My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and am now a writer who has

published three books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini.

                          I give a riddle to my readers: what if Communism never existed? We would

never see a Vladimir Lenin, a Joseph Stalin, a Mao Zedong, a Kim Il-sung, a Pol Pot, or a Fidel

Castro. Likewise, is it possible that we would never have had right wing fascist and neo-fascist

dictators like Benito Mussolini, Adolf Hitler, Francisco Franco, Chiang Kai-shek, Park Chung-hee,

or Chun Doo-hwan? These extreme right wing dictators came to power because of the threat of

Communism, and they were able to sustain themselves in power for so long because of the threat

of Communism. They could never have justified themselves for so long in power if there was no

threat, no external menace they could use as a dark, evil force that seemed like a threat so

powerful, so overwhelming that people would have felt there was no other choice but to keep these

right wing dictators in control. The three main differences between the right wing dictators and

the Communist ones were that right wing dictators protected private property and capitalist 

corporate property from being confiscated, allowing religion as a means to give people some

solace from everyday reality, and to allow the richer classes to exist and flourish. None of 

these things happened under Communism, and the sad truth of the matter is that so many people

in right wing dictatorships were just as willing to give up their political and civil freedoms just as

people in Communist states were forced to give up all their rights. In my view, if Communism

did not exist, then none of these right wing, fascist and neo-fascist dictators would probably

have ever existed either.