 A talk by Alan MacSimoin to the WSM Dublin 
branch in September 1991

The Korean anarchist Movement

In the 2,000 years of Korean history there 
arose movements fighting for peasants rights 
and for national independence. Within these 
movements there were tendencies that may be 
seen as forerunners of modern anarchism, in 
the same way as we might view the Diggers in 
the English revolution.

In 1894 Japan invaded, under the pretext of 
protecting Korea from China. The struggle 
for national independance became central to 
all radical political activity.

The modern anarchist movement in Korea began 
to take form among the exiles who fled to 
China after the 1919 independence struggle, 
and students & workers who went to Japan. 
This struggle, the 3.1 Movement within which 
anarchists were prominent, involved 2 
million people; 1,500 demonstrations were 
held; 7,500 were killed; 16,000 wounded and 
more than 700 homes and 47 churches 
destroyed.

In the period up to the close of World War 
II the Korean Anarchist Federation has 
identified three stages.

The first stage covered the first half of 
the 1920s and is described by the KAF as the 
gestation period.

In the early years of this century as the 
Japanese ruling class started their 
imperialist drive into other Asian countries 
they also ruthlessly cracked down on any 
opposition at home.  Japanese anarchists 
were to the forefront in anti-imperialist 
agitation. In 1910 Kotoku Shusui, a leading 
Japanese anarchist, was executed for 
treason. The Commoners Newspaper was 
rallying opposition to the Russia-Japan war 
and to the occupation of Korea. With the 
Russian revolutions of 1905 and 1917, the 
rice riot of 1918 and the mass uprising in 
Korea in 1919, the Japanese ruling class was 
worried.

Following the bloody suppression of the 3.1 
Movement and the rise in the level of class 
struggle in Japan itself, the Japanese 
bosses blamed anarchists and Koreans for the 
Tokyo earthquake of 1923. More than 6,000 
Korean workers in Japan were hunted down 
with clubs and bamboo spears. All known 
Japanese and Korean anarchists were 
arrested. Park Yeol and his wife Kaneko 
Fumiko, Korean anarchists, veterans of the 
independence struggle and organisers of the 
Tokyo "Black Workers Society", were 
sentenced to death. Many others were jailed. 
The charge of causing an earthquake may have 
been a bit embarrassing to sections of the 
ruling class so the sentences were commuted 
to life in prison. Kaneko died in jail and 
Park was not released until the end of WWll. 
Many of the Koreans jailed in what became 
known as "the High Treason case" went on to 
become leading activists in the anarchist 
movement in their own country.

The Korean Anarchist Federation in China was 
formed in April 1924.  and published the 
"Korean Revolution Manifesto". It was 
militantly anti-imperialist "we declare that 
the burglar politics of Japan is the enemy 
for our nation's existence and that it is 
our proper right to overthrow the 
imperialist Japan by a revolutionary means".  
It went on to stress the to do more than 
merely exchange rulers, pointing out the 
difference between a political revolution 
and a social revolution. It had no doubts 
about the role of anarchists, it laid 
emphasis on the leading role of the 
anarchists in a revolutionary situation. The 
Federation began to produce papers like 
Recapture and Justice Bulletin.

By 1928 the spread of libertarian politics 
allowed the Korean Anarchists to organise 
the Eastern Anarchist Federation with 
comrades from China, Vietnam, Taiwan and 
Japan - which published a bulletin, Dong-
Bang (The East). The "Manifesto" was adopted 
by the Eastern Federation as its formal 
programme.

The second stage which covered the years 
1925-30 was dominated by the organisation of 
the movement.  Armed with the theory of 
anarchist revolution set out in the 
"Manifesto" and practical experiences drawn 
from the 3.1 movement, the workers 
organisations in Japan and "the High Treason 
case" groups were organised in Seoul, Taegu, 
Pyongyang and other areas. By November 1929 
there had been a huge growth and the Korean 
Anarchist Communist Federation was formed as 
a national organisation. As part of the anti 
Japanese resistance it was a totally 
underground body. This should not lead 
anyone into thinking that it was small or 
lacking in widespread support.

To give some idea of how the movement had 
grown I want to look at how things had 
progressed since the early 1920s. In Kiho 
province the daily newspaper Dong-a Ilbo 
reported in October 1925 that ten members of 
the League of Black Flag had been jailed for 
one year each.  The following year the same 
paper reported that five young workers were 
jailed for putting out a manifesto very 
similar in style and content to the "Korean 
Revolution Manifesto".  In 1929 Dong -a Ilbo 
tells of a secret society of anarchists 
organised by Lee Eun-Song which had one 
hundred members in the town of Icheon in 
Kwangwon province. In that year it 
transpired that the entire membership of the 
Chunju Artists Movement Society were all 
anarchists, such were the names and fronts 
used to throw the Japanese police off the 
scent.  In response to this the death 
penalty was brought in for organising 
societies with the aom of "changing the 
national structure".

In Taegu a League of Truth and Fraternity 
was set up in 1925 by exiles who returned 
from Japan. The Revolutionists League also 
came into being and both were in regular 
contact with the Tokyo Black Youth Society. 
I have also come across anarchist grou s in 
Anui, Mesan, the Changwon Black Friend 
League, the Jeju Island Mutual Aid group. 
The last mentioned used their remoteness 
from central government to organise co-ops 
of farmers and artisans, even a peasants' 
band. Needless to say the organisers quickly 
found they were not that remote and saw the 
inside of a prison cell.

In Kwanseo and Kwanbul province I have found 
mention of at least eight more groups.  
Almost all the groups around the country 
were involved in a mixture of producing 
leaflets & papers, oranising trade unions 
and engaging in resistance to the 
occupation.

By this time we know that most areas could 
boast of an active group.  There were also 
organisations in Manchuria and amongst 
exiles in China and Japan.

 The next stage was the fighting period 
which ran up to 1945.

Among the two million Koreans in Manchuria 
the KAF in Manchuria was able to sink deep 
roots immediately after its formation in 
1929. The Federation's main organiser, Kim 
Jong-Jin, drew up a plan which he put to the 
anti-Japanese guerillas. It covered 
voluntary collectives for farmers, free 
education up to age 18 with adult education 
for those older and arms training for all 
responsible adults. Discussions followed and 
eventually an anarchist plan was agree which 
was described as being "according to the 
free federation principle based upon the 
spontaneous free will of man".

The difficulty that was not really addressed 
was how to deal with the Stalinists who were 
also organising in this region and were 
slandering the anarchists and others as 
"tyrants". The young anarchists around Yu-
Rim wanted to fight ideology with ideology 
and demonstrate the superiority of their 
ideas. The older anti-Japanese guerillas 
around Kim Jwa-Jin (sometimes called the 
Korean Makhno) thought it was enough to 
state their support for anarchism but that 
they could ignore the Stalinists until 
national independence was won because only 
then would real politics come to the 
forefront. Not a lot different from the 
stages theory put forward by elements in 
Sinn Fein!

By August 1929 the anarchists had formed an 
administration in Shinmin (one of the three 
Manchurian provinces). Whether this was a 
government is still a point of contention 
among anarchists.  Organised as the Korean 
People's Association in Manchuria it 
declared its aim as "an independent self-
governing cooperative system of the Korean 
people who assembled their full power to 
save our nation by struggling against 
Japan".  The structure was federal going 
from village meetings to district and area 
conferences. The general association was 
composed of delegates from the districts and 
areas.

The general association set up executive 
departments to deal with agriculture, 
education, propaganda, finance, military 
affairs, social health, youth and general 
affairs. The staff of the departments 
received no more than the average wage.

We would expect that the organisation would 
start at village level and then federate 
upwards. However the EAPM believed that the 
war situation made this impossible to apply 
the principle immediately. In the interim 
they appointed the staffs and appointed them 
from the top down.  Organisation and 
propaganda teams were then sent out to 
agitate for support and for the creation of 
village assemblies and committees. In one 
village a rice mill capable of milling over 
1 million bushels was built to allow the 
local co-op to break from reliance on 
merchants.  Seemingly all these teams 
reported a good response and were made 
welcome wherever they went.

The local administration of the anti-
Japanese fighters in Shimin voluntarily 
dissolved itself and lent its support to 
KAPM.  As the anarchists grew in numbers and 
support the Stalinists and the pro-Japanese 
elements in manchuria felt their own power 
bases threatened.

On January 20th the anarchist general Kim 
Jwa-Jin was assassinated while doing repair 
work on the rice mill I just mentioned. The 
killer escaped but his handler was caught 
and executed.

At a meeting in June in Peking of the KAFC 
it was decided to divert all resources 
outside Korea itself to Manchuria and most 
KAFC members moved to the anarchist zone in 
northern Manchuria.  It should be noted that 
women comrades were active as agitators and 
arms smugglers.

>From late 1930 onwards the Japanese were 
attacking in waves from the South and the
stalinists, supported by the USSR, from the 
North.  In early 1931 the stalinists sent
assassination and kidnapping teams into the 
anarchist zone to murder leading activists. 
They believed that if they wiped out the 
KAFM the KAPM would wither and die. By the 
summer of
1991 many leading anarchists were dead and 
the war on two fronts was devastating the 
region.  It was decided to go underground. 
Anarchist Shimin was no more.

There is much more to be said about activity 
in China and Japan as well as in Korea both
in the years up to the close of the second 
world war, about their attitude towards the
partition of their country, and about their 
position today.  It would take too much time 
to deal with it all.  What should be very 
clear is that anarchism in Asia has a very
real history.  We need more information to 
properly assess its political development,
achievements and failings.  In the meantime 
we can draw strength from the knowledge
that anarchism was, and can be again, a 
major force in the region.

The main source I have used in Ha Ki-Rak's A 
History of the Korean Anarchist Movement
which was published in 1986 by the Korean 
Anarchist Federation.  Apart from being
poorly translated and chronologically 
confusing, it is written from the 
perspective of the more nationalist and 
reformist tendency in the Korean movement.
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