A History of Korea (84 page)

These purges of Kim’s political rivals, then, required a shift in the North Korean system itself from a Soviet-sponsored state to one of greater autonomy. But in fact, aside from the ousted figures themselves, the Soviet ways of doing things were still preeminent; indeed the methods of eliminating political opponents—from the show trials to the trumped up accusations of espionage, anti-party activity, and “factionalism”—displayed Kim’s reliance on the Soviet template. Kim in fact was moving North Korea toward a firmer Stalinism just as many other communist states, led by the Soviet Union itself, began to repudiate it following Nikita Khrushchev’s famous speech in early 1956 denouncing the Stalin personality cult. Kim also owed a considerable debt to Mao Zedong, the Chinese communist leader whose espousal of paternalistic, even Confucian, dictatorship as the way to gain maximum subservience provided Kim a blueprint for his own efforts. Kim even appropriated from Mao many ideas related to cultivating a blend of nationalism, communism, and personality cult.

These strands of foreign influence were also on prominent display in the great effort, called “Ch’
llima” (after a legendary flying horse of Korean folklore), to collectivize and industrialize
the North Korean economy beginning in the late 1950s. The nationalization of industry, along with other economic measures such as currency reform, had begun in the years just preceding the Korean War by exploiting colonial period infrastructures, especially in hydroelectric generation and mining. The
Ch’
llima
campaign completed this process and launched a mammoth effort focused on heavy industries, such as construction, steel, and agricultural and military machinery. It required—and gained, it appears—a tremendous mobilization of labor, which resulted in a substantial increase in North Korea’s economic output and living standards. The campaign was contemporaneous with and similar to the doomed agricultural collectivization effort in Mao’s China, the Great Leap Forward, but it avoided China’s mass starvation—mostly because North Korea’s agricultural mobilization was limited in scope. Still, the foreign connections continued to play a central role: the promulgation of Soviet-style fixed-period development plans; the contributions of Soviet-Korean experts; the major impact of the Chinese troops stationed in North Korea until 1958 in terms of security and reconstruction; and the ongoing economic aid coming from China and especially the Soviet Union that paid for many spectacular North Korean gains. By all accounts, that is precisely what allowed North Korea’s economic growth to outpace that of South Korea from the late 1950s through the 1960s.

Such a collective fervor for reconstruction manifested itself in cultural mobilization as well, as culture became thoroughly politicized into a form promoting nativism and the Kim Il Sung-led state. This process had already developed considerably in the post-liberation period, as music, theater, literature, paintings and sculptures, and cinema became immersed in revolutionary state-building. As in communist societies elsewhere—and ironically, given the Marxist emphasis on the material basis for historical development—ideological and cultural training was perceived as paramount in fortifying mass support for the sociopolitical system. Divergence into “frivolous” or “empty” expression, the coded terms for art that was not goal-oriented toward a display of “socialist realism,” came under attack in the 1950s. Aesthetics had to service ideology. Cultural practitioners who had originally
moved to or stayed in North Korea as a haven for their leftist ideals soon found themselves at the mercy of political developments, none more potent than the ongoing solidification of Kim Il Sung’s authority. The novelist credited with devising the aura of Kim’s personality cult, Han S
rya, became the most prominent and powerful figure in North Korean literary circles, himself leading many of the 1950s purges of suspect writers. But tellingly Han, too, eventually fell victim to the whims of politics and was purged in 1962, never to be heard from again.

JUCHE
, HISTORY, AND LEGITIMACY

Perhaps the most dramatic and enduring ideological outcome of this intense political concentration and mass mobilization came in the shaping of a new historical perspective. As Kim indicated in his 1955 speech, the most urgent task for propaganda workers—and presumably for society at large—was to focus on the essential lessons of Korean history. As elaborated upon later but clearly present already in the 1950s, the self-reliance constituting the core of
Juche
ideology could not be divorced from a strong consciousness of Korea’s historical experience, in particular the suffering from foreign intervention. North Koreans were taught that, throughout the nation’s history, including the most recent experiences of colonization and the Korean War, the outside world had consistently brought harm. But under the revolutionary leadership of Kim Il Sung, Koreans could finally escape this destructive pattern. At the most simplistic but comprehensible level, this narrative made tremendous sense. One can understand, then, why the North Korean people could have found this message of confidence and optimism appealing, especially in tandem with real gains in their standard of living and with a redress of grievances grounded in the inequities of the recent past.

The fabrication of historical details to shape this grand narrative began in the post-liberation period and gained momentum through the propaganda activities of intellectuals like Han S
rya. All of Korean history eventually came to be seen as an unrelenting struggle against harmful external forces and exploitative internal elements, such as those Koreans who collaborated with the Japanese colonialists and American occupiers. In service to Kim’s political ascent, his colonial period struggles against the Japanese in Manchuria underwent transparent inflation, even gaining credit for having achieved Korea’s liberation in 1945. The Soviet Union’s precipitous fall in significance in the historical orthodoxy thus paralleled its descent in political influence in the 1950s. Indeed, in the 1950s, as the North Korean regime’s legitimacy became more firmly hitched to Kim’s credentials as an independence fighter,
his official biography gave him another boost, this time hailing him for saving Korea from American imperialism as well. Kim lashed out at the US for having launched the Korean War, seeking world conquest, and desiring to “enslave” the Korean people. For evidence, he noted, one needed only to look at what had happened to South Korea since liberation. The strong implication behind this emerging North Korean historical orthodoxy was that only a great historical figure—namely, Kim Il Sung himself—could rally the people to learn from their experiences. This self-serving narrative sought to instill a dependency on Kim by equating him with the fate of Korean civilization itself.