Originally published on April 30, 2019, this chapter traces the connections among the South Korean law firm Hemaru, the Japanese Communist Party, Kanto-rengo, and Japan’s liberal forces, arguing that their cooperation was never accidental but had been built over at least more than a decade.
It places particular emphasis on the role of Lim Jong-in, one of Hemaru’s representative lawyers, who was deeply involved in lifting the South Korea entry ban on Kanto-rengo, a pro-North organization designated as an anti-state group in South Korea, and who also maintained contact with Japanese groups such as VAWW-NET Japan.
It then interprets the post–Nippon Steel lawsuit visit by Hemaru’s lawyers to the Japanese Communist Party, and Chairman Shii’s pledge of cooperation, as a visible expression of a long-standing human and political pipeline.

2019-04-30
The reason they visited the Japanese Communist Party.
Because the relationship between the Japanese Communist Party and Hemaru had already begun at least more than ten years earlier.

What follows is a continuation of the previous chapter.

When speaking of the pipeline with Japan, one person who cannot be omitted is Lim Jong-in, one of the representative lawyers who created Hemaru.
He was not directly involved in the present wartime labor lawsuit, but if one looks at his record, one can see an interesting pipeline to Japan.

The organization in Japan with which he has connections is Kanto-rengo.
The Korean Democratic United Front in Japan.
It is an organization.
Kanto-rengo, created chiefly by Zainichi Koreans, is a “pro-North organization” that was designated an “anti-state organization” by South Korea’s Supreme Court and whose entry into South Korea was prohibited for many years.

Those who defend Kanto-rengo claim that its entry ban was nothing more than a fabrication and labeling from the era of South Korea’s military governments.
1961 to 1987.
However, Kanto-rengo was recognized as an anti-state organization in 1990, after democratization.
1987.

Moreover, even during the Kim Dae-jung administration.
1998 to 2003.
when leftists who had been suppressed under the military regime were successively restored to honor and status, the ban on their entry into South Korea remained in force.
And this despite the fact that Kim Dae-jung himself had been the first chairman of Hanmintong, the predecessor of Kanto-rengo.
Hanmintong was renamed Kanto-rengo in 1989.

The person who worked to lift this ban on Kanto-rengo entering South Korea was Hemaru lawyer Lim Jong-in.
From around 2002, he visited Japan many times, took part in Kanto-rengo gatherings, and repeatedly held meetings with persons connected to Kanto-rengo.
Then, in 2003, when power shifted to the Roh Moo-hyun administration, Kanto-rengo was finally permitted to enter South Korea, and he was one of the principal figures behind that achievement.

Kanto-rengo is an organization of Zainichi Koreans and South Koreans, but it also has cooperative relations with the previously mentioned Japan Network on “War and Violence Against Women.”
VAWW-NET Japan.
For example, according to an article in the April 1, 2007 issue of Minjok Sibo, Kanto-rengo submitted to the Cabinet Office a statement addressed to Prime Minister Abe titled, “A Joint Statement Calling for an End to Sanctions on North Korea and Human Rights Violations Against Koreans in Japan, and for the Realization Through Dialogue of a Peaceful Northeast Asia Without War or Nuclear Weapons.”
VAWW-NET Japan participated together in this joint statement.
It is also interesting that the person who arranged this petition was Mizuho Fukushima, leader of the Social Democratic Party.
The two groups were comrades in “joint struggle.”

Taking this together, one may infer that Hemaru and Japan’s liberal forces are in a deep relationship.

The reason they visited the Japanese Communist Party.

On November 12, after the close of arguments in the Nippon Steel lawsuit, young Hemaru lawyers came to Japan and visited Nippon Steel’s Tokyo headquarters, but Nippon Steel refused to meet them.
From there they went straight to the Japanese Communist Party, met Chairman Shii, and requested cooperation.
Chairman Shii, responding to the request, actively expressed his willingness to cooperate, saying, “If we value this point of agreement, might we not be able to reach a forward-looking solution.
I would also like to work on the Japanese government.”
This scene was reported by multiple media outlets with photographs attached.
It was a good picture, showing together those who fight and those who seek to support them.

Seeing this report, some people probably tilted their heads and wondered why Hemaru’s lawyers had visited the Japanese Communist Party.
Or perhaps some simply thought that Hemaru’s lawyers had visited a Japanese opposition party that might cooperate with them, and that the Japanese Communist Party, having received the request, had decided to support and endorse the South Korean side’s activities.
But this was, at the very least, no coincidence.
Because the relationship between the Japanese Communist Party and Hemaru had already begun at least more than ten years earlier.