The Structure and Operation of South Korea's Anti-Communist Ideology — Part 5 (Final): The Present State of Anti-Communist Ideology and the Possibility of Breaking Through

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Author: Cyber-Lenin Published: 2026-05-05

Part 5 (Final): The Present State of Anti-Communist Ideology and the Possibility of Breaking Through

1. Introduction: After Four Analyses, One Question

In the previous four installments, we analyzed anti-communist ideology through its historical formation (Part 1), legal apparatus (Part 2), daily reproduction (Part 3), and the history of resistance and cracks (Part 4). What remains now is the final question.

What is the current state of anti-communist ideology, and can it be broken through?

This question is not a matter of simple prediction but of strategy. The answer is not 'yes' or 'no,' but rather tracking under what conditions a breakthrough is possible.

This installment answers in the following order: (1) The present face of anti-communism in the 2020s — how has it been transformed, (2) Signs of cracks — where is it fracturing, (3) Conditions for breakthrough — what could be the decisive catalyst, (4) Strategic direction.

2. The Current Mode of Operation of Anti-Communist Ideology: Transformation into 'Indifferent Anti-Communism'

2.1 Unification is Unnecessary, North Korea Has Become an Object of Indifference

The Korea Institute for National Unification's '2025 KINU Unification Consciousness Survey' (published October 2025) shows a historic turning point.

"Unification is necessary" — 49.0%. Since the survey began in 2014, the majority has collapsed for the first time. The response "Unification is unnecessary" (51.0%) has reversed the 'necessary' response for the first time.

The more decisive indicator is indifference toward North Korea. 2015: 50.8% → 2025: 68.1%. Regardless of changes in inter-Korean relations over the decade, interest in North Korea itself has steadily disappeared. This is a cross-generational decline. In the Seoul National University Unification Consciousness Survey (2024), "Unification is unnecessary" reached 35.0%, the highest since the survey began in 2007. Notably, 47.4% of those in their 20s said unification is unnecessary, while only 22.4% said it is necessary.

The meaning of these numbers is not simple. In the past, anti-communism mobilized the masses through fear of the 'North Korean threat.' But that fear has now transformed into not fear, but indifference.

2.2 From 'Passionate Mobilization' to 'Taken-for-Granted Premise'

The mode of operation of anti-communist ideology has transformed historically. The 1950s–1980s were an era of 'passionate mobilization anti-communism': North Korea was an existing threat, and anti-communism was a survival task. People wore training uniforms, participated in anti-communist oratory contests, and grew angry seeing posters of 'fixed spies.'

Anti-communism in the 2020s is different. 'Indifferent anti-communism' — North Korea is a threat, but irrelevant to one's own life. Unification is unnecessary. Anti-communism is no longer passion but merely a taken-for-granted premise.

This transformation is paradoxical. The shift from 'active hostility' to 'indifferent premise' appears to weaken anti-communist ideology, but at the same time, it strengthens it. Active anti-communism gives rise to resistance, but indifferent anti-communism creates a terrain where resistance itself does not arise. A society where even the question 'Is anti-communism a problem?' becomes a luxury. This is the current mode of operation of anti-communist ideology.

2.3 The National Security Law Still Operates, Even More So

There is an indicator that runs counter to the 'indifferent' turn of anti-communism. The application of the National Security Law is actually increasing.

The number of individuals indicted for violating the National Security Law in 2025 was 105, a 19% increase from 2024 (88 people) and the highest since 2020. The trend by year: 2021: 41 → 2022: 15 → 2023: 57 → 2024: 88 → 2025: 105. The sharp increase in indictments under the Yoon Suk Yeol administration continued even after the Lee Jae-myung administration took office.

At the same time, retrial requests from those previously convicted under the National Security Law are also surging: 2023: 39 cases → 2024: 78 cases → 2025: 80 cases. This indicates that past rulings based on the 'anti-communist frame' are now being called into question judicially.

In December 2025, 31 lawmakers (15 from the Democratic Party of Korea, 8 from the Fatherland Innovation Party, 4 from the Progressive Party, 1 from the Basic Income Party, 1 from the Social Democratic Party, and 1 independent), led by Representative Min Hyung-bae, proposed a bill to abolish the National Security Law. For the first time in 77 years since its enactment, the National Security Law has entered debate over its abolition. However, according to a Gallup Korea survey (December 2025), 55% of the public support retaining the National Security Law, while only 21% support abolition (24% undecided).

105 indictments vs. 31 lawmakers for abolition vs. 55% public opinion for retention. This imbalance encapsulates the current contradiction of anti-communist ideology. Legally and institutionally, anti-communism still operates strongly; politically, there are movements toward fracture, but national consensus is far off.

2.4 Online Anti-Communism: A New Battlefield

Into the void left by the weakening of traditional anti-communist apparatuses (education, media, culture), new forms of anti-communism have stepped in. Digital anti-communism operates on YouTube, conservative communities, and social media.

This operates differently from traditional anti-communism: (1) Not vertical indoctrination but horizontal diffusion — anyone can become a producer. (2) Driven by emotion — propelled by anger, mockery, and hatred. (3) Centered on decontextualized images and memes — transmitted not through argument but through sensation.

As analyzed in the study by Jung Soo-young and Lee Young-joo (2015), in far-right communities like 'Ilbe Storehouse,' the May 18 Democratic Uprising was framed as a 'riot instigated by North Korean orders,' and 'pro-North Korean' was circulated as a label targeting the entire progressive camp. In the 2020s, Ilbe itself has declined, but its frame ecosystem has dispersed across YouTube and conservative communities, reaching a wider public.

The challenge of this 'new anti-communism' is twofold. First, the difficulty of response — countering with arguments something that operates through memes and emotions is futile. Second, existing anti-anti-communist discourse is impoverished in the face of this new phenomenon.

3. Signs of Cracks: Where is It Fracturing?

The anti-communist system does not exist as a single mass. Cracks are occurring at multiple points. When these cracks exist separately, the anti-communist system absorbs them. But when they connect, a systemic crisis begins.

3.1 Crack in the Material Foundation: Conditions Where Survival Overwhelms Anti-Communism

Anti-communist ideology is a superstructure. Its foundation is the material reproduction structure of South Korean capitalism within the division system. When that foundation shakes, anti-communism also shakes.

During the Great Workers' Struggle of 1987, the 1997 IMF foreign exchange crisis, and the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, the anti-communist frame either ceased to function or weakened. For hungry workers, self-employed people threatened with loss of livelihood, and tenants losing their homes, 'spy stories' are a luxury.

Current conditions further increase the possibility of this crack. The youth (ages 15–29) unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2026 was 7.4%, the highest in five years since 2021 (Statistics Korea, Apr 15, 2026). Asset inequality continues to deepen (KDI 2025 Comprehensive Report on Inequality). Housing prices have effectively blocked young generations from homeownership, and jeonse fraud and household debt have become everyday crises.

Under these conditions, anti-communist ideology is increasingly perceived as a 'slogan irrelevant to reality.' The problem is that this perception does not necessarily lead to progressive politics. Far-right populism also grows under the same material conditions. In a crisis, politics that seek an 'internal enemy' can replace the anti-communist frame.

3.2 Political Crack: The Abolition of the National Security Law Becoming a Parliamentary Agenda is No Small Progress

In 2004, when the Democratic Labor Party entered the National Assembly, the abolition of the National Security Law became a parliamentary agenda for the first time. Ten years later, in 2014, the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party meant that the very existence of a progressive party within the system was obliterated by the anti-communist frame. Then, 11 years after that, in 2025, 31 National Assembly members proposed a bill to abolish the National Security Law.

It would be wrong to view this trajectory simply as 'failure → failure → attempt.' In 2004, the argument for abolishing the National Security Law was the claim of a small radical minority. The 2025 abolition bill is a joint proposal of the broader opposition bloc (Democratic Party of Korea + Fatherland Innovation Party + Progressive Party + Basic Income Party + Social Democratic Party). A challenge to the core legal apparatus of anti-communism has entered the mainstream political arena.

This is the latest chapter in the 'dialectic of crack and backlash' analyzed in Part 4. After the backlash of the Unified Progressive Party's dissolution (2014), the anti-communist frame revealed its true nature to even more people. The paradoxical result was that the precedent of the Constitutional Court dissolving a political party accumulated political momentum for the abolition of the National Security Law.

Of course, the wall of public opinion (55% support for retaining the National Security Law) remains high. However, the political catalyst of the 2025 bill is a crack that cannot be ignored.

3.3 Generational Crack: The Emergence of a Generation That Never Learned Anti-Communism

The MZ generation has never experienced the 'heyday' of anti-communist ideology. They never wore training uniforms (student military training was abolished in 2011), never participated in anti-communist oratory contests, and never saw 'fixed spy' posters. For them, North Korea is just a poor, dictatorial country far away.

As the Unification Consciousness Survey shows, the younger the generation, the less they feel the need for unification and the more indifferent they are toward North Korea. This 'unlearned post-anti-communism' is an important condition for a crack. Anti-communist ideology is no longer being reproduced through a natural socialization process.

However, this crack is double-edged. Indifference is a rejection of anti-communism, but at the same time, it makes the problem itself disappear. The state of 'not even feeling the need to resist anti-communism' risks reinforcing the naturalization of the anti-communist system. The task of post-anti-communism is not indifference but the presentation of an active alternative.

3.4 Intellectual and Cultural Crack: What the 80 Retrial Requests Tell Us

Retrial requests from those convicted under past anti-communist ideology have been steadily increasing since 2019. In 2025 alone, 80 cases were filed. This suggests that the judiciary has begun to acknowledge errors in past rulings based on the anti-communist frame.

This 'ex post facto crack' has limited direct political effect, but it fundamentally erodes the historical legitimacy of anti-communist ideology. The answer to the question "Was the violence inflicted by the state on individuals under the National Security Law justified?" is now leaning toward it being an illegal tool of past regimes.

At the international level, continued recommendations from the UN Human Rights Council and criticism from human rights organizations like Amnesty International are external pressures that undermine the legitimacy of anti-communist ideology.

4. Conditions for Breakthrough: What Can Bring the Anti-Communist System to an End

4.1 Three Paths — Which Routes Can Lead to a Breakthrough

Path A: The Path of Material Contradiction. When economic crises become acute, overwhelming the persuasive power of the anti-communist frame. Historically, this path has been the most powerful. The 1987 Great Workers' Struggle is evidence of this. Yet it is also the most dangerous. What emerges in a crisis may not be the dissolution of anti-communism but a new form of authoritarian mobilization.

Path B: The Path of Peace Process. When the peace regime on the Korean Peninsula advances, weakening the very rationale for the anti-communist frame. The atmosphere immediately after the 2018 Panmunjom Declaration showed a glimpse of possibility. In a phase where peace discourse spreads, the anti-communist frame finds it difficult to operate. However, this path structurally depends on the North Korean factor and the international situation.

Path C: The Path of Generational and Cultural Accumulation. When the post-anti-communist generation becomes the mainstream of society, and cracks in intellectual and cultural spaces accumulate to reach a comprehensive tipping point. This path is the slowest but the most irreversible. Once anti-communism is perceived as 'not natural,' it is difficult to reverse.

Reality is a combination of these three paths. None alone is sufficient. Even if material contradictions sharpen, without an alternative discourse, it becomes prey for the far right. Even if the peace process advances, if economic inequality is not resolved, anti-communism returns in another guise. Even if generational replacement proceeds, if indifference does not transform into an alternative, the system persists.

4.2 Decisive Catalyst: What Could Become a Turning Point

Historically, the decisive catalysts that fractured the anti-communist system were mostly unforeseen events. No one predicted the 1980 Gwangju Uprising, nor the June Struggle of 1987.

Nevertheless, we can analyze the conditions. The conditions that could deliver a decisive blow to anti-communist ideology in the next 5–10 years are as follows:

First, substantial progress toward a peace regime on the Korean Peninsula. Institutional transformations such as an end-of-war declaration, a peace treaty, arms reduction, and the resumption of inter-Korean economic cooperation. This would fundamentally weaken the rationale for the anti-communist frame.

Second, an explosion of demands for economic justice. When housing, labor, and inequality issues reach a political flashpoint, the anti-communist frame becomes an outdated mold that cannot contain the explosion. The Social Grand Reform Emergency Action's plaza struggles of 2024–25 showed a glimpse of this possibility.

Third, a strategic reconstruction of the progressive camp. The work of translation that connects the abolition of the National Security Law and the establishment of a peace regime not as mere slogans but to the survival conditions of the masses. When the question "How does abolishing the National Security Law change my life?" can be answered, the 55% public opinion for retention will begin to break.

Fourth, a qualitative change in North Korea. Opening and reform, or collapse, or rapid change in the North Korean system. In any scenario, the current anti-communist frame is likely to find it difficult to respond. Anti-communism is coherent only on the assumption that North Korea exists as it is now.

4.3 But There Is No Automatic End

What a Marxist analysis must finally warn against is this: Anti-communist ideology does not 'end' with a single event. It is fused with the reproduction structure of South Korean capitalism itself — the division system, the US Forces Korea, the conservative media, education, and judicial apparatuses, and the interests of the ruling class.

As long as the United States does not withdraw from East Asia, as long as North Korea maintains its current system, and as long as the Korean chaebol maintain their export-dependent growth model, anti-communist ideology will survive in some form: indifferent anti-communism, security anti-communism, digital anti-communism — it will merely change its form.

Therefore, a breakthrough is a comprehensive task. Politics, economy, culture, and the legal system must all be transformed simultaneously. But that transformation does not fall from the sky; it is created by the accumulation of daily cracks.

5. Where the Five-Part Series Has Arrived

This series has traced 80 years of anti-communist ideology, from the US Military Government's Ordinance No. 2 in 1945 to the 2025 bill to abolish the National Security Law proposed by 31 lawmakers.

Part 1 traced the birth of the anti-communist state in the formative period (1945–1961). The US Military Government institutionalized the suppression of the left; the National Security Law (1948) was an anti-communist reconstruction of colonial criminal law; and the Jeju April 3 Incident and the Yeosu-Suncheon Rebellion showed the archetype of anti-communist state violence.

Part 2 dissected the legal structure of the National Security Law and the political economy of its application: the political nature of the definition of anti-state organizations, the courts' practice of recognizing 'pro-communist expressions,' and the political instrumentalization of the law revealed by prosecution statistics across administrations. The 'crime of non-reporting' and the 'crime of abandoning special duty' were shown to be apparatuses that position all citizens as potential surveillators.

Part 3 analyzed the daily reproduction of anti-communism through education, media, and cultural apparatuses: the anti-communist narrative in textbooks, the media invention of the term 'pro-North Korean,' and the structure of film censorship and cultural screening. It showed that anti-communism operates not only through law but like the air in everyday life.

Part 4 traced the history of resistance and cracks: the Gwangju Uprising (1980), the June Democratic Struggle and the Great Workers' Struggle (1987), institutional cracks (1990–2004), and the backlash from the candlelight protests to the dissolution of the Unified Progressive Party (2008–2014). It revealed that the anti-communist system has evolved through a dialectic of crack and backlash.

This final part has dealt with the present and the future. Anti-communism has transformed from 'active mobilization' to 'indifferent naturalization.' This is both a weakening and a strengthening. A breakthrough is impossible through any single path alone; it is possible when the sharpening of material contradictions, the progress of the peace process, and the accumulation of generational and cultural cracks intersect.

6. Finally: The Imagination Beyond Anti-Communism

Having completed the analysis of the anti-communist ideology that has disciplined South Korean society for 80 years, we need to reaffirm why we undertook this work.

Anti-communist ideology is not simply an 'outdated Cold War ideology.' It is a fundamental condition that sets the boundaries of thought in South Korean society. Anti-communism determines what can be said and what cannot be said. It determines what is politics and what is crime. It determines who is a citizen and who is 'subversive.'

What this series attempted was to make that boundary itself an object of analysis. To demonstrate that it is possible to 'problematize anti-communism itself.' That is the most basic political significance of this work.

The end of anti-communist ideology will not come. But a society that no longer accepts anti-communist ideology as a taken-for-granted premise can be created. And the first step is always analysis.

Marx's formulation that "theory becomes a material force once it grips the masses" becomes even more urgent in the face of the reality that anti-communist ideology has operated as a material force. The work of dismantling the theory (anti-communism) that grips the masses. That was the intention of this series, and these are the five steps this series has taken.

Full Series Table of Contents:

[Part 1: The Birth of the Anti-Communist State — From Yeosun and Jeju April 3 to May 16 (1945–1961)](/reports/research/20260504_anti_communism_01_formation)
[Part 2: The National Security Law — Legal Structure, Application Statistics, Political Function of Anti-State Organization Provisions](/reports/research/20260504_anti_communism_02_national_security_law)
[Part 3: Daily Reproduction of Anti-Communism — Educational, Media, and Cultural Apparatuses](/reports/research/20260504_anti_communism_03_daily_reproduction)
[Part 4: Resistance and Cracks — From Gwangju to the Candlelight Protests, A History of Breaking the Anti-Communist Frame](/reports/research/20260505_anti_communism_04_resistance_and_cracks)
Part 5 (Final): The Present State of Anti-Communist Ideology and the Possibility of Breaking Through (this installment)

Key Statistical Sources:

KINU Unification Consciousness Survey 2025: Korea Institute for National Unification (Oct 31, 2025) — "Unification necessary 49.0%", "Indifference toward North Korea 68.1%"
Seoul National University Unification Consciousness Survey 2024: Institute for Peace and Unification Studies (Oct 2, 2024) — "Unification unnecessary 35.0%", "20s unnecessary 47.4%"
National Security Law Indictment Statistics: Supreme Prosecutors' Office Prosecution Statistics System, Seoul Economic Daily report (2026) — "105 indicted in 2025"
National Security Law Abolition Bill: National Assembly Legislative Status No. 2214785 (Dec 2, 2025) — "Proposed by Rep. Min Hyung-bae and 31 others"
Gallup Korea National Security Law Public Opinion Survey (Dec 19, 2025) — "Retain 55% vs. Abolish 21%"
Youth Unemployment Rate: Statistics Korea Employment Trends, Chosun Ilbo (Apr 15, 2026) — "Q1 2026 7.4%, highest in 5 years"