Le Front uni du PCC contre la compagnie Shen Yun Performing Arts en Corée du Sud

What does it mean to conquer a country? Well, it looks like a foreign government controlling the politics, the businesses, the media, the laws, even the culture of another country. This isn't a far-off concept. It's actually the main method being used as we speak by the Chinese Communist Party. It's the true face of the CCP's military, in line with what we often call unrestricted warfare. It's the network of CCP agents operating these so-called Chinese police stations, which are typically operated through its United Front Work Department and through networks run on foreign soil through its consulates and embassies. As an investigative reporter, I've been exposing these networks and operations of the CCP since 2008, including right here in New York City. And I recently caught wind of these CCP operations on full display in South Korea. The people of South Korea have already cast their votes for the future. The new president, Yoon, won the 2022 elections on a platform of breaking from CCP influence and forming an alliance with the United States. And it seems that silently, behind the scenes, the CCP is rallying its networks to try to prevent this from happening. At the center of this is a target of the regime which may at first seem odd. Shen Yun Performing Arts, an American performing arts company based in New York, which is set out to revive the essence of China's traditional culture, which the CCP has tried to destroy. And by targeting Shen Yun in South Korea, the Chinese Communist Party is exposing its hand. I went over the documents on the case. The fingerprints of the Chinese Communist Party can be found all over. For 17 years, the CCP has been pressuring local officials in South Korea to keep Shen Yun from performing in the country. Now for Shen Yun, this type of international censorship from the CCP, it's not uncommon. Even theaters in the United States have reported receiving pressure from Chinese consulates. And for the most part, they ignore the CCP. But in South Korea, the forms of CCP interference are different. They're more widespread, they're more coordinated. And oddly, they're more effective. All the top theaters in the country are run by either the central or local South Korean governments. And last year, the top 13 theaters all rejected Shen Yun almost simultaneously. For me, this raises some key questions. What makes the case in South Korea so different? Why does the CCP take such extreme efforts to block an American performing arts company? And how does the CCP extend its influence into other countries? I recently traveled to South Korea to investigate the CCP's operations and its tools at play in this agenda. Over the course of the next 10 days, I'd find the answers. And what they revealed were not just why the CCP is so focused on trying to stop Shen Yun performing arts, but they also revealed a hidden war. They showed how over the course of decades, the Chinese Communist Party has gained influence in the country's politics and economy, how the CCP is manipulating these strings to subjugate the country, the regime's interest in preventing South Korea from forming an alliance with the United States. And they showed how the CCP is using culture and ideology as tools in conquering nations. And the first part of the investigation was a piece that stood out. In 2016, Shen Yun was scheduled to perform at one of Seoul's main theaters, KBS Hall. But the Chinese embassy wrote at least twice to the Korean broadcasting system, which owns the KBS Hall venue in Seoul, demanding that it cancel the contract with Shen Yun. A legal battle ensued. A court in Seoul initially ruled in Shen Yun's favor, but then reversed the decision just two days prior to the performance. Audience members showed up to see the show, only to be told that it had been canceled. Lee Hee-jin, the Shen Yun coordinator in South Korea, had to stand outside that day, give them refunds, and tell them what had happened. So you said you were over here and you had to get the refunds. Yeah, over there. So what happened exactly? Was it the day that people were coming to watch the show, and you had to tell them in person that the show was canceled? Right, because they didn't know the cancellation. That's really bizarre. So people showed up, dressed up, and ready to go to the show. And they came all the way here, and you had to tell them and give them the money back? Yeah, right. I've never heard anything like this. And the court allowed it. That was the court order. Were people, like, sad? Or were they shocked? They couldn't believe it. KBS is more than just a station for Korean people. It's a public broadcasting system. So when we got to perform on KBS, everyone was very excited. We already signed the contract as per the procedures. We paid all the venue rental fees, so we started printing flyers, posters. We were running even TV commercials at that time. It's not normal for a theater to just cancel a show like that unless a performer gets hurt, or there's a scheduling conflict, or there's a natural disaster, or something like that. The contract was made legally, so we're all obligated to honor the contract. It was only after we went through the legal process that we found out who was behind it. I had to give ticket refunds to people who hadn't heard about the cancellation right outside the venue. The audiences who came to the theater, they couldn't believe it. Because Korea is a democratic country, and we have the right to freedom of expression. And we have the right to perform. And people who bought tickets have the right to watch it because they bought tickets. But suddenly, the show was canceled. And the reason why it was canceled was because the Chinese Communist Party sent a letter. And it was a letter from a third class secretary. It's totally unbelievable for people. So I was very sad and upset when I was explaining this to the people. And they also said they couldn't believe it. Now on the surface, the case was odd. It's not common to cancel the show like that. But what really matters is why it was canceled. But when the case went to appeal, well, the truth came out. The heads of the theater, they weren't trying to cancel the show based on politics or religion. They were canceling the show because they had been threatened by the Chinese embassy. I decided to have a look at these documents myself. Welcome. Welcome. Thank you for coming. I met with Se-Yal Oh, a judicial scrivener involved in the Shen Yun case against KBS Hall. He's also the secretary general of the Korea Falun Dafa Association. The Chinese embassy had sent at least two letters that the theater heads had at first withheld from evidence. After lost the case, they appealed the injunction and submitted the official letter from the Chinese embassy as evidence. This is the official letter. As you see, they didn't even have official seal, without any official seal on it. Third class secretary sent it to the head of KBS international cooperation office on January 22nd. And they immediately sent a notice that they were canceling the rental contract. In general, in such cases, it is customary to let the show agency know first and discuss with them how to deal with the case. But they just unilaterally canceled the contract without discussion. So there is some sort of illegal tort and KBS completely hid it. And because of money, they're being allowed to violate Korean law on freedom of expression and human rights. As a national broadcaster, the possibility of being accused of cooperating with the CCP and doing something that violates the cultural sovereignty of our people and our right to freedom is very high. The other thing that's unusual is that this is the judgment that initially applied for the injunction to prevent the venue from being disturbed. But then the same judge who made this decision in the same court overturned his own decision in 15 days. This is very unusual in the opinion of legal experts. And this could hardly happen without external pressure. The KBS Hall case seems to have been pivotal. It effectively created a legal precedent that the Chinese regime's use of extortion was effective. It sent a message to the CCP that as long as it threatens enough money and economic harm, it can make the South Korean government do its bidding. Now, for Shennian Performing Arts, this made it even more difficult to find venues in South Korea. But for the country overall, the harm was arguably even worse. It represents an assault on South Korean law, which normally protects human rights and freedom of expression. And it also represents something larger for the nation. By allowing Chinese threats to influence the South Korean legal system, it undermines the sovereignty of the nation. I decided to head to the Chinese embassy in Seoul myself to learn more about this. In front of the Chinese embassy, we met with Han Min-ho. He's a former director of South Korea's Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, which gives the initial approvals on which shows can perform in the government theaters. These days, he's become one of the more outspoken voices against the CCP's influence operations in South Korea. And he leads an organization challenging the Chinese regime's Confucius Institutes. His group marched on the Chinese embassy. I was blocked by police from getting close to it. After the protest, though, we spoke with Han Min-ho. He agreed to take us to one of the CCP's Confucius Institutes operating in South Korea, at Yonsei University, a top three university in the country. According to Han Min-ho, the CCP's attempts to control South Korea relate directly to its attempts to stop Shen Yun performing arts. Now, as the former head of the Culture Ministry, he explained the CCP is waging war on South Korea. But it's not a physical war. In Korea, all the big theaters are national or public, so they have no choice but to follow the policies and instructions of the central government or the mayor of the local government. The theaters didn't allow Shen Yun to perform because of their own decision, but because of the position of the local government or the government. In 1992, South Korea and China established diplomatic relations. And for the past 30 years since then, the South Korean government's basic foreign policy has been to basically get along with China. So it was difficult for the South Korean government to allow Shen Yun to perform, which is something that the Chinese government is vehemently opposed to. Now, there are two ways that the CCP can exert influence over Shen Yun in the performing arts. One is to threaten economic penalties. For example, the whole country of South Korea, as well as local governments, have been trading with China for a long time, and they threaten to cut off this trade relationship or not to send tourists or not to send international students. If that threat, the threat of economic penalties, is the first lever, the other lever is the CCP's United Front campaign over the past 30 years. It has created a lot of pro-China people in all walks of life, especially local politicians, influential business people, and journalists. It mobilizes these friends of the CCP. They took over Hong Kong because they couldn't control the free speech. I think one of the concerning things, I mean, you as being the former head of the culture ministry, the CCP for some reason sees culture and free expression as a threat, which is one of the reasons why I think it's so interesting they try so hard to suppress Shen Yun. What do you think them going after Shen Yun shows about their concerns of culture they can't control? This means that the CCP cannot tolerate any organization other than its own. It is scared because what it usually does is the worst dictatorship and corruption in human history. Because it has basically a huge weakness, it is afraid of people gathering. The CCP is more afraid of Shen Yun performances than the American aircraft carrier fleet. Shen Yun is a pure artistic performance, but the CCP considers its destructive power to be greater than an aircraft carrier. Shen Yun shows how fragile the Chinese Communist Party is, that it can't even allow pure performance without ideology like Shen Yun. We, the Korean government, should not only judge the performance from the cultural and artistic aspect, but also judge it from the geopolitical and national strategic level of Korea and allow them to do this performance. I would like to emphasize that this can be a strong evidence to prove that South Korea is an ally of the United States. Why are ideology and public opinion so important? How do these relate to the CCP's programs of unconventional warfare and espionage? The answers came from a whistleblower who agreed to step forward. He works in government counter-spy operations in South Korea. And he spoke with us under conditions of anonymity. Now, unlike in the past, it's not just about intelligence gathering and covert detection. It's about public opinion warfare that uses people's psychology. But now, Korean people are very vulnerable to this and especially Korean politicians, so the Chinese government is digging into this loophole and using Korean politicians a lot. China also has a lot of coercive attitude towards all of its neighbors except for the United States because they see them as small countries that are within their sphere of influence. In the case of Falun Gong and Shen Yun, they continue to pressurize our government to take measures to prevent these. But I've heard some universities, for example, have tried to rent out their theaters to Shen Yun and have been blocked by the CCP, by Chinese embassy officials. I know that a lot of theaters in Korea are not able to rent out their theaters to Shen Yun performances because of the pressure from the Chinese government. Is there anything you've seen that the CCP became more aggressive last year? I think that because the current president is focusing on United States and Japan and trying to get closer to them a lot, the CCP are definitely unhappy and trying to somehow continue to create public opinion domestically in favor of China and against the United States. I think what the Chinese Communist Party is doing in South Korea is, first of all, wrapping it in the guise of friendship, approaching people at the highest level of South Korean politics, people in the city government or people who are now progressive left-leaning, and they're calling it China-South Korea friendship. And then they're making friends who keep making friends. They're trying to get people on their side. They're trying to get China's favorable position communicated. So China is actually investing more money in people in Korea, especially Chinese or Koreans who have acquired Korean citizenships, so that they can be utilized to work on the front line of China's unification. They're just making organizations like China-China Friendship City Association, China-China Global Associations, and running the organizations. So South Korea's counterespionage operations are limited to just North Korea? This means the CCP operations have been left largely untouched. To get a clearer picture on this, we spoke with Choi Soo-yong, who is with the NIS, the Korean equivalent to the FBI or CIA. Are you aware of the United Front Work Department of the Chinese Communist Party? How does the United Front fit into this picture of subversion in Korea? There is no big difference between the United States and Korea. First of all, they have the United Front strategy. It's a kind of tradition of the CCP. They utilize the fear, and the money, and the women, and the bribery, and so on. So the first stage is a kind of community between China and Korea. They invite Korean politicians or the professors, the social leaders, something like the high position level. And then they make a great dinner. After that, they prepare very gorgeous and very fascinating women for each Korean delegation. And they make a deep sleeping with the beautiful ladies. And then right before they come back to Korea, they make a kind of present for the Korean delegation. Yeah, this is to memorize the great ownership and the great relationship with China and Korea. But open the gift. There is some CD or the USB. That USB or CD contains the last night. So after that, you need to listen to our order or our word. So otherwise, what is going on in your future time? So every Korean politician or Korean professors, scholars, or the government officer, they have to listen to CCP order. I get the sense the Chinese Communist Party wants to make Korea into a vassal state. They're using bribery, and they're using threats to do it. To what extent do these tools work to control South Korea? Yeah, between the China mainland and the Korean Peninsula, the short distance. And the China CCP tried to dominate all of the far eastern Asian areas too. So they need to make a colony in Korean Peninsula as well as they want to get more their original territory, even including the Japanese island too. They try to cultivate what is the weakness point, the weak point of the Korea high-level society, like politicians or the professors or the journalists, something like the high-level leadership groups. Finally, these Korean corrupted politicians have to listen to CCP command or the CCP expectations. So this is just a small part of the iceberg only. The Chinese Communist Party's networks involved in subverting South Korea, they're almost identical to what I've spent my career investigating and exposing in the United States and in other countries. At the heart of this system is the United Front Work Department. It's a branch of the Chinese Communist Party. It works to the CCP's consulates and embassies, and it runs operations oftentimes through Chinese organizations, including various hometown associations and so-called friendship associations. It ties in with the branch of the Chinese military dedicated to political warfare. This is the Political Work Department of the Central Military Commission, which was formerly known as the General Political Department of the People's Liberation Army. Now for the Chinese Communist Party, this is warfare. Former CCP leader Mao Zedong infamously described the United Front as one of these so-called magic weapons of the CCP. It was credited as helping bring the regime to power. Now this same line was reiterated in 2014 by the current CCP leader Xi Jinping. He detailed the importance of the regime's United Front Work. The Wilson Center wrote in a report that using these tools, China's foreign influence activities have the potential to undermine the sovereignty and integrity of the political system of targeted states. Its operations are known. The Project 2049 Institute detailed in a 2013 report how the CCP uses these organizations to wage political warfare, one of the CCP's fighting methods detailed in its unrestricted warfare doctrine. And it's no secret that the United Front is deeply active in South Korea. The Jamestown Foundation reported in April this year that Chinese influence operations against Seoul have been characterized as not subtle and even blatant compared to the more covert and subversive methods employed in other countries. There are 24 tactics in unrestricted warfare, and using them comprehensively and indiscriminately is the main way for China to exert its influence on South Korea now. If you look at it, it's not just three warfares. In unrestricted warfare, there are actually a lot of those tactics. Political warfare, ideological warfare, cyber warfare, financial warfare, drug warfare, whatever you can think of, China is using. And the emphasis is not on applying these things singularly, but more on combining them to create a convergence effect. What are the organizations that operate these things? For the most part, this is part of the CCP's United Front. In Korean society, there are various friendship associations, social clubs, community associations, and international student organizations. They are trying to impact the Korean central government or the local government. By their names and on the surface, most of them are very friendly to South Korea and play a positive role in promoting South Korea and China relations. But in reality, at the highest level, they are part of China's United Front strategy and their subordinate organizations. And they operate at different levels in South Korea, at the central and local levels. Do you think the CCP's recent moves to block Shen Yun are part of this agenda? Yes, of course. That's a given. In fact, restricting Shen Yun's performances can be seen as a way of controlling any kind of arts and culture in South Korea and expanding China's influence over the arts and culture. I attended a Shen Yun performance in February this year. It was a very spectacular and moving performance. China is strongly blocking South Korean performance-related companies and theaters in various ways. Even if the people want to see it, they can't if there is no venue. How does China use cultural control to prevent Shen Yun from performing in Korea's national theaters and other venues? They make some kinds of threats to the officials or to the local governments or even to the governments that are in charge of the theater rental. This performance is too political, or if you allow this performance, you're going to jeopardize a very important part of the China-Korean relationship. It's a risk to the relationship. A court case revealed that the CCP was actually threatening Korea financially if they held Shen Yun or allowed Shen Yun to perform. I'm curious, why does the Chinese Communist Party care that much about an American performing arts company? That part is obvious. Since the birth of the Chinese Communist regime in the People's Republic of China in 1949, there's actually been very little consideration of traditional Chinese culture. If any kind of respect, if there was, I think it was more as a means to maintain the communist regime. So the big theme of this performance is to show the world 5,000 years of Chinese culture. Chinese people or people in any country are nostalgic for their own traditions and their past. And China is a country that takes great pride in its arts and culture as much as any other country. I think that by showing the public these 5,000 years of Chinese culture before the birth of the Communist Party, Shen Yun can awaken respect for China, ancient traditions, not the Communist Party and can awaken nostalgia for ancient Chinese culture, which has an impact on the current Communist Party system. I think that what Shen Yun is doing now and what it's all about, the revival of Chinese culture, it's all about challenging the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party and the authority of the communist regime currently ruling China. And that's why they're trying so hard to stop it. It has to do with K-culture. I think that if this becomes popular in Korea and the performance is expanded in Korea, the ripple effect would be something like the spread of K-culture. It's not just the revival of Chinese culture or Shen Yun performances challenging the system and authority of the Chinese Communist Party. It's about becoming a global influencer at the level of culture and arts. And that's why I think that's the main reason why China is preventing Shen Yun from performing in South Korea. China's approach to South Korea is part of that strategy of trying to disrupt America's friends and allies in China. And so by preventing the U.S.-South Korea alliance or U.S.-Korea-Japan cooperation or something like that, they're trying to reduce the threats that come to China and the checks that come to China. And they're trying to undermine any role of the U.S. I think the biggest and most serious problem is that the majority of South Koreans are not informed about China's penetration and expanding influence, which means they are largely unaware and defenseless. I spoke with other experts in South Korea who had similar findings. Among them is Lee Ji-yong. He's a professor at Gye-myung University, and he's author of Unrestricted Warfare, which details the CCP's use of these systems. A lot of people, they would never imagine that propaganda could have the effect of dividing a country from one ally and taking that country towards another one. What is the CCP agenda with this? What is the tactic of the CCP that it's using to capture South Korea and pull it away from America? The aim of the CCP upon South Korean society is to dominate South Korea and make South Korea be a pro-Chinese regime, pro-Chinese society. It means that the main pillars of society are then under foreign control. Politicians would serve a foreign interest. Businesses would be limited by foreign interest. Sources of information would be controlled and censored. Culture and freedom of expression would be limited. And anyone who dared go against the forms of subjugation would be marked for attack. Of course, it does appear that the current administration in South Korea is looking to break free from these networks. President Yun is looking to mend South Korea's relations with Japan and to throw out a former agreement with the CCP that forbids South Korea from joining a military alliance with the United States. As many others have noted, this may be a difficult task. He deals not only with the CCP and its use of military and economic threats, but also the CCP's attempts to manipulate public opinion. Xi Jinping recently gave a statement I know is very controversial in South Korea about claiming that kimchi was Chinese. But the bigger debate with that was that he seemed to suggest that China owns the Korea Peninsula. With the rise of China beginning early 2000s, I think the South Korea-China relationship has become different. China began to think of South Korea as something subservient than equal partner. Whenever I visited China after Xi Jinping came in, the Chinese bureaucrats' attitude has changed tremendously. In an official arena, calling South Korea a small mountain and China a big mountain, that's a diplomatically very rude attitude. Especially after the third deployment and economic coercion by China on South Korea, the South Korean people's attitude has changed. There is a huge anti-China sentiment. 76%, which is, I think, the highest in the world now. And because of this public sentiment, current government's policy toward China is going on as a normal trend. I mean, if there is no public support, government policy toward China would not have been this successful. I was told by many people in South Korea that the CCP's ability to dig its roots this deep into the country stem from policies of the previous governments. It comes from officials here who support the CCP and North Korea. There are people who want the Marxist and Maoist systems of communism. And many of these officials have been student activists in Korea in the 1987 June uprising. To learn more about this history, I met with Min Kyung-woo. He's a former leader of the student uprising who has since turned against the Marxists. I met with him at one of the focal points of the uprisings at Seoul National University, which is regarded as South Korea's equivalent of Harvard. He first showed me Xi Jinping's library on the campus. It's taken as a symbol of the CCP's influence over one of the most esteemed institutions of learning in the country. Afterwards, Min Kyung-woo showed us two memorials of the student uprising leaders, old classmates of his. If I had to choose one iconic figure from the Korean democratization movement, I would probably choose Park Jong-chul. He's that kind of person. Park was tortured to death after being detained by the police in January 1989. And this incident was the catalyst for the June 1987 pro-democracy movement. Close by was another memorial, this one of the incident that started the mass protests. It's taken as the symbol of anti-Americanism. Now, one faction of this movement, the so-called self-reliance branch, wanted to push out the United States and it aimed to have South Korea join forces with North Korea. Another faction was based on Maoism and Marxist-Leninism. April 1986, i.e. when Kim Il-sungism was growing in Seoul, Seoul National University. A student who set himself on fire, thinner, do you know thinner? He put oil on himself and set himself on fire and died in an anti-American protest. He was a friend of yours. He was my classmate, my friend. He was a senior at school. So whenever I come here, I have a lump in my throat. I can imagine the difficulty. It takes a lot of courage too to have broken from that, I'm sure. That's right. It was harder than I thought. What we went through was not something that happens in a book. It was a living reality. And that person was tortured. He was burned to death. I can't forget it. It's not just me. All of us university students at the time witnessed those events, those deaths. And it's been 30, 40 years. South Korea's student movement began with the April 19, 1960 uprising and culminated in the June 1987 democratization movement. From 1960 to 1987, the student movement in South Korea was a struggle for democracy and a direct democratic system. But on the other hand, it was carried out with the radical ideologies such as Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, and Juche ideology. Even after the June 1987 democratic movement won a direct democracy, the students who were young people at that time continued to hold on to those radical ideas. And now, those young people are now middle-aged and form the backbone of society. These people are very strong in proportion and intensity. It is a common phenomenon that radicalism weakens as young people get older. However, this is not the case in Korea, and it seems that these students have maintained their radicalism until now. I believe this is directly related to the Lee Jae-myung Democratic Party. Radicalism can be categorized in three types. One is anti-Americanism, the second is egalitarianism, excessive egalitarianism, and the third is people's revolution. And I think that the radicalism that these students have, even in their middle age, is the core of the divisiveness that is currently tearing apart Korean politics. For Americans, when we look at North Korea, we view North Korea as like the worst form of totalitarianism. So right and left in America, they see North Korea as the worst example of a government. And so it's unthinkable for us that people would want that. So what is it in these politicians that make them still align with that belief? If you ask every middle-aged person in South Korea, every student who was in the pro-democracy movement, every student activist who is now middle-aged in a public setting, isn't North Korea the worst totalitarian state? They will say yes, but they have different feelings in their hearts. The anti-U.S., pro-North Korea sentiment that I had in the mid to late 1980s has survived, strongly refuting the official perception in my mind and preventing the official perception that North Korea is the worst totalitarian state from being reflected in national policy or social trends. There is no one in the country who does not understand on the surface that North Korea is a totalitarian state and we should be friendly with the United States. But I think it's a very abnormal psychological state that is blocked by the sensitivity of youth that they had in the past. Does that make sense? There is a mythologization of the student movement activists and an overly high evaluation or image of their role in Korean democracy. They think that students did a lot of work, but I disagree. Basically the June 1987 democracy movement was done by two Kims and the general public and what they wanted was democracy and freedom. But here, students with socialist ideology combined, they have gradually transformed this socialist ideology in their own way over the past 40 years. Now that these people are middle-aged, they are showing their true colors and implementing their own ideology. They are just going along. Nothing has changed. I concluded that that's the realm of psychology. Recently, the mind and the actual reality are different. From the 2000s, Korea developed into a high-tech capitalist culture with a rapid expansion of GDP, exports, companies, etc. The benefits were concentrated in the 40s and 50s, but their thoughts and behaviors are stuck in the 80s. There is no specific vision, but that the current system must be brought down. But if you ask them why they need to bring down the system, they bring up the past, the 80s. It's like that. I think it's a little bit difficult. I think there is culture and there is ideology. In the case of Korea, there are actually very few people who support the communist ideology, but there are many people who support the communist culture. Even if this Marxism-Leninism disappears, this way of thinking remains. However, there is something that has not been introduced in South Korea, individualism, rationalism, etc. that Western society has developed. I think we're back to the old ideology because it's not there. So I think it's very valid to put culture at the center. This is also true from experience. If you look at it from a communist point of view, until Marxism-Leninism, it was mainly a materialistic, ideology-oriented society. But if you go into Mao Zedong, Juche thought, Gramsci thought, it has been historically developed by seeing the importance of bending people's minds. Those things are still in various social movements today. What Ming Qianwu highlighted was the impact of ideology. In practical terms, people see North Korea as a totalitarian state. They dislike the CCP and its brutal regime. Based on polling, the people of South Korea overwhelmingly have positive views towards the United States. But some of them also hold contradictory feelings, influenced not by practicality, but instead by the residual memory of the student protests. In South Korea, though, it's not just the memory of the student uprising that still impacts the country. It's also the memories of when Korea was subjugated under China in the past, and by Japan in the 1930s leading up to World War II. The Imperial Japanese Army forced women and girls into sexual slavery. These are the so-called comfort women. A memorial commemorating them reads, Our worst fear is that our painful history during World War II will be forgotten. And the suffering of the Korean people goes beyond this. In the entire Korean peninsula, religious freedom was crushed in the early 1900s. Under Japanese rule, Shinto shrines were built throughout the country, and Koreans were forced to denounce their religions and to worship at these shrines. This is memorialized at the Trail of National Humiliation at the site of the Joseon Shrine. For Korea, these are painful memories. But now that the CCP is undermining the country's national sovereignty, and even extending its religious oppression to South Korea, is history repeating itself? Unfortunately, this part of Korea's history is forgotten, even by many Americans. It was the United States that freed Korea from tyranny, first from Japan during World War II, and then later from the Chinese Communist Party during the Korean War from 1950 to 1953. Over 1.7 million Americans were joined by the United Nations forces to fight alongside South Koreans against the CCP, the Soviet Union, and North Korea. Americans still call this the Forgotten War. But for many in South Korea, the freedom of the nation is seen as being rooted in this history. They commemorate this contribution with the largest war memorial in the world. And I went there to meet with two South Korean veterans, a one-star general and a four-star general. We went from being a colony under Japanese occupation to being an independent nation again with the help of the United States, for which we are very grateful and fortunate. But an even greater tragedy awaited us as the Soviet Communist Party took over the Korean Peninsula and tried to extend its reach to Japan. And we almost became a communized country and fell under communist rule. We are very grateful that the United States saved us from that. Even after we barely survived, we were in a difficult situation, but the U.S. provided us with so much money, technical assistance, military assistance, and that was the basis for our rapid development into a developed country. I think that was God's help to our country, and I have a lot of gratitude and respect for all the people and all the traditions of the United States. It's sad. A lot of Americans, they forget this. It's sad. You say no longer the Forgotten War. Why do you think people should remember this? Well, in order to prevent the same kind of war in the future, we have to let them know what happened during the Korean War, okay? That's why we constructed this memorial, and so we can teach young generations the situation and what's the result of the war. At the statue of the famous Admiral Lee Soon-Shin, who defended Korea against what seemed to be impossible odds in the 1500s, are written his words, I will do all I can, alive or dead, to protect the country. The path of soldiers and warriors is to give your life for your country, and that doesn't necessarily mean dying for your country in battle. This type of sacrifice comes as a prerequisite. It comes at the beginning, not the end. It's a willingness to lose personal interest to defend a nation. So how much money is a nation worth? What these investigations into the CCP's attempts to block Shen Yun revealed is that for financial gain, there were people willing to allow the Chinese Communist Party to undermine South Korean law. The Chinese embassy was able to make a financial threat, which went against Korea's protections on human rights and freedom of expression. And by doing this, the CCP was able to not only export its systems of censorship into South Korea, but also demonstrated an ability to undermine the basic sovereignty of the nation. Alongside this campaign, the CCP is also exporting its tools for religious suppression. The propaganda it uses in its campaigns of torture and genocide have found their way onto the streets of South Korea. Its tools to influence and subjugate nations are rampant to the point that the CCP puts little efforts into hiding its actions. And the heads of the CCP, they're openly laying claim to Korean culture and history, while stating their vision for a future of Korea, where the Chinese regime dominates the full Korean peninsula. At the same time though, I believe there's more of a reason for hope in South Korea. Despite the full weight of these operations and information campaigns, the Chinese Communist Party is overwhelmingly seen in a negative light. The people of this country remember what it's like to lose their sovereignty. They know what it means to lose religious freedom. The ongoing threats from North Korea are an ever-present reminder of what life under communist tyranny looks like. The war being waged here isn't being done through tanks and bombs, but instead through the invisible forces of culture and ideology. And while the CCP is exerting its influence to these networks, it's also making a fatal mistake. The people of Korea that I saw would not support this if they were aware. And while the CCP rallies its networks to try to censor Shen Yun, its united front networks are revealing themselves for the world to see.