To say that the Korean working class lacked organization or didn't oppose partition is inaccurate.
In 1946 and 1947 South Koreans opposed to the US military government and the repressive Rhee regime launched a national offensive, led at first by railroad workers. Strikes were broken by US army soldiers and the south was the scene of hellish repression (Gabriel Kolko has an excellent chapter on this is The Limits of Power). Leftist and communist-led unions, along with many other citizens' groups, opposed the establishment of separate states, both in the south and also in the north (contrary to what some list-subscribers believe, the Korean CP had several factions until Kim Il Sung consolidated his power during and just after the Korean War; the key communist leader in the south was executed as part of that power play).
In the 1970s, SKorea was under martial law that made it almost impossible to maintain any kind of independent political organization. Unions were a particular target of repression. Those interested may want to look back to 1979, when textile workers (mostly women) sick of state-backed repression took over the HQ of the opposition party led at the time by Kim Young Sam. Park Chung Hee ordered the bldg attacked and a young woman was thrown out the window and killed. That incident let Kim to denounce the US for supporting Park, which in turn led Park to throw Kim out of the assembly, which then led to a huge uprising in the industrial cities of PUsan and Masan that was put down just before Park was assassinated by the head of the KCIA (who was fearful of a revolution breaking out).
To say that worker organization was non-existent simply flies in the face of the truth. Look what happened in 1987 and 1988 once the military shackles were lifted - unions sprouted so fast even the AFL-CIO couldn't keep up.
Koreans are often referred to as the Irish of the Orient for their exuberance and militance. The comnparison is a good one, I think.
TShorrock
On Wed, 28 Jun 2000, Jim heartfield wrote:
> But the Korean working class never had
> its own party to speak of, said nothing about partition (in which case
> the Irish working class was way ahead of them) and yielded up so vast a
> mass of surplus value with little more than an occasional scream of
> pain.
Oh, it was more than a scream of pain. Apparently the family firm which had the rights to produce tear gas was the single most profitable firm in South Korea during the Seventies. The workers did lack organization, it's true, but some of the scenes in the Seoul of the Seventies looked like outtakes of Tetsuo: Iron Man (metal, truncheons, body parts every which way).
-- Dennis