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South Korea Political Extremism and Political Violence
The deliberate use of violence, including occasional
assassination, to express or advance political goals was common
among both the right and the left in South Korea after liberation
in 1945 and up to the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950.
Subsequent political violence up to the 1980s, apart from
exchanges between police and participants in political
demonstrations or rallies, was largely limited to the illegal
government use of violence or the threat of violence to suppress
dissent and intimidate political opponents. During the presidency
of Syngman Rhee (1948-60), for example, the government mobilized
the Anticommunist Youth League and members of street gangs to
smash facilities of critical newspapers and intimidate opposition
candidates for election
(see
The Syngman Rhee Era, 1946-60
, ch.
1). The Park government continued illegal police practices,
including torture of some dissidents, intellectuals, and even
members of the National Assembly, and was often indirectly
involved in violence. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency
(KCIA) also used various means, including physical threats, to
intimidate South Korean journalists in the United States. Such
methods continued under Chun, occasionally resulting in the
deaths of political defendants under police torture. Police were
passively present while hired thugs broke up dissident religious
services or union meetings. Under Roh Tae Woo, police handling of
political suspects retained some of the illegal violence of
earlier times, although improved media freedom also meant greater
scrutiny of police misconduct. In contrast with earlier regimes,
however, the Roh government permitted prosecution and conviction
of police officers and even of military personnel in several
cases involving violence during its first year in office.
Under a special "afforestation program" administered by the
Defense Security Command, more than 400 student activists were
punitively induced into the army during the Chun years; according
to a Ministry of National Defense report, at least 5 committed
suicide or were killed, and many were forced to become informants
(see The Defense Security Command
, ch. 5). At least 50 people
died (of some 10,000 incarcerated) in the government's "triple
purity" (samch'ong) reeducation camps in the early 1980s.
Ten years after the May 1980 Kwangju incident, many South Koreans
continued to believe that the initial violence committed by armed
Special Forces troops against civilian demonstrators on that
occasion was deliberate. The former martial law commander for the
region told a National Assembly committee in 1988 that civilian
protests were not violent enough at the beginning to justify the
use of elite forces and that army brutality aggravated the
situation.
Public violence against government institutions was rare from
the 1950s through the early 1980s. When students overthrew the
Syngman Rhee government in April 1960, mobs destroyed the
headquarters of Rhee's Anticommunist Youth League. More
spontaneous forms of violence often occurred during student
protest rallies in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, when small
numbers of rock-throwing students at the edges of large rallies
clashed with club-wielding riot police, or security forces
dispatched martial arts experts and plainclothes officers to beat
or arrest demonstrators. Students also occasionally beat up
police informants or plainclothes officers. This pattern changed
following the killings of students and other demonstrators in
Kwangju in May 1980.
The Kwangju incident permanently stained the legitimacy of
the Chun government for subsequent generations of student
activists, many of whom also blamed the United States for what
they believed to be its supportive role. The use of Molotov
cocktails by some elements among student demonstrators, both as a
counter to increasingly effective police use of tear gas and as a
reflection of increased militancy, became a feature of student
demonstrations during the 1980s.
Another threshold was crossed in March 1982, when several
students deliberately set a fire in the American Cultural Center
in Pusan, causing severe damage, and, inadvertently, the death of
another South Korean student studying in the building at the
time. In a related statement, the students said they were
beginning an anti-United States struggle to eliminate United
States power from South Korea. The students blamed the United
States for causing "the permanent national division of Korea" and
for "supporting the military regime that refuses democratization,
social revolution, and development."
In April 1985, radical students, together with veteran
activists released from prison the year before, formed the
Struggle Committee for the Liberation of the Masses, the
Attainment of Democracy, and the Unification of the Nation, or
Sammint'u. The ideology of this organization borrowed from the
dependency theory in blaming a "dependent industrialization
process" dominated by the United States for South Korea's social
and political problems. Sammint'u supported various forms of
direct action, including infiltration of labor unions and
forcible occupations of United States and South Korean government
facilities. Sammint'u activists conducted a number of such
actions, including a three-day seizure of the United States
Information Service (USIS) building in Seoul in May 1985 and the
occupation of two regional offices of the Ministry of Labor in
November of the same year. Although Sammint'u was suppressed in
1986 under the National Security Act as an "antistate"
organization, its emphasis on well-organized occupations and
other actions (rather than the more spontaneous forms of
traditional student protest) and its ability to mobilize students
across campus lines marked a permanent change in student protest
tactics
(see College Student Activism
, ch. 2).
By the late 1980s, violence-prone student radicals, although
a small minority even among politically active students,
demonstrated increasing effectiveness in organizing occupations
and arson assaults against facilities. In 1988, under the general
guidance of the National Association of University Student
Councils (Chondaehyop) or the Seoul Area Federation of Student
Councils (Soch'ongnyon), small groups of students armed with
Molotov cocktails, metal pipes, and occasionally tear gas
grenades or improvised incendiary or explosive devices, staged
more than two dozen raids on United States diplomatic and
military facilities. Students also conducted a similar number of
attacks against offices of the government and ruling party and
the suburban Seoul residence of former President Chun (see
table 13, Appendix).
Anti-United States attacks in 1989 began in February with a
seizure of the USIS library in Seoul and attempted arson at the
American Cultural Center in Kwangju. Additional incidents
continued through the year at about the same level as in 1988,
culminating in the violent occupation of the United States
ambassador's residence by six students in December. In the spring
of 1989, there were numerous incidents of arson and vandalism
against Hyundai automobile showrooms in many cities as
Chondaehyop mobilized member organizations nationwide to support
a strike by Hyundai shipyard workers. Other attacks occurred
throughout the year against Democratic Justice Party (DJP)
offices and South Korean government facilities.
As the 1980s ended, however, violence-prone radical groups
also suffered setbacks and found themselves under increased
pressure from the courts, police, and public and student opinion.
The deaths of seven police officers in a fire set by student
demonstrators in Pusan in May 1989, the arrest of Chondaehyop
leaders on National Security Act charges stemming from the
unauthorized travel of a member of the organization to P'yongyang
over the summer, and the beating to death of a student informer
by activists at one university in Seoul in October contributed to
this pressure. In student council elections throughout the
country in late 1989, students at many campuses defeated student
council officers associated with the Chondaehyop's "national
liberation" strategy, often replacing them with other leaders who
favored a "people's democracy" approach, emphasizing
organizational work among farmers and the labor movement over
violent assaults on symbolic targets, at least for the near term.
Many South Korean commentators interpreted the outcome of the
1989 campus elections as a renunciation of violent methods or as
a turn away from radical student activism. Other observers noted,
however, the ideological and organizational complexity of
"people's democracy" elements, some of which had in the past
equaled or exceeded Chondaehyop's commitment to violent activism.
As the 1990s began, it seemed likely that at least some radical
elements, though perhaps increasingly driven underground like
their counterparts in Japan, would remain committed to the use of
violence as a political tool.
Data as of June 1990
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