CULT OF PERSONALITY OF KIM IL SUNG
Emulating techniques used by Mao and Stalin and taking them to new extremes, Kim developed a personality cult that elevated him to near-divine status. Kim Il Sung is still referred to today as "Great Leader," "His Excellency," "Respected and Beloved Leader", "the Greatest Genius the World has ever Known," “the Clairvoyant,” “Korea’s Sun,” and ‘The Perfect Brain” who even had the power to change the weather. There is hardly a song or work of literature or art that does not allude to the ideology of "the Great Leader." North Korea is refereed to at home as Kim Il Sung nation.
Kim Il Sung encouraged his cult of personality from the start. As it grew Kim became an embodiment of the North Korean state itself and achieved godlike status. The Grand People’s Study House contains more than 13,000 volumes of Kim’s collected works. At nursery schools still today children bow before Kim’s portrait and say “Thank You Great Father” after receiving snacks. Stalinism, Western militarism, Japanese imperial-era Emperor worship. and Confucianism are believed to been guides in the development of Kim’s style of authoritarianism.
Images and statues of Kim Il Sung have been raised everywhere, including a massive gold-plated monument in the middle of Pyongyang. Kim Il Sung picture hung on the walls of every home, factory and school. Kindergarten children learn patriotic songs that praise the "Great Leader"on their first day of school and visitors to North Korea report seeing thousands of Kim Il Sung statues throughout the country. By one count there are 80 large statues of Kim Il-sung and over 20,000 smaller ones nationwide.
In the 1990s, North Korean citizens often told foreign journalists that their home, food and clothes were gifts of the "Great Leader." Virtually all North Korean citizens wore Kim Il Sung badges which they received after attending a solemn rite at the age of seven. The ultimate symbol of loyalty, these badges were not sold and they must had to worn during important ceremonies.
David E. Sanger wrote in the New York Times: Mr. Kim seemed, in every public utterance, to be nothing short of a god. Everything North Koreans received from the government — clothes, rice, apartments — were said to come directly from "the Great Leader" or "the Dear Leader," his son. Pyongyang considered 50,000 new apartments to be the Great Leader's birthday gifts to his people. But when a reporter toured these "gifts," no one discussed the fact that there was little heat and electricity. "You have to remember that at home, President Kim Il Sung is treated as a combination of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln," former U.S. President Jimmy Carter said. [Source: David E. Sanger, New York Times, July 10, 1994]
Cult of Personality Government of Kim Il Sung
North Korea is run like an extreme religious cult. Song Soon-jong, an influential North Korean resident in Japan told Newsweek, "It's almost become something like [Japan's] Aum Shinrikyo cult over the years, totally mind-controlled. Otherwise they would see what's going on."
Huge pictures of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are everywhere, many of them with peasant and bountiful harvests. The North Korea holy trinity was Kim Il Sung as the "father," Kim Jong Il as the "son" and concept of juche as the spirit. The Workers Party is often refereed to the "mother." North Korean citizens of North Korea regard each other as happy "brothers" and "sisters."
Many North Koreans have what amounts to a household shrine with portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. One North Korea guide, who said his parents were killed in the Korean War, said he was brought in an orphanage run by the Workers Party. He said he was live better than people with natural parents. "You see,” he said, "Comrade Kim Il Sung is our father, and our mother is the bosom of the Workers Party of Korea."
Anne Penketh wrote in The Independent: "You must not fold the Great Leader's face." The stewardess was not joking when she sternly addressed the passenger on the Air Koryo flight out of Pyongyang, as he creased a special issue of a magazine devoted to the achievements of the late leader of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, to place it in his bag. A British diplomat on the same Soviet-era Ilyushin-62 received the same treatment when he asked the stewardess to leave his drink on the magazine, while he read a newspaper. She waited until he had cleared the tray so that the Great Leader on the cover would not be sullied. In North Korea, Kim Il Sung is no laughing matter. The former leader, who died in 1994, is not just the object of a personality cult, he has been elevated to the status of god in a state religion [Source: Anne Penketh, The Independent, September 17, 2004]
On the feeling of being betrayed by the lies North Korean cult of personality, Philip Gourevitch wrote in the Observer: Kim Chol is a university student, “recalled his parents' sense that they had been betrayed by their god in the early 90s, when, as party loyalists, they were granted permission to visit relatives in an ethnic Korean enclave just across the frontier in northeast China. They returned in 'total shock', with news that the North had started the Korean War, was to blame for Korea's division and that 'Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il governed for themselves and not for the good of the country and its people'.” [Source: Philip Gourevitch, Observer Magazine, The Guardian, November 2, 2003]
Monument of Kim Il Sung
To commemorate Kim Il Sung's 70th birthday a replica of the Arc de Triumph called the "Tower of Juche" was unveiled in Kaesong Square in downtown Pyongyang. Built in just two years, the replica is a few meters taller than original. "The Korean people," American journalist Peter Hyun was told by his North Korean guide , built the tower to express "their ardent wish to glorify forever his immortal revolutionary exploits... After leading the 20-year-long anti-Japanese struggle for victory and accomplishing the cause of national liberation, Great Leader Kim Il Sung made his first historical speech here upon his triumphant return to the fatherland October 14, 1945."
When asked how much the Tower of Juche cost the guide replied, "this monument to the great leader was built with the love and the sweat of the people. How many people? It is not important. How much money it cost? That, too, is irrelevant. For our Great Leader Kim Il Sung, we were willing to lay down our lives, if necessary."
Huge Statues showing Kim Il Sung with his armed raised have been erected all over the country. The huge museum of the Korean Revolution in Pyongyang has 95 monumental rooms devoted his career. Kim occasionally ran full-pages ads in the New York Times and other international newspapers trumpeting his successes.
Song of General Kim Il-sung
"The Song of General Kim Il-sung" was composed by Kim Won-gyun in 1946 and is still widely played today. It is the earliest piece of music or art mentioning Kim Il-sung, and thus is regarded as the beginning of his personality cult. In the early 1980s Kim Jong-il began promoting the song and it has since replaced "Aegukka", the national anthem, as the most important song played in public gatherings in the country. North Koreans typically know the lyrics by heart. [Source: Wikipedia
The first two bars of the song are used as an interval signal on North Korean radio and television. According to North Korean sources, their satellites Kwangmyongsong-1, launched in 1998, and Kwangmyongsong-2, supposedly launched in April 2009 broadcast the song. The song is played by the North Korean state television at the start of broadcasts each day and its lyrics, by Ri Chan, are carved in stones — like carved Buddhist sutras — as well as the Pyongyang Arch of Triumph.
Bright traces of blood on the crags of Jangbaek still gleam,
Still the Amnok carries along signs of blood in its stream.
Still do those hallowed traces shine resplendently
Over Korea ever flourishing and free.
So dear to all our hearts is our General's glorious name,
Our own beloved Kim Il Sung of undying fame.
[Source: naenara.com, Foreign Languages Publishing House of the DPR Korea]
Tell, blizzards that rage in the wild Manchurian plains,
Tell, you nights in forests deep where the silence reigns,
Who is the partisan whose deeds are unsurpassed?
Who is the patriot whose fame shall ever last?
So dear to all our hearts is our General's glorious name,
Our own beloved Kim Il Sung of undying fame.
He severed the chains of the masses, brought them liberty,
The sun of Korea today, democratic and free.
For the Twenty Points united we stand fast,
Over our fair homeland spring has come at last!
So dear to all our hearts is our General's glorious name,
Our own beloved Kim Il Sung of undying fame.
Bright traces of blood on the crags of Jangbaek still gleam,
Still the Amnok carries along signs of blood in its stream.
Still do those hallowed traces shine resplendently
Over Korea ever flourishing and free.
So dear to all our hearts is our General's glorious name,
Our own beloved Kim Il Sung of undying fame.
Tell, blizzards that rage in the wild Manchurian plains,
Tell, you nights in forests deep where the silence reigns,
Who is the partisan whose deeds are unsurpassed?
Who is the patriot whose fame shall ever last?
So dear to all our hearts is our General's glorious name,
Our own beloved Kim Il Sung of undying fame.
He severed the chains of the masses, brought them liberty,
The sun of Korea today, democratic and free.
For the Twenty Points united we stand fast,
Over our fair homeland spring has come at last!
So dear to all our hearts is our General's glorious name,
Our own beloved Kim Il Sung of undying fame.
Juche
The cornerstone of Kim Il Sung’s political philosophy was “juche”, a concept based on self sufficiency that would provide the framework for North Korea's isolation. The idea behind juche was that North Korea would build everything itself and do it bigger and better than anybody else. Over time juche replaced Marxist-Leninism as the state ideology. Marxism and Leninism after all were foreign ideas and the premise of Juche was self-reliance. By contrast Eastern European Communist governments relied on Soviet troops to prop them up and for a while North Korea did too.. Now it can be argued that North Korea is an anti-juche society dependent on outsiders for food and oil.
Juche was introduced in 1955 at a time when North Korea was distancing himself from the Soviet Union and the Soviet’s regarded North Korea as nutty and ungrateful. It called for North Korea to be self sufficient to a degree that nothing was needed from the outside world. As the concept of juche rose in prominence it became like a state religion. As well as socialist and military theory, it embraced Confucianism, shamanism, cult personality and mysticism. In 1997, Pyongyang officially replaced the Gregorian calendar with a Juche calendar that starts with year 0 as 1912, the year of Kim Il Sung’s birth.
Juche ideology is the basic cornerstone of party construction, party works, and government operations. Juche is sanctified as the essence of what has been officially called Kim Il Sung Chuui (Kim Il Sung-ism) since April 1974. Juche is also claimed as "the present-day MarxismLeninism ." North Korean leaders advocate juche ideology as the only correct guiding ideology in their ongoing revolutionary movement. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada, Library of Congress, 1993]
According to “Governments of the World”: “Unfortunately, the policies of self-reliance, much of which involved the adoption of independent economic and military strategies, had largely the opposite result; namely, North Korea became increasingly dependent on the outside world, and particularly on other communist countries, for vital resources (especially fuel), foodstuffs, and capital goods. The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989 unequivocally exposed the weaknesses of the juche system, but, significantly, it did not immediately destabilize the North Korean political system. Indeed, since 1989 and despite chronic shortages of fuel and electricity, long-term economic stagnation, and, most important, periodic bouts of famine, the regime has remained firmly in control. This is partly due to the DPRK's disproportionately large military and security apparatus, which has been thoroughly integrated in North Korean society, but also partly due to ideological indoctrination and insular policies that have isolated the North Korean people from the rest of the world.” [Source: Governments of the World: A Global Guide to Citizens' Rights and Responsibilities, Thomson Gale, 2006]
Meaning of Juche
"Juche" means "holding fast to the principle of solving for oneself all the problems of the revolution and construction of one's own efforts." This was to be accomplished, he added, while "applying the universal truth of Marxism-Leninism." Much of reams of prose that has been written about juche is incomprehensible. Bruce Cumings, an expert of North Korea. wrote: “The term is really untranslatable, the closer one gets to its meaning, the more the meaning slips away. For a foreigner its meaning recedes into a pool of everything that makes Koreans Korean and therefore is ultimately inaccessible to the non-Korean.”
Juche also is referred to as "the unitary ideology" or as "the monolithic ideology of the Party." It is inseparable from and, for all intents and purposes, synonymous with Kim Il Sung's leadership and was said to have been "created" or "fathered" by the great leader as an original "encyclopedic thought which provides a complete answer to any question that arises in the struggle for national liberation and class emancipation, in the building of socialism and communism." Juche is viewed as the embodiment of revealed truth attesting to the wisdom of Kim's leadership as exemplified in countless speeches and "on-the-spot guidance." [Source: Andrea Matles Savada, Library of Congress, 1993]
According to Kim, juche means "the independent stance of rejecting dependence on others and of using one's own powers, believing in one's own strength and displaying the revolutionary spirit of self-reliance." Juche is an ideology geared to address North Korea's contemporary goals — an independent foreign policy, a self-sufficient economy, and a self-reliant defense posture. Kim Il Sung's enunciation of juche in 1955 was aimed at developing a monolithic and effective system of authority under his exclusive leadership. The invocation of juche was a psychological tool with which to stigmatize the foreign-oriented dissenters and remove them from the center of power. Targeted for elimination were groups of pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese anti-Kim dissenters.
Juche is instrumental in providing a consistent and unifying framework for commitment and action in the North Korean political arena. It offers an underpinning for the party's incessant demand for spartan austerity, sacrifice, discipline, and dedication. Since the mid-1970s, however, it appears that juche has become glorified as an end in itself.
"On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work"
In a speech in 1955, explaining what is meant by juche (“subjectivity” in literal translation) and why it was important for North Korea. Kim Il Sung said: Today I want to address a few remarks to you on the shortcomings in our Party’s ideological work and on how to eliminate them in the future. As you learned at yesterday’s session, there have been serious ideological errors on the literary front. It is obvious, then, that our propaganda work also cannot have been faultless. It is to be regretted that it suffers in many respects from dogmatism and formalism. [Source: from Kim Il Sung’s Works 9:395.408, “Sources of Korean Tradition”, edited by Yŏng-ho Ch’oe, Peter H. Lee, and Wm. Theodore de Bary, vol. 2 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000)]
“The principal shortcomings in ideological work are the failure to delve deeply into all matters and the lack of Juche. It may not be correct to say Juche is lacking, but, in fact, it has not yet been firmly established. This is a serious matter. We must thoroughly rectify this shortcoming. Unless this problem is solved, we cannot hope for good results in ideological work.
“Why does our ideological work suffer from dogmatism and formalism? Why do our propaganda and agitation workers only embellish the facade and fail to go deeply into matters, and why do they merely copy and memorize things foreign, instead of working creatively? This offers us food for serious reflection.
“What is Juche in our Party’s ideological work? What are we doing? We are not engaged in any other country’s revolution, but solely in the Korean revolution. This, the Korean revolution, determines the essence of Juche in the ideological work of our Party. Therefore, all ideological work must be subordinated to the interests of the Korean revolution. When we study the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the history of the Chinese revolution, or the universal truth of Marxism.Leninism, it is entirely for the purpose of correctly carrying out our own revolution.
“By saying that the ideological work of our Party is lacking in Juche, I do not mean, of course, that we have not made the revolution and that our revolutionary work was undertaken by outsiders. Nonetheless, Juche has not been firmly established in ideological work, and this leads to dogmatic and formalistic errors and does much harm to our revolutionary cause.
“To make revolution in Korea we must know Korean history and geography as well as the customs of the Korean people. Only then is it possible to educate our people in a way that suits them and to inspire in them an ardent love for their native place and their motherland.
“It is of paramount importance to study and widely publicize among the working people the history of our country and of our people’s struggle. … Only when we educate our people in the history of their own struggle and its traditions can we stimulate their national pride and rouse the broad masses to revolutionary struggle. Yet, many of our functionaries are ignorant of our country’s history and so do not strive to discover, inherit and carry forward our fine traditions. Unless this is corrected, it will lead, in the long run, to the negation of Korean history....
“Once I visited a People’s Army rest home, where there was a picture of the Siberian steppe on the wall. Russians probably like that landscape. But we Korean people like the beautiful scenery of our own country. There are beautiful mountains such as Kumgang and Myohyang in our country. There are clear streams, the blue sea with its rolling waves, and fields with their ripening crops. If we are to inspire in our People’s Army men a love for their native place and their country, we must display more pictures of our own landscapes. … I noticed in a primary school that all the portraits on the walls were of foreigners, such as Mayakovsky and Pushkin, but there were none of Koreans. If children are educated in this way, how can they be expected to have national pride? …We should study our own things in earnest and get to know them well.…
“It is important in our work to grasp revolutionary truth, Marxist.Leninist truth, and apply it correctly to our actual conditions. There should be no set rule that we must follow the Soviet pattern. Some advocate the Soviet way and others the Chinese, but is it not high time to work out our own? The point is that we should not mechanically copy the forms and methods of the Soviet Union, but should learn from its experience in struggle and from the truth of Marxism.Leninism. So, while learning from the experience of the Soviet Union, we must put stress not on the form but on the essence of its experience. … Merely copying the forms used by others instead of learning the truth of Marxism.
“Leninism does us no good, only harm. In both revolutionary struggle and construction, we should firmly adhere to Marxist.Leninist principles, applying them in a creative way to suit the specific conditions and national characteristics of our country. If we mechanically apply foreign experience, disregarding the history of our country and the traditions of our people and without taking account of our own realities and our people’s political level, we will commit dogmatic errors and do much harm to the revolutionary cause. This is not fidelity to Marxism. Leninism nor to internationalism. It runs counter to them. …
Early History of Juche
Juche was proclaimed in December 1955, when Kim Il Sung underlined the critical need for a Korea-centered revolution rather than one designed to benefit, in his words, "another country." Juche is designed to inspire national pride and identity and mold national consciousness into a potentially powerful focus for internal solidarity centered on Kim and the KWP. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada, Library of Congress, 1993 *]
Donald L. Baker wrote in the “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices”: “Kim Il Sung first used the term juche (self-reliance) in a formal speech in 1955. Initially he used the term to indicate that North Korea was an independent Communist country and would let neither China nor Russia control it. By 1965, however, Kim Il Sung was presenting Juche as a new ideology, a product of his uniquely Korean genius that superseded the traditional Marxism-Leninism that had been the official ideology of North Korea. The constitution of North Korea was revised in 1972 to show that Juche was now "the guiding principle of its [the country's] actions." [Source: Donald L. Baker, “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices”, Thomson Gale, 2006]
Juche did not become a prominent ideology overnight. During the first ten years of North Korea's existence, MarxismLeninism was accepted unquestioningly as the only source of doctrinal authority. Nationalism was toned down in deference to the country's connections to the Soviet Union and China. In the mid-1950s, however, juche was presented as a "creative" application of Marxism-Leninism. In his attempt to establish an interrelationship between Marxism-Leninism and juche, Kim contended that although Marxism-Leninism was valid as the fundamental law of revolution, it needed an authoritative interpreter to define a new set of practical ideological guidelines appropriate to the revolutionary environment in North Korea.
Kim's practical ideology was given a test of relevancy throughout the mid-1960s. In the late 1950s, Kim was able to mobilize internal support when he purged pro-Soviet and proChinese dissenters from party ranks. During the first half of the 1960s, Kim faced an even more formidable challenge when he had to weather a series of tense situations that had potentially adverse implications for North Korea's economic development and national security. Among these were a sharp decrease in aid from the Soviet Union and China; discord between the Soviet Union and China and its disquieting implications for North Korea's confrontation with the United States and South Korea; Pyongyang's disagreements with Moscow and apprehensions about the reliability of the Soviet Union as an ally; and the rise of an authoritarian regime in Seoul under former General Park Chung Hee (1961-79).
These developments emphasized the need for self-reliance — the need to rely on domestic resources, heighten vigilance against possible external challenges, and strengthen domestic political solidarity. Sacrifice, austerity, unity, and patriotism became dominant themes in the party's efforts to instill in the people the importance of juche and collective discipline. By the mid-1960s, however, North Korea could afford to relax somewhat; its strained relations with the Soviet Union had eased, as reflected in part by Moscow's decision to rush economic and military assistance to Pyongyang.
Beginning in mid-1965, juche was presented as the essence of Kim Il Sung's leadership and of party lines and policies for every conceivable revolutionary situation. Kim's past leadership record was put forward as the "guide and compass" for the present and future and as a source of strength sufficient to propel the faithful through any adversity. Nonetheless, the linkage of juche to MarxismLeninism remains a creed of the party. The April 1972 issue of K lloja (The Worker) still referred to the KWP as "a Marxist-Leninist Party"; the journal pointed out that "the only valid policy for Korean Communists is Marxism-Leninism" and called for "its creative application to our realities."
Since 1974 it has become increasingly evident, however, that the emphasis is on the glorification of juche as "the only scientific revolutionary thought representing our era of Juche and communist future and the most effective revolutionary theoretical structure that leads to the future of communist society along the surest shortcut." This new emphasis was based on the contention that a different historical era, with its unique sociopolitical circumstances, requires an appropriately unique revolutionary ideology. Accordingly, Marxism and Leninism were valid doctrines in their own times, but had outlived their usefulness in the era of juche, which prophesies the downfall of imperialism and the worldwide victory of socialism and communism.
Later History of Juche
As the years have passed, references to Marxism-Leninism in party literature have steadily decreased. By 1980 the terms Marxism and Leninism had all but disappeared from the pages of K lloja. An unsigned article in the March 1980 K lloja proclaimed, "Within the Party none but the leader Kim Il Sung's revolutionary thought, the juche ideology, prevails and there is no room for any hodgepodge thought contrary to it." The report Kim Il Sung presented to the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980 did not contain a single reference to Marxism-Leninism, in marked contrast to his report to the Fifth Party Congress in November 1970. In the 1980 report, Kim declared: "The whole party is rallied rock-firm around its Central Committee and knit together in ideology and purpose on the basis of the juche idea. The Party has no room for any other idea than the juche idea, and no force can ever break its unity and cohesion based on this idea."
Donald L. Baker wrote in the “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices”: ““In the 1970s and 1980s Kim Jong Il, the son and future heir of Kim Il Sung, began elaborating on the implications of a philosophy of self-reliance for understanding the place of humanity in the universe. Kim Jong Il explained that traditional Marxist materialism slights the unique position of human beings. Human beings, and only human beings, possess consciousness, creativity, and autonomy, giving them not only the power but also the duty to dominate everything else in the universe and remake the world to better fit human needs. [Source: Donald L. Baker, “Worldmark Encyclopedia of Religious Practices”, Thomson Gale, 2006]
“Kim also explained that Juche philosophy, which he began to call Kimilsungism, recognizes that human beings exist only within societies. Because social relationships define human existence, human beings will continue to exist even after their individual physical lives end, as long as their society continues to exist. Because Juche is an immortal philosophy, all those who hold fast to Juche philosophy and unite around a Juche-led organization under the guidance of a leader who embodies Juche will enjoy an eternal sociopolitical life.”
In his annual New Year's message on January 1, 1992, Kim Il Sung emphasized the invincibility of juche ideology: "I take great pride in and highly appreciate the fact that our people have overcome the ordeals of history and displayed to the full the heroic mettle of the revolutionary people and the indomitable spirit of juche Korea, firmly united behind the party . . . . No difficulty is insurmountable nor is any fortress impregnable for us when our party leads the people with the ever-victorious juche-oriented strategy and tactics and when all the people turn out as one under the party's leadership."
Corporatism and the Juche Idea
Marxism did not present a political model for achieving socialism, only an opaque set of prescriptions. This political vacuum opened the way for the development of an indigenous political culture. The strongest foreign influence on North Korea's leadership has been the Chinese communist model. Like Mao Zedong, Kim Il Sung has been very much a mass line leader, making frequent visits to factories and the countryside, sending cadres down to local levels to help policy implementation and to solicit local opinion, requiring small-group political study and so-called criticism and self-criticism, using periodic campaigns to mobilize people for production or education, and encouraging soldiers to engage in production in good "people's army" fashion. [Source: Andrea Matles Savada, Library of Congress, 1993*]
The North Korean political system also differs in many respects from China and the former Soviet Union. The symbol of the KWP is a hammer and sickle with a superimposed writing brush, symbolizing the "three-class alliance" of workers, peasants, and intellectuals. Unlike Mao's China, the Kim regime has never excoriated intellectuals as a potential "new class" of exploiters; instead, it has followed an inclusive policy toward them, perhaps because postwar Korea was short of intellectuals and experts and because so many had left North Korea for South Korea in the 1945-50 period. For Pyongyang, the term intellectual refers to experts and technocrats, of which there are exceedingly few in North Korea. North Korea's political system is thus a mix of Marxism-Leninism, Korean nationalism, and indigenous political culture. The term that perhaps best captures this system is corporatism. Socialist corporatist doctrine has always preferred an organic politic to the liberal, pluralist conception: a corporeal body politic rather than a set of diverse groups and interests.
North Korea's goal of tight unity at home has produced a remarkable organicism, unprecedented in any existing communist regime. Kim Il Sung is not just the "iron-willed, ever-victorious commander," the "respected and beloved Great Leader"; he also is the "head and heart" of the body politic (even "the supreme brain of the nation"!). The flavor of this politics can be demonstrated through quotations taken from KWP newspapers in the spring of 1981:
Kim Il Sung ... is the great father of our people....Long is the history of the word father being used as a word representing love and reverence ... expressing the unbreak-able blood ties between the people and the leader. Father. This familiar word represents our people's single heart of boundless respect and loyalty.... The love shown by the Great Leader for our people is the love of kinship. Our respected and beloved Leader is the tender-hearted father of all the people.... Love of paternity ... is the noblest ideological sentiment possessed only by our people.
His heart is a traction power attracting the hearts of all people and a centripetal force uniting them as one.... Kim Il Sung is the great sun and great man ... thanks to this great heart, national independence is firmly guaranteed.
This type of language was especially strong when the succession of Kim Jong Il was publicly announced at the Sixth Party Congress in 1980. The KWP often is referred to as the "Mother" party, the mass line is said to provide "blood ties," the leader always is "fatherly," and the country is one big "family." Kim Il Sung is said to be paternal, devoted, and benevolent, and the people presumably respond with loyalty, obedience, and mutual love.
North Korean ideology buries Marxism-Leninism under the ubiquitous, always-trumpeted juche idea. By the 1970s, juche had triumphed fundamentally over Marxism-Leninism as the basic ideology of the regime, but the emphases were there from the beginning. Juche is the opaque core of North Korean national solipsism.
National solipsism expresses an omnipotent theme found in North Korean written materials: an assumption that Korea is the center of the world, radiating outward the rays of juche, especially to Third World countries that are thought by the North Koreans to be ready for juche. The world tends toward Korea, with all eyes on Kim Il Sung. The presence of such an attitude is perhaps the most bizarre aspect of North Korea, but also one of the most noticeable. The model of ever-widening concentric circles — at the center of which is Kim Il Sung, next his family, next the guerrillas who fought with him, and then the KWP elite — is profoundly Korean and has characterized North Korea since 1946. This core circle controls everything at the top levels of the regime. The core moves outward and downward concentrically to encompass other elements of the population and provides the glue holding the system together. As the penumbra of workers and peasants is reached, trust gives way to control on a bureaucratic basis and to a mixture of normative and remunerative incentives. Nonetheless, the family remains the model for societal organization. An outer circle distinguishes the Korean from the foreign, a reflection of the extraordinary ethnic and linguistic unity of Koreans and Korea's history of exclusionism. Yet the circle keeps on expanding, as if to encompass foreigners under the mantle of Kim and his juche idea.
Fallacy of Juche
Ian Buruma wrote in The New Yorker: “Kim Il Sung's most famous motto, juche — self-reliance — must be understood in this light. Juche is an often paranoid fear of dependence on others. The fact that North Korea was highly dependent on stronger Communist powers had to be obscured. The combination of proud isolationism, as an official attitude, with de-facto reliance on China and the Soviet Union has proved disastrous, not least for the North Korean economy, which has been in a state of collapse since the demise of the latter and the capitalist course set by the former. North Korea cannot survive on its own, but it cannot open up, either. [Source: Ian Buruma, The New Yorker, August 22, 2005]
Mark Magnier wrote in the Los Angeles Times: “For decades, North Korea has subjected its population to a propaganda assault centered on juche, roughly translated as “self-reliance.” In recent years, scholars said, the term also has come to connote unquestioned trust in the “living-god” leadership of national founder Kim Il Sung and his son, current ruler Kim Jong Il. [Source: Mark Magnier, Los Angeles Times, October 13, 2006]
“The truth is that socialist North Korea has never been self-reliant, depending since its formation on the Soviet Union, then China, the United Nations and other donors to feed itself. But this myth is part of the glue that binds North Koreans to the regime. impact on people’s ability to withstand hardship,” said Cui Yingjiu, honorary director of Peking University’s Institute for Korean Culture Studies. “For most of the past 100 years, North Koreans haven’t had enough to eat or wear. This gives them enormous tolerance for hardship.”
Self-reliance is particularly attractive for a small, insecure country with just 22 million people and giants Russia and China sitting to its north. “If you listen to North Korean history, China didn’t even have a role in the Korean War,” said Banning Garrett, Asia programs director at the Atlantic Council in Washington. “Now of course they’re making self-reliance a reality. They’ve made everyone angry and will be left to eat dirt all by themselves.” Bolstering the propaganda is the fact that the government is not afraid to use force against the slightest sign of dissent. “If you inculcate juche and other beliefs over decades, you start to have a self-fulfilling prophecy,” said Andrew O’Neil, a senior lecturer in international studies at Australia’s Flinders University. “From what you hear, a lot of people really believe the U.S. is going to invade tomorrow and their best defense is nuclear weapons.”
Image Sources: Wikimedia Commons.
Text Sources: Daily NK, UNESCO, Wikipedia, Library of Congress, CIA World Factbook, World Bank, New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, National Geographic, Smithsonian magazine, The New Yorker, “Culture and Customs of Korea” by Donald N. Clark, Chunghee Sarah Soh in “Countries and Their Cultures”, “Columbia Encyclopedia”, Korea Times, Korea Herald, The Hankyoreh, JoongAng Daily, Radio Free Asia, Bloomberg, Reuters, Associated Press, BBC, AFP, The Atlantic, Yomiuri Shimbun, The Guardian and various books and other publications.
Updated in July 2021