The Controversies on Fascism in Colonial Korea
in the early 1930s
0.
The concept of ¡°Fascism¡± seems
to belong to the most indefinable notions in the world of social sciences.
While Mussolini¡¯s and Hitler¡¯s regimes are commonly referred to as ¡°benchmarks¡±
of fascism, the problems persist in marking clear borders between those
ideologies and modes of political behaviour that predated ¡°classical¡± fascism
and heavily influenced it without fully merging with it, and with marking the
ever vague boundaries between what may be judged as coming closest to the ¡°classic¡±
Italian and German models and what should be possibly categorized as ¡°semi-fascist¡±
or ¡°fascism-influenced¡± regimes and/or movements. It was commonly recognized
already in the 1930s that fascism developed out of the modern European
nationalist tradition, Fichtean ideas on the ¡°national struggles¡± as the
primary content of history and Carlyle¡¯s ¡°hero worship¡± being the intellectual
legacies on which fascists were successfully capitalising.
It is also quite clear that the
nationalist cult of war and war sacrifice dating back to the Napoleonic wars, ¡°militarised
masculinity¡± of the 19th century European middle classes reinforced
by the romantic cult of adventure and the late 19th century youthful
revolt against the bourgeois respectability, as well as the legacies of the ¡°volkish¡±
thought with its emphasis on the ¡°Bund¡± of the males and racism furnishing the ¡°Volk¡±
with a tangible enemy both within and without, all contributed in a variety of
ways to the formation of the distinctive élan
of the ¡°fascist revolutions¡± of the 1920-30s in Central and Southern Europe.
However, it is obvious as well that it will be only too teleological to regard
the 19th century ¡°hero worship¡±, racism, Social Darwinism and the ¡°militarised
masculinity¡± as ¡°fascism in embryo¡± – after all, Britain, the country which
perhaps contributed most into the formation of assorted race-related and Social
Darwinist discourses, did not develop into a fascist regime in the end. It may
be safer to say that, while the late 19th century nationalised
vision of the world laid a fundament of sorts for both ¡°fascists¡± and a variety
of other right-wing movements and regimes of the 20th century, the
maturation of ¡°real¡± fascism and its coming to power depend upon a complex
combination of both domestic and international factors, among which the
failures – both real and perceived - of one¡¯s country in the ¡°survival struggle¡±
for acquiring colonies and resources may be considered the most decisive. Thus,
despite the obvious dissimilarity of the cultural and historical background and
obviously stronger role of the established bureaucracies in comparison with the
fascist movements ¡°from below¡±, war-time Japan still may be classified together
with Germany and Italy as a ¡°have-not¡± nation, which developed the ideologies
and forms of the social mobilisation truly ¡°fascist¡± in content if not always
in name.
However, to which degree the right-wing ideological developments in the early
1930s Korea
– reduced by that point to the status of a Japanese colony and obviously in no
position to independently mobilise itself for a ¡°fight for Lebensraum¡± – may be connected to the world-historical phenomenon
of the 1920-30s ¡°fascist wave¡±?
While it is obvious
that the colonised or semi-colonial periphery of the capitalist world-system
did not provide the needed type of environment for the formation of the regimes
coming close to the ¡°classic fascist¡± model, it is equally obvious that the
ideological fashions of the world-systemic core could be quickly seized upon by
the peripheral elites and sub-elites seeking to further a variety of their own
agendas, often not very much dissimilar to that of the ¡°classical fascists¡±
(rabid anti-Communism is a case in the point).
Of course, inasmuch as the agendas of the various peripheral fascist movements
and regimes were formed both by the
influence of the European examples and precedents and by the concrete local circumstances – Chilean fascists of the
1930s were, for instance, avowedly Catholic and anti-imperialist, in strong
difference with their German and Italian mentors, but otherwise just as fond of
violence, anti-individualism, anti-Marxism and ¡°corporatist state¡± ideas – they
never become the exact copies of their core prototypes, but this, however, does
not necessarily mean the lack of the ideological authenticity on their part. At
least in the case of many Latin American fascist movements and fascism-inspired
¡°corporatist states¡± of the 1930s-1940s, the difference lied rather in socio-economic
circumstances than in the tone of the aggressively militaristic, statist and
emphatically anti-liberal and anti-individualistic ideology.
While European fascism hardly could be a realistic model to closely imitate for
the nationalist anti-colonial movements in the colonies - there is little sense
in attacking liberalism and democracy under the colonial regimes which usually
exclude both anyway, and ¡°nation as the highest and only value¡± may ring hollow
in the places political nations are still to be built – the ¡°fascist spirit¡±
undoubtedly influenced the right-wing mass mobilisation movements in the most politicised
colonies in the 1920s-1930s, India¡¯s Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National
Volunteers¡¯ Union), founded in 1925 with the stated aim ¡°to serve the nation
and its people in the form of God – Mother India¡± being one good example.
In fact, the latter creation of Keshava Baliram
Hedgewar (1889-1940),
being a mass-based grassroots movement with strong emphasis upon the strictly
authoritarian mode of organization and enemy picture of ¡°Muslims¡± as
essentialised ¡°threat¡± against ¡°Indian identity and culture¡±, might, to a
certain degree, fall into the same category as the fascist and
fascist-influenced mass movements of Europe or Latin America of the 1920s-30s,
the limitations put upon its activities by India¡¯s colonial situation
notwithstanding.
However, the case of
Korea¡¯s right-wing
intelligentsia of the 1920s-1930s seems to differ cardinally even from India. While
the – mostly Communist – left made by the early 1930s considerable progress in
penetrating even the rural districts of the country in the form of ¡°red¡±
peasant unions and associations,
the ideological influence of the bourgeois right-wing was relatively limited:
its newspapers and journals were, from 1923-24, calling Gandhi a ¡°saintly hero¡±
(sǒngung) and admiring his ability to
mobilise the population for a disciplined political action,
but they were neither able nor
willing to exercise any comparable influence upon Korea¡¯s own masses. The goal
of many right-wing nationalists was ¡°self-strengthening¡± (sillyǒk yangsǒng), and that made them willing to collaborate with
the colonial masters rather than oppose them as much as the colonialism adapted
a ¡°developmental¡± colour and was seen as an agent of ¡°civilization¡±. Thus,
instead of attempting a political mobilisation of the masses in service of the
anti-colonial cause, the fascism-influenced Korean right-wingers of the early
1930s were more interested in demobilising
them politically – that is, in
checking and counteracting the leftist grassroots movements - and in channelling
the energies of the lower-ranked and/or younger intellectuals (teachers, petty
civil servants, students, etc.) into the field of culture and identity, be
that veneration of Korea¡¯s historical ¡°heroes¡± (Tan¡¯gun, Yi Sunsin, etc.) or
mass literacy campaigns. Unlike the situation during the wartime period
(1937-1945), when the absolute majority of the prominent right-wing
intellectuals, not always completely willingly, had to publicly identify Korean
nation as a part of the greater ¡°Yamato¡± (Japanese) ¡°race¡±, the
fascism-influenced nationalism of the early 1930s still remained ¡°Korean¡±; but
it was formulated in the ways abstract and de-politicised enough not to be
judged ¡°dangerous¡± by the Japanese authorities. The focus of the fascism-influenced
writings was on the ¡°reconstruction¡± of the individual and society, or/and on
the evils of individualism and cosmopolitanism, but not on the political
mobilisation of the Korean nation in any way independent of the Japanese
authorities. In this aspect, the contemporaneous left-wing critics might have
been right in speaking about a ¡°fascism with a colonial deformation¡± – that is,
about an attempt by a hopelessly dependent and weak colonial bourgeoisie to
emulate much stronger capitalist classes of the independent nation-states. As
the Korean fascism of the early 1930s was definitely an intellectual tendency rather than a political or social movement, it possibly will not qualify as a ¡°fascism¡±
in a narrower, classical meaning of the world. But the fascist fashion of the early
1930s is still important: seen with a benefit of hindsight, it brought to many
Korean bourgeois intellectuals a stronger sympathy to the actions of the
extreme nationalists and militarists of Germany, Italy, and Japan, as well as
much stronger hostility to Marxism and Communism, and these attitude were
important in inducing the voluntary cooperation with the wartime Japanese
propaganda of the 1937-1945 period. Then, the injection of the anti-liberal and
anti-individualist values Korea¡¯s
educated society received in the 1930s may have influenced the post-colonial
developments in the society and culture of both North and South Korea.
- The controversies on fascism that swept Europe and reached
Japan very soon after the ¡°March on Rome¡± in October 1922 handed the power
in Italy into the hand of Mussolini, were relatively late to reach
colonial Korea. True, Mussolini¡¯s rise to power was duly reported – the émigré
Tongnip Sinmun, published in
Shanghai by Korea¡¯s nationalist and anti-Japanese ¡°Provisional Government¡±,
duly reported in November 1922 on the ¡°success of Mussolini¡¯s politics of
naked force, characterizing Mussolini¡¯s policies as ¡°extremist¡± and his
party as ¡°extreme right-wing¡±. Among the newspapers inside Korea proper,
Tonga Ilbo was quick to report
on the clashes between the Communist and fascist forces around whole Italy
and particularly in Rome,
and then gave a detailed report on Mussolini¡¯s overtaking of power,
somewhat exaggerating the strength and influence of the fascist forces.
After this, however, most of Italy-related reporting in colonial Korea¡¯s
newspapers was concentrated upon Mussolini¡¯s foreign policy, while the
domestic socio-political situation was being rather overlooked. The
reporting on the moves by the German fascists was very scarce until the
very end of the 1920s.
It does not seem that the significance of the events in Europe,
where the extreme right was rapidly capitalizing on the fears of
Bolshevik-led ¡°world revolution¡±, and traditional democracy was entering a
period of general retreat, was duly understood in the Korean intellectual
circles until the end of the 1920s. Especially the beginning of the
1920s was the time when the rise of the socialist (communist) and
anarchist thought on the more radical flank of the socio-political
spectrum was matched mostly by the heightened interest in democracy and
individualism among more conservative intellectual public. Korea¡¯s
national bourgeoisie and the intellectuals closely attached to it were keenly
aware that they had to present Korea¡¯s image to the world where the
supposedly ¡°democratic¡± and ¡°liberal¡± states of Western Europe and USA had
just won a victory over the Central European empires; and they were
putting sincere hopes upon the democracy proponents in Taishō Japan, some
of whom, like Yoshino Sakuzō (1878-1933), were seriously proposing a sort
of ¡°home rule¡± for the colonized Korean peninsula.
For example, one of the central Protestant activists in Korea at that time
and the man, who was to play an important role in the importation of the
fascist ideas to Korea afterwards, Sin Hǔngu (Cynn, Hugh Heung-wo: 1883-1959), was praising in one of his English writings of the early
1920s, aimed mostly at the Christian public in the USA, the role of Christianity
in Korea in the following terms: ¡°If a man is at
all sincere, he cannot be a Christian and at the same time not be
democratic in spirit. (¡¦)Liberty is there when one is told to gain freedom from self and make
one's righteousness exceed that of those
who fulfil only the letter of the law. (¡¦) Christianity recognizes the personalism of individuals. Man is
not merely a part of a mass of humanity, but he has his own peculiar
personality distinct from any others, and that personality is in the final
analysis solely responsible to the Supreme Being. Every person has his
worth, his rights, and duties. This is a mighty germ for liberalism and
democracy. This helps one to find one's own place in the world scheme of
things, and it compels one to recognize
and respect the personality of others.¡±
Even those on the
right-wing, who continued to adhere to the Social Darwinist collectivist ideals
of the ¡°individual sacrifice for the sake of national/state survival¡±, largely
inherited from the ¡°enlightenment¡± discourses of the 1900s-1910s, were often
carefully balancing their appeals for the strengthening of the collective
cohesion with the paeans to what was counted as liberalism and democracy¡¯s
symbols. For example, Yi Kwangsu¡¯s (1892-1950) seminal Minjok Kaejoron (Treatise on National Regeneration, first published
in Kaebyǒk, May 1922) contrasted the
semi-eternal ¡°longevity¡± of the ¡°collectives¡± (nations, churches, etc.) to the
brief lifespan of the ¡°individuals¡± and exhorted utmost self-sacrifice for the
sake of Korean nation¡¯s ¡°reform and survival¡± – and at the same time idealized
the ¡°national qualities of the Anglo-Saxes¡±, first and foremost their ¡°love of
freedom¡±, and ¡°practical and enterprising spirit¡±. Yi understood ¡°Anglo-Saxon constitutionalism¡±
as a fruit of gradual, non-revolutionary development, fully based upon ¡°pragmatism¡±
and ideally balancing the respect towards ¡°individuals¡¯ privacy¡± with ¡°the
spirit of service towards both states and various communities and voluntary
groups¡±
– in full accordance with the commonplaces of the conservative liberalism of
the day. Social Darwinism remained very much the ¡°hard core¡± of the right-wing
nationalist discourse throughout the 1920s, but it was de rigueur to put it under some liberal dressing. The extreme-right
discourses were not much welcome onto such a milieu – so far. It is not that Korea¡¯s right-wing nationalist ¡°moderates¡±
were not alarmed by the growing popularity of communist and anarchist ideas
among the educated youth and their influences upon the workers¡¯ and peasants¡¯
movements; but in colonial Korea of the 1920s, were the underground communist
cells were thoroughly hunted down by the Japanese police and denied any right
to the lawful public representation anyway, the local bourgeoisie was much less
interested in the militant anti-Communism than its counterparts in many
European countries. In fact, even among the Korean Christians directly
challenged by the communist anti-religious propaganda, the dominant response
was rather interest in the moderate ¡°Christian socialism¡± and ¡°social gospel¡±,
as well as in the middle-of-the-road on the establishment of the basic welfare
provisions for the workers and ¡°cooperation of the capital with the labour¡±,
than any surge in confrontational anti-Communism.
- The
onset of the Great Depression in autumn, 1929, had a shock impact on the
whole yen zone economy, Korea
included. While the impact upon the industrial economy was somewhat
limited in comparison with the events in Europe and USA, the agriculture was hit hardest: gross
domestic product in the agricultural sector in Japan proper declined 12
percent in 1928-1933. In Korea,
the main rice supplier to Japan,
the rice prices dropped by almost 60% during September 1929 – January
1931, to recover fully only by 1935.
This blow to Korea¡¯s rural economy led to an explosive growth in peasants¡¯
resistance – the number of the participants in the tenancy disputes almost
tripled between 1928 and 1930, from 4863 to 13012 persons – and led to the
direct legal intervention of the colonial state into the rural land tenure
relationship, the first ¡°Tenancy Regulation Law¡± being promulgated by the Government-General
as early as in December 1932.
Activist and interventionist, rather than liberal and democratic state,
was now high on the agenda in Korea. For the Japanese industrial and financial
sectors, direct imperial expansion into China was one of the solutions
to the perils of worldwide crisis – a solution, which was also in
accordance with the general trend towards the establishment of the closed
regional economical blocks. During the five years after the puppet ¡°Manzhouguo¡° state
was established in north-eastern China in February 1932, the Japanese
investment there totalled 1,2 billion yen – a figure close to the 1,75
billion yen invested into the region by the Japanese capitalists during
the 25 years period before the aggression. The aggression against China profited the business community on
the Korean peninsula as well: the exports from Korea
to Manchuria increased ten times during
1929-1939. The Japanese entrepreneurs, who dominated in the majority of
capital and technology-intensive sectors in Korea, profited most, but some
of the native industrialists, for example, brothers Kim Sŏngsu and Kim Yŏnsu,
the majority shareholders both in the Tonga
Ilbo, and Kyŏngsŏng Pangjik
textile company, were able to supply their production in large quantities
into the occupied parts of China as well.
In the 1930s, Korea
was rapidly industrializing, and this industrialization was to a large
degree driven by the war-generated demand: the share of the war-related
industrial goods in the overall Korean production jumped from 9% in 1930
to 31% in 1940. While the open favouritism towards Japan¡¯s own metropolitan big capital shown
by the colonial state¡¯s developmentalist policies in Korea in the 1930s, posed a problem for Korea¡¯s
industrialists, the activist militarized state bent on outward expansion
was also beneficial for them as well. In addition to providing further
opportunities for the industrial expansion, trade inside the yen zone, and
investment, the militarist state was also seen as the provider of
stability – bulwark against the discontent from beneath and against the ¡°Soviet
communist threat¡± outside. As the pace of the Soviet industrialization and
militarization was well covered in the Korean press,
the perceptions of the ¡°Soviet threat¡± in the 1930s differed sufficiently
from the more relaxed attitude of the 1920s. As a result of all these
interrelated developments, ¡°fascism¡± started to be viewed with much deeper
interest by the right-wing intellectuals in Korea from 1929 onward, and
this interest was in many cases largely favourable.
One of the first
among Korea¡¯s conservative Protestant leaders to turn his attention towards the
events in Italy and to interpret them in a sympathetic light was Yun Ch¡¯iho
(1865-1945) – one of the first Koreans to receive regular American university
education and to accept the Social Darwinist ¡°might is right¡± thesis in a
peculiar combination with the Christian beliefs.
On having read Mussolini¡¯s My Autobiography
in the beginning of 1929, Yun Ch¡¯ho wrote in the diary he kept in English (February
11, 1929): ¡°What an
ability, what an integrity, what a common sense, what an energy that man must
have! Not only Italy
but China,
Russia,
India
and Korea
desperately need Mussolini
to deliver them from the abominations of sentimental internationalism, bestial
Bolshevism, sickening Socialism. But a Mussolini is possible only among a war-like
race, hence he is an impossible article in Korea. By the way his
autobiography reads like an enlarged Nehemiah with modern background and modern
problems.¡±
Yun¡¯s fascination with Mussolini was seemingly gradually cooling down, as he
was learning more about more oppressive sides of Italian strongman¡¯s internal
policies, but, true to his Social Darwinist beliefs, Yun was ready to defend
Mussolini¡¯s external aggressions as late as in summer 1935: ¡°Italy is determined to Koreanize or
Manchurianize Ethiopia.
Mussolini is sending troops, airplanes etc. to Eritria to be ready to bounce
upon the black kingdom to make it a protectorate. That race or nation which
refuses or fails to adapt itself to the changing conditions of the world so as
to make itself strong enough to defend its rights - as Japan has done - that race or nation simply
invites to be Koreanized or Manchurianized. Why blame Italy? If she doesn't annex Ethiopia
some other Power will do it.¡± (July 9, 1935).
Approving attitude towards the Japanese invasion of Manchuria easily translated
into an approval to the invasion of Ethiopia based upon Yun¡¯s long-term
favourite, the ¡°survival of the fittest¡± thesis as applied to the human
societies.
While both ¡°Hitler¡±
and ¡°Mussolini¡± were synonyms for ¡°dictator¡± in Yun¡¯s diary – and the
dictatorship was understood as somewhat unpleasant, but at the same time inescapable
phenomenon in the societal life – the attitude taken by Yun towards Hitler was
markedly much more critical, as Hitler¡¯s incomparably more ambitious plans of
military conquest were judged by Yun to be too reckless and dangerous for the
whole non-communist world in the face of the ¡°communist threat¡±. Already the first mention of Hitler in
Yun¡¯s diary (May 16, 1933) was in strongly disapproving tone:
¡°Papers report that in Berlin, truck-loads of
un-German books
were burnt at the great public squares. The famous Einstein has been deprived
of his citizenship and his property confiscated because he happens to be a Jew.
Incredible! Nearly 23 centuries ago the great Emperor of a unified China -òÚã·üÕ (sic – V.T.) - burned libraries of Confucian classics and
butchered Confucian scholars, hoping thereby he could perpetuate his dynasty to
10 thousand generations. His dynasty came to an end soon after his death. After
annexation of Korea by Japan, the new masters of Korea cut car loads of anti-Japanese or
patriotic books and pamphlets into bits to throw them all over the muddy
streets of Seoul.
That didn't and hasn't and will never make Koreans love Japan any better. Nor will Hitler
and his crowd succeed in eradicating un-German thought in the Jewish heart or
in the German heart either, by burning all the books in Germany. On the meanness of human
nature¡±
It looks as if German fascists¡¯ pronounced anti-intellectualism was frightening
enough for Yun Ch¡¯iho as an accomplished, self-conscious intellectual. The
Fascist treatment of the Jews, in its turn, reminded Yun about Koreans¡¯ own
fate. The fate of the stateless Jews was often compared to the Koreans¡¯ own
state of the colonial captivity by many colonial Christian intellectuals, Yun
himself included.
However, Yun¡¯s deeply-felt aversion towards Hitler – ¡°modern times¡¯ emperor Qin
Shi Huang¡±, ¡°hungry wolf¡±, ¡°mad dog¡± and ¡°man-slaughterer¡± – notwithstanding,
his hostility towards what he routinely calls ¡°beastly Russia¡± or ¡°beastly Bolshevism¡±
seems to have been much deeper and stronger. While Yun compares Hitler¡¯s and
Stalin¡¯s ¡°state terrorism¡± and ¡°totalitarian statehood¡±, it is Stalin¡¯s Russia
he wishes to see vanquished first and foremost: ¡°When one thinks or rather knows what Russia
has been doing in the last 50 years, he can't help wishing some great power
might give the bloody Bolshevists a sound and crushing beating. As long as
Russia goes unpunished there will be no peace in the East¡± (May 4,
1938)
It is quite obvious here that Yun¡¯s class hostility towards ¡°barbarian
Bolshevism¡± – that is, what may be defined as ¡°anti-Communism¡± in the classical
sense of the word – overlaps here with older resentments towards what Yun
perceived as Russia¡¯s aggressive bullying of Korean monarchy between 1896-1904.
While Hitler-Stalin¡¯s August 23, 1939 ¡°Non-aggression Pact¡± alerted Yun to the ¡°increased
Russian threat towards Japan¡±
(August 26, 1939),
the news on Hitler¡¯s aggression against USSR
again led him to think that the Soviet, and not German victory is the real
danger for Japan and Korea: ¡°Everybody is startled by the news that
Hitler began invading Russia
this morning. Another treaty - the Russo-German Mutual Non-aggression Agreement - torn to scraps. Thus the biggest
and cruelest Robber-Barons of the 20th Century have flown at each other's
throat. The world may be better off if both of them do each other up for good.
I have no love for either of them except the fear that the defeat of Hitler may
affect Japan
adversely. That makes me wish he would succeed in giving a crushing blow to
Bolshevism, the greatest curse humanity has seen¡± (June 22, 1941).
While in the first Yun apparently
believed that the German blitzkrieg was to succeed and considered any resistance
to Hitler futile,
the German defeat in Stalingrad frightened him with a perspective of a future ¡°Stalin¡¯s
attack¡± against Japan: ¡°What most concerns us Koreans is
what will Stalin do toward Japan.
It is probable that America
and England are urging Russia to attack Japan. On the other hand Hitler and
Mussolini must be urging Japan
yields to the demands of her allies. Korea will be the first and the
greatest suffer¡± (February 9, 1943). Since ¡°Bolshevik Russia¡± topped Yun¡¯s
personal hierarchy of world¡¯s political ¡°demons¡±, he was waiting then for
Hitler¡¯s defeat in anguish, rightfully enough predicting for himself that a
victory over Germany would be followed by a Soviet march upon Imperial Japan,
and then the fortunes of Korea¡¯s dominant class he himself belonged to were
bound to decline. Korea¡¯s
foremost senior Protestant intellectual of the 1930s and early 1940s, Yun seems
to have sincerely abhorred what he termed for himself ¡°Hitler¡¯s totalitarian
rule¡± and ¡°war-for-the-war-sake policy¡± – but those ¡°anti-totalitarian¡±
sentiments were essentially stifled by almost paranoid anti-communism, Yun¡¯s
most visceral political feeling. Even after the Allied landing in Calabria and
Italy¡¯s official surrender, Yun revealed in his diary (September 10, 1943) his
continuing admiration of Mussolini, ¡°great and good man who saved Italy from
Bolshevism¡± while marking disapproval with Italian fascism¡¯s ¡°excessive¡±
aspirations to the conquests abroad.
¡°Salvation from Bolshevism¡± was seemingly a good enough legitimation for a
fascist state of the Italian type in Yun¡¯s eyes.
Yun¡¯s diary is a
private record; while it allows us an uncommon opportunity to observe the
changes in the internal world of one of the most prominent Korean intellectuals
of the first half of the 20th century, it certainly did not exert
any influence on the contemporaries, although Yun¡¯s public anti-communist
posture and tendency to view what he believed were ¡°milder¡± forms of the
capitalist totalitarianism as a ¡°lesser evil¡± compared to ¡°Bolshevism¡± undoubtedly
did become a reference point for his own – conservative Protestant – milieu. However,
much more cardinal influence on the attitudes of the educated society was being
exerted by the newspapers, especially by Tonga
Ilbo – which expanded its size to 10 pages format by September 1933, printed
31.666 copies daily by 1936
and was indeed a profitable capitalist enterprise, with net profits totalling
6962 yen for the financial year 1933 and 5087 yen for the financial year 1934.
Tonga Ilbo¡¯s editorials may be
considered a good reflection of what Korea¡¯s fledgling capitalist class,
as represented by Tonga Ilbo¡¯s
shareholders, wished to make into society¡¯s hegemonic ideology in Gramscian
terms. A cursory analysis of the content of these editorials for the early
1930s shows that in Korea, as elsewhere, the Depression shook to its very
grounds the belief in the possibility of crisis-free, stable development of
capitalism. The 1920s liberal faith was now in shambles – the very paragon of
the ¡°free-loving Anglo-Saxon spirit¡± and ¡°personalism of the individuals¡±
eulogised earlier by Yi Kwangsu and Sin Hǔngu respectively, the USA, were now
exactly in the epicentre of the worldwide economical and social storm. A
December 17, 1930 editorial in Tonga Ilbo
– judged to be too radical and prohibited from being printed by the Japanese
sensors – asked, for example, why the economy of a World War victor, USA, was
being as badly damaged by the crisis as the economy of the vanquished,
reparations-ridden Germany, questioned the long-term sustainability of the
relatively robust economical performance in France, and emphasized that the
only industrial country which had the number of the unemployed reduced and not
increased, was the USSR, with its planned economy.
Tonga Ilbo, edited by Song Chinu (1890-1945) – a relatively
liberal and thoroughly business-minded graduate of Meiji University, who even
showed some sympathetic interest towards the socialist trends in the 1920s
– was not going, of course, to accept the decline and fall of the liberal
capitalism as terminal and irreversible. After having seen Adolf Hitler becoming
Germany¡¯s Chancellor and Reichstag being put on fire, Tonga Ilbo entitled its March 29, 1933 editorial ¡°Dictatorship and
Emergency¡± (¡°Tokchae wa pisangsi¡±) and asserted there that, although the
worldwide decline of parliamentarism was caused by its own ¡°corruption and
inherent contradictions¡±, the contradictions are also immanent to the
dictatorial rule as well – it might continue for some time, driven by the
economical dislocations caused by the Depression, but it was not going to last
forever. Tonga
Ilbo was even shocked enough by Hitler¡¯s officially proclaimed anti-Semitism
to publish an editorial (September 3, 1933) strongly sympathetic to the Jewish
cause, entitled ¡°Plight of the Jews¡± (¡°Yut¡¯aein ǔi piae¡±), which, while
ascribing the ¡°pitiful situation¡± of the persecuted Jewish people to the
absence of a Jewish state, wisely cautioned also that British-sponsored mass
migration of the European Jews into Palestine might in the end provoke bitter
hostility on the part of the Arab population and lead to ¡°tragic enmity¡±
between two ¡°weaker peoples¡±, Jews and Arabs.
But with the
beginning of the Japanese aggression in north-eastern China and general retreat of the
liberalism in the metropolitan Japanese politics, Tonga Ilbo as well began a gradual revision of its erstwhile
editorial line. From 1931 onward, many of its editorials on more or less
abstract subjects started to closely resemble a sort of Confucianized Social
Darwinism – a moralistic interpretation of the ¡°might is right¡± doctrine, which
sees ¡°ethical strength¡± as an element of ¡°might¡± – that was popular in the ¡°enlightenment¡±
press and journals in the 1900s-1910s. February 1, 1932 editorial, ¡°Source of
strength¡± (¡°Yǒk ǔi him¡±), stated, for example, that, together with various
kinds of ¡°practical strength¡±, such as physical strength or military might, the
¡°moral strength¡± (todǒngnyǒk –
loyalty to a group, truthfulness to one¡¯s principles, etc.) is an important
component of the general ¡°vital force¡± (saengmyǒngnyǒk)
that supposedly sustains both individuals and nations.
While September 3, 1932 editorial, ¡°Egoism and Social Consciousness¡± (¡°Igijuǔi
wa sahoe ǔisik¡±), castigated Koreans for supposedly resembling Chinese and Jews
in being too egoistic and uninterested in the common well-being, the September
8, 1932 editorial, ¡°Struggle for survival and nation¡± (¡°Saengjon kyǒngjaeng kwa
minjok¡±), bluntly asserted that Kropotkin¡¯s ideas on the mutual aid as the
driving force beyond evolution were completely wrong, that the Social Darwinist
rule of the ¡°survival of the fittest¡± remains ¡°the scientific truth¡±, and that
every Korean should contribute to the cause of ¡°national survival¡± by, for
example, strengthening his or her muscles or getting rich ¡°in the name of the
nation¡±.
By the end of 1932, crudely Social
Darwinist and racist content of some editorials started to closely resemble the
topics developed by the extreme right-wingers in contemporaneous Europe. While December 26, 1932 editorial, pompously
entitled ¡°Life and the Guiding Principle¡± (¡°Saenghwal kwa chido wǒlli¡±),
contrasted ¡°civilized European and Asian peoples¡± and the ¡°uncivilized others¡±
and assured the readers that the difference between the former and the latter, ¡°partly
conditioned by the hereditary discrepancy in abilities, partly by the
variations in the levels of those races¡¯ culture¡±, lied in the degree ¡°the
whole life of the nation¡± was controlled by a uniform set of ¡°guiding
principles¡±, the next, December 27, editorial, ¡°The Guiding Principles of the
Korean Nation¡± (¡°Chosǒn Minjok ǔi chido wǒlli¡±), proposed that the Koreans
return to the ¡°ancient hwarang spirit
of the sacrifice in the name of the state, resembling Japan¡¯s bushido¡±, eschew their familial
attachments and wholeheartedly put themselves in the service of the ¡°big I¡± –
that is, the nation.
While Tonga Ilbo¡¯s editorializing on
the international topics retained still a degree of the 1920s liberal leanings,
its exhortations towards ¡°Korean people¡± were gradually returning to the
1900-1910s Social Darwinist formulae and then going even further, towards
increased emphasis upon ¡°racial differences¡± and the cult of ¡°total and
complete self-sacrifice in nation¡¯s name¡±. And finally, in March 29, 1934 editorial
tellingly entitled ¡°What Comes after Liberalism¡± (¡°Chayujuǔi ǔi twi e ol cha¡±),
US president Roosevelt was simultaneously called ¡°dictatorial¡± and ¡°not enough dictatorial
to subdue the Depression¡± and liberalism in both economy and political life was
effectively pronounced dead for good.
After this, Tonga Ilbo editorials occasionally showed sympathy with Ethiopia¡¯s
desperate attempts to put resistance against Italian invasion (May 4, 1936) and
with the persecuted Jews of Europe¡¯s fascist dictatorships (September 4, 1938),
but the advent of ¡°post-liberal¡± political and social institutions and
doctrines was more or less accepted as fait accompli, and at many cases
cheered. After Japan began a full-scale invasion of China on July 7, 1937, Tonga Ilbo, threatened with heavy
sanctions for any insubordination, began soon calling Japanese army ¡°our army¡±
(agun) and from late July practically
turned into a propagandist tool of the Japanese administrative and military
machine.
While Yun Ch¡¯iho was
deeply appalled by Hitler¡¯s anti-intellectualism and ultimately questioned the
sanity of his militaristic ambitions, and the editorial writers of Tonga Ilbo in the 1930s were still
showing some sympathy to the plight of Jews or Ethiopians, some right-wing
ideologues of the colonial Korea went much further in identifying themselves
with the extreme right trends of contemporaneous Europe. The most famous name
on the list of colonial Korea¡¯s self-styled ¡°fascist theoreticians¡± is
unquestionably that of Yi Kwangsu – who entered Tonga Ilbo as an irregular staff member in May 1923, served there
as managing editor between April 1925 and October 1927 and then again between
December 1929 and August 1933 (he then was headhunted to Chosǒn Ilbo, to become a vice-director there).
In fact, many of Tonga Ilbo editorials of the early 1930s
mentioned above – such as ¡°Life and the Guiding Principle¡± or ¡°The Guiding
Principles of the Korean Nation¡± – vividly show the imprint of Yi Kwangsu¡¯s benchmark
Social Darwinist nationalism and his cult of ancient Korea¡¯s ¡°war-like and manly spirit¡±.
It is not fully implausible that some of these pieces were penned by Yi Kwangsu
himself. However, in his lengthier treatises published in the journals of opinion,
as well as in some literary works of the 1920s and early 1930s, Yi Kwangsu articulated
his views on the importance of ¡°leadership¡±, ¡°virtues of obedience¡±, ¡°dangers
of communism¡± and so on much clearer and often in more extreme form that it was
possible in brief, unsigned editorials of a newspaper which pretended to be the
ideological representative of the whole educated Korea and thus expected some
measure of balance of its editorial scribes. Even in the beginning of the
1920s, when he still was seemingly considering the ¡°Anglo-Saxon¡± liberal democracies
to be the ideals of ¡°civilized statehood¡±, the basics of his worldview remained
solidly Social Darwinist, and were continuously strengthened by the effects of
further study of the foreign Social Darwinist ideologues. Among Yi¡¯s particular
favourites in the early 1920s was Gustave Le Bon (1841-1931): the first part of
the 4th chapter of his 1895 classic, La psychologie des foules, was translated by Yi, obviously from the 1915 Japanese translation, as
Yi never learned French and, having studied for several years in Tokyo, mastered Japanese incomparably
better than English. The tone of Yi¡¯s writings in the early 1920s indicates
also his familiarity with another book by Le Bon available in a Japanese translation
by that time, namely La revolution francaise et la psychologie des revolutions. Le Bon, an elitist Social
Darwinist, a staunch believer in the ¡°racial minds¡± and different ¡°racial
qualities¡± of different peoples and a life-long opponent of any social or
political movements from below, ascribed much of the ¡°violence¡± of French Revolution
to what he considered the ¡°savage¡±, ¡°uncivilized¡± nature of the ¡°crowd¡±, namely
its ¡°gullibility¡± and its tendency to be ¡°manipulated by power-hungry
demagogues¡±.
Pretty much as Le Bon himself, Yi Kwangsu applied this ¡°crowd manipulation¡±
theory, first and foremost, to the socialist movement. While in his writings of
the early 1920s Yi Kwangsu – in common with a good number of ¡°moderate¡±
nationalist right-wingers – mostly scolded the left-wingers for ¡°incitement to
reckless violence¡±, by
the beginning of the 1930s his anti-communism acquired a distinct nationalistic
flavour. In an article on the basic tasks of the ¡°national movement¡± written in
the wake of the Japanese aggression in Manchuria, Yi begins with pouring scorn
upon the ¡°Marxists¡± – those ¡°people of slavish ideas¡± who ¡°avoid using the very
word ¡®nation¡¯ and worship Soviet Russia just as [Korean Neo-Confucians] before
them called Ming China their fatherland¡±. Yi asserted that he was prepared, in
principle, to tolerate the ¡°people of ideas¡± just as he tolerated various
universalistic religions (Buddhism, Christianity) once they are ¡°Koreanized¡±
enough, but on one condition, namely that they acknowledge the primacy of
nation – which Yi termed ¡°the eternal entity¡±. Otherwise, they were becoming ¡°sinners
to their nation¡±. In addition to this broadside against ¡°Marxist flunkeys of
the Soviet state¡±, Yi also proposed a positive programme which obviously was
meant to diminish the ¡°communist influence¡± upon the Korean masses – mainly the
literacy campaigns, the ¡°enlightenment movement¡± by the ¡°national
intelligentsia¡± centered upon ¡°educating the people¡± into ¡°loving the whole of
Korean nation more than oneself¡± and ¡°sacrifice oneself for the community¡±, and
organization of various (financial, consumer, etc.) cooperatives. This part was largely built upon the
experiences of the YMCA-sponsored ¡°rural reconstruction movement¡±, launched in
1925 and focused, besides the educational projects, especially on spreading the
small-scale mutual credit societies and consumer cooperatives among the poorer
peasant with no recourse to mainstream banking and credit system. Interestingly
enough, the undisputed leader of this movement, Sin Hǔngu, still outwardly a
liberal by the beginning of Japan¡¯s aggression in Manchuria, was to become one
of Korea¡¯s ¡°Christian fascist¡± organizers in the mid-1930s.
What was the theoretical
background of Yi Kwangsu¡¯s passionate anti-communism? Having become a committed
Social Darwinist of a ¡°statist¡± (state-nationalist) sort, a believer in morals
being ¡°obligations forced by the strong upon the weak¡± and sameness of the ¡°destiny
of the state¡± and the ¡°destiny of the individuals belonging to it¡± – once state
is either weak or gone, the individuals are doomed in the international
Darwinian jungles – already in the early 1910s, Yi
was influenced by An Ch¡¯angho¡¯s (1878-1938) beliefs in ¡°gradual development of
the national strength¡± and ¡°moral regeneration of the Koreans¡± while working
for the Shanghai Provisional Government in 1919-1921, and counted himself among
An¡¯s disciples until the very end of his life, organizing, among other things,
his and An¡¯s fellow north-eastern nationalist intellectuals into ¡°Moral
Cultivation Society¡± (Suyang tonguhoe,
launched on January 7, 1926 in Yi¡¯s Seoul house), which functioned as a
domestic branch of An¡¯s mainly USA-based Hǔngsadan (¡°Young Korea Academy¡±). Positioning himself as a loyal
propagandist and populariser of An¡¯s national vision, Yi showed the keenest
interest in its ethical side and defined An¡¯s ethics as that of full, totally
self-sacrificial and non-selfish devotion to the nation. In an open letter to
An he exhorted Koreans to eschew personal enmities and ¡°passionately love¡± each
other, love their jobs and completely commit themselves to their chosen field
of work, and also love the Korean nation as a whole and put the
self-sacrificial service to the nation above ¡°egoistic individualism¡±. As ¡°love to the nation, love to the
nationals¡± became Yi¡¯s motto, the ¡°materialists¡± were derisively referred to as
those who ¡°view the issue of stomach as the whole content of the issue of the
human life¡±
and the class struggle interpreted as an egoistic assertion of the group
interests over the national interests, that is, as essentially a continuation
of the ¡°egoistic individualism¡±.
On the opposite side of what
he recognized only as despicably mundane demands for better living conditions,
he found an ¡°ideal¡± world of love, ¡°beauty¡±, ¡°fascination¡± and ¡°deep excitement¡±
(kamdong) – the values, authentic
literature, in his opinion, had to cling to. And
the most exciting sight, the highest expression of ¡°love¡± and ethical beauty
was for him an obedient, hard-working cow, who ¡°takes its heavy yoke for the
sake of the humans and tills the fields for them, just as a lofty patriot
or a man of religion sacrificing themselves for the sake of the humanity (¡¦.),
and after being slaughtered, gives its flesh and blood to its loved ones, on
the highest level of sanctity¡±
In the very end, ¡°love¡± and the ¡°lofty ideals¡± inside the overall nationalist
framework translate themselves into a consistent animosity towards any attempts
to articulate the demands on any level either below or above the sacrosanct national
(personal, class, or universal), and into a cult of ¡°ultimate sacrifice¡± –
highly aestheticised ideal of life and death for the sake of nation, which by
the beginning of the 1930s was for Yi more or less equivalent with the ¡°Korean
bloodline¡± (chosǒn hyǒlt¡¯ong) and the
membership in the Korean language community, as well as with the subjective ¡°loyalty
to the Korean people¡±. By emphasizing An Ch¡¯angho¡¯s ideas on ¡°unity
and sacrifice¡± and further aestheticising and romanticising the ¡°love-induced sacrifice
for the sake of nation¡±, Yi could achieve two objectives simultaneously. First,
the appeal to the ¡°national¡± could legitimise the market-driven activities by
Yi – he himself confessed that one of the reasons he continued writing for so
long, was the need to earn his leaving
- and his employers and sponsors in Koreaa¡¯s biggest commercial newspapers, as business
was elevated in An¡¯s and Yi¡¯s ideological schemes from simple profit-making
into a vehicle for ¡°cultivating the national strength¡± and ¡°realising the
mutual love between the nationals¡±. In this respect, Yi¡¯s musings on ¡°love and
sacrifice¡± may be considered a seed of nascent Korean capitalism¡¯s hegemonic
ideology. Second, Social Darwinist belief in the ruthless law of the ¡°survival
of the fitness¡± could acquire a sort of ¡°human face¡± once the ¡°competition for
survival¡± was to happen between the states and nations, not between private
individuals, who, on the contrary, had to develop now high ethical qualities,
such as ¡°sacrificial spirit¡±, in order to ensure not simply their personal
survival, but the ¡°life and glory¡± of their national communities. In this way,
Yi¡¯s ethics and aesthetics of ¡°love and sacrifice¡± were essentially an attempt
to build up a capitalist modernity project without capitalist market ethics –
in fact, a one in which profit motive would be reliably veiled by the pathos of
the semi-religious nationalist rhetoric. Such an attempt was structurally
similar to the projects of the contemporaneous European extreme right, and
closely paralleled – being also partly influenced by – the visions of the ¡°national
community¡± of the Japanese right-wing of the 1920s and early 1930s.
Yi¡¯s eugenic musings
on the necessity to ¡°improve the secondary qualities of the Korean people¡±, as
well as his particular combination of elitarian top-down view of ¡°enlightenment¡±
and statist nationalistic disdain for the individual or class rights and
interests sparked manifold controversies from the early 1920s, the left being,
naturally enough, in the vanguard of Yi¡¯s critics. For one example, well-known
younger poet with strong communist – in the mid-1920s, even somewhat
ultra-leftist - leanings, Pak Yǒnghǔi (1901-?), who was one of the KAPF (Korea Artista Proleta Federatio- Korean Federation
of the Proletarian Artists) founding members in 1925, accused Yi in 1926 of
formulating ¡°Korean-ness¡± (chosǒnjǒgin kǒt)
in a prejudiced way – overemphasizing the ¡°effeminate¡±, defeatist qualities of
the Korean past and purposefully overlooking the class struggles of Korea¡¯s
present. Yi¡¯s emphasis upon ¡°tragic beauty of Korea¡±, ¡°Korean sadness¡± and his
interest in the fin de siècle motives,
declared Pak, is nothing more than just a reflection of the decadent bourgeois
desires.
While Pak¡¯s application of the class theory to the literary criticism seems to
be too simplistic in many ways, his comments on highly subjective and
artificial nature of what Yi constructed as ¡°Korean-ness¡± are undoubtedly worth
of being taken seriously, even by the contemporary researchers. Undaunted by criticism and definitely
being aware about the general turn to the right in the post-Depression Japanese
and world politics, Yi published in July 1931 a brief, but very meaningful
piece on the question of ¡°leadership¡± – a short semi-academic treatise in form,
and a heavily ideological proposal to reshape colonial Korea¡¯s right-wing
politics in content. Viewing the whole historical process as a story of
essentially collective life and struggle, Yi contended that every meaningful
organization – be it a political party or church, for example – should have a
leader who would serve as ¡°embodiment¡± of the given organisation¡¯s ¡°basic
doctrines¡±, and who would earn the unchallenged loyalty of the members by the ¡°highest
moral qualities¡± – ¡°bravery¡± and ¡°ability to calmly accept death¡± being among
the most cardinal ¡°virtues of the leader¡±. The rank-and-file members, in turn,
should repay the leader¡¯s self-sacrificial leadership by ¡°obeying the leader,
helping the leader and loving the leader¡±, their ¡°joyful obedience¡± (yǒlbok) being regarded as the major
feature of the healthy collective life. The position of the leader in an
organization corresponded, according to Yi, to the position of the ¡°leading
group¡± in relation to the whole of nation. While, together with the dictatorial
parties – Fascists in Italy and the Communist Party in the USSR – America¡¯s
Republicans and Democrats were also on Yi¡¯s list of ¡°leading groups¡± of the
world, he also proposed that in case
a nation had two or more ¡°leading groups¡±, the strongest among them was
to be charged with the task of ¡°national leadership¡±. Quite customarily for Yi,
Koreans were mercilessly accused of inability to select right leaders and
follow them, and all-Korean confederation of left- and right-wing groups, Sin¡¯ganhoe, which just had disbanded
itself in May 1931, was reprimanded for its presumed lack of authoritative leader
and consistent theory.
It is well-known that, unlike some of his colleagues from the ¡°Moral Cultivation Society¡± (Suyang
tonguhoe) – notably, ambitious Columbia University PhD Cho Pyǒngok (1894-1960),
who was to become one of the most prominent oppositional politicians in South
Korea in the 1950s and a candidate for South Korean presidency in 1960 – Yi
Kwangsu and other members of Tonga Ilbo¡¯s
¡°inner circle¡± did not participate in Sin¡¯ganhoe activities and viewed rather negatively the
cooperation with the left even inside a ¡°pan-Korean organization for national
self-expression¡± framework,
so the criticism of Sin¡¯ganhoe is
hardly surprising. It looks as if Yi either viewed his own organization, the ¡°Moral Cultivation Society¡± (Suyang
tonguhoe), as a prototype of the future ¡°leading group¡± of the Korean
nation and was thinking of An Ch¡¯angho and himself, as An¡¯s best-known domestic
disciple, as candidates for the ¡°national leadership¡±, or was exhorting Korea¡¯s
nationalist right to build a sort of unified pan-national organization on Sin¡¯ganhoe¡¯s ruins.
Yi¡¯s ¡°leaderism¡±
provoked immediate critical response on the left: in two months, Korea¡¯s veteran
communist theoretician Kim Myǒngsik (1891-1943), Yi¡¯s fellow Waseda alumnus
(Kim entered Waseda in 1915, Yi – in 1916), launched a broadside against Yi.
Having drawn a strict distinction between ¡°leadership¡± (chido) as authority which is voluntarily followed by the members of
the same class sharing the same interests as their leader, and ¡°rule¡± (chibae) being violently imposed by one
class upon another, he maintained that to speak of ¡°national leadership¡± is a
self-contradiction – since ¡°nation¡± consists of the ruling classes and those
ruled by them, the submission of the latter to the former never can be fully
voluntarily, but always requires the element of coercion. In Kim¡¯s opinion, Yi¡¯s
phrases on ¡°national leadership¡± simply veiled the intention of Korea¡¯s
ruling groups – ¡°the minority of large landowners, bureaucrats, men of free
professions, (¡¦.) and urban bourgeoisie¡± – to forcibly impose their will upon
the majority of the dominated. Defining the nationalists who chose to
participate in Sin¡¯ganhoe as Korea¡¯s ¡°Jacobins¡±,
Kim called Yi a ¡°Girondist¡±, and reminded him, that, on the bourgeois part of
the political spectrum, those to the right of the Jacobins may also be
classified, under certain circumstances, as ¡°white reactionaries¡±. On a
personal level, Yi was charged with trying to become both ¡°Shakespeare¡± and ¡°Caesar¡±
– that is, to combine literary work with a particularly dictatorial sort of
politics. On having been confronted with a public
retort by Yi, Kim penned a new piece, in which Yi was unambiguously tied to the
rising worldwide tide of the fascist movements. In this new criticism of Yi,
Kim defined the times he was living through – the early 1930s – as the epoch of
¡°new absolutism¡±, when the crisis-ridden capitalism is being propped by fascist
dictatorships, when traditional bourgeois democracy is disintegrating and when
once progressive nationalist movements, like China¡¯s Guomindang or India¡¯s
Gandhism, are either degrading into dictatorships or losing any influence. That
is why Yi was increasingly focusing upon ¡°strength¡±; but his understanding of ¡°strength¡±
was completely ahistorical, since the strength progressive forces draw from the
fact they follow the laws of historical evolution, is qualitatively different
from the rude force employed by their reactionary opponents. Kim viewed
Gabriele D¡¯Annunzio (1863-1938) as a model of a fascistic literatus Yi
followed, but added also that fighter pilot and daredevil D¡¯Annunzio, Yi was
nothing but just a literary man worshipping ¡°strength¡± while sitting at his
writing desk – and that reflected the pathetic nature of ¡°fascist¡± movement in
a small, colonized state like Korea.
Confronting Yi¡¯s ¡°hero-worship¡± with Plekhanov¡¯s orthodox Marxist views on the
role of the individuals in history as conditioned by the interrelationships of
the societal forces, Kim was also debunking the Yi Sunsin myth Yi was helping
to re-create and sustain, explaining the victories of the famed admiral as a
product of the contemporary levels of technology.
All in all, Kim defined Yi Kwangsu
as a ¡°provincial fascist¡± of sorts – modelling himself upon the fascistic
leaders of the reactionary last-days bourgeoisie of the capitalist metropolies
and dreaming of translating his literary influence into a political capital, so
that to serve the aims of the colonial ruling class to which he himself, as a
richer man of ¡°free profession¡±, belonged.
While after 1939 Yi
Kwangsu undoubtedly became a propagandist for Japan¡¯s war machine and much of
war propaganda he produced followed the stereotypes developed by the
propagandists of the European Axis powers – for example, his article ¡°European
War¡± (¡°Ōshū no dōran¡±) published in Japanese in Seoul¡¯s government-produced
daily Keijō Nippō on September 10,
1939, proclaimed the ¡°irredentist¡± ambitions of Italy fully legitimate, denounced
Czechoslovakia and Poland as ¡°puppet states made up by their Anglo-French
masters¡± and rejoiced in Germany¡¯s ¡°triumphs¡±
– the question to which degree his worldview of the early 1930s may be
classified as ¡°fascist¡± is a complicated one. Indisputably, Yi used to show an
interest in European fascism, and this interest became much keener than before
when Hitler was appointed Germany¡¯s
Chancellor in January 1933. As early as in June 1933, the intellectual journal Tonggwang run by Yi¡¯s close friend and
fellow An Ch¡¯angho disciple, Chu Yohan (1900-1979) – which also served as main
outlet for Yi¡¯s own writings – published, as the first in its series of popular
books on the current issues (Tonggwang Ch¡¯ongsŏ), a volume on fascism and
related issues, which also included a translated fragment from Hitler¡¯s Mein Kampf. The 23 pages-long translation
was done by Chŏn Wŏnbae (1903-1984), then a young teacher of the Protestant Yŏnhǔi
College (today¡¯s Yonsei
University), who then rose to become South Korea¡¯s
foremost authority on the classic German philosophy. In several writings, he
used to offer praises to Mussolini and the Italian fascists:
in one particularly explicit piece, with telling title ¡°Return to the State of
the Beast, Youth, Unite to Fight Epoch¡¯s Evil!¡±, he openly admonishes his
readers ¡°to learn from the Italian fascist youth, strong and sincere¡±, and then
¡°to unite for serving Korea and sacrificing for Korea¡¯s sake¡± instead of
following the ¡°licentious¡± trends of modern days¡¯ eroticized mass culture.
However, most of Yi
Kwangsu¡¯s appeals to ¡°unity¡±, ¡°sacrifice¡±, ¡°heroism¡± and ¡°life of service and
worship¡± from the first half of the 1930s use the paradigm of references which
may be termed ¡°nativist¡±, with references to ¡°Korea¡¯s old beautiful morals¡±, Buddhism,
even Christianity – which became the religion of a sizable part of Korea¡¯s
educated class by that point - rather than the examples taken from Hitler¡¯s and
Mussolini¡¯s theory and practice. For example, Yi attempted to present Korea¡¯s
age-old village order, with its supposed emphasis upon ¡°respectfulness towards
the seniors, filial piety, mutual help, feeling of duty and loyalty towards the
community¡± as an ideal prototype of a benign social order he termed ¡°totalitarian¡±
(literally ¡°whole-ism¡±: chǒnch¡¯ejuǔi),
and contrast all these presumed ¡°virtues of old Korea¡± to the ¡°Anglo-American
egoism, individualism and hedonism (hyangnakchuǔi)
of the modern days¡±. Interestingly enough, Yi praised his own employer, Tonga Ilbo¡¯s major stakeholder Kim Sǒngsu,
as the ¡°paragon of old Korea¡¯s
virtue¡±, claiming that the latter¡¯s entrepreneurial activities had ¡°the service
to the country¡± as their main aim.
In this way, the rhetoric of ¡°patriotism¡± and ¡°service¡± definitely was
employed, among other things, for legitimising the entrepreneurship of Korea¡¯s
modernising elite. But, instead of praising contemporaneous Italy or Germany¡¯s
fascist party as examples of ¡°totalitarian¡± societies of ¡°duty¡± and ¡°service¡±,
Yi preferred, in many of his writing from the early 1930s, to speak either in
generally moralistic or in religious tones. In line with old ¡°hero-worshipping¡±
rhetoric loved by Korea¡¯s early modernisers from the 1900s, Yi was describing
the ¡°unusual people of the emergency times¡± as ¡°heroes¡± who freed themselves from
the attachment to their physical lives, to their families and to any sort of
material wealth,
was appealing to Korea¡¯s youth to understand the ephemerous nature of the
individual life and transcend it by rejecting all individual desires for the
sake of the nation or loftier principles,
and was even enlisting Christ,
Gandhi and Tolstoy – clearly not the best loved personages among the Italian or
German fascists! – as the examples of the ¡°selfless devotion¡± and ¡°life of
service to the others¡±.
Until the late 1930s, Yi was much more willing to elaborate on the importance
of Tan¡¯gun, the mythical progenitor of the Koreans whom Yi considered ¡°the
founding father of the Korean statehood¡±,
than to speak openly and in details on his attachment to Hitler¡¯s or Mussolini¡¯s
ideals. What are the reasons for such a self-restrained attitude in relations
to the European far right, with the basic values of which – the emphasis on the
all-encompassing ¡°totality¡±, on the ¡°self-sacrificial heroic¡± mode of
behaviour, on ¡°leadership¡± and ¡°obedience¡± - Yi demonstrated a clear and unambiguous
proximity? The reasons seem to be manifold and complicated. First, given the
lingering attachment of many educated younger Koreans, who formed Yi¡¯s
readership, to either leftist or liberal ideals and their general nationalist
mood, the appeals to ¡°our older values¡±, Tan¡¯gun and Yi Sunsin might have been
a better hegemonic strategy than outright references to the foreign right-wing
extremist ideas, regardless the interest Yi personally had in them. Second, the
grand militarist designs of Hitler or Mussolini obviously did not fit the
situation of Korea¡¯s
colonial bourgeoisie, alienated from the political power and anxious to go
along well with its Japanese masters. And third – last but not least – Yi¡¯s
mentor An Ch¡¯angho remained a proponent of a democratic model of national
statehood, and Yi was in no position to deviate significantly from An¡¯s design,
especially given Yi¡¯s ambition to position himself as An¡¯s ¡°best disciple¡±. An¡¯s
vision of the future Korean state – termed taegongchuǔi,
or the ¡°great unity-ism¡± – was a sort of ¡°national unity-based democracy¡±,
which required its citizens to put the common good above their private
interests, but did not mean a ¡°totalitarian¡± way of totally sacrificing the
personal, and, moreover, envisioned empowerment of the workers and peasants and
a place for organized workers¡¯ movement.
This vision may be termed ¡°right-wing
nationalist¡±, as it prioritised the demands of nation-state building over the
private or class interests, and An Ch¡¯angho¡¯s ideology of ¡°cultivating the
national strength¡± was indisputably Social Darwinist in its inspirations, but
An – unlike Yi – never crossed the line between more or less moderate
right-wing nationalism and ¡°genuine¡± totalitarian ideology. Until An¡¯s death in
1938, Yi was putting certain restrains upon his rhetoric, but after 1938-1939,
his writing became undistinguishable from the mainstream war propaganda of the
Japanese nationalist intellectuals.
- Is
it possible to speak on the development and popularization of the fascist
ideology in early 1930s Korea?
If we define ¡°fascism¡± in a narrower way, reducing it mainly to the ideas
and practices of the European far right of the 1920-40s, often (but not
always) anti-Semitic, bent on external territorial aggrandisement and desirous for a explicitly
anti-liberal state, that is something hardly applicable to Korea¡¯s intellectual
history of the early 1930s. Even while deeply respecting Mussolini, such
Korean intellectuals as Yun Ch¡¯iho could despise Hitler and sympathise
with the Jewish plight; indeed, the sympathy towards the Jews were
expressed by a major newspaper of Korea¡¯s nascent bourgeoisie. In early
1930s¡¯ colonial Korea, liberalism remained a noble, if somewhat unachievable
dream for many mainstream right-wing nationalist intellectuals, such major
figures as An Ch¡¯angho included, with certain reservations; and
expansionism or anti-Semitism were simply not on the agenda. However, the ¡°fascistic
mood¡± in a broader sense was already in the air, as the colonial bourgeoisie,
sceptical of the further usefulness of its erstwhile liberalism, and
aspiring to legitimise its cooperation with the Japanese aggression in
North-eastern China and curb the popularity of communist and other
left-wing ideas, was turning back to the old Social Darwinism of the
1900-1910s it never fully discarded. Yi Kwangsu, together with our scribes
of the Tonga Ilbo circle, were
competing for the ideological hegemony with Korea¡¯s left-wingers by
propagating what the left viewed as ¡°fascistic¡± – ¡°self-sacrifice¡±, ¡°all-encompassing
love of the nation¡±, ¡°worshipping attitude¡± in life, and the cult of the ¡°leaders¡±.
That largely the same people became the assiduous ideological servants of
the Japanese war machine after 1939, hardly may be ascribed to the
Japanese state coercion only; while the presence of such coercion is
undeniable, the worship of the ¡°totalitarian values¡± among the Korean
nationalist intelligentsia predated the onset of the full-scale invasion
of China in 1937, and may be, in its main features, traced back to the
Social Darwinist values learned already in the 1900-1910s and enshrined as
the main pillar of Korea¡¯s nationalist ideology. The cooperation with the
Japanese war machine was at least partly voluntarily, although it should
not be, of course, teleologically seen upon as an ¡°inescapable¡±
consequence of the Social Darwinist leanings of the 1900-1910s. However,
the visible persistence of Social Darwinist nationalism throughout the
seemingly ¡°liberal¡± 1920s – which became manifest in the beginning of the
1930s - leads us to question
the extent to which liberalism may become an ideological mainstaple of a
peripheral (in a world-systemic sense of the word) bourgeoisie, given the
uncertainty of its position in general, requirements of the cooperation
with the ¡°core¡± (in our case, Japanese) ruling class, and difficulties in
securing the safe ideological grounds in the combat against the leftist
forces, which are always able to make an issue of the abysmal social
inequalities and the tendency of the local capitalists to collaborate with
the structures of political power seen as unjust (in Korea¡¯s case, the
colonial state). It looks as if Korean bourgeoisie in the 1920s, as
represented by the Tonga Ilbo
circle, was approaching liberalism rather from the position of the
political expediency than deeper ideological loyalty – and it was
gradually abandoned as its usefulness was coming to the end. The
liberalism resurfaced after Korean became independent from Japan in 1945, but very soon it developed,
in South Korea,
into a typical cold war liberal ideology, which emphasized anti-communism
much stronger than individual freedom. But, as we have already seen,
anti-communism was already a major part of the Korean bourgeois worldview
in the 1920s-1930s.