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South Korea’s ‘Hostile’ Class

Leaving no stone unturned in its quest to emulate North Korean concepts of social justice, South Korea has announced the first official list of 100  Japanese collaborators whose blood, we can suppose,  will hereby stain three generations of class enemies (from way back in 1904, in some cases!).  Just to make sure the new songbun designations become nice and official, the government sent notices to  said descendants.  Depending on whose report you believe, there are either about 400, about 800, or several thousand of them.  Next,  the government intends to seize their property, but not to worry, it  hasn’t announced any intention of publishing their names.  Yet.  So does anyone suppose that their identities will remain secret if they try to fight the confiscations in court?

No, I am not making this up.  I’m serious.  Really. 

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5 Responses

  1. How long until this happens:

    Two days ago, you Dogbertt, wake up, have your morning coffee and read the paper with breakfast. Half way through you find your fathers name on a list of enemies of the state. You go to work, and are hassled, return home and people are calling you all throughout the night telling you how horrible you are and threatening to kill you. The next day you are fired, you return home to find protesters on your lawn burning Japanese flags and trying to eat your suit, all under police protection. Today, you go to the bank and realize all of your assets have been frozen by the government. You race home and find that your house has been seized while you were out. Later you get a call from the police, your daughter has committed suicide after her classmates learned her grandfather was ‘friendly to the Japanese’ and beat her and harassed her.

    Are you going to tell me that’s justice? What’s your crime exactly? You have the wrong DNA?

    Obviously this is an over dramatized fictional example, but you are essentially arguing it’s proper and morally correct for that to happen. I think that’s wrong, you’ve committed no crime, yet you have to ‘do the time’. What’s worse, this whole thing is unconstitutional to begin with.

    I hold movie rights to the above story, any movie studios may click on my name to contact me 😉

  2. Wow. I was going to check the ROK Constitution, but that’s a humdinger of a lawsuit in any fair and impartial judicial system.

    I wonder if a British court could assert jursidiction.

  3. Seizing property generations later is just wrong, if it says so in a constitution or not. Along the same line of reasoning, I for one would be in the streets if a “tax” for reparations was ever imposed. Normal South Koreans should be opposing this move.

  5. Eh, the last time they did this, someone from Uri got caught with his pants down. This stuff flares up every so often, so you figure it stops after the bloodletting on both sides.