North Korea Adopts New Propaganda Tool

Books regarding North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his father and the late leader Kim Il-sung are displayed for sale to visitors at a hotel bookstore in central Pyongyang, Oct. 24. / Reuters-Yonhap

By Andrei Lankov
Korea Times Columnist

Until some time a decade ago, the North Korean populace was expected and required to believe in a very simple world picture.

The North, led by the glorious dynasty of omniscient and benevolent rulers, was the best society on the face of the Earth, much envied and glorified by the less fortunate peoples of other countries.

The rest of the world was inferior, though people in the socialist countries admittedly fared better than the helpless inhabitants of the capitalist hell.

But worst of all was South Korea, the colony of the U.S. imperialists who exploited it with unparalleled brutality.

A quarter of all South Korean women were prostitutes who had to serve the Yankees' lust to survive. Eight million unemployed people wandered the streets looking for non-existent jobs.

Kids were polishing the boots of the occupiers while students survived by selling their blood to the American ``doctors'' (of course, those two legged wolves came to Korea to exploit Koreans, not cure them).

However, around 2000 the North Korean watchers (well, actually a handful of them with the time and ability to read the official press systematically) began to notice a new image of the South emerge.

Brian Myers, the ever observant reader of North Korean press and fiction first noticed the signs of this quiet transformation when it was only beginning.

Soon it became clear that he was right. A new propaganda line was being born. Interestingly, this time the new line was introduced not through newspapers, but in a more subtle way, through works of fiction, which also have to be approved by the supreme ideological authorities.

The new South Korea which emerged in these writings wasn't so poor. Actually, it was not poor at all. The characters in recent North Korean novels, which deal with the imaginary life of the South, enjoy a lifestyle far superior to that of the average North Korean. They drive cars, dine out easily and live in expensive houses.

As Myers pointed out, the North Korean authors have poor ideas of how expensive Seoul real estate has become, so they sometimes overestimate South Korean's income levels. In one novel, a young South Korean journalist buys a house in a very expensive neighborhood after merely a few years of work.

Does this mean that the new image of the South is positive? Of course not! South Korean society might be rich, the propaganda operators say, but it is still inferior to the North.

The South Koreans had to pay a terrible price for their success: they were deprived of their precious national identity.

The cultural uniqueness and racial purity of the great Korean nation has become endangered. Mixed marriages are mentioned frequently and in a way that makes readers believe they are between the same lusty Americans and young Korean women.

The spiritual pollution has become a great problem. The American military presence is to blame. The Americans and their puppets deliberately keep the country in this state of pollution and degradation.

It is remarkable that no exception is given even to those politicians who are seen as friendly toward the North. While the North Korean newspapers occasionally published something positive about Kim Dae-jung, the South Korean leader was still depicted in fiction as a disgusting personality, a clownish lackey of the American imperialists.

However, the propaganda insists, the South Koreans themselves are not happy about this situation. They dream about liberation and purification, and their hopes are pinned on Pyongyang and, above all, the Dear Leader himself. In recent years, North Korean propaganda has insisted that Kim Jong -il is worshipped in the South. Similar statements were made earlier as well.

According to this new logic, the North is a torchbearer, a proud protector of nationhood and racial purity. South Korean prosperity is tainted and hence should not be envied.

The North must fight for the ultimate salvation of the South, and such salvation can be achieved only through unification under the North Korean auspices, so all South Koreans will be able to enjoy the loving care of the Dear Leader. Only American troops and a handful of national traitors prevent this dream from coming true? So far, yes.

How did such a change take place? It is quite obvious, actually: the gradual spread of information from overseas has made the old myth of South Korean destitution unsustainable.

In the late 1990's, the self-imposed information blockade began to crumble, and news about life in the outside world began to penetrate North Korea.

Smuggled foreign DVDs are widely watched, with Seoul movies and shows being exceptionally popular. These dangerous rumors are also spread by North Koreans who visit China frequently, as they are exposed to information about the South.

Hence, the North Korean ideologues had to change their tune. Since they cannot insist on material superiority, they began to rely on the nationalist message. The modernization of the South can easily be presented as its corruption, and this is widely done indeed. The North Koreans are taught to feel superior to their southern brethren, but not because the North has a better economy. It does not, and even Pyongyang itself tacitly admits it, but because it embodies the lofty national ideal.

It seems, however, that this new line creates a new set of problems in the longer run. The official worldview cannot "spin" the South Koreans' complete indifference to Kim Jong -il and their pride in the ROK. This, as Myers said, is the reason why North Korea refused to follow FIFA rules in February, and did not allow Red Devil soccer fans to travel to Pyongyang, where they would have waved the Southern flag. Such things are somewhat easier to hide than South Korea's superior wealth, but only slightly.

The present author sometimes argues with Brian Myers, but we both agree that in the short term, the new strategy is working but in the long run it will prove to be unsustainable. The question is how long the "long run" is. No amount of nationalist rhetoric can withstand the pressures of reality forever (even though it can resist for another decade or two).

The ideology of the regime has changed quietly but significantly. The emphasis now is on nationalism, and this might help the system to win some additional time.