Getting a glimpse of North Korea is difficult.
If you want to travel there, you can only participate in official tours where you’re
not allowed to leave the hotel without a guide who will show you only what you’re supposed
to see.
And as a source for what daily life in North Korea is like, all we have are the storys
from North Korean defectors.
Because of the limited information we get, there are countless of false assumptions and
North Korea is portrayed as this bizarre and odd place.
"The North Korean Government has announced that it found a unicorn" - Bill O'Reilly
However, the worldview that drives the state rarely gets attention, which makes discussing
how to deal with the country absurd without studying it’s ideology first.
To understand their ideology, we have to look back in time.
The korean peninsula lies between two seas - the yellow sea on the west and the sea of
japan on the east, which South Koreans call “East Sea”.
On each side, the country neighbors two rivaling powers - China and Japan - who have both heavily
influenced Korea throughout it’s history.
Korea was unified by the Silla Kingdom, which stretched all across the peninsula.
For centuries there has been a diverse cultural exchange with China, bringing to Korea confucianism.
These confucian teachings and political theories became an essential part of korea, and so,
when in 1946, Kim-Il Sung established the socialist north korean state, he made sure
to not take away those aspects.
Even when they conflicted with socialist thought.
The North Koreans went so far to actually add a confucian scolars brush to the long
established hammer and sickle symbol that represents socialism.
"Now this is odd.
This is really odd."
"Communism everywhere stands for sweeping away everything from the past."
"And yet there is probably not a more traditional symbol of traditional Korea than confucian
scolars brush."
On the other side of the country, relations between Korea and its Japanese neighbour in
the east have been more difficult.
In 1910, Korea was annexed and became a japanese colony.
Imperial Japan at that time had a race-based fascist worldview.
They forced Koreans to assimilate to Japanese tradition, which went so far, that Koreans
even had to adopt japanese family names.
The japanese oppression caused anger and hundreds of thousands of Koreans demonstrated against
the Japanese occupation in what turned into the March 1st Movement.
While the japanese managed to beat down the protests, it did lead to a change in tactic.
Rather than depriving Koreans from their culture, the Japanese started supporting Korean nationalism.
And extended their own ethnic ideology to Korea.
"They wanted the Koreans to be proud of their koreanness."
"They actually urged them to take pride in their history, in their culture.
In their dialect - they didn't want to call it a language."
"But at the same time they wanted them to be proud of belonging to this greater Yamato.
And this idea actually went down much better than south koreans today and north koreans
today would like to acknowledge."
So if you see North Korea on the news described as the last fortress of communism, then perhaps
it would be more appropriate to view North Korea as the last fortress of Japanese fascism.
North Korea's race-based propaganda solidifies the image that Koreans are superior to the
rest of the world
And unlike other socialist ideologies national pride plays an important role in North Korea
with tradition not being repressed but rather embraced.
While in soviet propaganda or in communist china women were depicted wearing the clothes
of the revolution or of the workers force north korean propaganda is different and often
shows them wearing traditional korean Joseon-ot dresses.
As Japan was defeated in the second world war, Korea was freed from the outside, by
soviet forces that came from the north, and americans coming from the south.
The country was divided along the 38th parallel and two seperate governments were established.
A war between north and south began - one of the first proxy conflicts amidst the cold
war.
And with the fights of the korean war ending on July 27, 1953, both countries agreed to
the so called Demilitarized Zone that seperates the states until today and is effectively
the border - almost at the same location as the original 38th parallel line.
The North Koreans established a personality cult around Kim Il Sung, that was deeply inspired
by the heroic tales of Chinese revolutionary Mao Zedong.
"The North Koreans felt the need to match this cult claim for claim.
So Mao Zedong claimed that he was a poet of course and he enjoyed quite a good deal of
international renown for his poetry.
So the North Korean personality cult suddenly remembered play which Kim Il-Sung had allegedly
written in his youth.
Mao Zedong had the long march for which he was very famous on which he had led his troops.
And the north korean historians suddenly remembered the Arduous March that Kim Il-Sung had taken
his troops on.
Mao Zedong had Maoism as a world famous ideology.
And this claim of course forced the north koreans to come up with something that they
called Juche Thought".
Kim Il Sung’s Juche philosophy became the official north korean state ideology.
Nevertheless, Kim Il Sung has written hardly any content-based works on Juche.
Instead it serves more as a justification for the reign of the Kim family, and is not
a true theoretical blueprint for state life.
The most detailed written elaboration on Juche, actually comes from Kim Il Sungs son, Kim
Jong Il, who for his fathers 70th birthday, In 1982, published his book on the Juche Idea.
In this 84 page work he justifies the Songun policy to prioritize the Military above all
other branches of the government.
But the actual content of the book has little to do with the real life in North Korea.
"This is the pros they use to fill those book spines so that people can look at those book
spines and say - our kim il-sung is just as great an ideolog as mao zedong was."
"I can basically say Juche is nothing.
Because you can basically summarize, say, Marxism- you can not summarize Juche.
Because the contradictions between official state ideology and reality could not be more
obvious.
In North Korea there has now twice been hereditery change of power -
and there are big social and economic differences within their society.
"North Korea has legal hereditary classes.
There are 3 big groups that outsiders call the core, the wavering and the hostile class.
Within each of these groups there are several subdivisons - as many as 55 or 65 depending
on how you count.
These are class divisions based on who your parents and grandparents were, it's based
entirely on heredity.
This is about as anti communist as you can get."
It has almost become a ritual for every united states president who visits South Korea, to
stand at the DMZ border and look through binoculars towards the north korean side.
And it sort of symbolizes the hard time we have understanding this isolated country.
North Korea is often portrayed as this sort of jail-state that can only survive by imprisoning
and oppressing its people.
And even though that is one side of it’s story, the truth is more complicated.
Because unlike, for example, East Germany, where large parts of the population knew exactly
that their government told them lies, North Korean propaganda is way more effective.
so effective, that sometimes we too can fall for it.
"We can only attach the name communist to North Korea if we redefine the word to mean
<>.
Above and beyond that it doesn't really tell us all that much about what's going on."