New people in party posts at DLP (updated)

Kim Chang-hyun, whose view on death penalty I noticed in this post, has been elected as the general secretary (samu ch'ongjang) of DLP (Democratic Labor Party). (He said that in socialist countries, death penalty on counterrevolutionary crimes is not necessarily against human rights, while in capitalist countries death penalty is an infringement of human rights.) He is said to belong to the NL (National Liberation) fraction. The new head of DLP is Kim Hey-kyong (Kim Hye-gyông), the former two-term representative of Sillim 7-dong in the Gwanak-gu assembly (see personal info in Korean) and a long-time activist in poverty relief work in Nan'gok, Sillim 7-dong (my earlier post on Nan'gok). The selection of the head of policy council (?, chôngch'aek wiwônjang) went undecided, as no-one got the majority of votes; the top was Yi Yong-dae with 40%. The decisive vote will be held between him and the second most voted. Yi Yong-dae is the one who praised the wonderful collectivism (chiptanchuûi) of DPRK, unspoiled by capitalism. He also had the opinion that homosexuality is a capitalist aberration, which wouldn't exist in socialism. The NL group, or the "National Alliance" (Chôn'guk yôndae) line, to which Kim Chang-hyun and Yi Yong-dae to my knowledge belong, have been contemplating on changing the party name to Minjok chajudang (民族自主黨), "People's Independence Party". One term that's been going around those circles is chusap'a (주사파), followers of chuch'e (juche) ideology, the DPRK-minded for short. It's difficult to discern who exactly belongs to which line, but these results mean that human rights in the Korean peninsula will not be a priority in DLP. "National Alliance" (for Democratic Reunification of Korea?) (NADRK, 민주주의민족통일연합) people were not originally DLP members, but they joined and have now demonstrated what a collective and planned action can achieve. We'll see what becomes of DLP; now it seems it's going to an opposite direction from what I'd seen desirable. 걱정된다. Update. The leftist columnist and esthetics scholar Jin Jung-gwon, who openly campaigned for DLP until the April election, has the following to say in a not-yet-published piece about these results (no time to translate, sorry), which pretty much sums up my own feelings: 북조선의 인민보다 북조선의 권력을 더 걱정하는 인민의 적들, 남한의 사형제도는 인권침해이나 북한의 것은 혁명을 옹위하는 정당한 수단이라 말하는 역사의 반동들, 동성애자가 "자본주의의 파행적 현상"이라는 도덕 파쇼들, 노래 한 자락 부르는 데에도 지도원 동무 허락 받는 것을 집단주의의 미덕이라 칭송하는 전체주의자들이 진보정당의 지도부가 되었다. 당에 들어와 툭하면 지구당이나 집어삼키던 종파주의자들이 당을 통째로 삼켜버렸다. 민주노동당은 더 이상 서민의 정당이 아니다. 적어도 당분간은 다 망해 가는 어느 한심한 봉건권력의 그림자일 뿐이다. (...) After watching this for several years, the agenda of those people is to make Democratic Labor Party into "People's Independence Party", which would do unification propaganda under the tutelage of North Korean Workers' Party.(수년 간 지켜본 바에 따르면, 저들은 민주노동당을 민족자주당, 즉 조선노동당이 주도하는 통일전선의 대상으로 만들려는 속셈을 갖고 있다.) Categories at del.icio.us/hunjang: Koreanpolitics • deathpenalty