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Anarchism in Korea dates back to the Korean independence movement in Korea under Japanese rule (1910-1945). Korean anarchists federated across their end of the continent, including forming groups on the Japanese mainland and in Manchuria, but their efforts were perforated by regional and world wars.
During the later Joseon period, a number of precursors to anarchism emerged from the works of Korean Neo-Confucianism. Jeong Yak-yong advocated for a type of anarcho-communism called a "village-land system", in which land was held under common ownership, everyone contributes "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs", and the redistribution of income and wealth is carried out between villages. [1] Choe Je-u pursued a humanist and egalitarian philosophy known as "Donghak", which held that "Man is Heaven". In 1894, these egalitarian ideas were put into practice during the Donghak Peasant Revolution. [2]
Japan's occupation of Korea in 1910 encouraged a national liberation movement whose more radical proponents gravitated towards anarchism. [3] Following the 1919 independence struggle led by the March 1st Movement, following and during which 7,500 people were killed, a large number of Koreans emigrated to Manchuria, forming independent communities there.
In 1923, Sin Chaeho released his "Declaration of the Korean Revolution", which cautioned Koreans against replacing one oppressor with another, or becoming a society that would exploit another. He pushed for the revolution to guarantee new freedoms and material improvements, not just the removal of foreign control. [4] The Korean anarchists named their newspaper Talhwan (Reconquest) and advocated for anarcho-communism. The Japanese ruling class took a reactionary view towards anarchists and Koreans, blaming them for an earthquake in Tokyo that same year.
Sin Chaeho joined other Korean anarchists in creating the Eastern Anarchist Federation (EAF) while he was in exile in 1927. The EAF had members across China, Japan, and Vietnam. [5] Anarcho-syndicalists were also active in organizing trade unions in Busan. [6]
Manchuria, in particular, became the breeding ground for the new anarchist movement of Korea, as the short-lived Korean People's Association in Manchuria (KPAM), which was an autonomous anarchist zone in Manchuria, close to the Korean border, declared its formation in 1929. The KPAM was organized on the principles of federalism, a gift economy and mutual aid, and is still regarded as one of the most important developments in Korean anarchism. [7]
Following the end of World War II, Korea was the first region in Asia to see a sizable anarchist movement, given that state communism was present in China and repression of socialist beliefs were widespread in American occupied Japan. While the Korean Anarchist Federation opposed a united national front before the war, during the war, some anarchists joined their exiled government in the fight for independence. Some anarchists encouraged an alliance with the government to protect Korea against foreign invaders, and others continued to advocate for a federation of autonomous units across the country. [5] After the war, workers and peasants began a process of social reconstruction through independent unions, but this process was stunted by the imposition of government from foreign forces (the United States and Soviet Union) in 1948, which led to the Korean War in the 1950s. [8]
Many different groups and individuals have discussed the characteristics of early Korean anarchism, and whether it diverged from what these groups regard as the anarchist ideal, specifically the nationalist and racially motivated tendencies present within groups as well as individuals within the movement. [9] There has been critique from, among others, Dongyoun Hwang and Henry Em, that the traditional Western conception of anarchist ideology is in the way of a full understanding of the group's aims, as well as the belief that many Western anarchists attempt to romanticize the group and its aims. [10] [11] This modern understanding of a multifaceted Korean anarchism, that is not strictly based on the works of traditional anarchist theorists, but also on national independence from the Japanese, is echoed in the contemporary quote from the Korean-Chinese anarchist Sim Yongcheol:
"Korean anarchists, since they were slaves who lost their country, had to rely with affection on nationalism and patriotism and thus had difficulties in practice in discerning which was their main idea and which was their secondary idea. The reason was due to that their enemy was the only one – Japanese imperialism. My life is one that has drifted along with this kind of contradiction inside." [12]
Anarchism is a political philosophy and movement that is against all forms of authority and seeks to abolish the institutions it claims maintain unnecessary coercion and hierarchy, typically including the state and capitalism. Anarchism advocates for the replacement of the state with stateless societies and voluntary free associations. As a historically left-wing movement, this reading of anarchism is placed on the farthest left of the political spectrum, usually described as the libertarian wing of the socialist movement.
Anarchist communism is a political ideology and anarchist school of thought that advocates communism. It calls for the abolition of private property but retention of personal property and collectively-owned items, goods, and services. It supports social ownership of property and the distribution of resources "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs".
Anarchism in the United Kingdom initially developed within the religious dissent movement that began after the Protestant Reformation. Anarchism was first seen among the radical republican elements of the English Civil War and following the Stuart Restoration grew within the fringes of radical Whiggery. The Whig politician Edmund Burke was the first to expound anarchist ideas, which developed as a tendency that influenced the political philosophy of William Godwin, who became the first modern proponent of anarchism with the release of his 1793 book Enquiry Concerning Political Justice.
According to different scholars, the history of anarchism either goes back to ancient and prehistoric ideologies and social structures, or begins in the 19th century as a formal movement. As scholars and anarchist philosophers have held a range of views on what anarchism means, it is difficult to outline its history unambiguously. Some feel anarchism is a distinct, well-defined movement stemming from 19th-century class conflict, while others identify anarchist traits long before the earliest civilisations existed.
The Japanese Anarchist Federation was an anarchist organisation that existed in Japan from 1946 to 1968.
Anarchism and nationalism both emerged in Europe following the French Revolution of 1789 and have a long and durable relationship going back at least to Mikhail Bakunin and his involvement with the pan-Slavic movement prior to his conversion to anarchism. There has been a long history of anarchist involvement with nationalism all over the world as well as with internationalism.
Anarchism in China was a strong intellectual force in the reform and revolutionary movements in the early 20th century. In the years before and just after the overthrow of the Qing dynasty Chinese anarchists insisted that a true revolution could not be political, replacing one government with another, but had to overthrow traditional culture and create new social practices, especially in the family. "Anarchism" was translated into Chinese as 無政府主義 literally, "the doctrine of no government."
Anarchism in Ukraine has its roots in the democratic and egalitarian organization of the Zaporozhian Cossacks, who inhabited the region up until the 18th century. Philosophical anarchism first emerged from the radical movement during the Ukrainian national revival, finding a literary expression in the works of Mykhailo Drahomanov, who was himself inspired by the libertarian socialism of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon. The spread of populist ideas by the Narodniks also lay the groundwork for the adoption of anarchism by Ukraine's working classes, gaining notable circulation in the Jewish communities of the Pale of Settlement.
Anarchism in Ireland has its roots in the stateless organisation of the tuatha in Gaelic Ireland. It first began to emerge from the libertarian socialist tendencies within the Irish republican movement, with anarchist individuals and organisations sprouting out of the resurgent socialist movement during the 1880s, particularly gaining prominence during the time of the Dublin Socialist League.
Post-colonial anarchism is a term used to describe anarchism in an anti-imperialist framework. Whereas traditional anarchism arose from industrialized Western nations—and thus sees history from their perspective—post-colonial anarchism approaches the same principles of anarchism from the perspective of colonized peoples. It is highly critical of the contributions of the established anarchist movement, and seeks to add what it sees as a unique and important perspective. The tendency is strongly influenced by indigenism, anti-state forms of nationalism, and anarchism among ethnic minorities, among other sources.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to anarchism:
Anarchism in Japan began to emerge in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, as Western anarchist literature began to be translated into Japanese. It existed throughout the 20th century in various forms, despite repression by the state that became particularly harsh during the two world wars, and it reached its height in the 1920s with organisations such as Kokuren and Zenkoku Jiren.
Pak Yol was a Korean anarchist and independence activist who was convicted of high treason in Japan for conspiring to attack the Imperial House of Japan and assassinate Emperor Hirohito. His name is also spelled Bak Yeol, and he is also sometimes known by his birth name Pak Jun-sik. In Japanese his name was rendered Boku Retsu. Park was sentenced to death in March 1926, albeit his sentence was commuted to life in prison the following month. He was released from prison by U.S. military occupation authorities in October 1945, following the end of World War II.
Synthesis anarchism, also known as united anarchism, is an organisational principle that seeks unity in diversity, aiming to bring together anarchists of different tendencies into a single federation. Developed mainly by the Russian anarchist Volin and the French anarchist Sébastien Faure, synthesis anarchism was designed to appeal to communists, syndicalists and individualists alike. According to synthesis anarchism, an anarchist federation ought to be heterogeneous and relatively loosely organised, in order to preserve the individual autonomy of its members.
The Korean People's Association in Manchuria was a self-governing autonomous prefecture in Manchuria, populated by two million Korean refugees. Following the Japanese occupation of Korea, many Korean anarchists had fled over the border into Manchuria, where they began organising a network of mutual aid for displaced Koreans in the region. Together with some Korean nationalists, they established the KPAM in order to provide food, education and self-defence to its members. Before long, the association found itself under attack by both Korean communists and Japanese imperialists, who assassinated their leadership. The Japanese invasion of Manchuria put an end to the anarchist experiment, with many of its members fleeing to China in order to fight against the Japanese Empire.
Baek Jeong-gi was a Korean anarchist and independence activist. A participant in the March First Movement, he was attracted to socialism and anarchism while he was a student in Japan, going on to join the Korean anarchist movement after moving to China. There he plotted the assassination of a Japanese consul, but he was arrested before he could make the attempt and died in a Japanese prison.
Anarchism in Malaysia arose from the revolutionary activities of Chinese immigrants in British Malaya, who were the first to construct an organized anarchist movement in the country, reaching its peak during the 1920s. After a campaign of repression by the British authorities, anarchism was supplanted by Bolshevism as the leading revolutionary current, until the resurgence of the anarchist movement during the 1980s, as part of the Malaysian punk scene.
Yi Jeong-gyu known by his pen name Woogwan was a Korean anarchist. He spent much of his youth in China, where anarchists were relatively freer than in occupied Korea, and collaborated with not only Chinese anarchists but also with ones from various countries such as Japan, Taiwan, and Russia. He was one of the pioneers of the Korean anarchist movement in the early 1920s, and one of the most prominent Korean anarchists in China of that period.
Anarchism in Taiwan first developed out of the anti-imperialist resistance to the Empire of Japan, when a number of young Taiwanese nationalists were exposed to anarchism during their studies abroad. Influenced by the anarchist movements in China and Japan, and in close cooperation with a number of Korean anarchists, the Taiwanese anarchist movement reached its height during the 1920s, before being suppressed by 1931.
