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Shim Sang-jung, the former chairwoman of the Democratic Labor Party's emergency leadership body, has proposed the formation of a new political party made up of progressive politicians. Shim has vowed to pursue the path of a truly progressive party by reflecting upon the mistakes committed by the DLP. Even the head of the DLP¡¯s emergency leadership, which had sought to overcome the crisis facing the party, has quit. Now the DLP has become a hang-out for the so-called National Liberation faction of pro-North Korean lawmakers who worship the communist country.
Among the countless numbers of progressive parties around the world at present, the few that support the North Korean regime are dictatorships and political groups in countries that starve their own people the way Pyongyang does. Progressive political parties in Europe turned their backs on North Korea in the 1980s. Left-wing political parties and progressive intellectuals in Europe are even more critical of North Korea than right-wing political groups and conservative intellectuals. The left-wing French newspaper Liberation leads in criticism of North Korea. It was during the 1960s that Japan¡¯s Communist Party criticized North Korea's "Juche" ideology of self-reliance and announced firmly that North Korea's bombing of a Korean Air passenger jet was a crime.
The reason they turned their backs on North Korea is because they could not recognize as socialist a regime that claims to protect its people yet puts them in front of a firing squad without a trial; a regime in which high-ranking party officials feast on Norwegian lobsters while the masses starve to death. Since socialist countries first began emerging in the early 20th century, there has been no country other than North Korea where the leader hands over rule to his son. North Korea is the first ever socialist country where a hereditary transfer of power has taken place. The reason former French president Francois Mitterand shook his head in disgust after visiting North Korea while he was the Socialist Party¡¯s candidate for the top office was because he witnessed this side of the communist country in person.
The DLP, as South Korea¡¯s progressive, left-wing party, should be in the best position to have the most accurate picture of North Korea. Yet the DLP is defending the North Korean regime and its nuclear weapons program. Just as North Korea's Workers' Party is the only ruling party in the world that practices hereditary transfer of power, South Korea's DLP is almost the only party in the world that supports such a regime. It is simply a comedy to watch the DLP seek to gain the support of South Koreans. And this comedy is what led to the disaster taking place at the DLP right now.
Those European progressive political groups that stayed silent on the human rights abuses of the former Soviet Union and Eastern European governments have disappeared into history. If the left-wing politicians fail to reclaim the progressive title from the pro-North Korean faction at the DLP, then left-wing, progressive ideology itself may cease to exist in our society altogether.
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