A Link Cannot Sustain Itself
At 4:30 a.m. on October 1, Trump announced South Korea's investment in the United States from Washington. It had been a week since our government finished reporting to the National Assembly, and the negotiations had ended before that. We did not set the announcement schedule, and it was not us who timed the announcement for the early hours of our time. The project list included $54 billion for Alaska liquefied natural gas. The government had classified that project as a matter for future consultation and had explained that the first U.S. investment was the Encinnal gas power plant in Texas. But the announcement came out with a different list. What the government calls No. 1 and where the money is declared to be going are different things. At the same hour, in other places in this country, different calculations were running. The Serious Crimes Investigation Agency, which opens its doors on October 2, has no chief until the day before its opening. More than 20 days after the candidate was nominated, the personnel hearing request has not gone to the National Assembly, and 615 applicants for special appointment withdrew their applications. While the White House issues a comment attaching the president's name to the Coupang matter, and the 35-page report by the House Judiciary Committee is still alive, the head of this country's new investigative body remains vacant. And on June 11, the Personal Information Protection Commission imposed a fine of 624.681 billion won on Coupang. These are not three dates but one circuit. Trump announces at dawn our time where our money is going, in the same week the head of our new investigative agency is not appointed, and the fine imposed by our regulatory agency becomes a subject for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain. The common cause of these three is one thing: when this country's state apparatus deliberates on capital, the language of that deliberation is already filled with someone else's language.
The Coupang matter shows that circuit being completed. Its material basis is the deaths of workers. Repeated industrial deaths at the logistics center, most of them on the night shift. What came after the deaths was concealment. According to disclosed audit and press records, in 4 of the 5 deaths in 2020 there were circumstances of responsibility being reduced: instructions not to leave records saying the person worked hard, legal office emails blocking bereaved families' industrial accident applications, and industrial accident concealment agreements. This is not a management failure but a system. Next is the stage where even when a regulation is imposed, it is not enforced. The Personal Information Protection Commission's 624.6 billion won fine is the largest ever, far exceeding the 134.8 billion won in the SKT case, and the disposition immediately goes to administrative litigation and is reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a request for relief. Here intervention enters. The single fact that the company is listed on the U.S. securities market changes the circuit of regulation. The phrase "interference in internal affairs" gains concrete meaning at this point. It is not a dispute between countries, but an event in which the procedure for holding someone responsible for workers' deaths and the procedure for putting a price on the leak of citizens' personal information disappear inside the title of another country's congressional report. The title of the report is "competition blocking, Korea's discriminatory attack on American-owned companies." The 23 dead workers and the 37.55 million leaked records are nowhere in that title. Language is cleaned up first, and then people are erased.
What is interesting is the fact that each link in this chain cannot endure on its own. In this section, I read in a public document a discussion that defines national capital as small and medium-sized latecomer capital excluded from the subordinate chain, and traces its origin to landlords who fell during land reform and the postwar reconstruction period and converted into capitalists. It was a precise tracing. But the same document, in two places, digs out the ground beneath its own strategy. First, it says that the national capital group had no will to confront the monopoly of bureaucratic big capital and the system of subordination to the U.S. and Japan. Second, it says that the political alliance between national capital and the urban petty bourgeoisie had no capacity to confront bureaucratic big capital, and that the fact that authorization was possible only in the form of cooperation and collaboration with bureaucratic big capital was proven again under the Kim Dae-jung regime. If these two sentences are accepted, then the strategy of setting that class up as a regular member of the united front does not stand on its own analysis. It is calculating those bound by the chain as a force outside the chain. What matters here is not the error of that document but the nature of this chain. Capital bound in a subordinate chain cannot possess within itself the power to break the chain. If it did, it would already be capital outside the chain, and such capital does not exist in this country. Therefore, breaking this chain is not a matter of capital above the chain but of labor below the chain. Even after confirming this with its own document, in every place where that confirmation is erased in strategy, the place of the working class narrows.
The way this circuit extends outward was also revealed in the same section. That what Coupang's workers and consumers paid and what Trump is dragging our capital away for are not different events is because the recipients of the two events are the same. Workers pay with death, citizens with information, the state with the right of deliberation. And the channels through which that value flows are financial routes including the Wisaeng Card, U.S. investment, defense costs, and energy contracts. Each link in this chain — chaebol, comprador, imperialism — needs the others, and so if any one is removed, the rest collapse. The problem is that each link in this chain does not stand on its own power. The chaebol relies on the state's deliberation, finance, and labor control; the state relies on the U.S. security framework; and that security framework relies on public opinion that this country's security calculations cannot be completed on their own. A structure in which things that cannot stand on their own hold each other up — this is the substance of the comprador-monopoly form. Therefore, shaking this structure is not about pushing the link that looks strongest, but about calling into question the very supporting relationship by which they hold each other up. In the Coupang matter, that supporting relationship was placed before the language of the public for the first time. Why must the procedure for holding someone responsible for a dead colleague become the title of another country's congressional report, and why, while that report is being written, is there no head of our new investigative agency? The moment the two questions are placed in one spot, the public sees for the first time the form of capital it has bought. What I have accumulated in this section is the material for that question. The material now lies not as sentences but as a chain. On October 2 the door opens, there is no name before that door, behind that door is the U.S. Congress report, and beneath that report are dead night workers. Drawing the line begins with reversing this order.
The Coupang matter shows that circuit being completed. Its material basis is the deaths of workers. Repeated industrial deaths at the logistics center, most of them on the night shift. What came after the deaths was concealment. According to disclosed audit and press records, in 4 of the 5 deaths in 2020 there were circumstances of responsibility being reduced: instructions not to leave records saying the person worked hard, legal office emails blocking bereaved families' industrial accident applications, and industrial accident concealment agreements. This is not a management failure but a system. Next is the stage where even when a regulation is imposed, it is not enforced. The Personal Information Protection Commission's 624.6 billion won fine is the largest ever, far exceeding the 134.8 billion won in the SKT case, and the disposition immediately goes to administrative litigation and is reported to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission as a request for relief. Here intervention enters. The single fact that the company is listed on the U.S. securities market changes the circuit of regulation. The phrase "interference in internal affairs" gains concrete meaning at this point. It is not a dispute between countries, but an event in which the procedure for holding someone responsible for workers' deaths and the procedure for putting a price on the leak of citizens' personal information disappear inside the title of another country's congressional report. The title of the report is "competition blocking, Korea's discriminatory attack on American-owned companies." The 23 dead workers and the 37.55 million leaked records are nowhere in that title. Language is cleaned up first, and then people are erased.
What is interesting is the fact that each link in this chain cannot endure on its own. In this section, I read in a public document a discussion that defines national capital as small and medium-sized latecomer capital excluded from the subordinate chain, and traces its origin to landlords who fell during land reform and the postwar reconstruction period and converted into capitalists. It was a precise tracing. But the same document, in two places, digs out the ground beneath its own strategy. First, it says that the national capital group had no will to confront the monopoly of bureaucratic big capital and the system of subordination to the U.S. and Japan. Second, it says that the political alliance between national capital and the urban petty bourgeoisie had no capacity to confront bureaucratic big capital, and that the fact that authorization was possible only in the form of cooperation and collaboration with bureaucratic big capital was proven again under the Kim Dae-jung regime. If these two sentences are accepted, then the strategy of setting that class up as a regular member of the united front does not stand on its own analysis. It is calculating those bound by the chain as a force outside the chain. What matters here is not the error of that document but the nature of this chain. Capital bound in a subordinate chain cannot possess within itself the power to break the chain. If it did, it would already be capital outside the chain, and such capital does not exist in this country. Therefore, breaking this chain is not a matter of capital above the chain but of labor below the chain. Even after confirming this with its own document, in every place where that confirmation is erased in strategy, the place of the working class narrows.
The way this circuit extends outward was also revealed in the same section. That what Coupang's workers and consumers paid and what Trump is dragging our capital away for are not different events is because the recipients of the two events are the same. Workers pay with death, citizens with information, the state with the right of deliberation. And the channels through which that value flows are financial routes including the Wisaeng Card, U.S. investment, defense costs, and energy contracts. Each link in this chain — chaebol, comprador, imperialism — needs the others, and so if any one is removed, the rest collapse. The problem is that each link in this chain does not stand on its own power. The chaebol relies on the state's deliberation, finance, and labor control; the state relies on the U.S. security framework; and that security framework relies on public opinion that this country's security calculations cannot be completed on their own. A structure in which things that cannot stand on their own hold each other up — this is the substance of the comprador-monopoly form. Therefore, shaking this structure is not about pushing the link that looks strongest, but about calling into question the very supporting relationship by which they hold each other up. In the Coupang matter, that supporting relationship was placed before the language of the public for the first time. Why must the procedure for holding someone responsible for a dead colleague become the title of another country's congressional report, and why, while that report is being written, is there no head of our new investigative agency? The moment the two questions are placed in one spot, the public sees for the first time the form of capital it has bought. What I have accumulated in this section is the material for that question. The material now lies not as sentences but as a chain. On October 2 the door opens, there is no name before that door, behind that door is the U.S. Congress report, and beneath that report are dead night workers. Drawing the line begins with reversing this order.