South Korea is a country where the words ‘Yankee, Go Home’ can be punished by one year’s imprisonment under the Anti-communist Law, and where a judge can tell an opposition presidential candidate that ‘the freedom of speech prescribed in the Constitution does not mean unlimited freedom’.footnote1 The government’s purpose has been summed up by its leader Pak Jung-hi in his book, Our Nation’s Path: ‘The democracy we aim to build should be one that meets social and political reality and not the unworkable West European Democracy. Our type of democracy can be termed “Administrative Democracy”.’ In such a country opposition groups have to fight for their very existence. The stakes are high, and the government’s inability to distinguish between different types of opposition groups produces strange alliances; radicals and liberals, and even progressive conservatives, find themselves aligned together against the regime. Official and unofficial groups are often mixed; elderly conservatives who remember the Japanese occupation find themselves in sympathy with radical students fighting Japanese economic investment. This means that divisions become blurred, aims and purposes diffused. But one theme overrides all others among the Korean opposition:

‘Fiercely blowing; our friend the wind is blowing,

Kindly blowing from Hynhaetan.footnote2

Nippon’s Embassy is ablaze.footnote3

How well it burns, how welcome are the crackling flames

To patriots’ ears!

Fire broke out but no-one fetches water.

Aimlessly, helplessly the Japanese dart around

Filming the blaze with their cameras’.

This popular student song, banned by Pak’s government, illustrates the overriding importance of Japan for the opposition. It is not the only problem which taxes them; but, despite the huge American military complexes in Korea and the obvious influence of the United States in every sphere of life, there are many among South Korea’s opposition who would prefer American domination to that of Japan, as the lesser of the two evils. The fears of re-emergent Japanese militarism and economic neo-imperialism are amply illustrated in a ‘White Paper on Korean–Japanese Relations’ which has been secretly circulating among opposition groups.

Next to relations with the us and Japan, and the need for obvious reforms in domestic government, the main focus of opposition demands is ‘reunification’:

‘The North is my home country

The North is the land were women were sold away

When the wind freezes and unfolds

On the far, far-away mountain range

My mind roams under the sorrowful Northern sky.’

These are the words of Lee Yong-hak, a southern poet who was active in the opposition in the 1930s and who returned to the North after the division of the peninsula in 1945. Despite government efforts to the contrary, Lee Yong-hak is one of the most widely read poets among South Korea’s young generation, and his vision of the North is vividly matched in the work of Kim Chi-hah, the most outstanding literary rebel in South Korea to-day. Kim Chi-hah is only 27 but is a chronic sufferer from tb; yet he has inspired all opponents of the South Korean regime. He has been imprisoned under the Anti-communist Law for his most famous work, ‘The Five Bandits’, and his lively verse and his keen concern for the future of Korea have made him a household name among students and opposition alike. To match Lee Yong-hak’s ‘North’, Kim Chi-hah has written ‘The South’:

‘The throat rebels, cut down,
And shouts again,
The arms mutilated, crying out,
Again rebelling
The corn-field at last stopped
Writhing in chains, chains.
Under the blue sky where it stopped, stopped,
Yes, stopped
The bluntly burnt devil-posts are crying.
The hot South is the land of rebellion.’