LANGUAGE AND TRUTH IN NORTH KOREA 6991_Ryang_V3.indd 1 4/27/21 9:50 AM 6991_Ryang_V3.indd 2 4/27/21 9:50 AM LANGUAGE AND TRUTH IN NORTH KOREA Sonia Ryang University of Hawai‘i Press Honolulu, Hawai‘i 6991_Ryang_V3.indd 3 4/27/21 9:50 AM © 2021 University of Hawai‘i Press Library of Congress Control Number: 2020946984 The Open Access edition of this book is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0), which means that digital editions of the work may be freely downloaded and shared for non-commercial purposes, provided credit is given to the author. Commercial uses and the publication of any derivative works require permission from the publisher. For details, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. The Creative Commons license described above does not apply to any material that is separately copyrighted. ISBN 9780824888718 (OA PDF) ISBN 9780824888770 (OA EPUB) ISBN 9780824888787 (Kindle) The Open Access edition of this book was made possible with support from the T. T. and W. F. Chao Center for Asian Studies Tenth Anniversary Publication Fund. Contents Acknowledgments vii INTRODUCTION Truth 1 CHAPTER 1 Purge 26 CHAPTER 2 Words 49 CHAPTER 3 The Chronicle 94 CHAPTER 4 The Memoirs 137 CONCLUSION Self 174 References 195 Index 215 v 6991_Ryang_V3.indd 5 4/27/21 9:50 AM 6991_Ryang_V3.indd 6 4/27/21 9:50 AM Acknowledgments riting books is a privilege, one that I often wonder whether I truly Wdeserve, even after having written and published multiple volumes. Although writing itself can be a burden, the opportunity that it provides me, as an author, to express myself—and not simply my mental contemplations, but the material part of me as well—is a privilege that is, in my view, unsur­ passed by anything else, save for motherhood. For this book, I am once again haunted by the familiar question of whether or not I have put all of my soul into its creation. As with all of the other books that I have written, there are many individ­ uals who have helped me in my journey and many entities that facilitated my research. First and foremost, I would like to express my thanks to the National Science Foundation for granting me the Senior Research Grant (ID#BCS­ 1504957), which provided me with encouragement as well as the material basis for the research for this book. Jeffrey Mantz, the Program Director for Anthropology, with his trust in my scholarship, played a pivotal role in the conception as well as the completion of this project. I am forever indebted to Jeff. As part of the research toward this book, I met a number of former defec­ tors from North Korea. Although I will not name these individuals, I wish to express my heartfelt gratitude to them here for the insights that they shared with me. An NGO involved in refugee support in North America (which I will also opt not to name) helped me to meet with the defectors and played a key role in facilitating this endeavor. I am truly grateful for its help. Preliminary thoughts on this book were shared with colleagues in Rice University’s Department of Anthropology in 2016 when I gave a talk there. Faculty and students who were present gave me invaluable insights and posed thought-provoking questions. I am very grateful for that occasion. In 2018, Todd Henry invited me to the Transnational Korean Studies seminar at the University of California, San Diego, where I had the opportunity to pres­ ent an early version of the content of chapter 1 of this book. The questions that I was asked and the comments that I received from faculty and students vii 6991_Ryang_V3.indd 7 4/27/21 9:50 AM viii Acknowledgments on that occasion were amazing, helping me enormously in further develop­ ing my ideas. I want to thank Todd and all of them for providing me with this opportunity. Another incredible source of inspiration for the completion of this book came after I was invited to participate in the Affect in Korea workshop at Tel Aviv University in May 2019. In Tel Aviv, I benefited from constructive sug­ gestions and criticisms as well as warm encouragement. I wish to express par­ ticular thanks to Liora Sarfati, who organized the workshop. At the workshop, I was inspired by comments and reflections by Steve Choe, David Shuster, Dafna Zur, and many others. Dafna Zur has been an important figure in my research. She first invited me back in 2012 to a Stanford University workshop on North Korean culture, where I had the privilege of meeting a new generation of sophisticated research­ ers of diverse backgrounds. Seeing Dafna again in Tel Aviv and spending time together there conversing and discussing research and scholarship, walking around the neighborhood that was dear to Dafna, was a delight as well as a source of immense inspiration. I also wish to thank Dafna for having drawn my attention to the journal Munhwaeo hakseup (Study of the Cultured Korean Language) published in North Korea from the 1960s through the 1980s. One of the many exceptional scholars that I met at Dafna’s 2012 work­ shop was Immanuel Kim, whose work played an instrumental role during the initial formation and later development of my thoughts. In 2017, I had the great fortune to attend a workshop on North Korean poster culture organized by Koen de Ceuster of Leiden University. Immanuel was a fellow participant, and he provided me with enormous assistance in terms of the further devel­ opment of my thought processes. I was truly inspired by his paper, as well as by many of the other papers presented on that occasion. I would like to thank Koen for organizing such a wonderful gathering. Also at the Leiden workshop was Andre Schmid, who has been an “anchor” to me in relation to my ideas about North Korea for many years, if not decades. His thorough and faithful approach to the data has been a beacon to me as I proceeded with my research. I am thankful for his friendship and his exemplary work, which has been the source of my inspiration. Since my move to Rice University as Director of the Chao Center for Asian Studies, in 2014 many of my colleagues, both within and beyond Rice, have become key intellectual companions as well as sources of inspiration and new ideas. Richard Smith has consistently acted as my intellectual interlocu­ tor, conversations with him providing me with significant insights into the 6991_Ryang_V3.indd 8 4/27/21 9:50 AM Acknowledgments ix material that I deal with in this book. Another colleague whose intellectual depth and breadth have exerted a powerful influence on this book is Jeffrey Kripal, although Jeff himself may not be aware of this. The postdoctoral fel­ lows in the Transnational Asia Research Initiative with whom I had direct interaction also played an important, if perhaps less obvious, role in the for­ mation and advancement of my ideas. I would like to thank all of them for their presence and the intellectual stimulation which they provided. Many outside visitors to the Center have also provided me with encouragement and collectively served as a sounding board. In particular, I would like to thank Paul Greenough, John Lie, and Robert Oppenheim for their camaraderie and insightful comments on my research. I also wish to thank Chao Center col­ leagues and staff, Haejin E. Koh, Steven Lewis, Hae Hun Matos, and Amber Szymczyk, for always being there for me and consistently supporting my work. The T. T. and W. F. Chao Center for Asian Studies Tenth Anniversary Publication Fund enabled University of Hawai‘i Press to make digital edi­ tions of this book available in open access format. A portion of chapter 4, “The Memoirs,” draws upon my article “Reading Kim Il Sung,” published in 2018 in volume 1, issue 2 of Transnational Asia: An Online Interdisciplinary Journal and accessible online (see References). However, my thinking in this area has shifted considerably since the publication of this article, leading me to pres­ ent new ideas and interpretations related to the same material in this chapter. Finally, I would like to thank individuals who have directly facilitated the completion of this publication: Pamela Kelley, former editor at the University of Hawai‘i Press, whose patient interlocution nurtured this project; Stephanie Chun, Pamela’s successor, an equally wonderful editor, who is always caring and encouraging, boosting my energy levels and my creative output; and Grace Wen, managing editor at the press, and Marc Miyake, the copy editor for the press, both of whom ensured the final stage of the completion of this book. Don Cameron, my copy editor, who has been working with me for a long time, has done a remarkable job yet again. I am thankful for Don’s unmatched expertise and his meticulous editing, his skill enhanced by his multilingual ability. The comments and suggestions of two anonymous readers for the press review were also extremely useful in helping me to further refine the book’s focus. I am grateful for their astute and balanced reading of my manuscript. During the period when I was writing this book, I lost my mother, who lived to the age of eighty-five and passed away, strange as it may sound, hap­ pily and calmly, in February 2019. She was my primordial role model, having provided our family not only with maternal love, but also material security, 6991_Ryang_V3.indd 9 4/27/21 9:50 AM x Acknowledgments working long hours in an environment in which not only ethnic but also gender discrimination prevented Korean women in Japan from achieving their full potential.