Maybe you’ve read Hwang Dongyun’s book “Anarchism in Korea,” or George Katsiaficas’ essay Peter Kropotkin and People’s Uprisings: From the Paris Commune to the Kwangju Uprising. However, as abundant as such examples of past attempts are, those who called themselves anarchists often did not act like one, and those who did, did not claim to be anarchists. Though one could debate us about the specifics of these claims, us present-day Korean anarchists agree that, unfortunately, there isn’t much of a continued “Korean anarchist tradition.” (As of writing this text, we are unaware of any anarchist presence in the northern part of the peninsula, and as such we will deal exclusively with the panorama in the south.) Of course, the last century being one of conflict and oppression —of which the former half was spent under the yoke of imperialism and the latter half under a series of capitalist dictatorships—, the Korean people are still very well versed in the practices of popular grassroots resistance. Despite great swathes of our youth turning towards conservatism and apathy, and the government gladly suppressing attempts of social progress, the syndicalist movement under the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (민주노총, KCTU) still stands strong, together with the numerous human rights movements that are actively working on a diversity of issues. But still among these organisations and activists, none hold or vocalise specifically anarchist views. Like in most parts of the world, the bulk of left-wing progressive struggles is focused on the demand for the implementation of various pro-labour and anti-discrimination acts. Cries for autonomy and self-determination are truly rare.
Dire as it might look, we —the social anarchists in Korea— have been tirelessly organising against all odds. Especially with the start of this decade and still until quite recently, the group “Malangchism” has led much of university student organising. The group has held semester-long study seminars on topics such as anarchism 101, history of anarcho-syndicalism, and queer and feminist intersectionality. Much of their efforts have been about spreading the word of anarchism into the activist sphere. They have been also actively participating in protests and labour strikes, always voicing to fellow activists that anarchism is an alternative to the oh-so-popular parliamentarism. Specifically, this year marks the third consecutive year that the group has solidarised with the laid-off workers at Seojong Hotel —found at Myeongdong, in the heart of Seoul. The workers here have been fighting for the return to their workplace for 4 years, and against the suppression of the democratic union by the hotel’s administration for 10 years.
Malangchism and other groups have also been translating and publishing classical anarchist texts, including works of Russian anarchist Voline’s trilogy on anarchism in the Russian Revolution “the Unknown Revolution,” and a collection of didactic dialogues by Italian anarchist Errico Malatesta. For this purpose, the online “Anarchist Library Project” has been a useful nucleation site for our efforts. The Korean version of the project went online in mid-2021 and is still standing to this day.
At this moment, seminars and translation works make up the bulk of the theoretical work. Even though up to recently, each group has published their own pamphlets and online articles, these have consisted of mostly activity reports. Creative works beyond an occasional message of solidarity with another group here or there have been limited. The same goes to their engagement in popular social network sites like KakaoTalk (a Korean social network service), Facebook and Instagram. On the level of individual activists, a general reticence against formulating new and concrete theoretical analyses specific to our current Korean situation is dominant. This is mainly because, still having much to learn, we feel inadequate to postulate new ideas. Considering how many activists have barely over five years of experience as “anarchists,” —recall the absence of a continued anarchist tradition— seems like only time will fix it. We could also argue that this is representative of a general lack of strategic imagination, and this we shall elaborate below.
Further, even though most of anarchist gathering and organising has been limited to within the city of Seoul, this hasn’t stopped us from solidarising with worker struggles across (South) Korea. Again, Malangchism has been particularly active on this front. From the Gangreung Yoocheon Primary School teachers’ struggle against the Education Office, to all the way down south with the subcontracted shipyard workers of Hanwha Ocean (formerly DSME) in Geoje island, there have been constant efforts not to limit our anarchist participation to labour movements within the capital. This attempt to stay in touch with provincial issues is especially more important in the Korean context. Close to half of the population inhabits Seoul and its environs, draining the rest of the provinces and its rural areas of its population and resources, creating a power imbalance of scales rarely seen in other countries.
The activists have also not forgotten the internationalist aspect to the struggle for liberation. In 2022, they shared solidarising videos and messages with Mexican university students squatting their campus who were protesting against the silencing and general mistreatment of survivors of sexual violence among their colleagues by their college administration. Also in the next year, with the initiative of an Chilean anarchist filmmaker, a film was made documenting the struggles of a sales worker laid-off for whistleblowing at a major car-making firm’s internal malpractices.
The contemporary groups’ syndicalist focus is clear, and maybe because of it, there has been a painful lack of introspection about the intersectionality of the struggles against oppression in all its glorious forms. This means that much of our activists’ internalised misogyny, queerphobia, transphobia and ableism has gone unchecked for an embarrassingly long time. Though our constructive efforts considering the small number of activists and few resources may be commendable, these efforts have failed to reach a broader non-cismale audience. Indeed, non-cismale activists among us are rare, and the few that newly join have a hard time finding a welcoming place here. This is very much reminiscent of the situation described by Czech writer Marta Kolářová in their essay Sexuality issues in the Czech anarchist movement. With discussions regarding issues of sex, gender and disability being so direly sparse and superficial, much work is desperately needed. In that sense, we have been somewhat repeating the error of our predecessors: claiming to be anarchists without fully engaging with the broad intersectional liberatory approach it requires.
This is the current state of “anarchism in Korea.” Indeed, so much hard work lies ahead of us. From consistently engaging with people outside the Seoul Metropolitan Area, to more ruthlessly tackling our internalised shackles and phobias, these are just some of the challenges we as contemporary anarchists in Korea face. And staggeringly, we mustn’t forget the fact that we also live in a highly polarised society pushed around by the interests of different brands of the same conservatism. We expect that to some readers, this feeling of unpreparedness regarding such an impossibly large challenge will surely be familiar. And to you, dear comrade, we send our best regards. We are nowhere close to giving up, and we hope you share our spirit. We, the anarchists in Korea, still have to broaden the horizons of our imagination, search for more approaches towards an anarchist liberation. We will learn, improve, and carry on. We will work so that eventually the entire peninsula will join in our cries of “down to all authority” and “liberty for all,” and so it may be also wherever you are reading this from.
Students for Anarchism, StuFA
