One of the most substantial statement of the Communist International on the struggle of Korea against Japanese imperialism was this December, 1928 resolution of the Executive Committee.

‘Resolution on the Korean Question’ from International Press Correspondence. Vol. 9 No. 8. February 15, 1929.

Adopted by the Polit-Secretariat of the E.C.C.I. on December 10th 1928.

To the Revolutionary Workers and Peasants of Korea. Dear Comrades!

The revolutionary movement in Korea is passing through a severe crisis. The blows of persecution by the Japanese imperialists are raining down upon it. The advance-guard of the working class, the Communist Party is being born to the accompaniment of severe birth-pangs. The severe birth-pangs are caused not only by the objective conditions (weak development of industry and a resultingly weak development of the working class and the working youth, fluctuation of its membership and weak organisations of the working class), not only by persecution on the part of Japanese imperialism, but also by those regrettable inner quarrels and conflicts which for several years have rent the Communist movement in your country. The birth of the Communist advance-guard of the Korean proletariat is accompanied by severe birth-pangs, and the class enemy is endeavouring to disintegrate the movement not only by means of the most furious white terror but also from within.

Japanese imperialism is intensifying its assault upon your country. The working class and the peasantry are beginning to stir, as the events of the last months have proved. But the Communist movement, torn by inner disputes, cannot be the initiator, the organizer and the leader of the revolutionary struggle, so long as the closest connection is not established between the individual revolutionaries and the working masses so long as the Party does not exert its organisational influence upon the national revolutionary movement.

The Executive Committee of the Communist International, after having thoroughly discussed the situation in the country and the position of the revolutionary movement, has adopted the following resolution, which is to assist the revolutionary workers and peasants to form their revolutionary advance-guard:

Resolution.

The key positions in Korean economics are all in the hands of Japanese finance capital. American and British capital has but an absolutely negligible share in the mining industry. With this exception which barely merits any attention. Japanese capital has taken possession of all major economic positions. Transportation (railways, steamships), the mining industry, foreign trade, the banks and the entire credit and monetary system and the few industrial enterprises which deserve that name (textile, cement, leather, matches, sugar), the manufacturing concerns of any size (distilleries, paper factories, fat producers) are in the hands of Japanese. But Japanese imperialism has very strong positions also in the sphere of agriculture. The irrigation system, the colonisation fund of the country, the forests, fishing, the tobacco fields, etc., are controlled by Japanese imperialism which was able to grab vast tracts of land for the Japanese colonists and plantation owners. The role of Korea in the system of Japanese imperialism is to be an agrarian hinterland supplying raw material for Japan and serving as a market for Japanese goods; the principal mission of Korea is to supply the Japanese market with rice. The Korean population is fed on inferior food while rice is exported to Japan. The mining resources of the country were used during the world war more intensively, but the industry has barely emerged from its post-war crisis. Even the light and manufacturing industries are developing very slowly and modern large-scale factories can be counted on one’s fingers. Meanwhile the export of farm products and the import of manufactured goods is rapidly increasing. The increase in arable land, the construction of irrigation systems, the extension of irrigated areas, the improvement in forestry and the petty-agrarian reforms, have not improved the position of the people as it was accompanied by intense exploitation on the part of Japanese imperialism. Korea is a typical colonial country in the sense outlined in the Theses of the VI. Congress of the Comintern. It is merely an agrarian and raw material base of Japanese imperialism. But from this point of view the importance of Korea is becoming more significant.

Japanese imperialism exploits Korea not only economically, but also by other than economic means, squeezing vast sums of money out of the country in the form of taxes, customs tariffs, excise duties, State monopoly profits, etc.

Japanese imperialism grabbed not only the key and central positions in the government, but almost all more or less important positions in general. Korea is of enormous importance for Japanese imperialism also from a strategical point of view. Korea, together with the Kwantung Peninsula, is the main hinterland of Japanese imperialism on the Asiatic Continent from where Japanese militarism can direct its blows both against the U.S.S.R. and against China. To the extent that the coming war of the Pacific becomes more imminent the economic and strategical importance of Korea is increasing. Korea will have to maintain a big Japanese army, the police and the armed forces intended for the suppression of the revolutionary movement, and for military purposes in general.

Japanese imperialism has its own military, police and bureaucratic machine for the administration of Korea, deprives the country of the opportunity to develop its own culture, deprives it of the opportunity independently to develop its productive forces, and retards its industrial development.

Owing to the poor industrial development of the country the overwhelming majority of the population, over 80%, is occupied in, or depends on, agriculture. The number of industrial enterprises of a modern type in 1922 was 664, employing 50,000 workers; there are only enterprises of all sorts with a fixed capital of over one million yen.

The agricultural relations, notwithstanding the rapid development of commodity and money relations, are chiefly of a pre-capitalist type. The peasants having less than one uno of land, comprise 83.7% of all landowning peasants. The peasants possessing from one to two uno constitute 9% of the total. At the same time, 64.4% of all irrigated rice fields and 57.4% of all dry fields are cultivated by tenants. Most of the tenants hire land because of want. Rent in kind, crop sharing, semi-feudal relations between landlord and tenant, slave-forms and methods of exploitation, is what characterises the positions off the tenants. A relatively small group of landlords exploit the vast majority of starving peasants. Independent peasants are exploited in the form of taxes, usury, cheating, false weights and measures, etc. Terrific exploitation makes for the majority of the peasants even simple reproduction of values and labour power impossible. Even official statistics admit that about 1,300,000 farms are run at a loss. No doubt that the poor peasant is the main figure in Korean agriculture both among the independent peasants and the tenants. There is no doubt a progress is going on in Korea of transition of land to the landlords, merchants, usurers and speculators, including Japanese, a progress of concentration of land in the hands of landlords of various types and origin, and a process of breaking up agriculture among the peasants. Emigration to Japan, Manchuria, the Far East, etc., does not solve the problem of pauperisation the great mass of peasants.

The yoke of landed exploitation, the yoke of exploitation the part of the Japanese financial and administrative apparatus, is distinguished also by the pre-capitalist slave methods exploitation of the peasantry employed by merchant and usurers capital. These economic factors the domination of Japanese capital and the subordinate role of native capital in agriculture, industry and trade, the considerable investments of capital towards the development of large scale agriculture, etc. determine the position and role of the classes in the class Struggle of Korea. Thanks to the poor development and juvenile character of industry the Korean proletariat is still very weak. Not only is it numerically small, but is to a large extent still connected with the villages and is not sufficiently class-conscious. On the other pole, in view of the dominating, subjugating and determining role of Japanese capitalism, the big landowners are closely attached to it and the urban bourgeoisie the manufacturers, merchants and usurers connected with large-scale agriculture or directly subordinated to Japanese capital, is coming ever-closer towards it. The vast majority of the Korean population consists of economically enslaved peasants who are suppressed and downtrodden by the terroristic police regime and who have no prospects of an improvement of their position without a revolution.

That is why the revolution in Korea will, by its social and economic content, be directed not only against Japanese imperialism, but also against Korean feudalism. It will be directed towards the abolition of all pre-capitalist remnants and survivals, towards a cardinal change in the agrarian relations, towards a cleansing of the land from pre-capitalist forms of slavery. The revolution in Korea must be an agrarian revolution.

Thus the overthrow of imperialism and the revolutionary solution of the agrarian problem is the main objective historical meaning of the revolution in Korea in the first phases of its development. In this sense the Korean Revolution will be a bourgeois-democratic revolution.

Of all classes in Korea, as well as in any other colonial country, the proletariat is the most consistent anti-imperialist class. To the extent that the working class will grow and organise, especially the industrial workers, its leading role in the revolutionary movement will increase and the basis for the development of a Communist movement will be created. Apart from the proletariat, the toiling peasantry and the mass of the urban petty-bourgeoisie constitute a motive force in the revolution. The basic mass of the bourgeoisie constitutes, especially since the experiences of the Chinese Revolution, at best only à national-reformist opposition to Japanese imperialism, whilst the big landowners are completely on the side of the Japanese imperialists.

Under these conditions the national liberation movement in the majority of modern colonies, including Korea, is not only an anti-imperialist and an anti-feudal movement, but is closely inked up with the class struggle of the proletariat against the imperialists, the feudal lords and the national bourgeoisie. The proletariat of the colonial countries, in alliance with the broad masses of peasants, enters the political arena as an independent political factor which must have the hegemony in the revolution.

The Korean proletariat will not be able to take over the leadership in the national-revolutionary movement if the Korean Communists will not link up organically the agrarian problem with the national revolution. Inasmuch as the Korean bourgeoisie is bound up with big land ownership, in view of its dependence upon landed property, it is not interested in a radical agrarian programme and will find it very difficult to gain leadership over the peasants. (A big danger in this respect Is its agency the national-reformist petty-bourgeoisie.) The agrarian problem of Korea can be solved only by revolutionary and plebeian methods (by means of seizure of land from all big landowners).

There can be no victorious national liberation struggle without an unfoldment of the agrarian revolution. It is precisely the almost complete absence of control between the national-liberation struggle and the struggle for land that is responsible for the weakness and the defeat of the revolutionary movement of recent years (1919-1920). A victory over the imperialist yoke presupposes a revolutionary solution of the agrarian problem and the establishment of a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasants (in the form of Soviets) through which the bourgeois-democratic revolution under the hegemony of the proletariat is transformed into a Socialist Revolution.

Under these conditions, the peasant problem, the problem of the agrarian revolution, is of greatest importance for Communist activity in Korea. Only by bringing the peasants under their influence, only by appealing to them by means of intelligible and popular slogans and demands, will the working class and its vanguard be able to accomplish a victorious revolution in Korea.

The method by which Japanese imperialism has hitherto administered the country consisted in direct and open domination of the bureaucratic apparatus of occupation. Japanese imperialism does not even formally share its power with any of the native classes of Korea. The governor-general’s consultative body consists of picked and pro-Japanese representatives of the Korean feudal aristocracy and has no backing of any considerable sections of the Korean bourgeoisie and liberal intellectuals. Opposed by a wide front of workers and peasants, which is still weak, but carries with it the possibility of great complications in the future, Japanese imperialism is according to some indications ready, especially since the experiences of the Chinese Revolution, to resort to certain safety measures so as to secure its position in Korea by winning over and attraction of a certain section of the bourgeoisie and the bourgeois intellectuals to its apparatus of occupation.

The more far-sighted representatives of imperialist Japan are beginning openly to speak of the necessity of partial reforms in Korea, understanding that the present conflict between the colonial regime and the growing revolutionary forces in the country cannot be overcome with the help of police measures alone.

Meanwhile, terror against the Communists and radical nationalists is being multiplied. The class labour and peasant movement has actually been outlawed. The suppression of the press has become more brutal.

There is thus the possibility that Japanese imperialism will within the next few years try to crush the development of the revolutionary movement not only with knout, but also by granting small concessions to the exploiters. The latter, however, will not be able to satisfy the proletariat nor the peasants and the broad sections of the urban petty-bourgeoisie. The national-revolutionary movement in Korea which has a firm social basis to stand on will develop also in the future.

The rapprochement of Japanese imperialism and the big native landowners has not failed to influence the position of a considerable section of the intelligentsia which plays a big role in the organisation and leadership of the nationalist movement. These changes in the class relations in favour of conciliation with Japanese imperialism, just as the growing repressive measures and persecutions of the national-revolutionary organisations, cannot fail to influence the position of the latter. We may expect growing national reformist tendencies in their ranks, a diminishing of their revolutionary character and their transformation into a loyal “opposition”. With the elimination of the Communists (through imprisonments, etc.) from the national-revolutionary movement, the tendency of growing national-reformism is becoming ever more pronounced.

The main line to be followed by the Communist movement of Korea in the present phase of development is, on the one hand, to strengthen the proletarian revolutionary movement, to guarantee its complete independence with regard to the petty-bourgeois national-revolutionary movement, and, on the other hand, to strengthen the national-revolutionary movement by lending it a class character and dissociating it from compromising national-reformism (i.e. from the bourgeois-democratic movement, the vacillations of which must be untiringly and mercilessly exposed) The present situation and the existing class relations in Korea determine the political and organisational tasks of the Korean Communists. The years of factional struggle could not fail to retard their development and to confront them now with tasks, the accomplishment of which will be no child’s play. The first of these tasks is a conscious and constant formation of Communist cadres with sound Communist views, the working out of a genuine Communist conception and a true scientific Marxian-Leninist mode of thinking; it is about time to discard the superficial pseudo-scientific phrases which have so frequently been our stock in trade till now; a profound discussion of all problems arising from the tactics of the movement is necessary.

The ranks of the Communist Party of Korea have in the past consisted almost exclusively of intellectuals and students. A Communist Party built on such foundations cannot be a consistently Bolshevik and organizationally sound Party. The first task of the Communist movement of Korea is therefore to strengthen its own ranks. The problem of improving the social structure of the Party is confronting us in its full scope. The petty-bourgeois intellectual composition of the Party, and the lack of contact with the workers constituted until now one of the main causes of the permanent crisis in the Communist movement of Korea.

The Korean Communists must do their utmost to attract first of all industrial workers and also poor peasants who have not given up their farming, into the Party. The Communists will be able to accomplish this great task only if they effect a sharp break with the old methods of organisation of intellectual circles and undertake mass Bolshevik work, particularly in the factories and trade unions. More intensive work must be carried on in the labour and peasant organisations, in the old and new national-revolutionary mass organisations, some of which, like the “Sin-Han-Hwei”, “Khen-Fen-Sa”, “Chen-Do-Hio”, etc. are semi-religious associations. Fighting for the toilers in those organisations the Communists must expose the half-heartedness and indecision of the national–reformist and other opportunist leaders. In their organisational work the Communists must avoid mechanical methods such as, for instance the mechanical organisation of nuclei, etc.

Oral and written agitation among the toiling sections of the population must be developed much more extensively than hitherto. The Communists must respond to every social event in the country. Such events should be interpreted from the proletarian point of view and from the point of view representing the interests of all toilers of Korea. The response to Communist leaflets and oral agitation coming from the sympathising and hostile sections of the population and their press will be the best measures of the quality of Communist work.

The methods of work in the national-revolutionary organisations must also be changed. The illegality of the Communists obliges them to work in the mass organisations more under cover to carry their propositions, suggestions and resolutions through non-Communist members of those organisations. This of course does not mean that the Communists must be so clandestine that their work should be entirely invisible or unfelt. On the contrary, the work of the Communists must be felt on every step. The Communists must always and everywhere, if occasion demands, come out clearly and stop at no sacrifices, openly advancing the Communist point of view and methods of solution of problems. But they must work for the desired results also by means of deeper contact with the masses of these organisations and by means of deeper influence and greater popularity. This will protect the masses against the influence of the anti-Communist forces even when the Communists will be arrested or will suffer losses and defeats.

The frequent failures of the Korean Communists show that the Party was unable to organise its conspirative work properly. The employment of correct conspirative methods is therefore one of the most urgent tasks. Great pain must be taken to prevent the presence of agent-provocateurs in the Communist ranks. It must be particularly borne in mind that with the present factional struggle the Japanese spies and agent-provocateurs can penetrate the Communist organisations without any difficulty and that the creation of an ideologically compact and truly Bolshevik basis for the Communist Party is one of the first prerequisites for the struggle, against provocations.

The E.C.C.I. considers the task of ideological consolidation of great importance and advises the Korean Communists to concentrate their attention to it; on its part, the E.C.C.I. will take every step towards a most speedy restoration and consolidation of the Communist Party of Korea.

The Communists must be able to overcome the political indifference of the working masses in the Japanese governmental enterprises in Korea. The higher wages in those factories and the rapid dismissal of “undesirable workers” by the administration render Communist work among those workers very difficult, but, nevertheless, the Party must find a way of reaching those workers.

The Communists must devote special attention to the trade unions. The latter are still far from being militant class organisations. They are rather workers’ associations which constitute no danger for the employers. The trade unions must be imbued with the class spirit, and must be reorganised and strengthened. This is an immediate task of the Communists. The percentage of industrial workers in the unions must be increased.

In the sphere of work among the peasants, the Party must become more active among the tenants and half-tenants. The activity of the masses can be raised and the workers and peasants can be drawn into their mass organisations only if the Communists will learn to do mass work and to link up organically the final aim of the movement with the daily needs, requirements, and demands of the masses.

Much more system is necessary in the daily activity of the Party. It will not do to limit those activities to discussing from time to time “big” problems which, as experiences has shown, do not always arise from the requirements of the class struggle. A most important element of work is the concentration of attention on questions of the practical requirements of the movement, which gives rise also to great and general problems.

Only by means of practical work and the following up of all questions of the Communist, labour and national bourgeois movements, can the guiding abilities of the Communists be tested and evaluated, can the value of their statements and the force of their arguments be measured. In their practical work the Communists must not labour without a plan and haphazardly; they must be guided by a definite programme of action arising from the peculiarities of the situation and the petty-bourgeois groups and parties. But “whenever expediency given circumstances.

In all their work and action the Communists of Korea must strictly preserve the full independence of the revolutionary labour movement which must be definitely dissociated from all of the revolutionary struggle demands, temporary collaboration, and under some conditions even a temporary alliance of the Communist Party and national-revolutionary movement inasmuch as that movement is revolutionary, is permissible.” (Colonial Theses of the VI. Congress of the C.I.). This collaboration, however, must by no means “find expression in a fusion of the Communist movement with the bourgeois-revolutionary movement” (Ibid). With regard to the bourgeois opposition the Communists may conclude agreements with them “if the action of the bourgeois opposition can be utilised for the development of a mass movement and, if such agreement will in no way restrict the freedom of the Communist Party in its agitation among the masses and in their organisations. In this connection, Communists must not only fully preserve their political independence and reveal their own position, but on the basis of action they must open the eyes of the toiling masses under the influence of the bourgeois opposition so that they may see the unreliability of that opposition and the danger of the bourgeois-democratic illusions disseminated by it.” (Ibid.)

The Korean Communists will have to advance in the future and popularise more energetically, the slogan of the agrarian revolution as an organic part of the national-revolutionary movement. They will have to fight more energetically against the bourgeois-nationalists, expose their half-heartedness and inconsistency in the struggle against Japanese imperialism as well as against the big landowners, and they will have to take steps to prevent their falling under the influence of the nationalists who use radical phrases and are the most dangerous opponents of the Communists. The Communists must remember that the conquest of the national apparatus without the necessary preparatory work among the masses is no guarantee that they will have any contact with the masses.

By constantly advocating the Communist programme, the Korean Communists must coordinate the slogans of the daily struggle with the main slogans of irreconcilable struggle against Japanese imperialism, for complete national independence, for a democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasants (a Soviet Government of workers and peasants), for the agrarian revolution, i.e. the distribution of the estates and the State lands to the peasants without compensation, for the nationalisation of the mills and factories, etc., etc. It is at the same time necessary insistently to advance in the day to day activity the partial demands of the working class, fighting for the recognition and extension of the rights of the unions and the labour organisations, demands in the sphere of social legislation (the 8-hour day, 6-hour day for juveniles, equal pay and equal working conditions for men and women, equality of conditions of Korean and Japanese workers, labour protection, etc.).

Special partial demands and slogans should be advanced by the Communists in the course of the struggle in the interests of the peasants, including the demands for limiting the rates of rent to a certain percentage of the crop, fixation of definite tax rates, abolition of compulsory prices on certain agricultural products, passing of laws against feudal tyranny, etc. Finally, the Communists in their daily work must advance demands for political rights and liberties (against all forms of arbitrary power of State officials, against political persecution, for freedom of speech, the press, assembly, association, strikes, etc.).

The Korean Communists must invariably and in all cases come out sharply against the imperialist policy and military action of Japan. Slogans of struggle against imperialist war and for the Soviet Union must be advanced and the work organized–considering this task, propaganda and agitation of special importance in the daily activity of the Korean Communists.

Fighting against the Japanese terrorist regime, defending the legality of the labour and peasant movement, the Korean Communists must find ways and means of entering the arena of an open political struggle on the part of the mass movement. Thus the question of utilisation of all legal possibilities is rising before the Communist Party of Korea in its full scope.

This utilisation of the legal possibilities must, however, be to a certain extent kept also within certain limits. Thus, for instance, the utilisation of the liberal bourgeois press for the discussion of Party questions and for polemics which tend to discredit the ranks of the Party is intolerable. The Korean Communists must see to it that the discussion of such questions and problems of the Communist movement be possible in their own publications.

The enumerated measures of a political and organisational character cannot of course embrace all tasks of the Korean Communists. However, they can serve as a pre-requisite for the development of extensive and profound work of a truly Communist nature.

The E.C.C.I. is convinced that a conscientious and serious attitude of the Korean Communists to the tasks arising from the present situation in the country will help them to overcome the maladies of the past and to restore and strengthen the Communist Party of Korea on the basis of the decisions of the E.C.C.I.

Comrades, Workers and Peasants!

Such is the estimation of the situation given by the Comintern and the tasks resulting therefrom for the revolutionary workers and peasants.

The E.C.C.I. earnestly hopes that the Korean Communists will carry out the instructions of the above resolution, and will in a severe struggle, demanding great sacrifices establish the iron cohorts, the Communist Party. The E.C.C.I. will support you in this struggle. Without the restoration and consolidation of the Communist Party a consistent and determined struggle for the emancipation of the country from the yoke of Japanese imperialism and for carrying out the agrarian revolution is impossible.

International Press Correspondence, widely known as”Inprecorr” was published by the Executive Committee of the Communist International (ECCI) regularly in German and English, occasionally in many other languages, beginning in 1921 and lasting in English until 1938. Inprecorr’s role was to supply translated articles to the English-speaking press of the International from the Comintern’s different sections, as well as news and statements from the ECCI. Many ‘Daily Worker’ and ‘Communist’ articles originated in Inprecorr, and it also published articles by American comrades for use in other countries. It was published at least weekly, and often thrice weekly. Inprecorr is an invaluable English-language source on the history of the Communist International and its sections.

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