By Aych
Lately, the torrent of unusually loud and pugnacious rhetoric emanating from North Korea has been dominating the news cycle over the last few weeks. Many of you readers out there have undoubtedly noticed this. This wave of bellicosity has made me want to re-visit an excellent book on the topic of North Korean ideology and propaganda. The book is: ‘The Cleanest Race’ by B. R. Meyers.
It is a painstaking, systematic examination of the major themes which are generated by the North Korean propaganda apparatus. The reader is provided with useful insights for understanding these frothy outpourings which seem too bizarre and over-the-top to take seriously. (One must also keep in mind that North Korean domestic propaganda frequently differs from the English-language KCNA news releases which get issued to the rest of the world’s press agencies.)
The North Korean regime, undoubtedly the world’s vilest, is surely the worst possible example of extreme Patriarchy run amok. Furthermore, the ruling men of the Kim dynasty are surely held-up as the most macho, barrel-chested, bare-knuckled, testosterone-fuelled, manliest men who have ever lived. Am I right?
Well, hold on — not so fast.
Among other issues, the author of the book discusses the use of gender in the portrayals of North Korean leadership. An outside observer might reasonably assume that, since Korean culture is so strongly rooted in neo-Confucian values, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il are (and were) seamlessly portrayed as being the ultimate patriarchs for the nation to look-up to. That assumption, however, is quite misleading when you analyze North Korean media carefully.
Contrary to this assumption, it turns out that the NK propaganda mills frequently violate the most closely-held tenets of Confucianism by playing-up the Kims’ more ‘feminine’ features:
Even when Kim is referred to as Father Leader (aboji suryong)… there is nothing Confucian or patriarchal about him… Kim is referred to primarily as Parent Leader (oboi suryong), though with his maternal side praised far more often than the other. Kim Jong Il himself has long described his father’s motherly qualities as key to his success.
This is underscored by the many images of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il in which they hold joyous soldiers or workers close to their chests. The two Kims (the book only briefly touches upon Kim Jong Un) were, in fact, a fusion of paternal AND maternal features:
Artists and writers not only play up the feminine aspects of Kim Il Sung’s appearance- the soft pale face, the dimpled smile, the expansive bosom- but also show him holding small children or letting them clamber over him. In photographs we see him grinning as schoolgirls pull yearningly on his arms and hands. Even in depictions of his guerrilla years these qualities are always on display. In one illustration he is tucking children into bed…
In this way, the Leader is both the mother who nurtures the people and the father who fights the outside world.
While processing this idea, one should also bear in mind that Japan’s World War II emperor-centered ideology (the ideology which provided the initial raw materials from which the North Korean personality-cult came forth) frequently portrayed the emperor Hirohito as an androgynous figure rather than a patriarchal one. (One portion of the secret Imperial Japanese enthronement ceremony reportedly involves the Emperor symbolically giving birth to himself.)
The book continues on the Kims’ less-than-patriarchal portrayal:
…Kim Il Sung’s peculiarly androgynous or hermaphroditic image also seems to exert a far more emotional attraction than any of the unambiguously paternal leaders of Eastern Europe were able to. I am not qualified to analyze the cult (or anything else) from a psychological standpoint, but just enough should be written here to counter the reader’s skepticism that sane people could give themselves over to the adoration of a male mother figure. Sigmund Freud wrote of every child’s yearning for a phallic mother, a truly omnipotent parent who is both sexes in one…
So rather than being a bunch of out-of-control macho patriarchs, the Kim dynasty is instead a regime which attempts to fuse both elements- father AND mother- into the very same personage.
This may provide one psychological explanation of the NK regime’s stubborn endurance in the minds of those unlucky enough to be born into it: rebelling against the Kims would deprive the nation of both its parents. This is a loss which, psychologically, the nation could not survive.
But is North Korea a flat-out patriarchy? Well, if an accurate summation of its internal propaganda is any guide, their regime is arguably a rather different creature indeed.
