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Cho Seung-soo, a former lawmaker of the radical Democratic Labor Party and the head of the party's progressive political think-tank, said pro-North Korean forces have an iron grip on the party's leadership and the party will not be able to gain the trust of the public unless it severs ties with that faction. The DLP has grown remarkably, capturing 3.9 percent of nationwide votes in the presidential election in 2002, 4.3 percent of regional votes and 13 percent of votes among the different parties during National Assembly elections in 2004. The DLP was able to achieve its dream of entering the National Assembly by winning 10 seats. But during the latest presidential election the DLP captured just 3 percent of votes, marking a retreat from its showing five years ago. The neglect the party received from the public was far more sobering than the drop in votes. A sense of crisis is growing within the DLP that it may face dissolution after National Assembly elections in April.
For a while the public was unaware of the true nature of the DLP, and many supported the party as a demonstration of their disgust with the corruption and political infighting within the ruling party. But over the last four years the public has learned what the DLP is really all about. In October of 2006, the National Intelligence Service arrested a former central committee member of the DLP on charges of espionage. The party's members stormed over to the NIS headquarters and held a protest rally. Among the protesters was a DLP official who was arrested on espionage charges the following day. The Supreme Court ruled that both officials were spies. So a spy had protested in front of NIS headquarters, demanding the intelligence service release another spy.
DLP members stormed into the court during the trial of the two officials and screamed insults at the presiding judge, hurling expletives and calling him a collaborator working for U.S. imperialists. They cheered on the spies who had sworn allegiance to North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Soon afterwards a DLP member was caught planning to assassinate prominent officials and blow up a news organization. He had staked out his target's house and tried to purchase a gun.
A group of DLP lawmakers who traveled to North Korea after the communist country's nuclear test began their trip by visiting the birthplace of the late North Korean founder Kim Il-sung. They also issued a statement blaming the U.S. for creating the nuclear crisis on the Korean peninsula. Left-wing political groups in Europe are even more critical of North Korea than conservative ones. As progressive, left-wing political parties that place priority on human rights, they cannot tolerate the communist country's human rights abuses and hereditary transfer of power.
The only reason the DLP is continuing its pro-North Korean activities, which would seem to go against its principles, is because a so-called national liberation faction maintains a firm grip on the party's leadership. This pro-North faction traces its roots back to labor activists in the 1980s who studied North Korea's Juche ideology of self-sufficiency and hailed Kim Il-sung. The faction has managed to stifle any complaints party members have raised against it.
Former DLP lawmaker Cho said the pro-North faction always viewed the DLP as an extension of the revolutionary front of communist movements rather than a political party. As long as the DLP fails to sever ties with this faction and refuses to be reborn as a true progressive, leftwing party, it will never be able to gain the trust of the public.
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