A History of Korea (90 page)

The higher literacy rate and publication activity were likely related to another phenomenon in mass culture that came to define the Yusin decade, the social standing and influence of organized
religion. While dramatic religious growth was a story that continued throughout the twentieth century, not since the 1910s had religions and the religious establishment exerted such a pronounced impact on society and polity as in the 1970s. As noted above, Buddhism inspired the social criticism of Ko
n, and the same could be said for Catholicism’s role in the work and actions of Kim Chiha. Indeed much of Kim’s Catholic inspiration came from his being mentored by Bishop Chi Haksun, who in the 1970s stood at the forefront of the Catholic Church’s steadfast opposition to the Yusin system, suffering arrests and beatings but unbending in his criticism. The same could be said for the Catholic politician Kim Dae Jung, who, like Kim Chiha, was raised in the city of Mokp’o on the southwestern coast. Kim Dae Jung had been the opponent who nearly pulled off the miraculous victory over Park Chung Hee in the 1971 presidential election. For this offense and his continuing opposition to the regime—much of it inspired by his Catholic faith—Kim was kidnapped while in Japan and came close to being executed before international pressure forced Park to relent. It is little wonder, then, that the Catholic clergy in South Korea developed a stout reputation for social justice that endures to this day.

The same does not apply to Protestantism, which for the most part—despite, or perhaps because of, its enormous growth in followers—remained mostly an anti-communist and pro-government stalwart. But there were eminent exceptions, including Mun Ikhwan, a Presbyterian minister who headed numerous organizations in the 1970s, religious and otherwise, that publicly resisted the Yusin dictatorship, for which he was arrested and constantly harassed. The most acclaimed Protestant figure of this period, though, was actually a Quaker, Ham S
kh
n. Unlike most of his fellow Protestants originally from the north who were driven by their hostility to communism, Ham sought to mobilize sentiment for major issues such as reunification through a focused push against dictatorship. Ham, already well-established as a renowned activist from the colonial period, began publishing a monthly in 1970,
Ssial
i sori
, which perhaps can best be translated as “voices of the people.” In the ensuing ten years, this journal became the
mouthpiece for Ham’s calls for ecumenism, non-violent resistance, and human rights, and cemented his moniker as the “Gandhi of Korea.” Ham became, then, among the most renowned symbols of the long journey toward democratization in modern Korea, a breakthrough in the 1980s that would not have been possible without the trials of the 1970s.

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Monumental Life in North Korea

CHRONOLOGY

GROUNDBREAKING FOR THE RYUGYONG HOTEL, 1987

The construction of Pyongyang’s Ryugyong Hotel, a massive, pyramid-shaped building over 100 stories and 300 meters tall, began in 1987 amidst the ongoing battle for prestige in advance of the Seoul Summer Olympics the following year. The North Korean regime believed this mammoth edifice would symbolize the advancement, power, and pride of North Korea. But after construction was halted in 1992 and left it an empty shell for over fifteen years thereafter, the Ryugyong Hotel became a national monument for all the wrong reasons. Like North Korea itself, and especially its regime, the structure originated in visions of grandeur, depended on foreign assistance, was built on the backs of the mobilized masses, and
stalled in the face of cold reality. In 2008 construction of this colossus was revived, but it remains to be seen whether it will ever function as originally intended, or rather endure as a symbol of the decay, mystery, and tragedy of recent North Korean history.

THE HISTORICAL CHALLENGE

Anyone attempting to understand North Korea faces a host of obstacles, beginning with the difficulties of accessing reliable information about this notoriously secretive land. This problem is compounded when pursuing a historical examination, for the temptation is to focus on North Korea as an immediate, present object of concern. We tend to ask about current conditions without wondering how they might have gotten that way, which is as misguided as to view North Korea only through the lens of the country’s effect on the outside world. The task, then, is to comprehend North Korea as a product of its unique, mostly internal historical circumstances.

The lack of unfiltered information has not stopped the emergence of a major publications industry on North Korea. In the West, and particularly the US, the demand for knowledge has stemmed from the chronic sense of threat from the North Korean nuclear program. In South Korea, the recent lifting of the long-standing official insecurity, bordering on paranoia, regarding information from the North has allowed the southern citizens a glimpse of their compatriots through North Korean television broadcasts and newspapers. What the South Koreans have found, however, are, to put it mildly, not very exciting, mostly due to the monotony and transparent propaganda in this content.

The attempt to decipher the realities of North Korean society and history based on what flows out from the tightly controlled sources of information, then, must be grounded on an analysis of what the official reports might be hiding as much as revealing. One must of course also rely on accounts from defectors, refugees, the occasional visitor, and other observers. But in all instances, the picture that emerges from both the official and unofficial sources should serve to demystify North Korea and its people, and to move beyond
caricatures and the easy condemnation of its ruling system. The other major historical challenge is to treat North Korea on its own terms and to integrate it into Korean history, overcoming the temptation to dismiss the country’s history as somehow an aberration. Only then can we can attempt a sincere understanding of North Korea’s development within the larger historical context—not just that of the recent or modern periods, but of Korean civilization a whole. We can then find strong parallels to premodern patterns, which are essential to understanding North Korea today, and come closer to solving that most demanding of all historical questions about modern Korea: how did North and South Korea diverge so dramatically out of common origins?

HISTORICAL PATH, 1970s TO 2000s

Notwithstanding these lessons, it is difficult to avoid a consciousness of South Korea when tracing the North’s history, and vice-versa, for in part the radical departures in the two states’ development resulted from their strenuous efforts to contrast themselves from each other. For both, the rivalry drove their self-perceptions and actions. By the turn of the 1970s, both countries had completed their post-Korean War recoveries and established strong foundations of industrialization and military autocracy. Whereas South Korea continued to undergo dramatic change in comprehensive fashion thereafter, however, in the North the post-war economic growth hit a wall, and politically the leadership demonstrated a disturbing recidivism, a lapse into primal Korean forms and values. It was as if North Koreans had nothing to do, and nowhere to go, but to reassure themselves of their specialness. The echo chamber, however, resulted in an ongoing tragedy of modern Korean history.

Like many countries, North Korea squandered its relative plentitude in natural resources, such as hydroelectric capacity, coal, and even oil. The industrialization of the 1960s and 1970s made available many advances in material comfort, especially in the urban areas, where citizens enjoyed modern amenities. Even in the agricultural sector, where growth from collectivized farming appears
to have been inconsistent, production was sustained sufficiently to allow the country even to export grains into the 1980s. The following decade, however, was one of unremitting economic catastrophe, beginning with the collapse of the Soviet Union and end of the Cold War, and hence the halt of cheap fuel and other subsidies. This was soon compounded by the disastrous floods, then drought, of the mid- and late-1990s, which resulted in the famine that likely killed more than half a million people (with some estimates reaching 2 million) and robbed the country of an entire generation to malnourishment. Though endowed with a relatively solid economy by communist standards toward the end of the 1980s, within a decade North Korea entered the new century a basket case, with its people suffering from rationed food, lack of power and heating, and general misery. How much of this downfall can be attributed to natural disasters, and how much to deficiencies in the economic system itself, will have to await further judgment; but on another level, of course, this is a moot point, for the system was responsible for placing the people in such a vulnerable position in the first place. The decade of the 2000s witnessed somewhat of an economic recovery, including thorough efforts to attract South Korean investment in the tourism and manufacturing sectors. Private markets even sprouted around the country. But the steady flow of refugees showed that this liberalization failed to overcome widespread privation—or more likely, that the economic conditions continued to be dramatically uneven within the country.

According to visitors’ accounts, the people of the showcase capital city of Pyongyang and of some other urban areas such as Kaes
ng, for example, appeared anything but impoverished. This simple reality offered a reminder of how this self-identifying socialist paradise developed into a society dependent on starkly unequal access to privileges and resources. While the revolution of the immediate post-liberation years had permanently flipped over the pre-1945 order, as time passed tight control of social interaction led to a startling regression to the premodern Korean patterns of hereditary hierarchy. Ancestry, in short, was paramount and, as in the dynastic eras of the past, much of the “purity” of one’s blood was determined by the political circumstances of the founding of
the regime. Below the royal family, the Kims, the aristocratic elite were the party leaders whose ties to Kim Il Sung extended back to the Manchurian guerilla days. After the descendants of party cadres, top bureaucrats, and army brass, North Koreans with peasant backgrounds came to occupy the commoner middle class. A despised or stigmatized population, meanwhile, was comprised of descendants of political criminals and colonial-era elites and landlords. A bureaucracy that investigated the lineage background of individuals in prospective marriages maintained this bizarre transplantation of premodern patterns.