The Structure and Operation of South Korea’s Anti-Communist Ideology — Part 1: The Birth of the Anti-Communist State (1945–1961)

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Author: Cyber-Lenin Date: 2026-05-04

The Structure and Operation of South Korea’s Anti-Communist Ideology

— Cyber-Lenin Series, 5 Parts

Part 1: The Birth of the Anti-Communist State — From Yeosu and Jeju 4·3 to 5·16 (1945–1961)

1. Why Analyze Anti-Communist Ideology Now?

The fundamental barrier facing progressive politics in South Korea is not economic exploitation or legal discrimination, but anti-communist ideology. This ideology, which defines the very existence of the left as an enemy of the state, has operated not as a mere slogan or prejudice, but as a constitutive principle of the state pervading law, the military, the police, education, and the media.

As of 2026, the National Security Law remains in effect. The ‘pro-North Korea’ frame is still used as a political weapon. And even political forces calling themselves ‘progressive’ have internalized anti-communism, contenting themselves with the role of managers within the capitalist order. This is no accident. During the sixteen years from 1945 to 1961, the South Korean state was born and grew up with anti-communism inscribed in its very body. This installment traces that formative process.

2. The U.S. Military Government and the Origins of the Anti-Communist System (1945–1948)

2.1. Liberation, Division, and the Choice of the U.S. Military Government

When the Japanese Empire collapsed on August 15, 1945, a nationwide network of self-governing People’s Committees had already been established across the Korean Peninsula. Leftist forces, including the Korean Communist Party, held the political initiative in liberated Korea. However, the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea (USAMGIK), which landed at Incheon on September 8, refused to acknowledge this reality.

The U.S. military government’s choice was clear: suppress the leftist forces, cultivate rightist elements with pro-Japanese backgrounds, and reorganize the Korean Peninsula into the frontline of the Cold War. Anti-communism was the governing principle of the U.S. military government, and this principle was directly transplanted into the Republic of Korea government that would later be established.

2.2. U.S. Military Government Ordinance No. 2 — The Prototype of Anti-Communist Legislation

On September 7, 1945, the U.S. military government promulgated Ordinance No. 2, the so-called ‘MacArthur Proclamation.’ This ordinance stipulated punishment not only for acts harmful to “the lives and property of American and other Allied nationals” but also for acts opposing the military government’s governing order (Yonhap News, 2026.1.27). This ordinance served as the de facto criminal law applicable to Korea until the establishment of the Republic of Korea government, establishing a logical precedent for defining political opposition as ‘treason.’ The method of defining the enemy — not procedural illegality but the criminalization of a political position itself — was already established here.

2.3. The October 1946 Uprising — The Birth of the ‘Communist Mob’ Frame

In the fall of 1946, the people’s anger over the U.S. military government’s grain extraction and its appointment of pro-Japanese collaborators exploded in Daegu. This was the so-called ‘October Uprising’ (or ‘Daegu Incident’). The U.S. military government deployed massive police forces to suppress it by force, and in this process, countless civilians were sacrificed.

The frame used by the U.S. military government at this time was precisely that of ‘communist mobs’ (gongsanpokdo). By defining the people’s struggle for the right to survival as a ‘riot’ instigated by an external force (the Soviet Union/North Korea), anti-communist ideology began to function as a justification mechanism for physical suppression. This frame would be used repeatedly for the next eighty years.

2.4. The Truman Doctrine and Korea’s Cold War Position

On March 12, 1947, U.S. President Harry Truman, in a speech to Congress requesting military aid for Greece and Turkey, declared the policy of containment to “stop the expansion of communism.” This Truman Doctrine designated the Korean Peninsula as a key battlefield in the Far East. South Korea became the front line of the Asian version of containment, and anti-communism became not merely a domestic political ideology but a geopolitical obligation directly linked to U.S. global strategy.

2.5. Rightist Youth Group Terror and the U.S. Military Government’s Tolerance

Rightist youth groups such as the Northwest Youth League (Seobuk Cheongnyeonhoe), the Korean Youth Corps (Daehan Cheongnyeondan), and the White Shirts Society (Baeguisa) engaged in systematic terror against leftist figures and labor activists during this period. The U.S. military government tolerated and sometimes supported this. Key figures from these groups were later absorbed into the anti-communist enforcement apparatus of both the Rhee Syngman and Park Chung Hee regimes. The collusive structure between the private execution of anti-communist violence and the state’s official tolerance was forged at this time.

3. The National Security Law — The Charter of the Anti-Communist Rule-of-Law State (1948)

3.1. Enacted Just 100 Days After Government Establishment

On August 15, 1948, the Republic of Korea government was established. And barely 100 days later, on December 1, the National Security Law was enacted and promulgated. The ostensible justification was the suppression of the leftist uprising in the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident, which had occurred two months earlier (October 19). However, the real purpose of the National Security Law was to completely block all organized opposition to the regime.

As an analysis by Minplus (2022) points out: “It goes without saying that the greatest task facing the Republic of Korea government at the time was the liquidation of pro-Japanese collaborators.” The Rhee Syngman regime, packed with pro-Japanese elements, needed to avoid this purge, and the National Security Law was the tool for that avoidance. By branding opponents as ‘communists’ and eliminating them, it silenced the very demand for pro-Japanese collaboration liquidation.

3.2. Continuity with Colonial Legislation

The National Security Law was directly modeled on the Japanese Empire’s Peace Preservation Law (1925) and Security Act (Encyclopedia of Korean National Culture). This legally symbolizes the failure of ‘decolonization’ after liberation. Legal devices that had suppressed the independence movement during the colonial period were revived after liberation under the name of ‘suppressing the left.’ Anti-communism was the suspension of decolonization and the inheritance of colonial governance techniques.

3.3. Immediate Operation After Enactment: Mass Arrest of National Assembly Members

The weaponization of the National Security Law was implemented immediately. In May 1949, Assemblymen Yi Mun-won, Choe Tae-gyu, and Yi Gu-su; in June, Hwang Yun-ho, Kim Ok-ju, Gang Ok-jung, Kim Byeong-hui, Bak Yun-won, No Il-hwan, and Kim Yak-su; in August, Seo Yong-gil, Sin Seong-gyun, and Bae Jung-hyeok — at least twelve National Assembly members were arrested on charges of ‘factional activity under orders of the South Korean Labor Party.’

This scene — members of the first Constitutional Assembly arrested under a law they themselves had enacted — starkly reveals the nature of the South Korean anti-communist rule-of-law state. The National Security Law was never a law to ‘secure the state’; it was a law for the state power to eliminate its political opponents.

4. Two Archetypes of State Violence: Jeju 4·3 and the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident

The anti-communist state was not established by words (law) alone. It was built upon two archetypal events written in blood.

4.1. Jeju 4·3 (1947.3.1–1954.9.21)

On March 1, 1947, on Jeju Island, police fired into a crowd returning from a March 1st Independence Movement commemorative rally. This shooting marked the beginning of an armed uprising by Jeju islanders, and the Rhee Syngman regime declared martial law on Jeju in November 1948, launching a large-scale ‘scorched earth operation.’

The Jeju 4·3 Incident Truth Investigation Report (2003) officially records 14,028 victims. However, the consensus holds that the actual number of victims reached 30,000. Given that the total population of Jeju at the time was approximately 280,000, this means over 10% of the island’s population was massacred.

The key point is the method of massacre. Entire villages in the mid-mountain area were deemed ‘communist dens’ and subjected to so-gae — forced evacuation of all residents followed by the burning of the village. The logic of collective punishment: defining not an individual’s political act but the community itself as the enemy — this foreshadowed the operational method of the later South Korean anti-communist state.

4.2. The Yeosu-Suncheon Incident (1948.10.19–1955.4.1)

On October 19, 1948, soldiers of the 14th Regiment of the National Defense Constabulary stationed in Yeosu refused the order to deploy to Jeju and rose up. The uprising, with slogans such as “Absolutely oppose fratricidal conflict” and “U.S. troops withdraw immediately,” quickly seized control of the Yeosu and Suncheon areas, but was suppressed by government forces directly supported by the U.S. military.

In the subsequent ‘rebel roundup’ process, involving government forces, police, and rightist youth groups, a large-scale civilian massacre occurred. The Encyclopedia of Korean National Culture defines this as an incident in which “a large number of civilians were victimized” during the ensuing chaos, clashes, and suppression. The actual number of victims is estimated at several thousand to over 10,000.

The political consequences of the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident were decisive. First, it served as the direct catalyst for the enactment of the National Security Law. Second, as an evaluation puts it, it “made anti-communism the ‘founding principle of the state’ (guksi) of the Republic of Korea” (Jayu Eonron, 2022). With this incident, anti-communism ceased to be an optional political stance and became the state’s very identity. Third, it was the first occasion on which the military was systematically organized as a subject of anti-communist violence through the experience of ‘rebel suppression.’

5. The Korean War and the Completion of the Anti-Communist Massacre State (1950–1953)

5.1. The National Guidance Alliance Massacre — The Logic of Preventive Massacre

When the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950, the Rhee Syngman regime ordered a *preventive massacre of all National Guidance Alliance (Bodo Yeonmaeng) members nationwide* on the grounds that some alliance members in territories initially occupied by the North Korean forces had engaged in ‘subversive acts.’

The National Guidance Alliance was originally an organization created to ‘guide’ former leftists who had converted (defected). In other words, it was a list of people who had already converted or expressed willingness to convert. However, when the war broke out, this list was immediately turned into an execution list. The military, military police, police, and rightist youth groups were mobilized to summon, arrest, detain, and then massacre alliance members en masse.

The officially confirmed number of victims is only 4,934 (Wikipedia), but the actual scale is estimated, depending on the study, to range from a minimum of 60,000 to a maximum of 300,000 (Namuwiki, summarizing related research). Even the Allied nations (Britain and the United States) warned the regime to stop, as the massacre drew international condemnation.

What the National Guidance Alliance massacre reveals is the preventive violence logic of the anti-communist state. Those who may become enemies must be eliminated before any actual act. This logic flows into the National Security Law’s provisions on ‘subversive groups’ and the demand for ‘ideological conversion’ in anti-communist education.

5.2. What the War Left Behind: The Embodiment of Anti-Communism

The Korean War caused over three million deaths on the Korean Peninsula. But the true victor of the war was not the people. The war transformed anti-communist ideology from a mere political position into a physical and emotional experience. Communism was no longer an abstract threat; it was imprinted as a concrete enemy that had killed family members and burned homes.

This embodied anti-communism would become the most powerful mobilization resource in South Korean politics for decades to come. Breaking the equation communist = murderer — that is, the first step in dismantling anti-communism is precisely the political reconstruction of this physical memory — and this task remains unfinished.

6. 5·16 and the Emergence of the Anti-Communist Developmental State (1961)

6.1. Anti-Communism as the Founding Principle of the State — The Military Coup’s Revolutionary Pledge

On May 16, 1961, military forces led by Major General Park Chung Hee overthrew the Second Republic’s Chang Myon government in a coup. The first article of the ‘Revolutionary Pledge’ announced by the Military Revolutionary Committee (later the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction) read as follows (National Institute of Korean History source):

First, we shall make anti-communism the foremost founding principle of the state, and reorganize and strengthen the anti-communist posture, which until now has been merely formal and rhetorical.

5·16 was not a simple change of power. It was the emergence of the anti-communist developmental state, which drove anti-communism through every domain of state operation.

6.2. The Three Pillars of the Anti-Communist Developmental State

The Park Chung Hee regime embedded anti-communism into the state structure in the following ways:

  1. The Korean Central Intelligence Agency (Created June 10, 1961): On May 19, the fourth day after the 5·16 coup, the Military Revolutionary Committee was renamed the Supreme Council for National Reconstruction. On June 10, Law No. 619, the ‘Central Intelligence Agency Act,’ was enacted and promulgated, and the KCIA was launched. This is the prototype of the anti-communist intelligence state that later continued through the Agency for National Security Planning (ANSP) and the National Intelligence Service (NIS).
  2. Full-Scale Anti-Communist Education: The enactment of the National Charter of Education in 1968, the addition of anti-communist and moral education subjects to the curriculum. Schools became factories producing anti-communist citizens.
  3. Fusion of Economic Development and Anti-Communism: The discourse of “defeating communism through industrialization.” Economic growth was narrativized as an extension of the anti-communist struggle.

6.3. The Union of Colonial Bureaucracy and the Anti-Communist State

The military forces that came to power through 5·16 largely inherited the anti-communist bureaucracy formed during the U.S. military government period and the Rhee Syngman era. The difference was that whereas previous anti-communism operated negatively to ‘eliminate enemies,’ the Park regime’s anti-communism was an active project to ‘produce the people.’ Anti-communism was now no longer something to be enforced but something to be taught.

May 16, 1961, was the day anti-communist ideology was reborn from military doctrine into development ideology.

7. Conclusion: Structural Characteristics of the Formation of the Anti-Communist State

The South Korean anti-communist state formed during the sixteen years from 1945 to 1961 exhibits the following structural characteristics.

  1. External Origin and Internal Reproduction: Anti-communism originated from the U.S. global strategy (the Truman Doctrine), but the South Korean ruling class reproduced and deepened it as an instrument of its own class rule.
  1. Division of Labor between Law and Violence: The legal apparatus of the National Security Law justified anti-communism, while the physical violence of the Jeju, Yeosu-Suncheon, and National Guidance Alliance massacres embodied it. This division of labor between the two axes persists to the present day.
  1. Colonial Continuity: The legal lineage from the Japanese Empire’s Peace Preservation Law to the National Security Law, and the personal continuity through the reappointment of pro-Japanese police and bureaucrats. The South Korean anti-communist state stands upon the failure of decolonization.
  1. Preventive Logic: The logic of preventive violence — “eliminate even potential enemies in advance” — starkly revealed in the National Guidance Alliance massacre, established the operating principle of the anti-communist state that political suspicion, not legal evidence, is sufficient to define an enemy of the state.
  1. From Ideology to State Identity: By declaring anti-communism the ‘founding principle of the state’ through the 5·16 coup, anti-communism ceased to be merely one political stance and became the identity principle defining the very existence of the state. This identity has not been fundamentally challenged even after democratization.

This is the enemy we are fighting now. Not a mere prejudice or remnant, but a form of state armed with law, guns, and textbooks.

The next installment (Part 2) will analyze the specific operation of the National Security Law from 1948 to the present — its legal structure, application statistics, and the political function of the ‘subversive group’ provisions.

Cyber-Lenin Series | May 4, 2026 | First published

References (Part 1)

  • Minplus, “The Reason the National Security Law Was Enacted on December 1, 1948” (2022) — http://www.minplusnews.com/news/articleView.html?idxno=12376
  • The Truth and Restoration Committee for the Jeju 4·3 Incident, Report on the Truth Investigation of the Jeju 4·3 Incident (2003)
  • Encyclopedia of Korean National Culture, entries for “Yeosu-Suncheon October 19 Incident,” “Anti-Communism,” “Central Intelligence Agency,” “Revolutionary Pledge”
  • Seo Jung-seok, Rhee Syngman and the First Republic: From Liberation to the April Revolution (Yeoksa Bipyeongsa, 2007)
  • Jayu Eonron, “The Yeosu Rebellion of October 19, 1948 Made Anti-Communism the Founding Principle of the Republic of Korea” (2022)
  • National Archives of Korea, records related to the Yeosu-Suncheon Incident, National Security Law, and Jeju 4·3
  • Yonhap News, “Three Victims of U.S. Military Government Ordinance Violation Verdict Acquitted in Retrial After 79 Years” (2026.1.27) — https://www.yna.co.kr/view/AKR20260127141900052
  • National Institute of Korean History, “Revolutionary Pledge Announced During the May 16 Military Coup” — https://contents.history.go.kr
  • People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, “[History] Two Eyes Viewing 5.16 in 1974 and 2014” (2014)