Propaganda in North Korea

The propaganda in North Korea is extensively based on the Juche ideology to promote the Workers' Party of Korea line.^{[citation needed]} From its beginning to this day the propaganda is omnipresent.

Themes

Cult of personality

In previous decades, North Korean propaganda was crucial to the formation and promotion of the personality cult centred around the founder of the communist state, Kim Il Sung.^[1] The Soviet Union began to develop him, particularly as a resistance fighter, as soon as they put him in power.^[2] This quickly surpassed its Eastern European models.^[3] Instead of depicting his actual residence in a Soviet village during the war with the Japanese, he was claimed to have fought a guerilla war from a secret base.^[4] Once relations with the Soviet Union were broken off, their role was expurgated, as was all other nationalists, until the claim was made that he founded the Communist Party in North Korea.^[5] He is seldom shown in action during the Korean War, which, if it was presented as a glorious victory, nevertheless devastated the country; instead, soldiers are depicted as inspired by him.^[6] Subsequently, many stories are recounted of his "on-the-spot" guidance in various locations, many of them being openly presented as fictional.^[7]

This has been supplemented with propaganda on behalf of his son, Kim Jong Il.^[8] The "food shortage" produced ancedotes of Kim insisting on eating the same meager food as other North Koreans.^[9]

Lately, propaganda efforts have begun for the "Young General," one of his sons.^[10]

Foreign relations

Early propaganda, in 1940s, presented a positive Soviet-Korean relationship, often depicting Russians as maternal figures to child-like Koreans.^[11] As soon as relations were less cordial, they were expurgated from historical accounts.^[5] The collapse of the USSR, without a shot, is often depicted with intense contempt in sources not accessible to Russians.^[12]

Americans are depicted particularly negatively.^[13] They are presented as an inherently evil race, with whom hostility is the only possible relationship.^[14] The Korean War is used as a source for atrocities, less for the bombing raids than on charges of massacre.^[15]

Japan is frequently depicted in colonial era as rapacious and dangerous.^[16]

Friendly nations are depicted almost exclusively as tributary nations.^[17] The English journalist Christopher Hitchens points out in the essay A Nation of Racist Dwarfs that propaganda has a blatantly racist and nationalistic angle:

"North Korean women who return pregnant from China—the regime's main ally and protector—are forced to submit to abortions. Wall posters and banners depicting all Japanese as barbarians are only equaled by the ways in which Americans are caricatured as hook-nosed monsters. (The illustrations in this book are an education in themselves.)"

South Korea

South Korea was originally depicted as a poverty-stricken land, where American soldiers shot Korean children, but by the 1990s, too much information reached North Korea to prevent their learning that South Korea had a higher living standard, and so propaganda admitted it.^[18] The line taken was that this had not prevented the South Koreans from yearning for unification and purification.^[19]

Racial pride

North Korean propaganda often invokes Koreans as the purest of races, with a mystical bond with the natural beauty of the landscape.^[20] White is often invoked for this purity, as in a painting of the "Homeland Liberation War" (or Korean War) which depicts female partisans washing and hanging out white blouses, despite the way it would have made them visible to attack.^[21]

In contrast to Stalinist depictions of people steeling themselves, preparing themselves intellectually, and so growing up and becoming fit to create Communism, the usual image in North Korean literature is of a spontaneous virtue that revolts against intellectualism but naturally does what is right.^[22]

Stories often have only mildly flawed Korean characters, who are, of course, easily reformed because of their inherently pure nature; this has resulted in problems with lack of conflict and so dullness.^[23]

South Korea is often depicted as a place of dangerous racial contamination.^[24]

Military first

Under Kim Jong Il, a major theme has been the need of Kim to attend to the military first of all (in North Korea, this policy is called Sŏn'gun or Songun, 선군정치), which requires other Koreans to do without his close attention. This military life is presented as something that Koreans take spontaneously to, though often disobeying orders from the highest of motives.^[25]

Devotion to the state

Romance is often depicted in stories as being triggered solely by the person's model citizenship, as when a beauty is unattractive until a man learns she volunteered to work at a potato farm.^[26]

Food shortage

The North Korean famine was admitted within propaganda to be solely a "food shortage," ascribed to bad weather and failure to implement Kim's teachings, but unquestionably better than situations outside North Korea.^[27]

The government urged the use of non-nutritious and even harmful "food substitutes" such as sawdust.^[28]

Practices

Every year, a state-owned publishing house releases several cartoons (called geurim-chaek in North Korea), many of which are smuggled across the Chinese border and, sometimes, end up in university libraries in the United States. The books are designed to instill the Juche philosophy of Kim Il-sung (the ‘father’ of North Korea)—radical self-reliance of the state. The plots mostly feature scheming capitalists from the United States and Japan who create dilemmas for naïve North Korean characters.

The propaganda in North Korea is controlled mainly by the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers Party of Korea.

Posters

Posters depict the correct actions for every part of life, down to appropriate clothing.^[13]

Art

Fine art often depicts militaristic themes.^[29]

The Flower Girl, a revolutionary opera allegedly penned by Kim Il-Sung himself, was turned into a movie, the most popular one in North Korea.^[30] It depicts its heroine's sufferings in the colonial era until her partisan brother returns to exact vengeance on their oppressive landlord, at which point she pledges support for the revolution.^[31] Art is based on Socialist Realism, which is the official school of artistic expression and was designed for propaganda purposes to begin with.

See also

• Voice of Korea
• Let's trim our hair in accordance with the socialist lifestyle
• Propaganda in the Soviet Union
• Propaganda in the People's Republic of China
• Socialist realism

Other:

• Media of North Korea
• Telecommunications in North Korea
• Communist propaganda

Censorship:

• Radio jamming in Korea
• Censorship in North Korea

Notes

1. ^ "North Korea country profile"
2. ^ Jasper Becket, Rogue Regime, p51 ISBN 0-19-517044-X
3. ^ Myers (2010), p. 37
4. ^ Myers (2010), p. 36-7
5. ^ ^{a b} Jasper Becket, Rogue Regime, p53 ISBN 0-19-517044-X
6. ^ Myers (2010), p. 101-2
7. ^ Myers (2010), p. 103
8. ^ "North Korea's propaganda machine"
9. ^ Jasper Becket, Rogue Regime, p40 ISBN 0-19-517044-X
10. ^ Myers (2010), p. 65
11. ^ Myers (2010), p. 35
12. ^ Myers (2010), p. 130
13. ^ ^{a b} "Gallery show for North Korea's propaganda"
14. ^ Myers (2010), p. 135
15. ^ Myers (2010), p. 136-7
16. ^ Myers (2010), p. 131
17. ^ Myers (2010), p. 129-30
18. ^ Myers (2010), p. 152
19. ^ Myers (2010), p. 155
20. ^ Myers (2010), p. 72
21. ^ Myers (2010), p. 78
22. ^ Myers (2010), p. 81
23. ^ Myers (2010), p. 90-1
24. ^ Myers (2010), p. 155
25. ^ Myers (2010), p. 83-4
26. ^ Myers (2010), p. 88
27. ^ Myers (2010), p. 119
28. ^ Jasper Becket, Rogue Regime, p36-7 ISBN 0-19-517044-X
29. ^ "Exhibitions: Art or propaganda? North Korea exhibit in Moscow"
30. ^ Myers (2010), p. 91
31. ^ Myers (2010), p. 92

References

• Myers, B. R. (2010). The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves and Why It Matters. Melville House. ISBN 978-1933633916. 

Further reading

• Portal, Jane (2005). Art Under Control in North Korea. Reaktion Books. ISBN 9781861892362. 

External links

• DPRK Propaganda Picture Gallery