Guerilla Internationalism: North Korea's Relations with the Third
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Guerilla Internationalism: North Korea’s Relations with the Third World, 1957-1989 by Benjamin R. Young B.S. in History, May 2012, SUNY Brockport M.A. in History, August 2013, SUNY Brockport A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 20, 2018 Dissertation directed by Gregg Brazinsky Associate Professor of History and International Affairs The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that Benjamin R. Young has passed the Final Examination for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of March 21, 2018. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. Guerilla Internationalism: North Korea’s Relations with the Third World, 1957-1989 Benjamin R. Young Dissertation Research Committee: Gregg Brazinsky, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs, Dissertation Director Jisoo Kim, Associate Professor of History, International Affairs, and East Asian Languages and Literatures, Committee Member Ed McCord, Professor of History and International Affairs, Committee Member ii © Copyright 2018 by Benjamin R. Young All rights reserved iii Dedication The author wishes to dedicate this dissertation to his parents who supported him with love, kindness, and compassion during his graduate studies. iv Acknowledgments First and foremost, I want to thank my family (Mom, Dad, Sara, Tom, and Lucy) and my grandmothers, aunts, uncles, and cousins for supporting me during my graduate studies. Without their help and support, I would not have been able to complete my PhD. I also want to thank my dissertation director, Gregg Brazinsky, and committee members, Jisoo Kim and Ed McCord, for their kindness and support during my PhD studies. Outside examiners Mitch Lerner and Jim Hershberg also provided valuable and helpful feedback on my dissertation. My journey into the historical discipline began at my alma mater, SUNY Brockport. The history department at Brockport, especially Professors Meredith Roman and Anne Macpherson, always provided encouragement to me in my pursuit of a higher degree in history and a career in academia. I also want to thank my group of lifelong friends back home in Rochester, New York for providing much needed levity and humor during my graduate studies. My fellow grad students within the GWU history department were great colleagues during my graduate studies as we discussed the ups and downs of PhD student life. I also want to express gratitude to the many institutions that provided me with financial support during my graduate studies and dissertation research. SUNY Brockport’s History Department, Fulbright Foundation, Cosmos Club, George Washington University’s History Department, Korean Studies Institute, East Asian Languages and Cultures Department, the Sigur Center and the U.S Department of Education’s Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) grant all provided me with generous financial support. v Abstract of Dissertation Guerilla Internationalism: North Korea’s Relations with the Third World, 1957-1989 My dissertation explores how North Korea became involved in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and saw the Third World project as a powerful international force in the Cold War world. The anti-Japanese guerilla fighting experiences of the DPRK’s leadership, with Kim Il Sung at its center, during the colonial period shaped North Korea’s Third World policy and explains why a small and geographically isolated communist state assisted anti-colonial movements around the world during the Cold War. Additionally, Pyongyang’s commitment to socialist internationalism, with its focus on solidarity and modernity, made the DPRK a highly active and influential member within the Third World as it sent advisors to assist African liberation movements, trained anti-imperialist guerilla fighters, and completed building projects in developing countries. My dissertation examines the intersection of North Korea’s domestic and foreign policies and the ways in which North Korea’s developmental model appealed to recently decolonized Third World nations. vi Table of Contents Dedication iv Acknowledgments v Abstract of Dissertation vi Introduction 1 Chapter One: Building a Reputation, 1957-1967 25 Chapter Two: Spreading the Revolution, 1968-1973 76 Chapter Three: Battling for Third World Leadership, 1974-1979 129 Chapter Four: Fomenting Revolutionary Violence, 1980-1983 185 Chapter Five: Survival By Any Means Necessary, 1984-1989 241 Conclusion 288 Bibliography 293 vii Introduction If a tourist walks into the Mamellles district of Senegal’s capital city Dakar, he or she will quickly be confronted by a large monument depicting a large bare-chested, muscular African man looking into the beyond while holding a baby in one arm and guiding a virtuous woman in the other. This socialist realist-style monument is anything but African in aesthetics. Built in 2011, Dakar’s African Renaissance Monument is just one of ten recent commemorative projects built by North Korea’s state-run construction company, Mansudae Overseas Projects, in Africa and Asia. Known for their relatively cheap price tag, work ethic, and efficiency, North Korean workers built a memorial hall and statue in Angola dedicated to former Angolan president Agostinho Neto in the early 2000s. Since 2002, Mansudae has also built the Heroes’ Acre Cemetery, the Memorial Hall of Independence, the Military Museum, and the State House in Namibia. These Mansudae construction projects have left a quintessentially North Korean architectural imprint on the African continent. As a Mansudae promotional booklet proclaims, the company “helped to splendidly build many statues, monuments, and other structures of lasting value, demonstrating the vitality of ever-developing Juche-based fine arts.”1 However, these projects are only one part of a much longer and complex history of North Korea-Third World relations. This dissertation investigates this history and North Korea’s place within the Third World. North Korea’s entry into the Third World begins with its early Soviet influence. Liberated and subsequently occupied by the Soviets from 1945 to 1950, the nascent North Korean government, under the guidance of Moscow-approved leader Kim Il Sung, 1 Mansudae Overseas Project Group of Companies Promotional Booklet (2014), University of North Korean Studies Library, Seoul, South Korea. 1 naturally adopted Soviet ideology, which was Marxism-Leninism. As Marx originally proposed, socialist revolutions around the world would eventually lead to global communism and the dissolution of the nation-state. Thus, communist governments, especially the Soviet Union as the first workers’ state, supported revolutions abroad in order to advance the cause of Marxism-Leninism internationally. Not merely an empty rhetorical device during the Cold War era, socialist internationalism was realized on an everyday level and involved the exchange of ideas, materials, goods, and people across national borders and became one of the earliest forms of globalization.2 Naturally, the global space ripest for socialist revolution was the recently decolonized Asia, Africa, and Latin America, collectively known as the Third World or the Global South. Initially used as a term of empowerment by these primarily non-white nations, the “Third World” was not a broad geographic region but a global project that aimed for an alternative future free from imperialism and colonialism.3 As a revolutionary leader of postcolonial Asia, Kim Il Sung identified strongly with his nation’s identity as a member of the non-white Third World project and its later political body, the Non-Aligned Movement. Before the North Korean national football team left for the 1966 World Cup in England, Kim Il Sung told the athletes, “European and South American nations dominate international football. As the representatives of the Asian and African region, as colored people, I urge you to win one or two matches.”4 The North Korean players surprised the world and became the first Asian team to advance to the quarterfinals of the World Cup. Kim Il Sung praised the newly emerging Third World as 2 Elidor Mehilli, From Stalin to Mao: Albania in the Socialist World (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 2017). 3 Vijay Prashad, The Darker Nations: A People’s History of the Third World (New York: New Press, 2008). 4 The Game of Their Lives (2002), Directed by Daniel Gordon, Film. 2 a powerful revolutionary force in the world and said “the non-aligned countries will wage a vigorous joint struggle against imperialism under the banner of anti-imperialism and independence.”5 As a non-white communist state, North Korea had one foot in the Eastern bloc and the other in the anti-imperialist Third World. Today, North Korea is one of the most impoverished and isolated nations in existence. However, North Korea during the Cold War era was a very different country as the DPRK’s economy quickly recovered after the Korean War. New York Times reporter Harrison Salisbury said in 1972 that the DPRK accomplished “tremendous technical and industrial achievement’ and that the country was “on a per capita basis… the most intensively industrialized country in Asia, with the exception of Japan.”6 Jon Halliday, an Irish scholar of Asia, said in 1981, the DPRK “has achieved remarkable economic growth and advances in social services. It raises important issues concerning industrialization and