The ideology of North Korea: What drives the “Hermit Kingdom”?

We may all be wiped out one day, but it'll look insanely cool while it's happening.
We may all be wiped out one day, but it’ll look insanely cool while it’s happening.
So you may have seen that last week North Korea let off a hydrogen bomb. Or maybe it didn’t. Or maybe we’ll never know. Whatever the truth may be, as this journalist points out, rather than take them more seriously, we’ll probably continue to treat North Korea as light entertainment. Which makes sense, as they are hilarious.1 Nevertheless, in our mockery, we often fail to ask ourselves “Why does North Korea behave in a way that seems crazy to the rest of the world?”

Nope. I don't see anything religious about this.
Nope. I don’t see anything religious about this.
Credit: yeowatzup CC2.0
The short answer is juche. This word translates roughly to “self-reliance” and is an ideology that revolves around total and utter independence for North Korea from other nations. Juche is such a strong ideology that it is often referred to as a “quasi-religion,2 with North Korea as a theocratic state.

To understand juche and its absolute desire for self-determination, you need to consider North Korean history, specifically its history of being stuck between rivalling powers. Apparently many Koreans like to boast that their country has been invaded over 900 times in recorded history (p.35). Whilst I don’t quite see how this is a matter of pride, it does offer an insight into how a country might become paranoid about their neighbours.

Japanese troops marching near Pyongyang during the Russo-Japanese war. It was honestly one of the least depressing photos I could find of the occupation.
Japanese troops marching near Pyongyang during the Russo-Japanese war. It was honestly one of the least depressing photos I could find of the occupation.
Juche finds its formative years around the Japanese occupation. Whilst the Japanese might have lacked Europe’s experience at running oppressive colonial states, they proved to be quick learners, building a thoroughly oppressive regime in less than 35 years. At this early stage, juche was basically anti-Japanism. Kim Il Sung, the first Supreme Leader of North Korea and credited as the creator of juche,3 was a renowned guerrilla fighter in WWII. It is difficult to separate the truth from propaganda, but considering Japanese military records have them placing a $100,000 bounty on his head, it seems this reputation might actually be deserved (what a surprise!). Either way, it is here that we can see juche’s earliest emphasis on avoiding the influence of other nations.

After WWII, in the eyes of North Korea the United States easily slipped into the mould of “oppressor” shaped by Japan before them. Whilst I’m not trying to say that the US stationing of troops on the South Korean Peninsula was as oppressive as the Japanese occupation, the fact that the US dropped more bombs during the Korean war than in all of the air campaigns of WWII combined means this fear might not have been entirely unreasonable.

Furthermore, North Korea has always been afraid of atomic weaponry. Kim Il Sung appears to have been certain the US would drop atomic bombs on North Korea. The subway in Pyongyang is between 70 and 100 meters deep4 and probably designed to be bomb shelters. Apparently almost every village in the country has its own bomb-shelter. In a turn of logic eerily reminiscent of the US gun-ownership debate, North Korea seems to believe it exists in a nuclear filled wild-west, in which the only way to be safe is to “pack heat”. A lot of heat, in this case.

For North Korea, this isn't satire, it's a documentary.

What might be more surprising is that juche also served as a way of gaining independence from both the USSR and China. Although both states have been sponsors of North Korea, the extreme antipathy between the two regimes, and North Korea’s position bordering both, left it desperately not wanting to antagonise either. Hence, when North Korea speaks of juche, they truly mean self-reliance from all other nations. This allowed them to be an unironic member of the Nonaligned Bloc during the Cold War, in spite of being a central member of the Soviet Bloc as well. History has by and large shown North Korea that the only one it can truly rely on is itself.

All of this goes to show that the scars of history take a long time to fade, for nations as well as for individuals. Whereas most of the world seems content to leave the Cold War behind, many North Koreans consider the height of the Cold War the “best of days” for their country. Few know this now, but until the 70s, North Korea was by far the richer and more industrialised of the two Koreas. This is believed to be a large part of the apparent recent efforts of the regime to return to a more hardcore version of juche from the 50s and 60s. They’re trapped. For a nation that considers “self-reliance” a fundamental goal of any nation, modern globalisation must seem a nightmare. So instead, the regime would prefer to return to a time when their very existence was under nuclear threat, but the place of Korea in the world was clear. Cha calls this “back to the future” thinking.

Of course, the architecture completely fails to reflect North Korea's desire to return to the 60s...
Of course, the architecture completely fails to reflect North Korea’s desire to return to the 60s…

That’s generous. To me it sounds more like a sad middle-aged man trying to recapture his youth. A sad middle-aged man with nuclear weapons, that is. It certainly gives more of a thrill than a convertible.

Academic Sources

Harrison, B 2007, “Through the Eyes of the Hermit: The Origins of North Korea’s Quest for the Bomb”, Stanford Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 7, no. 1, accessed 11 January 2016 from: http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal71/Korea.pdf.

Cha, V 2013, The impossible state: Nort Korea, past and future, HarperCollins, New York.

Jonson, R 2012, “Juche’s Transformation from a Tool for Ethnic Nationalism to a Quasi-Religion in Divided Korea”, Stanford Journal of East Asian Studies, vol. 12, no. 1, accessed 11 January 2016 from: http://web.stanford.edu/group/sjeaa/journal121/Korea3.pdf.

Park, HS 2002, North Korea: the politics of unconventional wisdom, Lynne Rienner Publishers, Boulder.

  1. I like Cracked.com, ok? It’s not a crime.
  2. For some reason I could never get it to show page 7. If you can, please let me know.
  3. Actually, it was likely formally written up by Hwang Jang yop, but that’s a story for another time.
  4. Can you imagine climbing the stairs?

2 thoughts on “The ideology of North Korea: What drives the “Hermit Kingdom”?

  1. Wasn’t most of the Non Aligned Bloc part of the Soviet sphere of influence. Even though India was not communist it was dealing with the Soviets and generally ignored the West or was continually critical its policies.

    1. That’s the perspective from the West, but I’m sure the USSR felt similarly. In fact one of the reasons Burma left the group was because it felt it had become basically a defecto sphere of influence for the US. Heck, Argentina was a member and they had one of the most anticommunist regimes of the era.

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