“The Cleanest Race: How North Koreans See Themselves – and Why It Matters,” by B. R. Myers (excerpted) Korean schoolchildren in North and South learn that Japan invaded their country in 1905, that Japan spent 40 years destroying its language and culture, and then withdrew. Yet the truth is more complex. For much of the country’s long history, the national identities of Koreans and Chinese were mutually indistinguishable. Believing their civilization was founded by a Chinese’s age in China’s image, Koreans subscribed to a Confucian worldview that put their country in a position of permanent subservience to China. It was not until the late 19th century, under Japan, that Koreans took measures to establish Koreas independence, and imbue the people with a sense of national pride.

The Japanese freed the peninsula from China only to take it for themselves. Opposition to Japanese rule grew from 1905 until patriots declared independence in 1919. The authorities responded with a brutal show of force. The Japanese started a colonial propaganda machine, which did not stamp out Korean pride. Instead it asserted that Koreans shared the same ancient bloodline and benevolent ruler as the Japanese. Both peoples belonged to one “imperial” race that was superior to all others. Japan and Korea were seen as one body. Koreans had languished too long under China’s shadow – now was the time to become part of a Japanese whole. It was in this period that Korean nationalists revived the legend of Jan’gun. Set down in an anthology of folktales in 1284, then largely ignored for centuries, it told how a half divine figure had inaugurated the first Korean kingdom with his seed in 2333 BC. This gave the Koreans their own pure bloodline, and a unique culture. The myths and symbols needed to form a nation were coined new in the awareness of Japan’s myths and symbols, both opposing and copying them. Korean intellectuals worked to glorify the Japanese emperor at the same time they urged countrymen to cherish their Koreanness. In romance novels, frail Japanese women fell in love with strong Korean men, much as they still do in South Korean films. Koreans were called on to demonstrate the loyalty of a Japanese citizen and the spirit of a son of Korea by volunteering to fight in the “holy war” against Yankees. By the end of the 1920’s upper and middle classes in Seoul were speaking Japanese in their homes, and intermarriage was considered natural. During World War II, newsreels of the Japanese army’s victories were applauded by the Koreans. However, by 1945, the

Japanese were sounded more desperate.

When that atomic bomb was dropped on By this

Hiroshima, the USSR was emboldened to enter into the war with Japan. The Red Army was advancing swiftly down the Korean peninsula when Japan surrendered. time, the US and The Soviet Union had already decided, without consulting the Koreans themselves, that they would share in the administration of the former Japanese colony. The Red Army occupied with north, and American soldiers arrived in Seoul to take over the southern half of the peninsula. Neither power,the Soviets or the Americans, punished former Korean propagandists for Japan. The north was mainly conservative and Christian, yet the The radio began Communist forces lost no time transferring ownership of printing presses, publishing houses and radio stations to their own fledgling Workers’ Party. operations in 1945, broadcasting a mass rally in Pyongyang to honor the Soviet liberators. Among the Koreans who spoke was Kim Il Sung, a 33 year old who was a captain in the Red Army. Although he had not fought in the Pacific War, he had earlier fought against the Japanese as a commander in Mao Zedong’s Chinese army. He was the least educated of all the leaders in the Soviet World. His spotty education had ended at 17, and though he had spent a year at an infantry officer school in the USSR, it is unlikely that he understood enough Russian to grasp anything theoretical. None of his writings show an understanding of Marx. But he was the closest thing to a resistance fighter the Koreans had, so the Soviets, persuaded him to assume leadership of the new state. Most of the intellectuals in Pyongyang had collaborated with the Japanese. Now they were used by the communist part to infuse the masses with the propaganda of the new regime. The Workers Party had to take a crash course in Marxism-Leninism. Not surprisingly, their work showed the influence of the Japanese ideology they had spent so many years disseminating. Having been convinced by the Japanese they were the world’s purest race, the North Koreans in 1945 simply kicked the Japanese out of it. They used the same symbols - however, the Japanese symbols were transposed into Korean ones. Mt. Fuji in Japan was turned into Mount Paektu, a sacred place of IT was the same glorious story of fighting the Tan’guns’ birth. The Japanese version of Korean history, from condemnation of China to murderous Yankees, was carried on. oppression of evil outsiders. Koreans now believed that their virtue had made them as vulnerable as children in an evil world. Novelists and painters focused on the forced labor of little girls and boys, reinforcing the impression of a child race abused by an adult one. Koreans were inherently virtuous, never evil by nature. Any atrocities committed

during the Pacific war were quickly erased from collective memory. In the new version, Koreans had done nothing under the Japanese but suffer. The new racial self-image showed in stories about Soviet-Korean friendship published in the 1940s. Writers depicted ailing men and women carried to hospitals on the backs of Russian nurses and doctors. The Soviets were flattered, but at the same time, Korean moral superiority was maintained. Foreigners can do the occasional good deed, but the child race is inherently virtuous. The North Koreans were by no means alone in reinventing their past. But unlike the nationalism of European nations, the North Koreans’ image of themselves was a race-based view. They were inherently pure and vulnerable, and thus they both disliked their allies and their chronic dependence on them. The new personality cult of Kim IL Sung had to be presented on the one hand as the embodiment of Korean naivety and on the other as a brilliant revolutionary warrior. Instead of emphasizing the qualities of strength, discipline and wisdom, the SovietKorean poets chose to depict a nurturing, maternal leader, one whose success derived more from his naivety and innocence than anything else. He had mastered MarxismLeninism with his hear, not his brain, and his best ideas came to him in his sleep. This was the image that took hold, though Soviet Koreans are said to have found it as bizarre and comical s we din the West do today. No mention was made of the fact that the “general” had spent the Pacific War years in a small Russian town. Instead, according to the propaganda version, he and his guerillas fought the Japanese from a secret base on Mount Paektu. This clever lie put the heroic troops just inside the homeland and offered a plausible explanation as to why no one could remember seeing him. alleged birthplace. More important, it linked Kim to Jang’uns

To outside observers, North Korea gave every appearance of being another Soviet Satellite in the making. But a closer look reveals a different truth. The North Koreans presented themselves as unanimously supportive of Kim ll Sung, under whose protective rule the child race could finally indulge its wholesome instincts. As in imperial Japanese propaganda, the dualism was one of purity versus impurity, cleanliness versus filth. Protagonists in these official narratives were boyish young men and blushing

virginal girls. The North Koreans saw no contradiction between regarding the USSR as developmentally superior on the one hand but morally inferior on the other. Many in the West wrongly assume, as George Orwell did, that a regime couldn’t reinvent history without resorting to brainwashing and intimidate. Instead, a regime can take power with the willing cooperation of its people. To promote the North Korean nationalism propagandists crafted the juche theory so that it appealed to the masses. It had to be innocuous, impenetrable, yet imposing. In 1972, one of Kim’s chief advisors, Hwang Chang-yop revealed the Juche thought (credited of course to Kim). pseudo-doctrine that enables the regime to lionize Kim as a great thinker. It was a It decoys

outsiders away from the true dominant ideology. Instead of an implacably xenophobic, race-based worldview derived largely from fascist Japanese myth, the world sees a reassuringly dull state nationalism conceived by post-colonial Koreans, rooted in humanist principles, and evincing an understandable if unfortunate preoccupation with autonomy and self-reliance. When the USSR began sharply reducing its aid, the food supply worsening, the party launched the slogan “Lets Eat Two Meals a Day.” When the Parent Leader passed away in 1994, it was perhaps fortunate for the regime that he did. Had he lived a few years longer, the economic collapse would have done irrevocable damage to his reputation. A popular image, especially since the collapse of the national economy in the 1990s is that of giant waves hurling themselves against the motherland’s rocky coast,symbolizing the Koreans’ resistance to foreign invasion. Use of “motherland” may surprise Western readers who expect North Koreans to think in terms of a fatherland. But propaganda always uses the mother homeland. A mythologized version of Mother Korea’s history is at the heart of the propaganda: ”From the start Koreans were marked by a strong sense of virtue and justice, and their exemplary manners earned the country renown as the “Land of Politeness in the East.” No less famous were their clothes, which were as white as the snow capped peaks of Mount Paektu. Kind-hearted and well featured, Koreans lived in harmonious villages, respecting the people above them and loving those beneath them. Unfortunately, the effete ruling classes fell under the sway of Confucianism, Buddhism, and other pernicious foreign ideologies. But these proved no match,

The personality cult proceeds from myths about the race and its history that exert a strong appeal on the North Korean masses. The mythic makes them feel vital to the universe, immortal in some way. The idea that every citizen’s sacred mission to reunite the pure race and move it to the center of the world stage does a very good job of filling the North Koreans’ need for significance, not least because everyone is given a role to play. It was the Japanese who taught the Koreans to see themselves as part of a uniquely pure and virtuous race. All the Kim Il Sung regime did was to expel the Japanese from that myth and turn familiar Japanese symbols into Korean ones – Pyongyang was destroyed by American bombs, but its reconstruction made it an enduring work of propaganda. The giant bronze statue of Kim IL Sung dwarfed any Mao statue in China. The Arch of Triumph was far larger than its Parisian model. Foreigners sneer at the kitsch of these things, but propaganda is never a waste of money. Its whole point is to make people feel as significant as possible. White is the dominant color in Pyongyang; white concrete plazas, white buildings, white statues of virginal maidens abound. Pyongyang is often photographed under snow, a favored symbol of purity itself. White is made much of throughout the official culture. This propaganda could not be further removed form a Marxist worldview. There is a great difference between state nationalist communism and the North Koreans’ belief in their innate moral superiority to all other peoples. To be uniquely virtuous in an evil world but not uniquely cunning or strong is to be as vulnerable as a child, and indeed history books convey the image of a perennial childnation on the world stage, wanting only to be left in peace yet subjected to endless abuse and contamination from outsiders. mistreating Korean children. Films and novels routinely show invaders With Kim, Koreans indulge their pure childlike instincts.

For this reason, the party poses as a nurturing protective mother. Accordingly citizens are expected to behave like children. It goes without saying that this state sponsored infantilism exerts a strong psychological appeal. Erich Fromm wrote of how man’s fear of emerging from the warm security of the family keeps him in the prison of the motherly racial national religious fixation.” Lenin’s saw the communist party’s forcing the child to grow up. The Soviet party posed as an educating father, the dictator who talked of the need to “re-engineer the human soul.”

In contrast, the North Korean propaganda does not show scenes of intellectual discipline. Because Koreans are born pure and selfless, they should heed their instinct. The leaders are expected to nurture, not teach. Bookworms are negative characters. In short, where Stalinism put the intellect over the instinct, North Korean culture does the opposite. How do propaganda artists depict this spontaneous child race? The men in

posters are robust but boyish with square jaws and full lips. The women are plump but girlish, with round pale faces. The men’s hair is always short, the women’s permed. Little boys’ heads are shaven on the sides while young girls sport neat bobs. The physiognomic ideal admits of little variation. Scores of children in the mass games are the same height, body type and hairstyle – they dance and leap in unison. These are not grim Stalinist exercises in anti-individualism that foreigners often misperceive them as, but joyous celebrations of the pure-bloodedness and homogeneity from which the race’s superiority derives. The cult of military life is different from Russian or Japanese counterparts. Discipline is all well and good, but must never diminish the race’s unique spontaneity. In one film from the 1950’s, the audience is invited to side with a boyish hero as he cheerfully flouts the rules of his ship, annoying his superiors no end. He does so because he wants to win a prize pig for his crewmates’ dinner. Such as story would have been inconceivable in the USSR.

Even in war, the soldiers are depicted as overgrown children. Depictions of soldiers dwell on the healthy joys of brotherhood than on actual physical rigors. Boisterousness is smiled upon as the mark of truly Korean naivety and innocence. Soldie’s workers, or farmers, the heroes in official narratives hardly differ; they are always more virtuous and pure than everyone else. Young females are more common in propaganda stories than men because they are more natural symbols of chastity and purity and thus of Koreanness. Women embody both the childlike attitude of the model subject and the nurturing, maternal attitude expected from authority figures. They behave girlishly even in adulthood, blushing and covering their mouths when they smile. In Korean narratives, Koreans take pleasure even in the hardest work. Whether baking or gripping shovels in the icy cold, workers are shown smiling or laughing. Though praising Juche, it is rarely explained. Much of the country’s visual art may appear completely apolitical to the foreign eye. But the North Korean is trained to “read”

these works differently. goodness of the race.

Every act of kindness is meant to demonstrate the unique

To most observers, the North Korean regime’s heavy use of family symbolism is proof of Confucian tendencies. However, in a fascinating way, contrary to what most outsiders take for granted, the leader depicted in official propaganda is hardly a father figure at all, let alone a patriarch. Here is the myth biography of Kim IL Sung. In 1912, the first year of Juche, a son was born, no ordinary child, more upright and virtuous than his playmates, he climbed a tree in a naïve effort to catch a rainbow. . By age sixteen, he devoted himself wholly to the anti-Japanese struggle…At 18, he set out his brilliant new ideology of Juche, explaining that man is master of all things. …he rescued his troops in 1938 by leading them on the legendary Arduous March… not once did he rest or slacken… alas the American imperialists had already invaded the southern part, the Yankees determined to crush Korean socialism forever, launched a surprise attack. Under the General’s brilliant leadership, the Korean People’s Army dealt them such a savage series of counter blows that they retreated whence they cam, finally signing an abject declaration of surrender on July 27, 1953. In the years that followed, Kim IL Sung worked day and night, waking every morning at 3 am to rebuild his country. . Yet the Leader found time to visit factories and farms, solving their problems at lightening speed…. The North Korean cult derives from Kim’s embodiment of ethnic virtues. He is the most naïve, spontaneous, loving and pure Korean, the most Korean who ever lived. He is a symbol of the homeland. His lineage is impeccable, he usually looks cheerful, but his eyes are blank. Kim is never shown thinking. Love of the race leads him spontaneously to Marxism, an ideology the propaganda praises but is loathe to explain. The liberation myth is depicted as a magical and epic past that must be accepted on its own terms. The leader is always shown solving problems but does not come off as cerebral. Both problem and solution are described in terms a child can grasp. In fact, the Leader’s published remarks are always trite, “Rainbow trout is a good fish, tasty and nutritious.” Kim’s easy solutions show his loving attentiveness of the world’s busiest There is nothing Confucian about him. He is man that moves characters to tears.

praised in maternal terms, the “Great General as the loving parent who holds and nurtures all Korean children at his breast.” The androgynous, or hermaphroditic designation of parent, praises his maternal side more than the other. His soft, pale face, the dimpled smile and expansive bosom, show him holding children, letting them climb

over him. Even grown Koreans are children at heart, and are treated accordingly. In one painting Kim smiles as he squats down in deep snow, tying a young soldier’s bootlaces. In another, he holds to his chest a young soldier, who like a child has his pink-cheeked face up against the white tunic. The depictions are the same through the years. (the goiter that afflicted the real man in later life is not seen in photographs). Kim IL Sung's androgynous image exerts a far more emotional attraction than any of the unambiguously paternal leaders of Eastern Europe. Sigmund Freud wrote of every child’s yearning for a phallic mother, a truly The North omnipotent parent who is both sexes in one. This may explain why Jesus and Buddha are far more feminine and maternal figures in the popular imagination. Koreans’ race theory gives a leader who is both mother enough to protect them from the evil world. In a society without the father, it does not even occur to one to rebel, just as one does not rebel against the mist. Perhaps it is no wonder that the propaganda apparatus decided to make the country’s next leader even more of a mother than Kim Il Sung had been.