Ethnic Nationalism and Internationalism in the North Korean Worldview

CHAPTER 18 Ethnic Nationalism and Internationalism in the North Korean Worldview

Tatiana Gabroussenko

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK—North Korea) emerged in 1948 as a Soviet satellite.1 However, and as demonstrated by later developments, the DPRK’s leaders proved to be more independent when given the oppor- tunity. While the Soviet Union moved towards de-Stalinization after Stalin’s death in 1953, the North Korean ruling elite under Kim Il Sung chose to reject this ‘obligatory’ policy of political “thawing.” Along with a few other dissenting regimes, such as Albania and Romania, it drifted towards a form of “national Stalinism.”2 Ivan Berend describes this phenomenon as reflecting a confronta- tional tendency among these regimes towards Moscow, and as a general desire to replace “the Soviet guarantee of communist power with a sort of national, domestic legitimization.”3 In order to substantiate this move ideologically, the national Stalinist states presented their own versions of Communist concepts. Like Hoxhaism, which was advertised as a purer version of Marxism-Leninism in Albania,4 and Nicolae Ceauşescu’s theory of a “multilaterally developed socialist society” in Romania,5 Kim Il Sung supplemented the North Korean political lexicon with the term Juche (often translated as ‘self-reliance’), that was later used for defining a revised and perfected version of Communism.6 Despite different roots and traditions, all the national Stalinist regimes, including North Korea’s, shared a number of similar features. Among these was a peculiar type of worldview that combined seemingly incompatible features. On one hand, the North Korean view of the world included a nationalist, ethnocentric element which occasionally resembled racism.7 As Vladimir Tismaneanu correctly stresses, the “flaming nationalist rhetoric” in national

1 Scalapino & Lee, 1972: 375. 2 Lankov, 2002: 88. 3 Berend, 1996: 129. 4 Blumi, 1999. 5 Programme of the Romanian Communist Party, 1974. 6 Kim Il Sung, 1960a. 7 Myers, 2010.

Stalinist states resulted from their elites’ tendency “to embrace political strate- gies” that “emphasize the uniqueness and the particularisms” of their nation, culture and people.8 The autarchic economic policies and general isolationism implemented by the national Stalinist regimes further underscored the rhetoric of national uniqueness and exclusivity, and thus helped to further distance these societies from the Soviet Union. Curiously enough, however, the ‘messianic’ tendencies of the North Korean regime had never been aimed at the South Korean population. In both the rhetoric and practice of North Korean ideology, South Koreans are consistently presented as the forcibly separated siblings of the North Koreans who long to join the North Korean paradise. Accordingly, it is only the continuous intervention of the American imperialists that prevents the unification of Korea under Kim Il Sung’s “banner of independence.”9 On the other hand, national Stalinist regimes sought to emphasize the uni- versalistic application and worldwide appeal of said ideas by presenting their newly invented ideologies as the world’s most advanced systems of thought. In this regard, these allegedly novel ideologies had much in common with old- style Soviet “proletarian internationalism.” In the DPRK, the “self-reliant” ’ isolationism espoused under the ideological metonym of ‘Juche’ also featured a strong outwardly oriented Messianic element that sought to embrace all the peoples of the world, bringing them under the North Korean, i.e. Kim Il Sung’s, banner (see Fig. 18.1). This duality of North Korean ideology found its clearest exposition in the famous Kim Jong Il saying that is attached to the front wall of the Kim Il Sung University e-library: “Keep your feet firmly planted on your own ground, but turn your eyes to the world. Redouble your effort to make the world admire our great Party and Kim Il Sung’s Korea.”10 The nationalist tendencies of North Korean ideology are widely recognized by overseas spe- cialists in Korean studies who have described the North Korean worldview in a variety of ways. Among these, “xenophobic nationalism,”11 “racism,”12 “ultra- nationalism/anti-internationalism,”13 and “national solipsism”14 are but a few examples. At the same time, however, internationalism, which DPRK ideological practices certainly do not lack, is often overlooked to the extent that some

8 Tismaneanu, 2011: 4. 9 For more details on the South Korean narrative in North Korean discourse, see Gabroussenko, 2011. 10 Kim Chol Ung, 2013. 11 Suh, 1988: 313. 12 Myers, 2010. 13 David-West, 2007: 146. 14 Cumings, 2005: 407.