Propaganda in North Korea

North Korea
This article is part of a series on the
politics and government of
North Korea
Foreign relations

The standard view of propaganda in North Korea sees it as based on the Juche ideology and on the promotion of the Workers' Party of Korea.[1]

Many pictures of the national leaders are posted throughout the country.[2]

Themes

Cult of personality

Kim Il-sung with Kim Jong-il on Mount Paektu

In previous decades, North Korean propaganda was crucial to the formation and promotion of the cult of personality centered around the founder of the totalitarian state, Kim Il-sung.[3] The Soviet Union began to develop him, particularly as a resistance fighter, as soon as they put him in power.[4] This quickly surpassed its Eastern European models.[5] 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.[6]

Once relations with the Soviet Union were broken off, their role was expurgated, as were all other nationalists, until the claim was made that he founded the Communist Party in North Korea.[7] 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.[8] Subsequently, many stories are recounted of his "on-the-spot guidance" in various locations, many of them being openly presented as fictional.[9]

This was supplemented with propaganda on behalf of his son, Kim Jong-il.[10] The "food shortage" produced anecdotes of Kim insisting on eating the same meager food as other North Koreans.[11]

Propaganda efforts began for the "Young General", Kim Jong-un, who succeeded him as paramount leader of North Korea on Kim Jong-il's death in December 2011.[12]

Foreign relations

Early propaganda, in 1940s, presented a positive Soviet–Korean relationship, often depicting Russians as maternal figures to childlike Koreans.[13] As soon as relations were less cordial, they were expurgated from historical accounts.[7] The collapse of the USSR, without a shot, is often depicted with intense contempt in sources not accessible to Russians.[14]

Americans are depicted particularly negatively.[15] They are presented as an inherently evil race, with whom hostility is the only possible relationship.[16] The Korean War is used as a source for atrocities, less for the bombing raids than on charges of massacre.[17]

Japan is frequently depicted as rapacious and dangerous, both in the colonial era and afterwards. North Korean propaganda frequently highlighted the danger of Japanese remilitarization.[18] At the same time, the intensity of anti-Japanese propaganda underwent repeated fluctuations, depending on the improvement or deterioration of Japanese-DPRK relations. In those periods when North Korea was on better terms with Japan than with South Korea, North Korean propaganda essentially ignored the Liancourt Rocks dispute. However, if Pyongyang felt threatened by Japanese-South Korean rapprochement or sought to cooperate with Seoul against Tokyo, the North Korean media promptly raised the issue, with the aim of causing friction in Japanese-ROK relations.[19]

Friendly nations are depicted almost exclusively as tributary nations.[20] The English journalist Christopher Hitchens pointed out in the essay A Nation of Racist Dwarfs that propaganda has a blatantly racist and nationalistic angle:[21]

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.[21]

South Korea

North Korean propaganda poster promoting Korean reunification

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.[22] The line taken was that this had not prevented the South Koreans from yearning for unification and purification.[23]

Racial pride

North Korean propaganda often invokes Koreans as the purest of races, with a mystical bond with the natural beauty of the landscape.[24] The color white is often invoked as a symbol of 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.[25]

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.[26]

Stories often have only mildly flawed Korean characters, who are easily reformed because of their inherently pure nature. This device has resulted in problems which lack conflict and hence dullness.[27]

South Korea is often depicted as a place of dangerous racial contamination.[23]

"Military first"

Songun, or "military first", propaganda

Under Kim Jong-il, a major theme was the need of Kim to attend to the military first of all (in North Korea, this policy is called Songun), which required 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.[28]

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.[29]

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.[30]

The government urged the use of non-nutritious and even harmful "food substitutes" such as sawdust.[31]

Practices

Propaganda poster

Every year, a state-owned publishing house releases several cartoons (called geurim-chaek (Chosŏn'gŭl: 그림책) 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.[15] North Korean Propaganda posters are very similar to the messages portrayed by other communist countries. North Korean propaganda posters focus on military might, utopian society and devotion to the state, and the leader's personality.[32] Propaganda posters are also used to depict the opposite of what is really happening in the country to the outside world. Kim Jong-il is credited with using propaganda art and posters to make the Kim family's identity inseparable from the state.[33]

Art

Fine art often depicts militaristic themes.[34]

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.[35] 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.[36] Art is based on Socialist realism, which is the official school of artistic expression and was designed for propaganda purposes to begin with (at odds with Marx, Engels and even Trotsky's own liberal views on art and culture).

Music

Main article: Music of North Korea

The country's supreme leaders have had hymns dedicated to them that served as their signature tune and were repetitively broadcast by the state media:

Film

North Korea has a prolific propaganda film industry.

The Korean government also runs a film industry. North Korean movies depict the glory of North Korean life and the atrocities of Western Imperialism, with a key role of providing on-screen role models.[37] The film industry is run through Pyongyang University of Cinematic and Dramatic Arts.[38] Kim Jong-Il was a self-proclaimed genius of film.[38] In 1973, he authored On the Art of the Cinema, a treatise on film theory and filmmaking.[39] He was rumored to own over 20,000 DVDs in his personal collection. Kim believed that Cinema was the most important of the arts. Domestically, these films are given lavish receptions. International critics cite the films as propaganda, because of their unreal depictions of North Korea.[40] Recently, there has been an increase in animated films. The animated films carry political and military messages aimed at the youth of North Korea.[37]

Leaflets

The North Korean government is known for dropping Propaganda leaflets to South Korean soldiers, just across the Demilitarized Zone. The leaflets are dropped across in a floating balloon. The leaflets criticize the South Korean government and praise North Korea.[41]

Social media

Further information: Internet in North Korea

North Korea made its first entry into the social media market in 2010. The country has launched its own website,[42] Facebook page,[42] YouTube channel,[43][44] Twitter account[44] and Flickr page.[45] The profile picture of all social media accounts, according to the official Korean Central News Agency, is the Three Charters for National Reunification Memorial Tower, a 30 metres (98 ft) monument in Pyongyang that "reflects the strong will of the 70 million Korean people to achieve the reunification of the country with their concerted effort."[42]

Propaganda village

Main article: Kijong-dong

Kijŏngdong, Kijŏng-dong or Kijŏng tong is a village in P'yŏnghwa-ri (Chosŏn'gŭl: 평화리; Hancha: 平和里), Kaesong-si, North Korea. It is situated in the North's half of the Korean Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) and is also known in North Korea as "Peace Village" (Chosŏn'gŭl: 평화촌; Hancha: 平和村; MR: p'yŏnghwach'on).

The official position of the North Korean government is that the village contains a 200-family collective farm, serviced by a childcare center, kindergarten, primary and secondary schools, and a hospital. However, observation from the South suggests that the town is actually an uninhabited Potemkin village built at great expense in the 1950s in a propaganda effort to encourage defections from South Korea and to house the DPRK soldiers manning the extensive network of artillery positions, fortifications and underground marshalling bunkers that abut the border zone.[58]

See also

Censorship

References

  1. ↑ Scobell, Dr. Andrew (July 2005), North Korea's Strategic Intentions, Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College
  2. ↑ Szilak, Illya (November 4, 2012). "Meeting, Everywhere, The Rulers Of North Korea". The Huffington Post.
  3. ↑ "North Korea profile". BBC News Asia. BBC. 14 October 2014.
  4. ↑ Becket 2005, p. 51.
  5. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 37.
  6. ↑ Myers 2010, pp. 36–7.
  7. 1 2 Becket 2005, p. 53.
  8. ↑ Myers 2010, pp. 101–2.
  9. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 103.
  10. ↑ "Chinoy, Mike (March 1, 2003). "North Korea's propaganda machine". International CNN: Asia. Panmunjom, South Korea: CNN.
  11. ↑ Becket 2005, p. 40.
  12. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 65.
  13. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 35.
  14. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 130.
  15. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 135.
  16. ↑ Myers 2010, pp. 136–7.
  17. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 131.
  18. ↑ Szalontai, Balázs (Winter 2013). "Instrumental Nationalism? The Dokdo Problem Through the Lens of North Korean Propaganda and Diplomacy". The Journal of Northeast Asian History. Northeast Asian History Foundation. 10 (2): 105–162.
  19. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 129–30.
  20. 1 2 Hitchens, Christopher (2010-02-01). "A Nation of Racist Dwarfs: Kim Jong-il's regime is even weirder and more despicable than you thought". Fighting Words. Slate. Retrieved 2012-12-23.
  21. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 152.
  22. 1 2 Myers 2010, p. 155.
  23. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 72.
  24. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 78.
  25. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 81.
  26. ↑ Myers 2010, pp. 90–1.
  27. ↑ Myers 2010, pp. 83–4.
  28. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 88.
  29. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 119.
  30. ↑ Becket 2005, pp. 36–7.
  31. ↑ Lai, Lawrence (December 22, 2011). "North Korean Propaganda Posters". Picture This: ABC News. ABC News Internet Ventures.
  32. ↑ Johnson, Robert (December 20, 2011). "Check Out These Twisted North Korean Propaganda Posters". Business Insider. Business Insider Inc.
  33. ↑ Ferris-Rotman, Amie (January 14, 2011). "Exhibitions: Art or propaganda? North Korea exhibit in Moscow". Moscow, Russia: Reuters.
  34. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 91.
  35. ↑ Myers 2010, p. 92.
  36. 1 2 Gluck, Caroline (11 January 2002). "North Korea's film industry boom". BBC News: Asie-Pacific. BBC.
  37. 1 2 "North Korea's cinema of dreams: 101 East gains rare insight into the beating heart of North Korea's film industry", 101 East, Al Jazeera English, 29 December 2011
  38. ↑ Johannes Schönherr (August 13, 2012). North Korean Cinema: A History. McFarland. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-7864-6526-2. Retrieved April 29, 2015.
  39. ↑ Jones, Sam (October 16, 2012). "A Cinematic Revolution: North Korea's Film Industry". AGI (Asian Global Impact).
  40. ↑ AFP (2 October 2012). "North Korea drops propaganda leaflets over border". The Telegraph.
  41. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Roberts, Laura (21 August 2010). "North Korea joins Facebook: North Korea appears to have joined the social networking site Facebook after its Twitter account was blocked by South Korea under the country's security laws". The Telegraph. Telegraph Media Group.
  42. 1 2 3 "uriminzokkiri". YouTube. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  43. 1 2 Yoon, Sangwon (August 17, 2010). "North Korea says it has joined Twitter, YouTube". Seoul, South Korea: Associated Press.
  44. ↑ Associated Press (April 4, 2013). "North Korea's Twitter, flickr accounts hacked amid rising tension".
  45. ↑ "English". Uriminzokkiri. Retrieved 4 February 2015.
  46. ↑ "Uriminzokkiri TV" (in Korean). Uriminzokkiri.
  47. ↑ Associated Press (August 20, 2010). "North Korea Joins Facebook, After Opening Twitter and YouTube Accounts". Seoul, South Korea.
  48. ↑ Choe Sang-Hun (August 17, 2010). "North Korea Takes to Twitter and YouTube". The New York Times (New York ed.). Seoul, South Korea. p. A7.
  49. ↑ "uriminzokkiri: About". YouTube. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
  50. ↑ "North Korea propaganda taken off YouTube after Activision complaint". BBC News. 6 February 2013.
  51. ↑ "uriminzokkiri (uriminzok)". Twitter. Retrieved November 28, 2012.
  52. ↑ "uriminzokkiri (@uriminzok)". Twitter. Retrieved February 4, 2015.
  53. ↑ "North Korea's Twitter account hacked to call for uprising: The North Korean government's official Twitter account appears to have been hacked, with the feed calling for an uprising to remove the leaders from power". The Telegraph. 8 January 2011.
  54. ↑ Rodriguez, Salvador (April 4, 2013). "North Korea's Twitter, Flickr accounts hacked; Anonymous speaks up". Los Angeles Times.
  55. ↑ "uriminzokkiri's photostream". Flickr. Archived from the original on December 20, 2010.
  56. ↑ "Anonymous 'hacks' North Korea social network accounts". BBC News. 4 April 2013.
  57. ↑ Tran, Mark (6 June 2008). "Travelling into Korea's demilitarised zone: Run DMZ". The Guardian. Guardian Media Group. Retrieved 5 July 2009. Kijong-dong was built specially in the north area of DMZ. Designed to show the superiority of the communist model, it has no residents except soldiers.

Sources

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