The Party That Isn't
The Party That Isn't
North Korea's "Unification Revolution Party"
Book excerpt
By: Research Center for Peace and Unification
Date: May 1980
Source: The Party That Isn't: North Korea's Unification Revolution Party. Seoul, South Korea: Research Center for Peace and Unification, 1980.
About the Author: The Research Center for Peace and Unification is located in Seoul, the capital of South Korea. The Center has published numerous books and articles on issues related to economic development, security, and other unification topics pertinent to North and South Korea.
INTRODUCTION
The development of the Unification-Revolution party (URP) was a move by North Korea's longtime leader Kim Il-Sung (1912–1994) to unify the Korean peninsula under common Communist rule in the 1960s and 1970s. There had been earlier unsuccessful attempts to take over democratic South Korea by Kim Il-Sung and his Workers' Party, including the three-year multinational Korean War (1950–1953), which involved the United States, the Soviet Union, and Chinese forces. With restrictions on media, education, and travel in and out of the country, North Korea's largely peasant population has been isolated from much of the outside world since the country was formed in 1948. For the nearly fifty years he was in power, Kim Il-Sung was determined to gain control of Koreans in the south of the peninsula as well. Kim Il-Sung died in 1994 without having achieved that goal.
Prior to surrendering power to the Allied Forces at the end of World War II, Japan ruled the Korean peninsula as a single country for thirty-five years. In 1945, control of Korea was handed to the United States, the Soviet Union, Britain, and China. Differences between American and Soviet political ideology made it difficult to develop an agreed upon plan to give Korea the independence its citizens were demanding. American fears that the Soviets would take over Korea led to the division of the peninsula into North and South at the 38th parallel, the line of latitude 38 degrees north of the equator. The United States supported the development of the democratic Republic of Korea in the South, while the Soviet Union fostered the development of the Communist Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) in the North.
The Workers' Party, which started as an anti-imperialist group throughout the Korean peninsula during the Japanese rule, gained support of North Korean peasants by speaking about the ideals of achieving self-reliance. The charismatic Kim Il-Sung implemented popular economic and political reforms, which included the redistribution of land to the people and the seizing of property previously controlled by the Japanese. However, many of the wealthier educated and skilled workers in North Korea disagreed with the Communist ideals and quickly fled to South Korea. North Korea struggled to maintain its self-reliance, requiring assistance from both the Soviet Union and China.
South Korea's early years were not free from political turmoil. Tensions between the government and the people climaxed in April 1960, since unemployment was high and many people believed the recent presidential elections had been rigged. Protests ensued, with the Korean police killing 125 students and injuring 1,000 others, during a week of demonstrations. The riots forced the president to step down, and a reorganization of the government followed.
PRIMARY SOURCE
FABRICATION OF THE "UNIFICATION-REVOLUTION PARTY"
When the Ap[ril] 19 Student Uprising created a politically and socially chaotic situation in the Republic of Korea in 1960, the North Koreans were overjoyed—as if a Communist revolution had broken out in the South—and spared no effort for agitation through its radio broadcasts to South Korea, hoping to inspire a Communist revolution.
But at the fourth Party Congress held in September of the following year, Kim Il-sung regretted that the Student Uprising could not be developed into a "popular revolution." Emphasizing that "for the success of the South Korean revolution there must be a revolutionary party which takes Marxism-Leninism as its guiding principle," he had support for the South Korean revolution adopted as a party policy.
The North Korean Communists judged that, due to the absence of a revolutionary party, they not only missed a favorable revolutionary opportunity in the April 19 Student Uprising, but also failed to prevent the May 16 Military Revolution in 1961, thereby allowing the birth of the strongest-ever anti-Communist government in Seoul and causing enormous damage to the South Korean revolutionary force.…
As part of the policy to secure a revolutionary base in preparation for the decisive moment, Kim Il-sung began to hasten the organization of a violent underground party in the South by infiltrating professional espionage agents.
At the eighth fourth-term meeting of the Party Central Committee on February 27, 1964, Kim declared, "The North will support the revolution in the south, but can never wage it in lieu of the south. We should organize the party's leading echelon with excellent persons from both the North and the South. For this purpose, the Communists who come originally from the south must be trained and dispatched to the South in large numbers."
In accordance with Kim's instructions, Ho Bong-hak, director of the party's external liaison department, dispatched a professionally trained espionage agent, Kim Song-ku, to the South on March 15, 1964, to win over former pro-communist collaborators Kim Chong-tae and Lee Mun-kyu, among others. Kim Chong-tae was summoned to Pyongyang on four occasions, in March 1964, April 1965, July 1966 and April 1968, received intensive espionage training and was sent back South to perform special missions.
Beside Lee Hyo-sun, party secretary in charge of anti-South operations, and Ho, the director of the general bureau of anti-South operations, Kim Il-sung personally met with Kim Chong-tae to instruct him on the South Korean revolution. Ho furnished him a total of US $70,000, 5,000,000 Japanese yen and 23.5 million Korean won in operational funds, in addition to weapons, poisons and other espionage equipment.
The North Korean instructions were: 1) to form a basic underground party organization with former members of the defunct South Korean Workers' Party as the nucleus; 2) to stage a campaign to propagate communist ideology among the masses by use of publications; 3) to cultivate party cadres with Seoul National University as the center; 4) to develop intellectual, student and youth circles into party teams and vanguards under the disguise of progressive movements; 5) to facilitate the revolutionary period through ideological indoctrination of the masses by use of booklets on Communism; 6) to study special warfare tactics for armed struggle and prepare for guerrilla warfare; 7) to organize a United Front for Korean National Liberation for a Vietcong-style united front struggle; and 8) to take over the metropolitan areas by violent means when the time is ripe and destroy major public installations and assassinate key figures in the ROK Government.…
PURPORTED ACTIVITIES OF THE URP
Although North Korea has been spreading false propaganda about the nonexistent Unification-Revolution Party, it is all too clear that the whole affair is a fraud.
In an attempt to make the world believe that such an organization does exist in the South, North Korea has been staging various dramas. For instance, on such public occasions as a Workers' Party Congress or Kim Il-sung's birthday celebrations in Pyongyang, alleged representatives of the Unification-Revolution Party deliver speeches denouncing the Republic of Korea while praising the North.
SIGNIFICANCE
Efforts by North Korea to infiltrate South Korea with the URP were largely unsuccessful. In 1970, spies and armed forces affiliated with the URP from North Korea were sentenced to death and sent to prison in South Korea. A high level politician from North Korea's Central News Agency was also put to death, after his claim of having defected to South Korea from the North proved false. Opponents of South Korea's government made claims that politicians were using the threat of Communist infiltration from North Korea as a way to scare the population and stay in power. However, with strong ties to the West, there was never a serious move towards communism in South Korea.
North Korea has found few allies since the country became a major arms supplier to Iran, Syria, and Libya. Threats of nuclear attack on South Korea and Japan by North Korea have brought further tensions to the region. The United States and other western countries have maintained economic sanctions against North Korea, only easing the sanctions to convince North Korea to freeze its nuclear weapons program, and to persuade North Korea to hold talks about ending the country's isolation. The people of North Korea suffer high levels of poverty and famine. In contrast, South Korea has seen high rates of economic growth, and the country maintains vigorous trading relationships throughout the Western world.
Although differences between the North and South remain, there continues to be a desire among the Korean people for reunification. Through the efforts of the Ministry of Unification, established by South Korea primarily as a research and publicity organization in 1968, there have been some efforts to forge economic and social ties between North and South Korea. Talks concerning economic cooperation between the North and South have taken place, and trials of a train link between the North and South are scheduled in 2006. Although in reduced numbers, U.S. troops continue to stand guard in South Korea at the 38th parallel.
FURTHER RESOURCES
Books
Grinker, Roy R. Korea and Its Futures: Unification and the Unfinished War. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1998.
Martin, Bradley K. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. New York: St. Martin's Press, 2004.
Suh, Dae-Sook. Kim Il Sung. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995.
Periodicals
Kim, Joungwon Alexander. "Divided Korea 1969: Consolidating for Transition." Asian Survey, A Survey of Asia, Part I 10 (January 1970): 30–42.
Web sites
PBS, NewsHour. "North Korea: Nuclear Standoff." October 24, 2005. <http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/asia/northkorea/index.html> (accessed May 21, 2006).
Republic of Korea. Ministry of Unification. <http://unikorea.go.kr/index.jsp> (accessed May 21, 2006).