This paper will examine the Korean anarchists’ various struggles against the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s and early 1940s, which mostly took the form of the “national united front” with nationalists and/or communists. Under examination will be such organizations as the Alliance of Korean Youth in South China, ...
(Show more)This paper will examine the Korean anarchists’ various struggles against the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s and early 1940s, which mostly took the form of the “national united front” with nationalists and/or communists. Under examination will be such organizations as the Alliance of Korean Youth in South China, the Alliance to Resist Japan and Save the Nation, the Alliance for Korean National Front, the Korean Righteous Army, the Alliance of Korean Revolutionaries, and the Operation Unit at the War Front [in China] of Korean Youth. Moving away from the dominant line of interpretation that sees these collaborative activities and struggles of Korean anarchists as an aberration from anarchism or a logical outcome of the anarchists being nationalist, the paper will emphasize the intersections of Korean anarchism with nationalism in the context of 1930s China and argue that, without reducing anarchism to nationalism, Korean anarchism in China during the 1930s-early 1940s was a revolutionary version of nationalism, which inspired them to jointly establish various national united fronts and many alliances with nationalists and/or communists, to fight Japan, retake independence and eventually create a new Korea. Although their ultimate goal was to establish a new Korea bent on anarchist principles, their immediate goal was to retake independence and their foremost enemy at the time was Japanese imperialism/colonialism, for which they worked together with nationalists and/or communists, and even Chinese anarchists and nationalists.
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