How Pyongyang Inspires Korea’s New Boxers
Score another one for counterspeech. The discrediting of South Korean academia’s Stalinist wing proceeds apace despite the Old Right’s inadvertent deification of them into the pantheon of respected dissidents:
[I]t was revealed that a large number of Kang [Jeong-Koo]’s theses and columns on the Korean War and the character of the U.S. Forces Korea (USFK) were posted on a North Korean propaganda group’s website. . . . [A] string of Kang’s remarks and actions coincided with guidelines advocated by the Anti-Imperialistic and National Democratic Front (AINDF), a propaganda body aimed at South Korea under the direction of the Unification Front of North Korea’s Workers’ Party.
. . . .On top of that, the prosecution and police said that the South’s headquarters of the Pan-National Student Association for Fatherland Unification and Hanchongryun’s claims, in which they insist that the withdrawal of the U.S. General MacArthur statue is a declaration of the will to expel the USFK, the root of all vice, are in line with Kang’s remarks. A summary of an anti-MacArthur white paper posted on the AINDF’s website that police submitted to the prosecution contains that a great number of Kang’s theses and columns on the Korean War and the character of the USFK.
Another blow struck against the shaky academic credentials of a tenured fool, right? Not quite. Regrettably, we learn these facts not through good investigative reporting or the righteous outrage of Kang’s more enlightened academic peers, but from a proposed indictment charging Kang as a North Korean agent. An agent he very well may be, but I don’t see it proven here. I think there’s a better case for him being a stooge–perhaps a second- or third-order stooge at that. This also adds to the body of evidence that Korea’s slow-motion Boxer Rebellion is largely directed from Pyongyang, and seeks to use academia to recruit new Boxers and red-vests. What interests me more is whether a case can be made that Kang plagiarized this landfill from North Korean propaganda, which would be an excellent reason to strip him of his academic credentials.
Just to get an idea of what a shallow, inconsistent, incoherent, and ultimately unoriginal thinker Kang is, read this translation of an interview he granted, which Virtual Wonderer was kind enough to post at the Marmot’s Hole. A sample:
Hank: Don’t you think it’s unacceptable to go so far as to call MacArthur an enemy with vendetta? (orig. Korean term Wonsoo).
Junggoo: I accept that I went too far with this. At first I thought of calling him someone who takes away life, but when I was trying to find an opposite term for “savior” I came up with a vendetta enemy. Due to the protests regarding the statue, I thought it was time to reconsider the conventional “Savior Theory. If we are to subscribe to the Savior or Hero theory, as the commander of allied forces, we must examine his ties with Rhee Syngman. If US never intervened, the war would have been over in a month, and the casualty would be less than 10,000. If you count US mass destruction weapons and casualties against civillians, the casualty goes up to 4 million. MacArthur may not be a vendetta enemy for all Koreans, but at the very least, you can’t say he is a savior to those who died.
Hank: but don’t you think putting all the responsibility for death on MacArthur going too far? Same thing can be said if DPRK or China never attacked.
Junggoo: I never said that it would have been good if the war ended in one month. I just said that US have a major responsibility for the war, I never said that everything was America’s fault. It’s just that when we were discussing about MacArthur, only the role of US was discussed. If we discuss China’s role, I might emphasize their responsibility. Someone asks me to draw DPRK’s face and then they criticize me for not drawing Juche or dictatorship feet of DPRK. It’s the same thing. Just because [I] criticise US does not mean I absolve China.
Elsewhere, he goes on to concede, and then express regret for, the fact that his son was a KATUSA, who later studied law in the United States. Why is the GNP so worried about this mental patient, who can’t even get through an interview with the Hankyoreh in one piece, rhetorically speaking? Might I suggest that the perfect strategy for discrediting this guy would be letting him talk as much as possible? If the GNP wants to use Kang to gain political traction against Uri, they justly could scandalize the slippage of academic standards that Kang represents.
If Kang has ever encouraged or participated in violence, that would be another issue, of course. Given the violence of the MacArthur demonstrations, there may well be a case for that, but I don’t hear the GNP making it. They’re talking about the man’s words.
This is a perfect illustration of how the GNP always pulls defeat from the jaws of victory. Just when its opponents are committing rhetorical suicide before a wide-eyed electorate, along comes the GNP to distract everyone from the spectacle and remind everyone of its own authoritarianism and power-hungry overreaching.
HT: The Nomad.