South Korean soldiers march during the 75th Armed Forces Day ceremony held at Seoul Air Base in Seongnam on September 26, 2023. Yonhap News.

Jeong Seong-hong, Chairman of the Private 5·18 Truth Investigation CommissionIt seems that many conservative citizens still do not realize the situation the free Republic of Korea is facing. We have already lost our sovereignty to China—led by Lee Jae-myung—on June 3, 2025, just 78 years after the nation was founded on August 15, 1948. It may not feel real. One might say, "I can travel abroad and buy luxury goods, so what are you talking about? This is nonsense." But then, how about this? We must obtain visas to enter China, yet Chinese citizens can enter South Korea without any visas. Like Japan during the colonial period, China has seized its spoils of war as it pleases.

It may also not feel real that just as they did in China, they have dismantled the intelligent Prosecutor’s Office, and not content with the National Office of Investigation under the Ministry of the Interior and Safety, they have proceeded to establish a Major Crime Investigation Agency. Come to think of it, when the country was lost to Japan, only a handful of insightful intellectuals like Min Young-hwan and Hwang Hyeon were grief-stricken enough to leave behind suicide notes and take their own lives; most of the Joseon people did not even realize that their nation had been taken over by Japan.

This is because, much like the "Gae-ttal" (Lee Jae-myung’s fanatical supporters) directed by Lee Seok-ki today, a pro-Japanese organization called the Iljinhoe, with 100,000 members, launched a signature campaign with 1 million people declaring, "Joseon wishes to become subjects of the Imperial Empire," and presented it to the Japanese Emperor. Excluding the upper class, most Japanese believed that the annexation of Korea was carried out according to the will of the 20 million Joseon people.

After the Eulsa Treaty, when Ahn Jung-geun assassinated Ito Hirobumi, the annexation, which had been delayed for five years, suddenly gained momentum. In the 1910s, when Japan’s annual budget was just over 200 million yen, they invested a massive 30 million yen into SOC projects for land owned by "Joseon-in" (Koreans) who had attained status similar to the Japanese through the "Naiseon Ittai" (Japan and Korea as one body) policy. So, what exploitation? Joseon was a bottomless pit. In the late 1950s, when life was hard, my grandmother in the countryside would tell sweet stories of how she was even rationed sugar during the Japanese colonial period. Just as we are currently intoxicated by the "China Dream," finding Seoul's Myeong-dong without a visa and singing the praises of China.

Modern warfare is no longer fought solely with traditional military power like guns, artillery, and missiles. It is fought by mobilizing every possible means, including politics, economy, finance, information, networks, psychological warfare, terrorism, and international law. We know this form of warfare, which originated from Deng Xiaoping’s "Black Cat, White Cat" theory, as Unrestricted Warfare (超限戰). This is the very womb of the China Dream.

During China’s economic stagnation in the 1960s and 70s, Deng Xiaoping sought to move away from Mao Zedong’s rigid communist ideology and secure the legitimacy of economic reform and opening. His slogan, "It doesn't matter if a cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice, it is a good cat," prioritized pragmatism over ideology and contributed greatly to China's economic revival.

However, after witnessing the United States win the Gulf War and the Kosovo War in short order with high-tech weaponry in the 1990s, the Chinese military concluded that it would be difficult to catch up to the U.S. through military power alone. They sought an "asymmetric strategy" where China could emerge victorious. In 1999, People's Liberation Army Colonels Qiao Liang and Wang Xiangsui published a military treatise arguing that all means should be treated as an extension of warfare, transcending traditional military concepts. They called it "Unrestricted Warfare."

Like the military strategy book "Thirty-Six Stratagems" written during the Ming and Qing dynasties, "Unrestricted Warfare" consists of 24 tactics that emphasize non-military means. China, which views the U.S. as an enemy to be subdued, primarily used the "10th tactic," "Economic Aid Warfare" (creating political and economic dependency through aid and loans), to target Asian nations with weak economic foundations through policies like the Belt and Road Initiative. As vast sums of money were dispersed around the early 2000s, countries like Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines, Nepal, and Indonesia were immediately devastated and became subordinate to Chinese influence.

However, for the Republic of Korea, which had already reached the status of a developed nation, that was not enough. Just as the 36th stratagem in the "Thirty-Six Stratagems"—running away—is the best option, the 24th and final tactic in Unrestricted Warfare, "Combined Warfare," is the master’s technique. China uses the preceding 23 tactics collectively as a secret weapon to bring down the Republic of Korea.

Thus, from 2013, full-scale "Combined Warfare" was implemented to take over the Republic of Korea. The most alluring element was "Financial Warfare." The massive funds totaling tens of trillions of dollars accumulated through economic growth are managed solely by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Numerous South Korean politicians from both ruling and opposition parties, the judiciary, and prosecutors and police officials were targets of this fund distribution. The hospitality, including the use of "honey traps," was lavish enough to ensure betrayal. Seoul National University, with no traces left of Syngman Rhee or Park Chung-hee, opened a 32-pyeong Xi Jinping donation archive; JTBC "stripped itself" for 100 billion won; and the moment a certain Police Commissioner Park, who had served as an attaché in the U.S. and Japan and was considered a hardcore conservative by all, visited China once and returned claiming the Chinese Public Security was a model for the Korean police—that was the turning point. (From this point on, the police became brothers with the Chinese Public Security.)

The Burning Sun scandal six years ago, which linked BIGBANG's Seungri and Superintendent Yoon Gyu-geun, is closely related to social and economic disruption through "narcotics distribution warfare," and the simultaneous wildfires that occurred in the Gyeongnam region this spring are enough to remind one of artificial "ecological warfare," utilizing environmental destruction such as floods, fires, and climate manipulation.

Above all, "Network Warfare" is the tactic through which the CCP deeply intervened in various elections since 2013. It is the key driver that usurped the sovereignty of the free Republic of Korea through fraudulent voting involving hackers, hidden behind democratic procedures. This is what contributed to the formation of a dictatorial power that "legally" seized control of the prosecution, police, courts, and media through legislative dictatorship in the National Assembly.

The moment the Republic of Korea entered the path of the failed Silk Road and the Belt and Road Initiative, other Asian nations that had been deeply asleep in the China Dream began to wake up. In Sri Lanka in July, Bangladesh in August, and Nepal in September, Generation Z, born after 1990, risked their lives to overthrow their dictatorial regimes. Furthermore, Indonesia, Pakistan, Myanmar, and the Philippines are on the verge of collapse as "red hot zones," and Trump’s America, with Venezuela in its sights, has declared a wartime footing and reorganized the Department of Defense into a "Department of War."

The world is truly in the early stages of a Third World War. Yet, most South Korean citizens, unaware of the roots of the "Gae-ttal," are enjoying a peaceful life both domestically and abroad.

What does it matter if there is an insurrection tribunal or a special court, or whether there are two or three special prosecutors? Is that all?

Even if they abolish the Prosecutor's Office and create new investigative and public prosecution offices, how would I know if the prosecutors don't? What is the point of the separation of the Ministry of Economy and Finance’s budget and policy functions? Whether Lee Jin-sook of the KCC lives or dies, or whether Kim Hyun-ji of the Gyeonggi Dongbu Federation—not exactly a beauty—formed a connection with Lee Jae-myung during his escape and is raising his son, or whether she becomes the Chief of the First Annex, requiring no confirmation hearing—what does it have to do with me?

Do you not see Trump’s America, which has renamed its defense agency the "Department of War"? Do you not hear the cries of Gordon Chang and Moss Tan, who are trying to help us reclaim the sovereignty more brutally stolen by China than our own? Does the image of the young girl cruelly murdered in front of the Andong Dam not come to mind? And are you confident that you will not be ashamed when you pass the utter misery of a fallen nation to future generations?

Injo, who was defeated in the Manchu War, suffered the humiliation of being forced to bang his head on the ground in Samjeondo. We have now lost once again in the Unrestricted Warfare against China. The Red Guards of the Cultural Revolution slaughtered tens of millions of "counter-revolutionaries" with stones and bamboo spears, claiming bullets were too expensive. They said that 5 million of us must also disappear. The day Lee Seok-ki of the Gyeonggi Dongbu Federation and Kim Ou-joon meet on YouTube, they will raise a glorious toast.

If you only talk about the "right of resistance" while having already lost your country, death is all that awaits you. I cannot wait for that day. Should we distinguish between what is legal, illegal, or extra-legal in reclaiming a lost country? Unless we, ourselves, take the initiative to deal with those who deceived our allies with filthy lies and swore allegiance by attending their victory commemorations, the heavens will abandon us. Life is as fleeting as morning dew.

Jeong Seong-hong, Chairman of the Private 5·18 Truth Investigation Commission