Dear Comrade Leader, Episode 328
Of course, like the adage ‘Clap hands must be met for a sound to be heard’, no matter how much Jeonghwan and North Korea sent a signal first, if the South Korean government did not respond to the signal, it was just an unanswered call.
Immediately after the apology meeting, even within the Workers’ Party of Korea, complaints are emerging from within the Workers’ Party of Korea, saying, ‘How grateful can those high-spirited South Koreans do such a thing?
The complaint was, in fact, that I could not express my dissatisfaction with Jeong-hwan’s apology interview directly, so I was saying, ‘Why does Comrade General Secretary make a scramble and scrape an apology conference?’
However, it was soon revealed that the worries (?) of some of those powers were not.
As if responding to the announcement and discourse of North Korea’s general secretary Kim Jeong-hwan’s historical apology and discourse, the former president of South Korea sent a kind of political expedition.
What the survey was about was to amend the Constitution, that is, to propose the 10th Constitutional Amendment.
– Article 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea: The territory of the Republic of Korea shall consist of the Korean Peninsula and its annexed islands.
In the 10th constitutional amendment in 2015, which opened the curtains for the 7th Republic, the provision declaring the rule of the South Korean government over the entire Korean Peninsula was, so to speak, the last obsession of the South Korean security conservatives, and a kind of vestigial institution.
In fact, in the present era, when North and South Koreans move almost freely to each other’s territory at all times, tickets for high-speed trains going directly to Mt. Baekdu are sold at Seoul Station Station, and Gyeongju school excursions are sold in Pyongyang, and a joint idol survival program between South and North Korea, ‘PRODUCE 38’, is scheduled to be aired on cable TV. However, the provision still remained.
It is a clause that is often referred to as a regular when there is a political and economic conflict between the two Koreas, or when interviews with ‘uncivilized’ North Koreans such as ‘What is the need for an election when the general secretary does everything?’ It was the reason why there was no official embassy between the two countries until now, and it was the main repertoire of a small number of extreme anti-North Korean figures in South Korea.
However, in the 10th amendment, Article 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea has been changed as follows in the 10th amendment, which has now been forgotten by most of the North and South Koreans and even legal scholars have concluded that it is a de facto inquisitor.
– Article 3 of the Constitution of the Republic of Korea: The territory of the Republic of Korea is determined to the extent that the government elected by the people of the Republic of Korea has administrative power.
Unless the approval ratings of all Korean presidents and ruling parties were quite high, the mention of constitutional amendment was always an adventure, and it was the same even for the two-year-old president who took office with equal support from both liberal and conservative sides, but this constitutional amendment proceeded surprisingly smoothly. , the reason again existed in Jeonghwan and North Korea.
There are no eternal secrets in the world, and as time passed after the war, the facts of the Korean military’s participation in the Yanbian Civil War began to gradually surface, starting with foreign media outlets who infiltrated Yanbian during the war and relayed the local situation in real time.
In addition, the North Korean side, who can be said to be the primary owner of this victory, did not directly deny this fact by saying, ‘It is true that among the workers who participated in the war from a private enterprise,’ the South Korean army participated in the Yanbian Civil War. has been established as a fact.
Although the South Korean government has officially denied participation in the war and is likely to deny it in the future, North Korea’s victories in the Yanbian Civil War and the North Manchurian Wars and the significant contribution of the South Korean troops to these victories are known through various channels. It turned out to be a victory.
The title of ‘victory president’ is especially helpful for a president who has served as a military member to support his approval rating and drive the performance of state affairs.
And apart from the administrative level of understanding, this victory had a great impact on the nation of the Republic of Korea and the public sentiment toward North Korea, along with Jeong-hwan’s apology interview not long ago.
As always, the fastest way to reconcile two individuals or forces with bad relationships is to create a ‘common enemy’ and make them fight under one flag.
And if we fought together like that and lost, I don’t know, but if we win, in one day, ‘Cheoncheonjisu’ will become ‘people who can endure and look after you,’ and ‘a country that was very difficult in the past’ will become ‘being able to design the future together’. Changing is also a breeze.
– We are pleased to announce that the 10th Constitutional Amendment Bill has been passed with a total of 299 people, 221 votes in favor, 47 votes against, and 31 abstentions!
Under these conditions, the 10th Constitutional Amendment Bill, which half-renounces the Korean government’s sovereignty over the northern part of the Korean Peninsula, was passed in the National Assembly through a surprisingly smooth referendum, and the 7th Republic was opened.
It was passed so neatly that the minority opposition on the South Korean side who muttered ‘If even one fails to pass, the former president’s political suicide’, likewise, the minority opposition on the North Korean side who said ‘the South Korean puppet government cannot give up its ambition to invade the territories of the Republic’. Both of them kept their mouths shut in one room.
After the constitutional amendment, a number of changes were made before 2015 was even halfway through, such as changing the visa issuing office and the ‘South-North (North-South) Office Exchange Association’, which had previously served as a representative office between the two countries, into an embassy.
And as these huge changes were made in such a short period of time, ‘the word’ began to come out from both sides of the North and South, precisely, both the people and the media in the South, and the people in the North.
Those words that came out from the beginning of Kim Jung-hwan’s inauguration, but were frustrated immediately after that, and always appeared with faint expectations at every turning point in history, such as the time of the North-South compromise and the joint World Cup, but were betrayed as quickly as they appeared.
-Is unification coming to our eyes?
However, neither of the North and South governments have officially mentioned the possibility of unification yet.
It may have been that an unspoken consensus was formed between the former president and the leaders of the two Koreas named Kim Jung-hwan, ‘if you swallow it quickly, you will pretend’, or it may have been an almost unprecedented path in human history of consensus reunification in an era when unification by absorption is virtually impossible for either side of the two Koreas. It may be because of the unfamiliarity of having to go to
Or it may be that the years of confrontation and distrust between the north and the south may have been too long to be filled with a few extravagant gestures.
However, the theory that best explains the psychology of the Korean government and people at the time of this ‘period of hesitation’ is probably the case even when the long-awaited unification has come to an end, even though their methods are different from the Park Yi-sam, Yu Min-jung, Lee Hyun-chang, and Noh Yun-hyeon administrations. It would be something like this:
-As of 2015, Korea is undoubtedly a democracy. But what will happen to dictator Kim Jung-hwan after reunification?
-There have been recent signs that the dictator Kim Jung-hwan might retire soon, but where is the guarantee that his successor will also want unification when he comes down?
In short, from the perspective of Korea, two dilemmas, unprecedented in history, overlapped.
Usually, a dictator who puts stability in the system and maintaining his power as the top priority seems to be unusually hoping for a huge change of unification first. is not
However, when he stepped down after seeing the dictator, he was in fact the main driving force for unification, so the South Korean government had no choice but to hope for North Korea’s preemptive action without doing this or that with only secret expectations.
Fortunately, around that time, Jung-hwan also took action to solidify the change he had started as irreversible.
It was the first free election in half a century to select the members of the Supreme People’s Assembly from all regions of North Korea.
* * *
“Well, as expected. Of course, I didn’t expect this to be settled any time soon.”
“… … Still, it seems that your comrade is very determined.”
The Mansudae National Assembly, which is usually the seat of the Supreme People’s Assembly, and the National Assembly of the Republic, where the delegates’ meeting is held, was boiling with unusual heat, very different from usual.
Of course, it is a place that performs its original function as the National Assembly of the Republic in normal times, but in the meantime, in North Korea, a one-party dictatorship, this place, which literally acts as a vending machine for the Workers’ Party of Korea and its leader Jeong-hwan, is a place that is immersed in a slightly different heat than usual. The reason was the election.
It was the first free election, that is, it was not a formal election in which security guards watched closely and voted for or against a ballot with the names of elected delegates in advance, but an election that kept the principle of (for now, properly) secret elections. Because the delegates took their seats and sat down.
In any case, in this practical free election, which I can’t even remember when the last time was, the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) still won 564 seats, 82% of the total 687 seats, maintaining its overwhelming majority position.
“But the beginning is halfway there. The day may come when our Workers’ Party will become an opposition party in the territory of this republic. It will take at least 20 years for that to happen, but don’t ignore the people. The human brain seems to never change, but it changes surprisingly quickly. Especially in today’s information age.”
“… … In the future, I will understand it as a teaching to engage in political struggle with a sense of crisis more than before.”
Right behind the podium of the Parliament House where the delegates were gathered, Hyun Young-sook nodded as she looked at Jeong-hwan’s shrugged face with a slightly hardened complexion.
Of course, since Jeong Hwan is not an idealist, he slightly revised the socialist constitution in the meantime to provide a minimum safeguard so that he can be nominated as the leader and supreme leader of the ruling party (that is, the Labor Party) even if he is not an elected representative. It was quite shocking to her as well.
Although the elections were held at a point in time when the approval ratings of the Workers’ Party and Supreme Leader Jeong Hwan were higher than at any other time after the victory in the North Manchurian War, the new opposition parties such as the first and second opposition parties, the ‘National First Party’ and the second ‘Joseon Democratic Socialist Party’, each had about 70 seats and about 40 seats, respectively. They took the seats to the Workers’ Party of Korea and made their own leap forward.
In fact, even though all of those opposition parties were elected with promises of cooperation and active cooperation with the Workers’ Party of Korea as if they had made a promise, evidence that the people’s consciousness has slowly but clearly changed in the face of the wave of material and spiritual openness achieved over the past 30 years it was
“… … But, is it really okay if I announce it?”
“Don’t be. Be proud. Isn’t it the first time in this republic, that is, the first elected representative since the 1960s, the head of the Organizational Guidance Department, a comrade? Besides, we need to give a signal to our South Korean comrades once again. We have to push our backs so that they will know that we are serious.”
There was a reason why Hyun Young-sook was hesitating, unlike her usual now.
The Workers’ Party of Korea, which became the overwhelming ruling party as everyone expected after the above-mentioned election of representatives of the Supreme People’s Assembly, quickly held a party congress and retained the leader and general secretary Jeong Hwan, as well as all cabinet and party posts, almost exactly as before the election.
Only Hyun Young-sook, who was the only propaganda and agitation director, was transferred to the organizational leadership department through the (formal) process of running for and winning a delegate under Jeong-hwan’s teaching. .
Other opposition parties, who had guessed the intention of the general secretary ‘knowingly’, removed all of the saffron candidates from the constituency, which resulted in a de facto vote for and against, and Pyongyang citizens usually voted for a relatively familiar former propaganda and agitation director through various media outlets. Even though the result came out with a laugh of 95% of the votes.
However, the real reason why Hyun Young-suk, the new director of the Organization and Guidance, who was elected ‘by election’, is hesitating without going up to the podium of the Supreme People’s Assembly is the same as Kim Yong-gun, who is the head of the Organizational and Guidance Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea today, and who will retain the chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly here today. It was because of the content to be announced immediately after being elected as Vice-Chairman.
It was already expected that the general secretary would formally send himself to the delegate election, albeit formally, in order to gain legitimacy as the next general secretary. It was something she didn’t expect to do.
Besides, the theme of the summit was… … .
“That’s it, but… … Anyway, the summit proposal and… … Shouldn’t the place to announce the North-South unification proposal belong to the comrades? To be honest, all of this today is a comrade… … .”
“right. But at the same time it must not be mine. Doesn’t the current manager know why? Come on.”
“… … !!”
Hyun Young-sook, who seemed to understand Jeong-hwan’s intentions only at that time, made only a complicated, subtle but regretful expression from behind the stage to the stage.
Read at noblemtl.com
Numerous Republican delegates from all over the country gathered at the Mansudae Capitol, seemingly surprised for a moment that she appeared first, not the beloved general secretary, but soon responded with enthusiastic applause to the appearance of the new organizational leadership director.And as he quietly watched the announcement of the vote and the start of the speech, hiding in the shadows behind the stage, Junghwan grinned and ate his mouth.
“Twitter, I got the position I had been waiting for for so long and was appointed the first female general secretary in history, but the current manager doesn’t seem to be in a good mood. Even if I don’t express my feelings, is it because I regret that my authority will be reduced compared to my time?”
“… … no. The current head comrade himself must be well aware of the fact that he is still too heavy to replace the giant’s vacancy. In fact, for now, anyone in this republic would do it, though.”
Jeonghwan looked back at the voice he heard from behind.
Ri Kyung-soo, the current head of the Anti-Corruption Investigation Bureau and the youngest member of the Politburo of the Workers’ Party of Korea, who succeeded Kim Young-il, and who once hated Jeong-hwan more than anyone else, was looking at him.