PETER HYUN'S SOUTH KOREA... NON-INTELLECTUAL KOREAN LEFT

From Mingi... an article from a few years back that his father wrote. His father, Peter Hyun, was a known South Korean journalist. I mentioned this before, but Mingi's uncle, Dr. Bong Hak Hyun, was an early mentor of mine.

An important statement he makes is:

Western intellectuals have experienced and observed communism and tend to have a strong anti-communist trend. However, the so-called leftists or progressives in Korea appear to be experts in reflecting North Korean propaganda and ideology.

Well, Europe and the U.S. never had to deal with such a high level of penetration by communist spies. For those that might not be aware, it is estimated that North Korean spies number in the hundreds, and possibly close to a thousand, and are concentrated in South Korea's major universities.

On Professor Choi's Korean History
BY PETER HYUN
THE CHOSUN ILBO

In the 1950s, when I was attending a university in the mid western United states, I was expelled for subscribing to the American communist mouthpiece 'The Daily Worker'. Two years later at the peak of McCarthyism I was deported from the US. This was only the beginning as in 1953, when I wrote articles for the weekly France Observateur, a left wing publication, the Korean embassy in Paris refused to extend my passport. I became stateless, living as an exile in Paris and had difficulty contributing pieces to the BBC, which threatened my being able to eat.

When Russian tanks rolled into Hungary in 1956, the French government gave out refugee passports registered to the UN and I too received one. Right after the student revolutions I was appointed cultural attache to the Korean embassy in Paris and acquired a diplomatic passport.

From 1952 to 1962 when I was in exile in Paris, I met a lot of British and French authors, artists and intellectuals. Among them were communist sympathizers such as Jean Paul Sartre, Margeurite Duras and Picasso, but they did not follow Stalin's policy and openly condemned the suppression of the freedom campaign in Hungary and Czechoslovakia.

There were also those who had once listened to the Marxist Utopia, but who woke up after their flirtatious youth, and they included Stephen Spender, Albert Camus and Arthur Koestler. Spender and Koestler co-authored "The God That Failed' alongside Richard Wright, Andre Gide and others. The book, which contains the experiences of those who absorbed communism in their youth and found its devilishness later, is
like an anti-communist manifesto. The book said that the real anti-communist is a former communist.

For the last several months I have noticed an enormous gap between liberals, progressives and leftists in Europe and those in Korea. Western intellectuals have experienced and observed communism and tend to have a strong anti-communist trend. However, the so-called leftists or progressives in Korea appear to be experts in reflecting North Korean propaganda and ideology.

Leftists in the West do not deny the history and legitimacy of their country. I have never heard a French leftist denigrate the role played by France in the First and Second World Wars, or condemn their country as one that was not supposed to be born. In the West, leftists are more patriotic. In contrast, leftists in Korea seem to deny the raison d'etre of the country they are living in. It is horrible to hear a
leftist say that government legitimacy resides in North Korea which is the world's most oppressive dictatorship.

It is surprising that this sort of thing happens when the North is the only Stalinist country left on earth and still aggressively expresses its ferver for revolution in a belligerent manner. I could detect Kim Jong-il's intentions from three trips to Pyongyang, namely that he wants to liberate South Korea from being a slave state at whatever the price.

Some intellectuals in Korea made up the 'national liberation war' to justify Kim Jong-il's South liberation theory. The media that opposed this was restricted by a court order. I am ashamed at where my country is heading.