Dismissing what the North Korean regime tells the outside world, the [Brian Myers of South Korea's Dongseo University] looks instead at North Koreas domestic propaganda, the Kim family cult and the countrys official myths. From these he pieces together what North Koreans are supposed to believe.
He concludes that Mr Kims power is based not just on surveillance and repression. Nor can its survival be ascribed simply to the effective brainwashing of the population. Rather, the personality cult proceeds from powerful myths about race and history.
Ideas of racial purity lie at the heart of North Koreans self-image. Since the regimes founding, they have been taught to think that they are a unique race, incapable of evil. Virtue, in turn, has made Koreans as vulnerable as children. Koreas history, the regime insists, is the history of a child-race abused by adultsChinese, Japanese and American.
Pure, spontaneous and naive, Koreans need a caring, protective leader. The upshot is the Kims peculiar cult, of state-sponsored infantilism.
You see no chin-thrusting depictions of father or son on the monumental streets of Pyongyang. In art as in life, both Kims are effeminate and podgy. Warnings against fleeing to China are conveyed as directed at a squirrel who wanders too far. In paintings, Kim Il Sung tucks children into bed. The nation lies at the breast of Kim Jong Il and his party. As commander-in-chief of the armed forces, Mr Kim is even called Mother General.
...
Mr Myers wonders why Mr Kim would ever give up confrontation with America when his legitimacy rests upon it. After a deadly famine in the mid-1990s and, in recent weeks, a bungled currency confiscation, he has no interest in claiming to stand for material prosperity. Anyway, South Korea wins that competition hands-down. Rather, nuclear crises since 1994and the detonation of a first nuclear device in 2006allow him to present himself as the nations defender against aggression.
In 2009 the countrys military-first policy, making the armed forces the nations highest priority, was even enshrined in the constitution. Fascism is Mr Kims last refuge. Giving up nuclear weapons would spell the end. So he negotiates with America not to end tensions, but to manage them: neither all-out war nor all-out peace.
What would bring the regime down, then? Thanks to the advancing creep of knowledge, North Koreans know that the South is richer by far. But the propaganda state has found a way around that. South Koreans may be rich, but they are desperately unhappy because they are under the thumb of the despised Yankees. Harder to deal with, by far, would be to find out that South Koreans are content in their republic.
Facebook
Twitter