a. ㉠ Details of the 2nd Law

㉠ Details of the 2nd Law

 

The 2nd law can be understood as the "spatial structure" of the entire political phenomenon focused on the maintenance and balance of organizations, and its detailed content is as follows.

 

[Tab.3.21] Detailed Content of the 2nd law of Political Phenomenon

2nd law	Detailed content
㉠ Basic content	The power structure (political regime) is determined by competition between internal and external factors of political organizations.
㉡ Detailed content	① Outside: Invasion threat	As the invasion threat increases, the cohesion force (political regime) becomes stronger.
	② Inside: Security force	As the armament level or ideological diversity increases, the cohesion force (political regime) becomes weaker.

 

The most basic structure of the 2nd law, as shown in Diagram 3.B.1, is the opposition and competition between the invasion threat (\( \vec{T_{HR}}\)) and security force (\( \vec{D}\)), which serves as the basis for maintaining cohesion and power regime. People form cohesive groups in order to expand their own survival and Profits^[Ch.2.4]. The survival process theory^[Ch.1.1], which is also known as the "0th law," and the three natural attributes of human survival form the foundation of political organizations and power phenomena.

Focusing on political phenomena, this can be rephrased as follows:

 

         [Ch.3.202] All members of any political organization come together and cohere in the face of external threats (invasion threats) by sufficiently expanding their collective interest (security force).

 

This proposition expresses the idea that "conflict towards the outside is the basis of harmony and cooperation towards the inside," and is a case where the law of repulsion^[Ch.1.11] mentioned earlier is applied to the cohesion of the organization. In other words, the content of the 2nd law of political phenomena is essentially about the opposition between inside and outside.

 

For example, let's consider the political organization, the Democratic Party, which had been united and cohesive in its confrontation with the Liberty Party. However, after the collapse of the Seungman Rhee regime and the Liberty Party due to the April 19 Revolution, the Democratic Party lost its cohesion and became divided. This was due to factional struggles within the party that intensified after the 7.29 elections held under the Second Republic Constitution, which resulted in the Democratic Party's monopolistic domination. In this case, the threat posed by competition with the Seungman Rhee regime and the Liberty Party constituted the ㉡invasion threat to the Democratic Party, and thus, the Democratic Party needed to strengthen its ㉢security force to survive. This directly led to the strengthening of the ㉠cohesion force among the Democratic Party members. However, the monopolistic domination of the Democratic Party meant that the invasion threat had weakened, which in turn weakened the cohesion force and led to the intensification of factional struggles within the party.

 

Two things should be mentioned here. First, security force refers to the protection of a political organization from possible threats to its common interests, meaning the potential for achieving desired gains. If it is difficult to obtain desired gains, then the invasion threat is high and security force is low, while if it is easy to obtain desired gains, then the invasion threat is low and security force is relatively high. Therefore, expanding political goals when external threats are constant also corresponds to a decrease in security force. Second, as stated in [Ch.3.202], people attempt to expand their common interests (security force) to a sufficient degree, but not to the point of maximizing them. This is because what individuals try to maximize is their own personal interest, and the common interest is not always equal to the interests of each member. Sometimes the two can conflict. And political organizations are chosen solely as a means to maximize individuals' survival opportunities.

 

In addition to security force and invasion threat, there are two important factors that should be considered regarding strengthening cohesion (and power): ㉣ideological diversity and ㉤armament level. To illustrate this, let's expand our perspective beyond a political organization like the Democratic Party to the Democratic Party regime of South Korea. Here, the political organization is the entire country. We can see the case of social chaos in 1960, where ideological diversity was extremely high.

 

At that time, the general public demanded urgent reforms and held day-and-night demonstrations. Protest movements for the resignation of temporary lecturers took place at several universities, and student movements developed nationwide enlightenment activities, as well as new lifestyle movements such as anti-cigarette campaigns and crackdowns on improper use of official vehicles. The number of labor disputes, which had been 50 cases in 1958 and 109 cases in 1959, sharply increased to 218 cases in 1960. When the permit system was changed to a registration system, the number of daily newspapers increased nearly tenfold in just five months. In such a situation, the increase in social cohesion is closer to logical contradiction. The number of political claims and thoughts of political actors in such a situation is referred to as ideological diversity, and if the number is high and each claim and way of thinking is different, it means that there is great ideological diversity. Then, cohesion force weakens. In the diagram, ideological diversity is represented by people's speech bubbles.

 

On the other hand, armament level is also important. At that time, the fact that South Korean citizens were able to engage in demonstrations and protests despite the clear threat of invasion from North Korea and the significant military disadvantage of South Korea was due to the presence of US troops in the country. As can be seen from North Korea's militaristic hard-line stance in the late 1960s, such as the 1.21 Cheong Wa Dae Raid, the Pueblo incident, and the infiltration of armed agents in Uljin and Samcheok, the threat of invasion from North Korea was very clear. If there had been no US troops, ideological diversity would have had to be suppressed, and if that had not been possible, the political organization would have failed. What is important here is not the 'US troops' themselves, but that there was an armed resistance to the invasion threat (i.e., armament level). Therefore, even if there had been no US troops, if South Korea had been armed with a significantly superior armed force compared to North Korea, the problem of weak cohesion force would not have been significant.