Authors: Andrei Lankov
B00BY4HXME EBOK (11 page)
Thus, North Korean diplomats and spies concentrated their efforts in the developing world. In the 1970s they created a network of study groups and research institutes there, dedicated to the propagation of Kim Il Sung’s ideology and heavily subsidized by Pyongyang. It soon became clear, however, that the scheme did not work as intended: many entrepreneurial activists were happy to receive cash, but their commitment to the Great Leader was doubtful, as was their ability to influence the politics of their home countries. Nonetheless, the subsidies for the worldwide Juche movement, while reduced around 1980, were never completely stopped since the movement was all too useful for domestic purposes. The North Korean leadership understood that it would be good to expose the North Koreans to the sight of exotic foreigners who allegedly come to Korea to lay flowers at the statues of the Dear Leader and confess their unwavering admiration for the Greatest Man on Earth. The government of North Korea had to pay for return air tickets and accommodation, but in domestic policy terms it might have been a good investment.
During the Kim Il Sung era, the media would report that inhabitants of the Communist bloc and Third World were doing relatively well, but remained inferior to the North Koreans. Things were different in the countries of the West—above all in the United States, the embodiment of
all things evil. The United States was a country of aggressors who made a living by robbing the world of its resources, a nation of blood-thirsty warmongers and sadists. Since kindergarten, the North Koreans were exposed to endless tales about acts of sadistic brutality perpetrated by the disgusting Yankees during the Korean War. They were also reminded that the same acts were still committed in South Korea by these evil monsters (one of the most common sobriquets used for Americans in the North Korean media was “the American imperialists, the two-legged wolves”).
Indeed, the worst place on earth to live was South Korea, “a land without light, a land without air.” Until the late 1990s, South Korea was presented as a destitute American colony, whose population lived in abject poverty. In movies and paintings of that period, the South Korean cityscape looked positively hellish. People dressed in rags, lived in shacks, and looked for edible garbage at the dumping grounds near US military bases. Those disgusting “Yankees” were often present in the picture as well—fat American soldiers, with hugely protruding noses and ugly, caricatured features, riding in jeeps (if such a jeep hit a Korean girl, they would be laughing approvingly) or standing on the major crossroads with automatic rifles, always ready to kill innocent Koreans.
The Year One textbook presents North Korea’s children with an enlightening picture: “A school principal in South Korea beats and drives from school a child who cannot pay his monthly fee on time.”
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In high school they learn that “Nowadays, South Korea is swamped with seven million unemployed. Countless people stand in queues in front of employment centers, but not even a small number of jobs is forthcoming. The factories are closing one after another, and in such a situation even people who have work do not know when they will be ousted from their position.”
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Needless to say, these horror stories are pure fabrications—primary education is free in South Korea and even in the worst times of economic crisis there were never “seven million unemployed.”
Of course, there was resistance. Heroic South Koreans were secretly publishing works of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, holding revolutionary meetings in basement rooms adorned with portraits of the Great and Dear Leaders and, while imprisoned, professing their loyalties to the
Juche Idea in spite of the unspeakable tortures inflicted upon them by the pro-American puppet police.
The explicit assumption was that an overwhelming majority of South Koreans envied their prosperous and happy brethren in the North and dreamt about a day when they too would enjoy life at the bosom of the Great Leader. Only a large US military presence and an iron-fist rule by a handful of shameless collaborators prevented this great dream from coming true.
To what extent did the average North Koreans of Kim Il Sung’s days believe these propaganda messages? By the late 1980s, a majority of the North Korean population had no personal memory of times when things were seriously different and had no access to alternative sources of information. There must have been some skeptics, especially among better-educated people or among those who had some exposure to overseas life. But, these people were wise enough to remain silent. In North Korea, the unusual intensity of propaganda was combined with the self-imposed information blockade and decades-long consistency of the ideological message. This ensured that the official worldview remained unquestioned by a majority. After all, the people had their own lives to live and were not that much concerned about how sincere in their statements Juche worshippers from Venezuela or Zimbabwe really were.
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Considering the North Korean regime’s habit of politicizing everything, one should not expect North Korean math textbooks to be free from politics.
Let’s have a brief look through the Year Two math textbook for North Korean primary schools, published in 2003 (or officially Year 91 of the Juche Era). This textbook is a masterpiece of politicized math and I would like to introduce some representative gems of this treasure chest.
Admittedly, the majority of the questions in the textbook are not political—indeed they have no backstory at all. Kids are required to
deal with abstract numbers and areas. However, some 20 percent of all questions are different—they include a story, to make the math appear more interesting and relevant. Some of the stories are quite innocent—about a train’s timetable or kids’ games. But some are not.
For instance, take an engaging quiz from page 17: “During the Fatherland Liberation War [North Korea’s official name for the Korean War] the brave uncles of Korean People’s Army killed 265 American Imperial bastards in the first battle. In the second battle they killed 70 more bastards than they had in the first battle. How many bastards did they kill in the second battle? How many bastards did they kill all together?”
On page 24, the “American imperialist bastards” fared better and were lucky to survive the pious slaughter: “During the Fatherland Liberation War the brave uncles of the Korean People’s Army in one battle killed 374 American imperial bastards, who are brutal robbers. The number of prisoners taken was 133 more than the number of American imperial bastards killed. How many bastards were taken prisoner?”
The use of math for body counts is quite popular—there are four or five more questions like this in the textbook. As every North Korean child is supposed to believe, his South Korean peers also spend days and nights fighting the American imperialist bastards. Thus, this also creates a good opportunity to apply simple math.
On page 138 one can find the following question: “South Korean boys, who are fighting against the American imperialist wolves and their henchmen, handed out 45 bundles of leaflets with 150 leaflets in each bundle. They also stuck 50 bundles with 50 leaflets in each bundle. How many leaflets were used?”
Page 131 also provides kids with a revision question about leaflet dissemination: “Chadori lives in South Korea which is being suppressed by the American Imperial Wolves. In one day he handed out 5 bundles of leaflets, each bundle containing 185 leaflets. How many leaflets were handed out by boy Chadori?”
That said, North Korean children are not supposed to be too optimistic. Life in South Korea is not just composed of heroic struggle but also great suffering. On page 47 they can find the following question: “In one South Korean village which is suffering
under the heel of the American imperialist wolf bastards, a flood destroyed 78 houses. The number of houses damaged was 15 more than the number destroyed. How many houses were damaged or destroyed in this South Korean village all together?”
These sufferings are nicely contrasted with the prosperity enjoyed by the happy North Koreans. On the same page, the question about destroyed South Korean houses is immediately followed by this question: “In the village where Yong-shik lives, they are building many new houses. 120 of these houses have 2 floors. The number of houses with 3 floors is 60 more than the number of houses with two floors. How many houses have been built in Yong-shik’s village?”
Indeed, feats of productive labor often become topics of North Korean questions, with robots, tractors, TV sets, and houses being mentioned most frequently. Interestingly, in some cases questions might produce results that were clearly not intended by the compilers. For example, on page 116 one can find the following question: “In one factory workers produced 27 washing machines in 3 days. Assuming that they produce the same number of washing machines every day, how many machines do they produce in one day?” One has to struggle hard to imagine a factory that manages to produce merely nine washing machines a day, but the irony clearly escapes the textbook’s authors (after all, a washing machine is a very rare luxury item in North Korea).
Activists love to say that everything is political. Whether this is true in general, I know not, but primary school math textbooks in North Korea clearly are.
This description of Kim Il Sung’s North Korea might appear extremely unappealing to an inhabitant of a developed liberal democracy, or even an aspiring liberal democracy; indeed it is fair to say that in the 1960s Kim Il Sung managed to create a society that was arguably the closest approximation to an Orwellian nightmare in world history—and then maintained this society for nearly 30 years.
Most people whose lifelong experiences are very different probably imagine that the average North Korean would constantly feel restive and dissatisfied when living under such a regime. However, this was not the case. When living in North Korea myself, I could not help but find it remarkable how “normal” the daily lives usually were. North Koreans of the Kim Il Sung era were not brainwashed automatons whose favorite pastime was goose-stepping and memorizing the lengthy speeches of their Leaders (although both these activities had to be a part of their lives). Nor were they closet dissenters who waited for the first opportunity to launch a pro-democracy struggle or studied subversive samizdat texts (and not only because samizdat simply could not possibly exist in such a thoroughly controlled system). Neither were they docile slaves who sheepishly followed any order from above.
Of course, there were zealots as well as dissenters and people broken by the system but, on balance, the vast majority of North Koreans did not belong to any of these categories. Like most people of all ages and all cultures, they did not normally pay too much attention to politics, even though the state-imposed rituals were performed and obligatory statements were delivered when necessary. People in Kim Il Sung’s North Korea were mainly concerned about much the same things people in other societies focused on. They thought about their families, they hoped to get a promotion, they wanted to educate their children, they were afraid of getting sick, they fell in love. They enjoyed romance, good food, and good books, and didn’t mind a glass of liquor. The political and ideological was more prominent in their lives than in the lives of the average person elsewhere, but it still did not color most of their experiences.
On top of this, in the 1950s and 1960s the promises of Kim Il Sung’s national Stalinism did look attractive to many North Koreans. Had they possessed the benefit of hindsight they would have probably had second thoughts about their initial enthusiasm for—or, at least, acceptance of—the system. The grave consequences, however, did not become apparent until it was too late.
Indeed, for the average North Korean living in the 1950s Kim Il Sung’s system did not look uninviting. It assured modernity and economic
growth (first in industrial output and then in living standards). It vowed to maintain material equality while opening avenues of social advancement to people of humble origins. It promised to deliver justice to pro-Japanese collaborators whom the average Korean of the colonial period hated. This system was not democratic, to be sure, but its nondemocratic nature was probably seen only as a minor impediment by the majority.
We should not forget that Kim Il Sung was imposing his system on a country whose population overwhelmingly consisted of the sons and daughters of premodern subsistence farmers. These people had never been exposed to democracy even in theoretical terms, and Kim Il Sung’s system seemed to be better than what they had experienced before—being at the mercy of a feudal absolute monarchy and then a remarkably brutal colonial regime.
Information from the outside world did not hint at the existence of attractive alternatives elsewhere. The developed West had unsavory associations with colonialism and at any rate was too far removed and little known to be a viable object of emulation. South Korea until the late 1960s did not constitute a particularly attractive alternative, either. Contrary to what many ideologically biased historians claim nowadays, even at its lowest ebb the South Korean regime of Syngman Rhee was remarkably more permissive than its North Korean counterpart. Nonetheless, it was brutal—from available statistics, between the years 1945 and 1955 the number of people massacred for political reasons was actually larger in the South than in the North (a result of brutal anti-guerrilla campaigns). The South Korean regime also had a less equal distribution of wealth and to a large extent was dominated by former pro-Japanese collaborators. So until the late 1960s even a well-informed and unbiased observer would not have many reasons to see the South Korean system as vastly preferable to Kim Il Sung’s version of nationalist Stalinism.
At the time, even the material situation did not look so bad to the average North Korean. In the early 1960s tens of thousands of ethnic Koreans from China fled to North Korea to escape famine and chaos resulting from the Great Leap Forward and the other insane experiments of Chairman Mao. Those refugees were granted housing and assigned work
by the North Korean authorities. A man who was part of this exodus recently recalled his surprise at walking into a North Korean shop for the first time and discovering plastic buckets of various shapes and sizes for sale. Everybody could buy these wonderful items without coupons, and there was not even a need to queue!