "much maligned reds and other revolutionaries". Whatever one may think of North Korea and its current policies and problems, it was founded with strong support from many Koreans, it served the interests of the Korean working class, and it made great achievements in numerous fields, and even outperformed the South economically for years.

     That should be contrasted with the brutal occupation of the South and the suppression of political freedom in the immediate post‑war years by the US military and its allies in the Syngman Rhee clique and subsequent post‑war governments. That kind of history, according to a retired South Korean historian, is "polluting the minds of the children". Wouldn't it just be awful if those children grew up thinking it might be worthwhile to give socialism a shot in the South as well?

     Lee Myun Bak and his Grand National Party's propaganda machine are trying to tell everyone that everything is going to be fine, though maybe after a short bumpy ride. It's the same nonsense spewed forth from other major capitalist countries, including Canada. They will never admit that such crises are an intrinsic part of the capitalist system, and they will continue to suppress opposition to that system. The for‑profit solutions they offer will only exacerbate the exploitation of workers everywhere, both in the short term and the long term.