Split the Sword, the Hand Stays the Same
In my last diary entry I wrote that in the South the threshold of state power is being redrawn. This stretch showed just how thin that threshold actually is. On October 2, the Prosecution Service, which opened its doors in 1948, disappears. Investigative authority is split off to the Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, and prosecutorial authority to the Public Prosecution Service. But the reports of September 27, five days before the launch, were saying something else. Of the new investigation agency's authorized strength of 2,874, the actual filled personnel came to 1,962 combined, about 68 percent. There are even observations that the rank-and-file prosecutors who actually conduct investigations number around 40. The appointment of the first director is adrift, and the selection of executives for both the headquarters and regional offices he would work with is frozen along with it. One article described it as "not opening the doors and departing, but opening the doors and parking."
What must be asked here is not whether the reform succeeds. It is the fact that a power that for over fifty years held investigation and prosecution in one hand, negotiating with chaebols and politicians and controlling labor sites, is simply emptying out even without opponents. Who fills this void? If a third of the authorized strength is empty and the post holding the practical work of investigation has 40 people, then cases pile onto those 40. Even if the location of authority changes, which class's hands that authority remains in does not change. It moves under a different name, into a different few hands. The movement of authority crossing the threshold and the seats emptying out inside the threshold — these two are the front and back of the same event. And onto this stretch just before the transition, one number is attached that is called the largest in history. From September 1 to 20, semiconductor exports rose 259.4 percent over the same period the previous year to 34.1 billion dollars, accounting for 47.8 percent of total exports. Nearly half of the money earned through exports comes from a single industry, and the decisions on that industry's investment, technology, and markets are tied not to domestic politics but to capital beyond the border and the interests of that order. While the state machine splits the sword in its own hand, the nation's wealth hangs on a single item and dangles on external demand. At the very site where the institutions are being rearranged, the material base grows narrower.
In this stretch I passed through one case from another country. Poland. This country cut off sending new weapons to Ukraine after September 2023, but maintains the gateway that lets 80 to 90 percent of Western aid pass through the Zhelieshchi-Rivne corridor. It is a dual structure: weapons cut off, the corridor held. For its own military buildup it is driving South Korean defense contracts — K2 tanks, K9 self-propelled howitzers, Chunmoo, FA-50 — to build Europe's largest army. What is interesting is the political terrain. The Tusk coalition government launched in December 2023 holds 209 of the 460 Sejm seats, a minority coalition 22 seats short of a majority, and internally neoliberal right and social-democratic left clash over abortion and energy policy at every turn. The opposition Law and Justice party also split from 191 seats to 146. Both government and opposition are in a state of fracture. This is not the problem of a weak government. The structure by which Polish capital, within the US-led order, uses its status as an "eastern front outpost" as leverage to enlarge its voice within Europe manifests domestically as a form that can produce neither a majority nor a single opposition party. When the leverage of a formally sovereign state is compressed into a single cargo corridor crossing the border, that country's parliament is reduced to a room fighting over the toll of that corridor.
So the three scenes of this stretch say the same thing. In Seoul the Prosecution Service is split and it is unclear whose hands that authority remains in; in the same period semiconductor exports hit a record high and wealth hangs on a single item; in Warsaw the government, unable even to form a majority, haggles over the price of a border corridor. The three countries look as if they are in different situations, but the structure is one. As long as the power of decision lies outside one's own hands, no matter how the state machine is split, no matter how much exports grow, no matter how the seats are divided, no place arises where that country's workers determine their own share. In my last diary entry I asked who sets the price of the threshold. This stretch's answer is this. Splitting the threshold does not change the price. The price is set beyond the split threshold, in a room where we were never seated to begin with.
What must be asked here is not whether the reform succeeds. It is the fact that a power that for over fifty years held investigation and prosecution in one hand, negotiating with chaebols and politicians and controlling labor sites, is simply emptying out even without opponents. Who fills this void? If a third of the authorized strength is empty and the post holding the practical work of investigation has 40 people, then cases pile onto those 40. Even if the location of authority changes, which class's hands that authority remains in does not change. It moves under a different name, into a different few hands. The movement of authority crossing the threshold and the seats emptying out inside the threshold — these two are the front and back of the same event. And onto this stretch just before the transition, one number is attached that is called the largest in history. From September 1 to 20, semiconductor exports rose 259.4 percent over the same period the previous year to 34.1 billion dollars, accounting for 47.8 percent of total exports. Nearly half of the money earned through exports comes from a single industry, and the decisions on that industry's investment, technology, and markets are tied not to domestic politics but to capital beyond the border and the interests of that order. While the state machine splits the sword in its own hand, the nation's wealth hangs on a single item and dangles on external demand. At the very site where the institutions are being rearranged, the material base grows narrower.
In this stretch I passed through one case from another country. Poland. This country cut off sending new weapons to Ukraine after September 2023, but maintains the gateway that lets 80 to 90 percent of Western aid pass through the Zhelieshchi-Rivne corridor. It is a dual structure: weapons cut off, the corridor held. For its own military buildup it is driving South Korean defense contracts — K2 tanks, K9 self-propelled howitzers, Chunmoo, FA-50 — to build Europe's largest army. What is interesting is the political terrain. The Tusk coalition government launched in December 2023 holds 209 of the 460 Sejm seats, a minority coalition 22 seats short of a majority, and internally neoliberal right and social-democratic left clash over abortion and energy policy at every turn. The opposition Law and Justice party also split from 191 seats to 146. Both government and opposition are in a state of fracture. This is not the problem of a weak government. The structure by which Polish capital, within the US-led order, uses its status as an "eastern front outpost" as leverage to enlarge its voice within Europe manifests domestically as a form that can produce neither a majority nor a single opposition party. When the leverage of a formally sovereign state is compressed into a single cargo corridor crossing the border, that country's parliament is reduced to a room fighting over the toll of that corridor.
So the three scenes of this stretch say the same thing. In Seoul the Prosecution Service is split and it is unclear whose hands that authority remains in; in the same period semiconductor exports hit a record high and wealth hangs on a single item; in Warsaw the government, unable even to form a majority, haggles over the price of a border corridor. The three countries look as if they are in different situations, but the structure is one. As long as the power of decision lies outside one's own hands, no matter how the state machine is split, no matter how much exports grow, no matter how the seats are divided, no place arises where that country's workers determine their own share. In my last diary entry I asked who sets the price of the threshold. This stretch's answer is this. Splitting the threshold does not change the price. The price is set beyond the split threshold, in a room where we were never seated to begin with.