WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE uk United Kingdom - (en) UK, AF, Organise: HAVE YOU HEARD OF ANARCHISM IN KOREA? (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 Maybe you've read Hwang Dongyun's book "Anarchism in Korea," or George

Katsiaficas' essay Peter Kropotkin and People's Uprisings: From the
Paris Commune to the Kwangju Uprising. However, as abundant as such
examples of past attempts are, those who called themselves anarchists
often did not act like one, and those who did, did not claim to be
anarchists. Though one could debate us about the specifics of these
claims, us present-day Korean anarchists agree that, unfortunately,
there isn't much of a continued "Korean anarchist tradition." (As of
writing this text, we are unaware of any anarchist presence in the
northern part of the peninsula, and as such we will deal exclusively
with the panorama in the south.) Of course, the last century being one
of conflict and oppression -of which the former half was spent under the
yoke of imperialism and the latter half under a series of capitalist
dictatorships-, the Korean people are still very well versed in the
practices of popular grassroots resistance. Despite great swathes of our
youth turning towards conservatism and apathy, and the government gladly
suppressing attempts of social progress, the syndicalist movement under
the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) still stands strong,
together with the numerous human rights movements that are actively
working on a diversity of issues. But still among these organisations
and activists, none hold or vocalise specifically anarchist views. Like
in most parts of the world, the bulk of left-wing progressive struggles
is focused on the demand for the implementation of various pro-labour
and anti-discrimination acts. Cries for autonomy and self-determination
are truly rare.

Dire as it might look, we -the social anarchists in Korea- have been
tirelessly organising against all odds. Especially with the start of
this decade and still until quite recently, the group "Malangchism" has
led much of university student organising. The group has held
semester-long study seminars on topics such as anarchism 101, history of
anarcho-syndicalism, and queer and feminist intersectionality. Much of
their efforts have been about spreading the word of anarchism into the
activist sphere. They have been also actively participating in protests
and labour strikes, always voicing to fellow activists that anarchism is
an alternative to the oh-so-popular parliamentarism. Specifically, this
year marks the third consecutive year that the group has solidarised
with the laid-off workers at Seojong Hotel -found at Myeongdong, in the
heart of Seoul. The workers here have been fighting for the return to
their workplace for 4 years, and against the suppression of the
democratic union by the hotel's administration for 10 years.

Malangchism and other groups have also been translating and publishing
classical anarchist texts, including works of Russian anarchist Voline's
trilogy on anarchism in the Russian Revolution "the Unknown Revolution,"
and a collection of didactic dialogues by Italian anarchist Errico
Malatesta. For this purpose, the online "Anarchist Library Project" has
been a useful nucleation site for our efforts. The Korean version of the
project went online in mid-2021 and is still standing to this day.

At this moment, seminars and translation works make up the bulk of the
theoretical work. Even though up to recently, each group has published
their own pamphlets and online articles, these have consisted of mostly
activity reports. Creative works beyond an occasional message of
solidarity with another group here or there have been limited. The same
goes to their engagement in popular social network sites like KakaoTalk
(a Korean social network service), Facebook and Instagram. On the level
of individual activists, a general reticence against formulating new and
concrete theoretical analyses specific to our current Korean situation
is dominant. This is mainly because, still having much to learn, we feel
inadequate to postulate new ideas. Considering how many activists have
barely over five years of experience as "anarchists," -recall the
absence of a continued anarchist tradition- seems like only time will
fix it. We could also argue that this is representative of a general
lack of strategic imagination, and this we shall elaborate below.

Further, even though most of anarchist gathering and organising has been
limited to within the city of Seoul, this hasn't stopped us from
solidarising with worker struggles across (South) Korea. Again,
Malangchism has been particularly active on this front. From the
Gangreung Yoocheon Primary School teachers' struggle against the
Education Office, to all the way down south with the subcontracted
shipyard workers of Hanwha Ocean (formerly DSME) in Geoje island, there
have been constant efforts not to limit our anarchist participation to
labour movements within the capital. This attempt to stay in touch with
provincial issues is especially more important in the Korean context.
Close to half of the population inhabits Seoul and its environs,
draining the rest of the provinces and its rural areas of its population
and resources, creating a power imbalance of scales rarely seen in other
countries.

The activists have also not forgotten the internationalist aspect to the
struggle for liberation. In 2022, they shared solidarising videos and
messages with Mexican university students squatting their campus who
were protesting against the silencing and general mistreatment of
survivors of sexual violence among their colleagues by their college
administration. Also in the next year, with the initiative of an Chilean
anarchist filmmaker, a film was made documenting the struggles of a
sales worker laid-off for whistleblowing at a major car-making firm's
internal malpractices.

The contemporary groups' syndicalist focus is clear, and maybe because
of it, there has been a painful lack of introspection about the
intersectionality of the struggles against oppression in all its
glorious forms. This means that much of our activists' internalised
misogyny, queerphobia, transphobia and ableism has gone unchecked for an
embarrassingly long time. Though our constructive efforts considering
the small number of activists and few resources may be commendable,
these efforts have failed to reach a broader non-cismale audience.
Indeed, non-cismale activists among us are rare, and the few that newly
join have a hard time finding a welcoming place here. This is very much
reminiscent of the situation described by Czech writer Marta Kolárová in
their essay Sexuality issues in the Czech anarchist movement. With
discussions regarding issues of sex, gender and disability being so
direly sparse and superficial, much work is desperately needed. In that
sense, we have been somewhat repeating the error of our predecessors:
claiming to be anarchists without fully engaging with the broad
intersectional liberatory approach it requires.

This is the current state of "anarchism in Korea." Indeed, so much hard
work lies ahead of us. From consistently engaging with people outside
the Seoul Metropolitan Area, to more ruthlessly tackling our
internalised shackles and phobias, these are just some of the challenges
we as contemporary anarchists in Korea face. And staggeringly, we
mustn't forget the fact that we also live in a highly polarised society
pushed around by the interests of different brands of the same
conservatism. We expect that to some readers, this feeling of
unpreparedness regarding such an impossibly large challenge will surely
be familiar. And to you, dear comrade, we send our best regards. We are
nowhere close to giving up, and we hope you share our spirit. We, the
anarchists in Korea, still have to broaden the horizons of our
imagination, search for more approaches towards an anarchist liberation.
We will learn, improve, and carry on. We will work so that eventually
the entire peninsula will join in our cries of "down to all authority"
and "liberty for all," and so it may be also wherever you are reading
this from.

Students for Anarchism, StuFA

https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2025/12/11/have-you-heard-of-anarchism-in-korea/
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