Red Star Over Korea

Greg Chung

Park Heon Young and Yo Un Hyong at the “Citizens' Convention Welcoming the US-Soviet Joint Committee” (Newsis)

Hundreds of Korean revolutionaries traveled to the Soviet Union with the hope of ending Japanese rule. There they trained at Comintern-run schools and later smuggled themselves back into Korea knowing that their lives would end in prison or with a bullet. These footloose communists deeply embedded themselves among the masses through “red unions” in factories and the countryside.

In his latest book, “The Red Decades: Communism as Movement and Culture in Korea, 1919-1945,” Marxist scholar Vladimir Tikhonov recounts in vivid detail the history of Korean Communism during the colonial era. Tikhonov digs into Korean Communism’s origins in the diaspora and the critical role the Communist International played in nurturing the nascent movement.

1919: A Year of Revolutions

In the aftermath of the First World War, revolution spread like wildfire. The Bolsheviks inspired a wave of proletarian uprisings in Europe, but the greatest ripples would occur in the colonial periphery. In Egypt, a nationalist revolution brought the country its formal independence, while the May Fourth movement in China re-ignited anti-imperialist sentiment and led to the formation of the Communist Party of China. 

Korea was not immune to this global awakening either. On March 1st, 2 million Koreans participated in the country’s first mass movement for independence after Woodrow Wilson made a half-hearted call for self-determination. Like everywhere else, the colonial authorities responded with naked repression, ranging from opening fire on unarmed protestors to bayonet charges. The most notorious case was uncovered in the village of Jeamni, where Japanese soldiers massacred all the villagers, including burning any potential survivors. 

By this point, the March 1st organizers failed to capitalize on the social explosion. The largely elite leadership refused to agitate for the material interests of the masses, especially the millions of land-hungry peasants. Radicalized by Japanese repression and disillusioned with bourgeois nationalists, many young Koreans looked abroad for an ideology that could better guide them toward national liberation. 

Pak Chinsun and Lenin discussing colonial issues at the Second World Congress of the Comintern (Sungkunkwan University/Im Kyong Sok via The Red Decades)

Korean Communism Started Abroad

Koreans were first exposed to communism through the diaspora in China, Japan, and especially Russia. In the Siberian and Maritime Province alone, 500 Koreans had become Bolsheviks. These well-educated and multilingual expatriates were pivotal in introducing Marxism to a Korean audience. The first Korean translation of the Communist Manifesto was published in Shanghai and translated by none other than Yo Un Hyong, who studied in the Soviet Union before becoming the leader of the short-lived People's Republic of Korea. 

Eventually, diasporic Koreans formed two Communist parties in Irkutsk and Shanghai. The Irkutsk Communist Party was founded by Russified Korean intellectuals with orthodox Marxist views. Pak Han Yong, the most important Korean communist during the colonial era, began his journey in the Irkutsk party. The Shanghai party included both expat intellectuals and anti-Japanese partisans, such as Yi Tonghwi. Unlike the Irkutsk faction, the Shanghai communists had a much vaguer take on class struggle, which they saw as a barrier to building a broad front with moderate nationalists. Even after both parties merged in 1925, Korean communists continued to be divided between factions that demanded class independence while working with bourgeois nationalists and those that favored delaying class struggle for the immediate goal of national liberation.

The Comintern

After communist defeats in Germany and Hungary, the Bolsheviks set their sights on organizing the colonized masses in the East, where Koreans proved to be the most enthusiastic audience. At the Communist University of the Toilers of the East, 200 Koreans received training to organize red unions in their home countries, become Comintern agents, or apply for membership in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. During the first Congress of the Toilers of the East, Koreans also made up the largest delegation. 

Korean delegation speaking at the First Congress of the Toilers of the East (Platform C)

However, the Soviet Union proved to be almost as much a threat to the lives of Korean communists as the Japanese. The paranoia surrounding the Great Terror combined with false accusations by political rivals led to the deaths of many first-generation Korean communists. Stalin personally signed the execution orders for Kim Tanya, a founding member of the Korean Communist Party. The worst would come in 1937 when 200,000 ethnic Koreans were collectively charged with “Japanese espionage” and deported to Kazakhstan. Around 4,000 Koreans perished during the move, including many Korean party members and former partisans.

The Two-Stage Revolution

The deep influence of the Comintern meant that the Korean communists’ program was informed and shaped by external political conditions. Even their main political framework, the two-stage revolution, was a Comintern design. The two-stage revolution was divided into a first stage which consisted of a united front with the most progressive segments of the bourgeoisie under the twin goals of national liberation and democracy and a second stage which called for a socialist revolution.

As a result of this united front strategy, the Korean Communist Party’s first political program called for an independent and sovereign Korea and moderate economic demands, such as the expropriation of Japanese property and the land of large landowners. To win the support of moderate nationalists, the program did not call for full land redistribution. Instead, tenant farmers’ rent would be reduced to a third of their harvest. The communist’s desire to coalition with the Korean bourgeoisie would later lead to the formation of Singanhoe, a legal organization inspired by the Comintern brokered First United Front in China.

However, the bloody massacre of Chinese communists in Shanghai forced the Comintern to move away from cross-class alliances. Korean communists responded by pulling a hard left. The 1928 program called for a “People’s Republic” to facilitate the withdrawal of the Japanese military and police from the peninsula and even full-scale land distribution, but the two-stage framework was never completely scrapped. The 1928 program also allowed the relatively small number of Korean capitalists to develop their industries as long as they respected workers' rights. 

Reinterpreting the Program 

While the political line tended to be debated between intellectuals who lived abroad, the organizers on the ground were mostly locals from peasant and working-class backgrounds. Homegrown militants, like Yi Chaeyu, would reinterpret the Comintern-derived program to fit domestic conditions. A talented organizer, Yi organized several factory and student cells, including one at Keijō Imperial University with the help of a leftist Japanese professor residing in Korea.

Yi Chaeyu’s prison photo (National Institute of Korean History via The Red Decades)

Yi’s communist cells didn’t stray far from the two-stage framework. Most of their demands centered around national independence, social democratic reforms, and issues specific to Koreans, like ending indentured servitude. However, Yi’s group also had more radical plans for post-liberation Korea, such as: factory committees, democratic education, and plans to secure independence through a worker and peasant state. 

Internationalism was another major pillar. Yi called for building solidarity with Chinese Soviets and even Japanese students. In June 1933, Yi’s hard work paid off with a strike by 320 female silk workers, but like many of his comrades, he was arrested shortly afterwards and disappeared from public record. 

Legacy

During the colonial era, communists were the most targeted and repressed group in the peninsula, but everything changed after Japan’s defeat in the Second World War. The soon-after freed communists would hold positions in at least half of the people's committees that were prepared to govern a post-colonial Korea. While the Comintern advised communists to build support among the masses, right-wing nationalists continued to lose relevance in exile and the local elite discredited themselves through colonial collaboration.

Unfortunately, the US military occupation and the Korean War would eradicate the Korean Left (the first casualty of the Cold War). Nevertheless, Communism represented the radical hope for an equally nationalist and cosmopolitan Korea, a dream kept alive by the Soviet Union's strong commitment to the colonized world. The Comintern’s guidance may have been heavy handed but they provided the resources and connections Korean communists needed to survive persecution and showed us what we can achieve when the left combines international solidarity with local organizing.