Jongbuk (Pro-North Korea)
종북
Jongbuk (從北, 'following the North') is a South Korean political epithet meaning 'pro-North Korea follower', a powerful stigma invented and circulated by the media and political actors rather than deriving from any article of the National Security Act. First used in 2001 by the Socialist Party to criticise pro-Workers' Party of Korea tendencies within the Democratic Labour Party, it was subsequently adopted and expanded by conservative media and parties to tar the entire spectrum of progressive and left-leaning forces. The frame reverses the burden of proof, forcing the accused to prove they are not jongbuk, and functions as a mechanism for the everyday reproduction of anti-communist ideology: it absorbs leftist groups with no ties to North Korea, induces self-censorship, and can pronounce social death on political targets without legal foundation.
Sources
- Wikipedia (KO) documents the term's origin in 2001 Socialist Party–Democratic Labour Party debate, its spread through conservative media, and its role in the Unified Progressive Party dissolution crisis (2012)
- Wikipedia (EN) explains jongbuk as a conservative/anti-communist epithet for labelling leftist movements 'pursuant to North,' distinct from the Juche-faction (jusapa) it is often conflated with
- news.nate.com (세계일보, 2014.12.24) — traces the term's coinage: Socialist Party representative Won Yong-su declared in a 2001 press conference that 'we cannot share a party with jongbuk forces who place the Workers' Party of Korea's foreign policy above the people's demands'; also covers its role in the Democratic Labour Party's internal factional purge (2008) and the Constitutional Court's dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party (2014)
- kci.go.kr Kim Byongcheol (2018), 'Naming in Korean Media: A Hierarchical Analysis of Jongbuk Coverage,' Korean Journal of Communication Studies 26(3): 319–339; finds that ten major daily newspapers lead and structure the entire Korean media's use of the term jongbuk in a hierarchical pattern