The social grounds of anticommunism in South Korea-crisis of the ruling class and anticommunist reaction

Abstract

I focused on how the domestic social grounds of anticommunism were interlinked with the external atmosphere like U.S. occupation, divided state-building and the Korean War. I especially emphasized the role of the Japanese collaborators in the post-colonial politics. Anticommunism as a political ideology surrendered to anticommunism as a rationale for the survival of class interests when historical task of overcoming colonialism was dominated by the Cold War atmosphere and full scale war. When North Korea’s threats came to reality by the outbreak of the Korean War, hysteric style of anticommunism came to dominate the other forms of anticommunism. The chronic occurrence of anticommunist hysteria may be explained by the political landscape. It was not just the result of U.S. occupation force’s policy, the international Cold War, but of the failure of de-colonization, by which former Japanese collaborators became the hegemonic groups among Korea’s anticommunists, left dark shadow on South Korea’s politics.