Students and Politics in Indonesia and Korea

Abstract

THERE HAS BEEN A GROWING RECOGNITION both in Western capitals and in the developing countries themselves of the surging emotions and the political power of the youth, and particularly the students, in the developing countries. This has long been recognized as a factor in the Latin American scene. But in Asia, the political role of students has been less clearly defined by tradition or experience. The recent manifestations of student activity in Asia, therefore, have been less easy to categorize. Student activity has been a major factor in political situations in Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia and-to name a developed country-Japan in the past few years. Some of this unrest stems from the insecurity, uncertainty and general uneasiness that seem to have gripped students in many parts of the world today. In each of the cases in Asia cited above, however, the motivations, the organization, and the issues that have moved students into the political arena have been different. It is all too easy to generalize, but it is clear from two cases in AsiaIndonesia and Korea-that underlying the student movement in politics is a whole system of education and change in developing countries that inevitably sets apart the new generation as a distinct and restless entity. At the same time, the political direction of this new generation is shaped in each case by other factors: by the political situation around it, by the organizational forces that seek to control it, by the culture and character of the individual nation itself. Until recently, one might have described the student influence in Indonesia as one of potential rather than actual significance. Student organizations have been splintered, their traditions confused. Their political activity, moreover, has long reflected the strong outside influence of the established political forces in the country. This situation was exemplified in i960 when President Sukarno called the Youth Congress that organized the National Youth Front. The Front was ostensibly to represent the youth of Indonesia as a functionally independent and organized political group. But the Congress was in fact the scene of considerable maneuver by the chief political forces in Indonesia-particularly, in this instance the President and the Army. The competition that took place at the Congress and its