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\title{A History of the Korean Anarchist Movement}
\date{1986}
\author{Ha Ki-Rak}
\subtitle{}




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\chapter{1. Prologue}

\section{A. People’s Struggle for Self-Liberation- Until the Dawn of the Modern Age}


In the course of developing from the primitive family society to the tribal society and further to the union of tribal societies, there emerged the three ancient kingdoms; the Kokuryo dynasty (37-668), the Baekje dynasty (346-660) and the Silla dynasty (356-935).


Before the modern age, land was the major means of production. Once a group of conquerors with a king at their summit had formed a ruling class, they would put the land under their control and establish a system that was exploitative of the farmers. This was the so-called state.


Seen from this point of view, the successive kingdoms, such as the United Silla dynasty (676-935), the Koryo dynasty (935-1392) and the Lee dynasty (1392-1910) were not heterogeneous in essence. Throughout the rule of the dynasties, there had been intermittent outbursts of revolt from the farmers whenever the exploitation became unbearable. This not only vitally wounded the dynasties, but also the ability of the farmers of support themselves.


A vicious circle occurred whenever a dynasty was replaced with another.


Let us take for example the foundation of the Lee dynasty. Upon the establishment of the dynasty, the new regime confiscated all the large private farms owned by Koryo dynasty dignitaries and re-divided them among the new civil and military bureaucratic classes.


Farmlands in the country were re-divided among royal families, bureaucrats, distinguished subjects, provincial powerful families and offices and public organisations in central and provincial areas. The farmers cultivating the lands were forced to pay a land tax of more than half their products to the owners and authorities. Therefore, although the owners of the lands and the tax collectors had changed, the situation for the farmers remained the same. In addition, the centralistic bureaucratic system of the Lee dynasty had divided the people into castes such as the Yang-ban (aristocrats of civil and military), the middle class, ordinary class and lower class, in order to limit their social position and wealth from birth. This caste system was supported by the Neo-Confucian ideology.


At the end of the Lee dynasty, the tax-free lands of various officials gradually increased, while the taxable lands decreased less and less. To make the situation worse, officials of various ranks collected several kinds of arbitrary taxes for the private avarice, while the provincial officials imposed a tax called the To-kyeol, which imposed extra rates on top of existing taxes, such as the ‘wasteland tax’ on uncultivated lands. They charged one pil (a bundle of clothes) of military cloth for one adult man. The average exchange rate of the cloth to rice was one pil to 6 du (=0.496 English bushels ) of rice, which was a higher rate per unit than the land tax of 4 du. Furthermore, in the case of a family with two grown men (father and sun for example), the amount of cloth amounted to 12 du, and in the case of three men, as much as 18 du, making the tax too heavy a burden for farmers.


Unable to bear the burden of over-taxation, many farmers had to abandon their lands to become drifting people. In this case, their relatives or neighbours were forced to pay the tax for these drifters. There was a relief system of cereals lent to the poor, but this system resulted in officially managed usury to exploit the poor.


To make matters worse, floods, frequent in the 19th Century, and cholera, which prevailed in 1821, put the whole nation in chaos. The exploitation of the disorder by the land military and cereal repayment administrations drove the farmers to resist. Many farmers who had been forced to abandon their lands became robbers, while the farmers who remained suffering the misadministration at last stood up in revolt across the country, attacking office buildings and dispelling corrupt officials sporadically throughout the 19th Century. The society contained many contradictions that could not be resolved without the system of exploitation being fundamentally reformed. It was a problem that could not be solved by any means other than a social revolution, but the people had not yet been so enlightened as to launch an organised revolutionary movement.

\section{B. Realism Movement as an Ideology of Farmer’s Revolution}


The Realistic School at the end of the Lee dynasty busied itself with the reform plans of the land system in order to resolve the accumulated contradictions of the feudal society.


Yu Hyang-Won (1622-73) proposed the Kyun-Jeon System (Average Land Own System) presupposing in the preface of his book Su-rok that “once the economic world is in order, everything will be solved.” Lee Ik (1681-1763) pointed out that while the Kyun-Jeon System appeared to be reasonable, it was not that practical, and proposed the Upper Limit System, whose purpose was to put the upper-limit in buying land, thereby preventing the land annexation and gradually proceeding to reach the ideal state of the Kyun-Jeon System. That is to say, it was a policy of protecting poor farmers. Chung Dasan (1760-1833), one of the greatest realistic scholars of the Lee dynasty, proposed the Yeo-Jeon System. He asserted that the Kyun-Jeon System would be contrary to the principle of the farmer’s ownership of the land and couldn’t prevent land annexation. Nor could Lee Ik’s theories, taken by themselves, save the country from its condition. When asked as to what the motive of writing his book Kyeung Se Yu Pyo, he said, “When I think deliberately about our society, there is not a thing in it which is not ill. If we do not heal the disease now, our nation will come to ruin without doubt.”


Influenced by Yu Hyang-Won, Lee Ik and other realistic thinkers, the young Dasan came into contact with the recently introduced Catholic religion, making him a reformist mind of a kind rare at the time.


He passed the Kwa-Keo (examination for government officials) early on, and became an official. He was loved, and his talents recognized, but he was persecuted as a Catholic in 1801 during the Heresy Affair and exiled to the remote Jeon-Nam province. Here he observed and experienced the miserable lives of the farmers around him and it was during this period of his unhappy exile that he proposed the Yeo-Jeon System.


Dasan daringly proposed that in order to bring about social reform, land should be divided into Yeo (village community of roughly 30 families) units and be commonly owned and cultivated, and that the products be divided in accordance with the amount of labour-imput. He said, “The man who farms land will have the land, while the man who does not farm land will not have the land, in compliance with the principle of farmer’s ownership of the land.”


“There is no demarcation land of my land and your land in the lands of a Yeo; the whole people of the Yeo own the land and cultivate is collectively. They will name a manager who records the daily work of each Yeo person and the products will be divided according to the work days\dots{}


The man who participates in the farming will receive his share of the grains, while the man who does no participate in the farming will not get a share. A craftsman will exchange his crafts for grains. And a merchant will buy grains with his money. Sp there will be no difficulties in their living.


Sa (intellectuals, aristocrats) will also have to participate in the productive activities; otherwise they won’t be able to receive any share of the grains at harvest time. True, the proposal of my Yeo-Jeon System is to solve these problems. Why should the man who has the title of Sa try to grab the products of the land and swallow the fruits of labour without toil? Because the men with the title Sa eat without doing any work, the benefits coming from the land are not developed to their full extent and the ill of the society continues to accumulate.


If the men of Sa realise the facts that they wouldn’t be able to receive any share unless the work hard, they will participate in the faring willingly. Some of them will choose to be craftsmen or merchants instead of being Sa; some of them will engage in the works of developing the technique of farming by improving seeds, conducting agricultural experiments, making better farming machines and tools and promoting irrigation systems and so on. They will be able to develop the agricultural industries to help the farmers. Some of them will engage in the education of the farmer’s children and in the training of adult farmers. So there will be an appropriate reward for their mental work. A day of mental work will be counted as several days of manual work according to their contribution.”


Here Dasan supported the public’s freedom of occupation in general but rejected the principle of an idle and unproductive exploiting class.


Dasan was optimistic about the difference of wealth among people of the Yeo inter-village, which would be adjusted naturally by way of free migration. “It is natural for people to follow benefit, just as water naturally flows to the lower place.” In case there were abundant lands to cultivate but a shortage of hands, or adversely, too many people for the lands, populations would move to even things out, without administrative enforcement, just as water flows.


The Yeo-Jeon System is based on the assurance that the people have the right to live on the free will of the individual. The Yeo rejects any kind of enforcement, asking ‘why should we need enforcement when the dignity of labour is esteemed as the sacred right of human life?’ and asserting that ‘freedom of an individual and social solidarity would make a beautiful harmony to build the spiritual basis of society, with a morality summed up by self-help, cooperation and diligence.’


Dasan discussed the origin of political power as follows in his Tang-ron (Tang being an emperor’s name in old China): “Where does the king come from at all? Has he come from Heaven? Or has he sprung up from the earth? A representative will be selected by five families to form a Yeo meeting, representatives selected by the Yeo conferences form a county council, representatives of the county councils get together to form a national congress and they select a representative, this man will be the king.


If there are 64 dancers in the yard, we select a man among them as the conductor to lead the dance party. If he accomplishes his work successfully, the audience will applaud him as ‘our conductor.’ If he fails to do so he will be dragged out to be replaced by another able one. A representative of a group is the same.”


He placed the so-called chief (representative) of any group at the same level as a conductor of an orchestra. The right of appointment and dismissal would always lies with the people who were members of the group. He asserted a direct democracy based on the right of recall by the people.


We find an ideology of self-liberation in Dasan. However, his age was not right to accept his ideas. His voice remained as an empty echo of a scholar in exile. It took another century for his theory to receive the proper social response.

\section{C. The Peasant Revolutionary War}


Choi Jae-Woo (1824-1864), founder of the Dong Hak Movement, was a descendant of a fallen aristocracy. He grew up in a country troubled from within and without. In the early 19th Century, many popular uprisings broke out. In addition, there were natural disasters and contagious diseases that made people’s lives unbearably painful. In the later part of the 19th Century, the western powers invaded the east like a mountainous wave. Choi’s love for his country made him ask, “How can the society be made secure? How can the people be saved from hunger and misery caused by the political insecurity?” It was not a situation to be viewed with the static attitude of quiet scholars, but rather, an urgent one requiring revolutionary action.


During the 1860’s, many peasant rebellions occurred against the oppressive government. It was required to organise the people’s energy into a unified revolutionary force. In response, Choi Jae-Woo declared a new social idea, both against the western religion of Roman Catholicism and the deteriorated Confucianism. This new idea was the so-called Don Hak, Dong meaning ‘eastern’ and Hak meaning ‘study’.


The doctrine of the Dong Hak can be summarized as follows: Man is Heaven, we must respect Man as Heaven, Man and Heaven are one and the same. Choi declared absolute liberalism and was against any form of inequality, being resolutely against feudalism, despotism and domination, all kinds of exploitation and discrimination, such as aristocrat and commoner, legitimate and illegitimate, master and slave, man and woman, old and young, rich and poor and so on.


His clear sense of history was well expressed in his characteristic view of revolution. He divided history into two periods, the Ante-Heaven Period and the Post-Heaven Period, Heaven meaning the enlightenment or dignity of man. He claimed that history up to his time was the Ante-Heaven Period, but that the new history of the Post-Heaven Period would begin with his new idea. The Ante-Heaven Period was represented as the 2000 years that the people were oppressed under the tyranny of the successive dynasties, while the Post-Heaven Period would be free of all kinds of oppression.


The peasant revolts that occurred in the Yeungnam, Honam and Kiho provinces were subdued in 1863, but insurrections continued intermittently. In the 1890s, peasant riots broke out again. Lord Daewon, the then ruler of Korea, was badly in need of funds for the reconstruction of the Kyoungnbok Palace, and he sold government posts to raise the fund. The officials who bought these posts levied heavy taxes on the people to compensate for their expense, thus accelerating the vicious circle.


In addition, the monopolistic Japanese pillage trades through the ports (Wonsan and Pusan) that were opened to foreign trade was sending the social and economic situations into uncontrollable confusion. The severe droughts that occurred at the Honam province (a granary of Korea) during the periods of 1867-77 and 1888-89 made the situation worse. Now, not only the farmers but the fishers and miners staged riots, and groups of bandits appeared all over the country. The uprisings by the provincial people to repel the governors now changed the character of the uprisings into armed revolts. Under such conditions, the Dong Hak Movement spread across the southern provinces.


Choi Jae-Woo was executed in March 1964, on the charges of deluding the world and deceiving the people. The follower’s petition for his pardon was completely ignored.


Some leaders of the Dong Hak recognized that peaceful demonstrations would have no effect on the administration, and finally decided to organise a peasant’s liberation force and undertake armed resistance. National security and welfare for the people (to break down the antagonism of the feudal classes, oppose oppression and exploitation and achieve human liberation) was the motto under which the revolutionary farmers gathered.


The peasant army occupied Goboo on January 10th, 1894 (lunar calendar), Kamku and Buan on the April 4th, Heungduk and Kohgang on April 8th and Mooju and Jangsu on April 9th successively. The victorious army snowballed as they marched, punishing the avaricious officials and confiscating weapons, and when it took up its position at Mount Kosan in Mujang on April10th, the strength of the army had reached about 10 000 soldiers. The manifesto declared at the time stated:


“\dots{} All officials of higher and lower ranks are neglecting the emergency of this country and only seeking the enrichment of individual and prosperity of his clan, considering the Kwa-Keo as means of money-making and so the examination hall has become the market place for trading\dots{} Without paying attention to the national debts, government officials are busy indulging in luxury and lewdness with an insolent attitude, leaving the people exploited and reduced to great misery\dots{} We, people of this country who are peasants cultivating the national land and live on farming, cannot look on this with indifference. Right here, we are united in one mind and in one force to declare our just determination with death to stand to save the nation and people\dots{}”


Jeung Bong-Joon, Seon Wha-Joong, Kim Gae-Nam of Honam Volunteer Corps.


The peasant army defeated the government army at Youngkwang on April 13th, Hampyong on April 16th, Changsung on April 23rd and occupied Jeonju, capital of the Honam province, on April 27th.


The peasant army made it its supreme purpose to win without shedding blood and made it its policy to minimize casualties even if they did have to fight. Among the 14 principles of the army, they expelled degenerated local officials, did not pursue defeated and running enemy, treated those who surrendered well and protected the poor and sick. They marched ahead with flags inscribed with these principles, maintaining military discipline strictly. Thus the peasant army occupied 53 guns (counties) that produced about half of the country’s grain, just 4 months after they revolted at Koboo, administering the areas, establishing the Farmer’s Self-Rule Committees, abolishing feudal class discrimination, re-dividing the farmlands and others, similar to the situation of the Spanish farmlands during the Spanish Revolution in July 1936.


Upon hearing the urgent news of the defeat of the government army in Jeonju area, the central government hurriedly sent reinforcements. But the reinforcements dispatched were reduced to half their original strength by the time they arrived in Jeonju area owing to mass desertions. There were two severe clashes on the 1st and 2nd of May, but the government army could not suppress the revolutionaries by force because of their encirclement by the revolutionary army, which had by now been also reinforced and now numbered in the tens of thousands. The revolutionaries also had to be careful because of rumors that the government was employing foreign troops to suppress them. The government, however, was forced to accept the revolutionary proposals, and a tentative peace treaty was concluded in Jeonju on May 7th.


The reform proposals included the removal of exploitation and deprivation at the hands of degenerated local officials, liberation of slaves, abolition of the feudal caste system, punishment for those making illicit exchange with foreign countries (thus excluding foreign invasion powers), the abolition of public and private debts and the fair re-division and redistribution of farm lands. As a result, the government submitted to the established realities in the liberated areas of Honam province and the revolutionary army stopped its military advance, satisfied with its gains. Following the treaty, the peasant revolutionaries developed their self-rule institution, ‘Jipkangso’, in the 53 emancipated areas, redressing the feudal caste system and administering farmlands by the farmers themselves.


This movement was about to extend all over the country. Indeed, it was working as an opportunity to finally divide the 2000 years of Korean history into the Ante-Heaven Period and the Post-Heaven Period. The rulers themselves initiated all the preceding struggles, with the suppressed and exploited people gaining no benefits whatsoever, no matter which party of rulers won. But in this peasant revolution, we can see the successful class struggle for farmer’s self-liberation.


But the monster of royal authority, which had lasted two thousand years, would not withdraw without sacrificing more blood. The head of the ruling class, the king, tried to suppress his own people by bringing in foreign troops in order to preserve his power. This shows that the ruling classes of different nations are homogenous even though they belong to different countries and that the ruling and ruled classes are more heterogeneneous even though they belong and live in the same country. The king secretly requested Chung (China) to dispatch reinforcements. It was July 12th, 1894, that the Chung fleet gathered in Asan Bay. Two days earlier, Japan sent its own troops to Seoul on the pretext of protecting its legation and people. On July 24th, Japanese troops invaded the king’s palace, replacing the pro-Chinese government with a pro-Japanese government. On July 25th, the Japanese fleet defeated the Chinese fleet in Asan Bay and attacked Chinese army units at Asan and Kongju. Japanese troops marched on Kongju behind Korean government troops and killed with artillery and machine guns about one hundred thousand peasant soldiers who were gathering there. By November, the Lee dynasty was on the verge of ruin. Dasan, long before, had predicted, “if the diseases were not cured now, the downfall of the country would come without fail.” Unfortunately his prophecy came to be realised within one hundred years.


We can outline the 2000 years of Korean history from the viewpoint of the exploitation of the farmers who cultivated the land belonging to the ruling class, as represented by royal authority. In this case, the exchange of several dynasties meant only the reorganisation of the ruling class, with no change in the exploitative relation. But as this exploitation became severer, it instigated the farmers to revolt against their rulers. And as the revolts occurred frequently, the peasants came to realise their real situation. This self-consciousness was systematised in the Yeo-Jeon System and Tang-ron by the realist scholar Jeong Dasan and put into practice by the revolutionary army of the Dong Hak.


The feudal ruling class was old and degenerated to the degree that it was unable to suppress the revolutionary power and had to invite foreign imperialist powers to preserve its remaining days. Thus, the Korean people had to be subjected to a hard test under a new ruler for the next half century.


Japanese imperialism was able to exert its evil influence over Korea and China only after the demolition of the Dong Hak peasant revolution. It proceeded on to the Chung-Japan War (1894-95), the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), the annexation of Korea (1910), the establishment of a puppet government in Manchuria (1932), the Sino-Japanese War (1937), the German-Italian Japanese axis (1940) and the Pacific War (1941). Likewise, it was only after the German Nazis’ assistance to Franco in destroying the Spanish Revolution in 1937 that they annexed Austria and Czechoslovakia and initiated the Second World War with the invasion of Poland. Thus, two invasive powers of the East and West joined hands in the Second World War. Even though there was a lag of about 40 years in the beginnings of these struggles and in the tempo of the subsequent interventions, we can evaluate that the 1894 Korean Peasant Revolution and the 1937 Spanish Revolution were of the same world-historical significance in terms of their characteristics as people’s liberation fronts against feudalism and exploitation and that they were international wars, interfered with by foreign military forces.

\chapter{2. Korean Anarchists struggle against Japanese Imperialism}


Outlines:


The modern Anarchist movement of Korean began to spread among the fighters who fled to China after the March 1st 1919 Independence Movement (3.1 Movement for short), as well as students and laborers who had gone over to Japan.


The 3.1 Movement was a struggle against Japanese rule. There were over 2 million people in the movement. Over 1500 demonstrations were conducted, with 7500 killed, 16000 wounded and 700 houses and 47 churches destroyed. It was a heroic struggle against Japanese imperialism, with bloodshed across the country.


The modern Anarchist movements of Korea had their roots in the front lines of the 3.1 Movement. Anarchism in Korea opened up with two eminent events in 1923. In China, journalist Shin Chai-Ho, one of the best writers of time, died in Yeosoon prison in Manchuria, where he was serving 10 years for having drafted and announced the Korean Revolutionary Manifesto. In Japan, there occurred a plot to kill the Japanese emperor with bombs, the so-called High Treason Case by Park Yeol and others.


Lee Hwae-Young , Shin Chae-Ho, Yu Ja-Myeong, Lee Eul-Kyu, Lee Jeong-Kyu, Jeong Wha-Am and Paik Jeung Ki organised the Korean Anarchist Federation in China, publishing as its organs Justice Bulletin, Recapture (Conquest) and others. In Japan, Park Yeol, Jeong Tae-Sung, Kim Chung-Han, Hong Jin-Yu, Choi Kyu-Jong, Yuk Hong-Kyun, Seo Dong-Seong, Noguchi Hinji, Jang Sang-Jung, Ha Sae-Myeong, Hang Hyeon-Sang, Kurihara Krzuo, Seo Sang-Kyeong, Ogawa Shigeru, Kaneko, Niyiama Shodai and others formed an anarchist group called Futeishya, ‘Revolt’, in 1922. Although being largely Korean, Japanese anarchists also joined this society.


China by the 1910s was in confusion owing to rival chiefs at the end of the unsuccessful 1911 Revolution that ended in an anticlimax, and the invasion of the coast areas by capitalist powers. The difficulty for the country lay in calling for national unity, democracy and industrial modernisation. The Han people desired to establish an independent nation by overthrowing the Chung dynasty and to defend the country against the penetration of Western powers. The Anarchists of China could not ignore this long-fostered national wish. The spirit of anarchism prompted their enthusiasm and work. The 3.1 Movement in Korea burst out in 1919, and the 5.4 Movement in China had the same spirit and background. The Korean Revolutionary Manifesto drafted by Shin Chae-Ho was the answer to such common international situations.


The situation in Japan was quite different. Having completed her task of modernisation for about half a century and having been victorious in the Sino-Japanese War and Russo-Japanese War, Japan was becoming a capitalist, imperialist power. So there was a working class growing rapidly, along with a severe socialist movement.


Under these conditions, the Korean Anarchist movement in Japan naturally saw the national liberation struggle as being closely connected to that of working class liberation, while in China, the movement put its emphasis on organising a united front to attain Korea’s independence. The latter thus retained a heavily nationalistic character, while the former inclined significantly to the left, in connection to the Japanese labor movement. The difference of the socio-political situation in these two countries was responsible for this divergence in the attitude of the Korean anarchist movement. The Anarchist movement in Korea itself can be characterised as having been a merging of these trends.


Generally speaking, the Korean Anarchist movement from 1920 to 1980 can be divided into two eras around August 1945. During the former era, which covers colonial rule, the Anarchist movement was directed to overall resistance to and the thorough destruction of the Japanese occupation, so it was anti-imperialist, anti-militarist, anti-state, anti-government and against the politics of power in general. During the latter period, after the Japanese surrender, the movement objectives became much more constructive. Now, their concern centered on the problem of how to build a society in compliance with Anarchist ideals. The energy that had been spent on destruction had to be poured into the construction of a new society.


From this viewpoint, the following classification of stages can be made;


A. The Former Era- period preceding August 15 1945, which is characterised as the era of national struggle for independence.


1. The quickening period (1920-24)


Announcement of the Korean Revolutionary Manifesto and the plot to assassinate the Japanese emperor.


2. The organising period (1925-30)


Sporadic organisations developed into the formation of a united federation.


3. The fighting period (1931-45)


Fighting against a series of Japanese invasions- the Manchurian Incident, the Sino-Japan War and the Pacific Ocean War.


B. The Latter Era- period after August 15, 1945, which is characterised as an era of struggle to build a new society.


1. Federation of the Free Society Builders.


2. Korean Anarchist General Federation.


3. The Independent Workers and Farmers’ Party.


4. Federation of Independent Koreans.


A. The Former Era


1. Quickening Period

\section{a. The Korean Revolution Manifesto}


The ‘Korean Revolution Manifesto’ was the main program of the Korean Anarchist Federation in China and was the spiritual succession of the Dong Hak Peasant Revolution of 1894 and the continuation of the 3.1 Movement.


The gist of the Manifesto is as follows: it begins with a violent the tone, stating, “Burglar Japan violently usurped our independent right and deprived our nation’s right to live.”


It continues to point out the vampiric acts of exploitation by Japanese imperialists one by one and condemns their barbarous persecution separately, saying that “based upon the abovementioned facts we declare that the burglar politics of Japan is the enemy of our nation’s existence and that it is our proper right to overthrow the imperialist Japan by revolutionary means.” It is a declaration of war denying and kind of compromise.


Next, the manifesto enters into the character of the revolution. “The revolution in the past was a ‘revolution’ in which people remained being ruled as before even though the power of A was transferred to the power of B by the so-called revolution, because people were the slaves of the state dominated by the privileged power class that kept control over the people.”


The revolution that I mean by can be called the ‘people’s revolution’ or ‘direct revolution’, because it is a revolution for the people by the people themselves. As it is the direct revolution of the people, the degree and scope exceeds the mathematical measurement and the results of the strife do not follow the ordinary rules of war, so the people without money and soldiers will defeat the king with millions of troops and billions of wealth, going further to drive out the foreign invaders. Therefore the first step of our revolution must be the people’s decision to fight by themselves.


The Manifesto clearly distinguishes between the ‘political revolution’, which is no more that an exchange of the political powers, and the ‘social revolution’, which changes the social structure fundamentally. It requires people’s firm decision to fundamentally change the social structure itself by their own power. It was the reconfirmation of the Dong Hak Peasant Revolution in 1894.


How is it possible for the people to determine to start the direct revolution?


“People are not awakened by the appeal of godly-men, saints and heroes saying, ‘People! You must awake!’ but by the people themselves recognizing their unequal, unreasonable and unnatural social status, and especially the far-sighted people, the revolutionary forerunners of the whole people.”


The Manifesto regards the subject of revolution not as a ‘nation’, which is a general and abstract concept, but as ‘people’, which is a concrete substance, and at the same time it stresses the forerunning role of the anarchists in revolution.


Who are the so-called ‘people’? “They are the people who are suffering hunger, cold, poverty; their wives and children starving and crying, being pressed to pay taxes and private debts; and those who can not live or die because of their having no freedom of action. They are the people who are starving and ragged due to the oppression and exploitation by the power. But there is one way left for these people. It is the way of revolution. Brave ones with their righteous indignation and the weaker ones longing to escape from the unbearable pains, realised that there is a way of revolution rather than to die in hunger. If the whole people start the revolution in this way and make a united stride forward continuously, than in the end the sly and violent burglar Japan could be driven out. So let us stand up to make our way ahead to open up our new life overthrowing the control of the burglar. A bomb-throwing would be stronger than hundreds of thousands of soldiers and a revolt would be more powerful than hundreds of thousands of copies of newspapers and magazines.”


This is the strategy and the tactics of the revolution. The Manifesto urges people to stand up against Japan in accordance with the situation and capacity of individual people. Active or passive un-cooperation and disobedience such as worker’s strikes, refusal to pay land rent by farmers, refusal to pay taxes by the general people should be done according to the individual person’s situation and the direct action of violence by fighters requires the mobilization of every possible method. We remember that many anarchist fighters threw bombs into the enemy strongholds. The plot by Park Yeol is only one of the many methods.


“Gentlemen and rich men in the various parts of the country shall be met with violence if they hinder or slander our movement by words or actions even if they do not hinder our revolutionary movement openly.”


The Manifesto warns against the anti-revolutionary elements remaining within the nation. It also regards destruction as another important aspect of the direct revolution.


“Revolution begins with destruction. But it is not destruction for the sake of destruction it destruction for construction. Without the will to construct, we should not destroy. Without destruction we cannot make a new construction. Construction and destruction is only a superficial distinction. From the spiritual viewpoint, destruction is construction.


First, we wish to destroy the control of the foreign nation. It is because the Korean people’s right of independence has been deprived by Japan, a foreign nation. We must expel it out of this land to build the independent life of the Korean people.


Second, we wish to destroy the privileged class. Why? It is because there are burglar groups of the privileged class and their followers who rule the Korean people. We must reject these elements to build a free independent Korea.


Third, we wish to destroy the economic system of exploitation. Why? Because it is a system that enriches the privileged class while leaving the people to starve. We are trying to destroy the pillage system in order to protect the Korean people’s right to live.


Fourth, we wish to destroy social inequality. Why? It is because all the political and economic inequalities stem from the social inequality.


Fifth, we wish to destroy the slavery culture. Why? It is because until now the culture was the means of defending the privileged and it has been used as a dope to enslave people.”


I have made a brief description of the Manifesto and it can be condensed to the destruction of foreign control and its pillage system, social and cultural injustice and inequality, in order to construct an independent nation with an economy, culture and society of the people and for the people.


“\dots{}People are the subject of our revolution. Violence and a refusal to compromise are the most reliable weapons for the revolution. By means of the combination of violence and nonviolence, we Korean people we drive out the burglar Japan, reform all the unreasonable institutions fundamentally, and construct an ideal Korea, where no human could be oppressed by another, and no society be deprived. Let us stand up to attain this goal!”


This is the conclusion of the Manifesto. It defines the people as the subject of any revolution. With the same logic, the main body to ‘build an ideal Korea’ also should be the people. An ideal Korea consisting of a people’s economy, people’s culture and people’s society is a country where all kinds of political oppression and economic exploitation have ceased to exist. It is a society administered for several months by the peasant revolutionary army and it is the principle of ‘land for the cultivators’ proposed by Dasan. In our present society, we can add to the principle of ‘machines for workers’.


In 1928, the Korean Anarchist Federation in China organised the Eastern Anarchist Federation composed of comrades from the Far Eastern countries, such as China, Japan, Taiwan, Vietnam and others, and published their bulletin Dong-Bang (The East). To procure the funds, some comrades dared to forge international money orders. Shin Chae-Ho was affiliated with this case and was arrested. Sentenced to a 10-year imprisonment, he died in Yeosun prison. The Eastern Federation adopted the Manifesto drafted by Shin Chae-Ho as its formal program. The Federation confronted ‘the proletariat of the world especially that of the eastern colonies’ with ‘the international capitalistic imperialism’ and appealed for the firm union of the workers of the whole world for the liberation of the proletariat. The movement front was enlarged to the scope of international imperialist power versus the international suppressed people originating from one ruling nation versus one ruled nation.

\section{b. The High Treason Case}


The predecessor of the Heuk-Woo-Hwae (Black Comrade’s Society), the Heuk-Ro-Hwae (Black Worker’s Society), composed of Park Yeol and others was the planner of the case. Park Yeol, who went to Tokyo after the 3.1 Movement, organised the Korean Working Student’s Group with Chung Tae-Sung, Kim Chun-Hae and others in 1919 and organised the Heuk-Ro-Hwae in connection with Japanese anarchists such as Osugi Sakae, Iwasa Sakutaro and others, publishing Korea Revolts.


In the 20th Century, the Japanese imperialists started to invade all Asian countries and ruthlessly oppressed the socialist movement in Japan. For example, in 1910 the executed Kotoku Shusui, the leader of the Japanese anarchists and forged the so-called ‘High Treason Case’ in retaliation to his Commoner’s Newspaper, which opposed the Russo-Japanese War and blamed the invasion of Korea on Japan. During the Tokyo Earthquake in September 1923, they killed Osugi Sakae and his wife, also eminent anarchist leaders. These testify to the facts of their internal oppression.


Te reason that drove the Japanese imperialists into such ruthless actions of the Devil were the Russian Revolution during the period of 1905 to 1917, the rice riots throughout Japan in 1918, the worldwide panic after the First World War, the overall uprising of the Korean people in 1919, the explosively developing labor movement and increasing leftist power in Japan and many other international and internal events that excited their conservative nerve.


Following the barbarous repression of the 3.1 Movement in 1919, the Japanese imperialists made a false rumour about the great Tokyo Earthquake in 1923 and made the Japanese people ‘hunt’ more than 6000 innocent Korean workers indiscriminately and arrested all the so-called Japanese and Korean anarchists under the pretext of arrest for protection. Of course the members of the Korea Revolts society and their friends were included.


They shamelessly forged ‘a great treason plot by anarchists’ about the arrested people in order to hide their crimes against God and man committed during the Earthquake. It was their cunning trick to obscure international eyes and ears. It was possible for them to collect many radical articles from Korea Revolts to justify their persecution. This is the so-called ‘High Treason Case’ by Park Yeol and others. Park Yeol and Kaneko Fumiko (his wife) were sentenced capital penalty, but were later reduced to penal servitude for life. Kaneko Fumiko died in prison and Park was released on October 27th, 1945. His friends who were involved and imprisoned returned to Korea after release and became leaders of the anarchist movement in Korea.

\section{2. Organising Period}


The internal and external situation and its background in the 1910s.


The power’s enthusiasm to obtain colonies since the 1910s came into keener competition and in the early 20th Century, when the confrontation and rivalry became sharper, the international alliances were made in order to maintain the balance of power. The Berlin Treaty, the Three Nation’s League and the Three Nation’s Negotiation were examples.


In the Far East, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was concluded to stop the march eastward policy of Russia and the Asian policy of Germany. After that, the Russo-Japanese War broke out in 1904.


On the other hand, after the Opium War (1830) and the Boxer Rebellion (1900), China was becoming a contest area of the world powers, which invaded parts of China by means of semi-permanent occupation of the land under so-called leased territories. In addition, the newly emerged Japanese Empire, which had won both the Sino-Japanese War and the Russo-Japanese War, was growing stronger as a member of the imperialist powers, which were invading the northern part of China.


As a result of the Portsmouth Peace Treaty of 1905, Japan established the Residency-General in Korea in 1906, depriving Korea of its diplomatic rights. Finally on August 29th, 1910, the Korea-Japan Annexation Treaty was forced upon Korea. Thus, Korea became a complete colony of imperialist Japan and the Government-General was established.


The armed peace that was maintained under the seriously conflicting interests of countries could not last long. The First World War broke out at last. During the five years of the war that started in July 1914, anti-war movements occurred in the European countries.


As the war prolonged and both sides engaged in desperate fighting, Russia, a member of the Triple Entente, encountered the March Revolution of 1917 and the Russian Empire collapsed. The provisional government led of Kerenskij was established, but was incompetent to lead the revolution in the right way. The Bolshevik Party led by Lenin, the left wing of the Social-Democratic Party, took over the government from Kerenskij in November of the same year. It concluded a separate peace treaty with Germany at Brest-Litowsk and strengthened its dictatorial power by oppressing the other revolutionary movements with the armed forces of its faction, composed of discharged officers and soldiers. This dictatorial government defeated the sailor’s revolt at Kronstadt and the farmer’s revolt in the Ukraine led by the anarchist Makhno, which the government denounced as an anti-revolutionary movement manipulated by the Western imperialists. So the truly revolutionary way of the people was interrupted. In such a way, the Russian Revolution was counter-attacked by the Bolshevik government. But the influence of the Russian Revolution was tremendous among the colonies and semi-colonies that did not know the facts. The Revolution was not expected at all and came as a great shock to the politicians of the warring countries, who were also astonished by the destruction and consumption of the war.


In 1918, President Wilson of the United States announced the ’14 principles for peace’, the aim of which was to control the territorial ambitions and the national hostilities of the imperial powers that caused the war, and to adapt to the nations that had been occupied the principle of self-determination, thus establishing an eternal peace for mankind.


Excited by this announcement, the Korean people rose in nationwide revolt, demanding independence for Korea on the first day of March 1919. The 3.1 Movement had an enormous influence on the weaker nations of Asia directly and indirectly. Anti-Dutch revolts occurred in the Celebes Islands in the same year, peasants revolted in Western Java, Burma revolted demanding self-government and the 5.4 Movement occurred in China.


On the other hand, while the European nations were engaged in the war, in 1915 the Japanese imperialists were enforcing China under the Chung Dynasty, in order to acquire secret permission on 21 items, such as the concessions over Shantung and Fukien Provinces, seizure of the German leaseholds along the Tsingtao Peninsula and Kiaochow Bay and the postponement of the lease period of the Liatung Peninsula, which included Talien and Lushun.


The 21 items of the secret treaty ended in smoke. The Tsingtao Peninsula and Kiaochow Bay were returned to China owing to the 5.4 Movement staged by the students of Peking University. The Anti-Japanese movement spread throughout China. Representatives of South and North China exposed the Japanese plots at the Paris Peace Treaty, the Washington Conference and at every other chance.


The colonial rule of Korea by the Japanese imperialists for about 10 years until the outburst of the 3.1 Movement was the rule of the saber completely. This period of time was characterised by frequent guerilla wars staged against the Japanese all around the country, and the garrison army stationed in Korea suppressed all revolts. After suppressing the 3.1 Movement by ruthless measures, the colony policy of the Japanese imperialists was forced to be transferred from the rule of the saber to a conciliatory policy by the name of the cultural policy. They organised the ‘Toyo Colonisation and Development Company’, whose main roles were to actively enforce the land exploitation and to encourage Japanese immigration into Korea. To effectively accomplish the works, they provided the Japanese immigrants with monetary favour to practice usury on the poor Korean people and acquire commercial supremacy in the cities and rural areas. In addition, they gave Japanese officials and employees of banks and companies a special bonus that was the same amount as their salaries upon the pretext of the colonial services allowances. So a great number of poor Koreans who lost their lands and means of living in their homeland had to go over to Japan to sell their labor for subsistence or had to be removed to Manchuria and Russian territory in order to get new places to live, Korean refugee’s numbers increased in proportion as Japanese immigrants into Korea increased. About one million Koreans went over to Japan and about two million immigrated to Manchuria.


It was the Japanese police system that supported such policies of exploitation. The Japanese police net was organised rigidly and carefully. Two divisions of the regular Japanese army were dispatched to replace the garrison. The so-called ‘cultural policy’ of Japan was, generally speaking, the exploitation policy.


Outline: Two monumental events guided the Korean anarchist movement. They are the ‘Korean Revolution Manifesto’ adopted by the Korean anarchist group in China and the so-called ‘High Treason Case’ of Park Yeol and others in Tokyo. The former is the theory of anarchist revolution and the latter is the event symbolizing the practical side. The two events occurred simultaneously and the influence caused ever-widening repercussions in the Korean anarchist movement. The quickening period proceeded gradually into the organising period.


Inland, various anarchist movements were occurring sporadically, mainly in Seoul, Taegu, Pyongyang and other areas. In November 1929, a national Federation was organised by the Kwanseo Black Friend League and finally succeeded in organising the Korean Anarcho-Communist Federation (KACF), which was an underground organisation on a national scale.


In China, the Korean Anarchist Federation in China (KAFC) was organised in Peking in 1924. This Federation joined hands with the Eastern Anarchist Federation (EAF), which was organised in Shanghai in 1928, and the front was enlarged to an international scale. After 1930, the KACF organised the Korean Youth Federation in South China (KYSFC) as the wartime system. In July 1929, the Korean Anarchist Federation in Manchuria (KAFM) was organised at Haelim in North Manchuria and conducted the movement for a local self-rule federation, but the fighting against the Japanese invasive army made it wise tactically to retreat to Shanghai to join with the KYSFC, leaving part of the underground organising structure behind. They continued the anti-Japanese struggle. In Japan, many organisations in Tokyo and Osaka continued the anarchist movement.

\section{a. Kiho Province}


1) League of the Black Flag


Hong Jin-Yu, Seo Sang-Kyeong and others who had been affiliated with the High Treason Case of Park Yeol returned to Korea after their release and rallied the comrades to organise the League of the Black Flag in December 1924. It was, however, detected by the police in May 1925 and all members, including Shin Young-Woo, Seo Jeong-Sup, Han Byeong-Hee, Lee Bok-Won, Seo Cheoung-Sun, Lee Chang-Sik, Kawk Cheol, Lee Ki-Yong and others were arrested.


The Dong-A Ilbo (daily newspaper of the greatest publication in Korea) of October 28th, 1925, reported the case with the headline ‘A trial of Anarchists: League of the Black Flag being Arrested Before its Organisation.’ Ten defendants were sentenced one year of imprisonment each.


2) Manifesto of the Nihilist Party


The Dong-A Ilbo of January 5th, 1926, reported the following article: “On the 4th of the hopeful new year, a secret publication with the title ‘Manifesto of the Nihilist Party’ was distributed all around the city, the content being extremely radical \dots{}the stamp was dated 3rd of January, Kyeongseoul (Seoul) post office\dots{}. Being greatly surprised, all police stations in the city started researching.”


The Manifesto is very similar in its ideas and style as the Korean Revolution Manifesto. It concludes, “People suffering painful life under the oppression of the violent enemy! Come to the banner of the Nihilist Party! Let us destroy the enemy by one stroke! Long live the Korean Revolution!”


The affiliated persons were as follows:


Yun Woo-Yeol (23 years old), a member of the Taegu Youth Federation and also a member of the Free Trade Union.


Ha Eun-Sa (23 years old), a member of the Kyeongseong Youth Group.


An Byong-Hoe (37 years old), a lecturer at Hanseong Kang-Sup-Won (short training course).


Yang Myoung (24 years old), a writer.


Lee Yoon-Jae (38 years old), a Russian language teacher of Kyeongseong Young Men’s Association and also a Korean linguist.


3) Yicheon Freedom Group


The Dong-A Ilbo of August 24th, 1929, reported, “Lee Eun-Song and about one hundred youths of Icheon, Kwangwon province, organised a secret society of anarchists. The large scope and the minuteness of the society surprised the examining judges of the case. The defendants were reduced to four men, but the affiliated persons are more than one hundred.”


The decision of the defendants who were indicted for violence against the law for maintenance of the public peace (the worst law) and violence against the publication law as follows:


Yun Yong-Wha, 5 years demanded and sentenced to 4 years.


Lee In-Ha, 5 years demanded and sentenced to 4 years.


Lee Eun-Song, 5 years demanded and sentenced to 3 years.


Kim Soon-Hee, 5 years demanded and sentenced to 3 years.


4) Chungju Artists Movement Society


Starting from May 1929, the police extended the search net throughout the Chung-Cheong province and arrested all the affiliated members of the Chungju Artists Movement Society and sent all defendants to the Kyeongseong provisional court on March 5th, 1930. Sentences for this case were reported by the Dong-A Ilbo of March 13th as follows;


Kwon O-Don (30 years old), 6 years demanded and sentenced to 5 years.


An Byeong-Ki (27 years old), 6 years demanded and sentenced to 5 years.


Kim Hak-Won (26 years old), 6 years demanded and sentenced to 5 years.


Jeong Jin-Bok (30 years old), 6 years demanded and sentenced to 5 years.


Seo Jeong-Ki (32 years old), 6 years demanded and sentenced to 5 years.


Kim Hyeon-Kuk (26 years old), 2 years demanded and sentenced to 2 years.


The defendants claimed that the Artists Movement Society was purely a society of the artists movement both in name and practice, but the prosecutor asserted that it was a secret society for the anarchist movement and applied the worst law for maintenance of public peace. Even the Japanese police with the best reputation for research could not offer the sufficient evidence to justify their prosecution. But there was no doubt that all the defendants were anarchists. The defendants, such as Seo Sang-Kyeong and Seo Jeong-Ki had been affiliated with the Black Flag League case in 1924, having been imprisoned for one year each in the Seodaemun prison, and Seo Sang-Kyeong had been affiliated in the High Treason Case. Imperial Ordinance No. 129 revised the new law for maintenance of public peace that was applied to the Artists Movement Society Case on July 29th, 1928, and its first application to this case in Korea drew the attention of the public.


The gist of the revised law was as follows:


“Paragraph 1 of Article 1. Those who organised a society to change the national structure, and the staff of the society and others who engaged in the leading role shall be punished with death, or penal servitude for life, or imprisonment of more than 5 years (first part). 2. Those who participated in the society knowing the facts or those who conducted the acts to accomplish the purposes of the society shall be punished with servitude or imprisonment of more than 2 years (last part).”


The Artists Society Movement was, as the defendants of the case asserted, not a secret society whatsoever for form’s sake, but was planned as a society of pure artists. No doubt their intention was to publish a bulletin of anarchist arts and literature covering creation and the theories of anarchism. And so the Japanese authorities must have tried to check the movement desperately despite their unreasonable application of the laws.


5) Argument in Proletarian Literary Arts


The socialist movement in Korea started abroad and developed in the early 1920’s. This can be seen in the cases of both Bolshevism and anarchism. In the first case there was a competition between the Shanghai group and the Irkutsk group of Korean communists, and in the organisation of the first, second, third and fourth Korean Communist Party during 1925-28. In the second case there was also an organisational movement starting in China and Japan. It was then developed into the Black Flag League in Seoul, the League of Truth and Fraternity in Daegu, organisations in every district in the years 1925-30 and the organisation of the Korean Anarcho-Communist Federation.


With this situation as a background, the Korean Artist’s Proletarian Federation (KAPF) was organised in July 1925. And the socialist’s theory gradually got sharp and deep. It was featured by the literary activity of Lee Hyang and Kweon Ku-Hyeon in the anarchistic camp and by the establishing of the Artist’s Movement Society, even though this was aborted.


Some anarchists joined the KAPF, but in the activities of the movement the anarchists and the Bolsheviks could not agree on literary theory. We can find this fact in the literary arguments of Kim Hwa-San against Park Young-Hee, Han Seol-Ya, Yoon Ki-Jeong and Im Hwa in the year 1927.


Park Yeon-Hee, the central figure of the KAPF, developed an extreme opinion, saying that the purpose of all literary art was to make all works statements of political propaganda, that literary works that are not political propaganda are not proletarian art, and that works which are not proletarian art are not literary art. The literature of Marxism is a means of serving the victory of a class (the proletariat). The young group of the KAPF denounced pure literature and caused conflict within the organisation, arguing that a literary movement is exclusively a political movement.


As the Bolshevik tendency within the KAPF increased, Kim Hwa-San, the anarchist, opposed it. He argued in accord with the principle that “There can be anarchistic literature and Bolshevik literature within proletarian literature. The anarchist can create proletarian literature according to his own view of life and society, just as the Bolshevik can create proletarian literature in accord with his own view.” He went on: “But in Korea, there is not a clear distinction. The movement of proletarian literature advocates the Marxist viewpoint or a vague communism, with the mistaken result that the communist movement of Korea is led by the Marxist brand of Russian Communism. The same mistaken idea that the liberating movement of the proletariat means the movement of Marxism is also within the movement of the KAPF.” He blamed the blindness of those who were furthering the Bolshevik trend. He believed “The mistakes of petty followers, who have no understanding of proletarian literature and think that proletarian literature must be Marxist and follow Marxism blindly, will be cleared up gradually. Proletarian literature will be and should be divided between the anarchistic group and the Bolshevik group in the proletarian theoretical system. By this way, in that division the danger can be expected comes from the intolerant and exclusive persistence of the Bolshevik literary men, whose tendency is now widely accepted. After tomorrow, namely after the division I anticipate, they will show this tendency more distinctively.” (See Kim Hwa-San, ‘New Development of Literary Theory and Class,’ in The Literary World of Korea, Vol.5, No.3, 1927, March, pp.14-16). This thesis of Kim Hwa-San with the subtitle ‘A Brief Review of Bolshevistic Literary Men,’ develops his own sincere literary theory of anarchism and warns that the movement of proletarian literature is losing the real meaning and value of original art through Bolshevik arbitrariness.


Kim Hwa-San argues against Park Yeong-Hee’s statement that, “Art in the struggling period is only a propagandistic instrument for social revolution.” Kim Hwa-San says, “I am surprised to hear this blind argument because of its ignorance and lack of recognition. Can this argument really be supported? Is literature really and instrument of propaganda? \dots{}Park Yeong-Hee thinks that art is right even though it is not perfect artistically and that the duty of art in the period of struggle can be performed if it helps to promote social revolution. But this kind of theory cannot be a literary theory, and this kind of art cannot be art. If its only purpose is to propagandise for social revolution, neglecting the necessary condition and the completeness as art, it is only a propaganda leaflet. (Ibid. pp.17-18). Even though we advocate The Literary Theory of Class, we do not deny the conception of the old pure art theory as a whole. Without neglecting the necessary conditions and the completeness of art as art, we only change the content and the form of art based on the consciousness of class. The nature of art is an everlasting constant. To be everlastingly constant does not mean that the content and the form of art are everlasting but that the essential element that contributes to mankind are everlasting. Although this is the art of the proletariat, they should not neglect the essential element of art.” (Ibid.)


Kim Hwa-San then distinguishes justifiably between the changeable and the unchangeable in art. But he does not explicitly specify what these elements are, Insofar as he cannot specify this, he cannot conclude his argument. He expresses the unchangeable in art by saying, “The nature of art is everlasting constant.” What is that nature? And what is the necessary element of art? He should have explained these concretely. The necessary element of art lies in “the emotional expression of the idea. Therefore it could be the emotional expression of the reality. ‘The idea’ or ‘the reality’ which is expressed otherwise than emotionally cannot be a poem or a work of literature, even though it could be an academic thesis. In the emotional expression of the idea, the genre of art is divided according to the materials that are used for that expression, namely the materials such as words, sounds, stones, and bronze metal. But all art in every field has an external element in common. The work that does not have this element cannot be artistic work and cannot be appreciated emotionally even though it can be a propagandistic poster or an academic thesis. Kim Hwa-San omitted these facts.


Lastly, Kim Hwa-San adds a point regarding the literary theory of Lenin, the founder of the Bolshevik literary. He says, “Lenin is a politician of communism. Therefore his literary theory can only be an expression of politics. His literary theory does not even suggest what the nature of literature is or what communistic literature is like, but it is a political literature view like the communist state’s constitution. To follow this crude literary theory blindly and to emphasize literature as a political means is not a desirable behaviour on the part of those who are interested in literature.” He goes on, “There is no harm if the communist politician uses for his purpose artistic works which are already made. But to demand the making of artistic works for the purpose of propaganda is an excessive demand of the communist politician. Of course, a politician does not know about literary art well, and he who thinks about politics constantly can not evaluate art correctly. But if he finds the possibility of using literary art as political means, he always does so without hesitation.” (Ibid.)


But which works of literature are to be used for political ends? Only works that have artistic value. And in what does the artistic value of such works lie? They must have the element of ‘emotional expression.’


And this is an autonomous principle in the creation of works that fulfill the criterion of art. Without following this principle a valuable work cannot be created. The principle accomplishes the conclusion in a work of the eternal essential qualities of art. The idea of proletarian art is to liberate the proletariat. The idea of bourgeois art is to give freedom to the bourgeoisie. These ideas are different. But whatever the aim of art may be, it should be conveyed by an emotional expression and it should follow the autonomous principle of its creator, because it is art.


This is what distinguishes the masterpiece from the common work. Works that are expressed emotionally according to the autonomous principles are masterpieces, and the works that are not like the above are common works or poor works. A work that follows the politics of a politician uncritically cannot be a masterpiece. And the works that are not masterpieces cannot be effective in political propaganda. If you govern an artistic creation by principles of economics or law, you will make the word fail. This is because the autonomous principles cannot be replaced by other principles in governing the domain of the artistic world. This is as clear and obvious as the sun and cannot be refuted. Nevertheless the Bolshevist literary theory makes precisely this unjust demand.




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Ha Ki-Rak

A History of the Korean Anarchist Movement



1986


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