On Western Literature

Kim Il-sung made a speech at the Asian and African Writers' conference in Pyongyang in 1980 which attacked the U.S. cultural imperialism that was penetrating all the developing nations and destroying their nationalism and traditional values. He said in his speech:

``Literature is the soul of the nation and the mirror of the time. Writers are the protectors of national conscience and ideals, and guardians of the national spirit. Writers are great, when they portray the national sighting spirit in their literary work. They have a noble mission before time and history.''

His speech was reprinted in the Chosun Munhak in the April 1992 issue. Kim Il-sung emphasized that the writer's mission was to protect national and traditional values from U.S. imperialism, capitalism, and that South Korea was a typical U.S. cultural colony.

One North Korean critic identified Americanism as 'Yankeeism' which was again identified as 'loneliness,' 'betrayal of children against their parents', `lust', emotional starvation, child abuse, homosexuality, brutality, fear, abnormal sexuality, hatred, and massacres as shown in the Korean War.

A group of North Koreans viewed Existentialism represented by Camus and Sartre as the approximation of human limitation, loneliness, insecurity, humiliation, fear and a killer of the fighting spirit of the masses, the philosophy of death. They sometimes called it 'America's tragedy'. They characterized Western literature as useless and destructive.

They seem not to understand the ambiguity of poetry, describing all Western poems as ``garbage,'' ``waste products,'' ``anti-masses,'' and/or ``reactionary bourgeoisie.'' They were very critical of ``art for art's sake,'' and claim that so-called ``pure literature'' is not useful for human welfare at all. They condemn ``naturalism,'' ``imagism,'' ``romanticism,'' and other literary thought. Poetry and novels should only serve the masses' welfare, idealism, and revolutionary romanticism.

They saw Western literature as a tool of capitalism and imperialism as they saw their literature as a tool of ``socialist realism'' or party propaganda machine. They believed that literature and art should espouse progressive ideas to lead to the attainment of socialism.

The loyalty to class consciousness, which is the most essential element of socialist realism, originates from the presupposition that every artistic work reflects the ideology of an artist, and that art in a class society always has a specific class orientation. Supporters of socialist realism believe that literature and art should represent the proletariat's ideology, as all artistic works in a capitalist society inherently represent a bourgeois ideology.

As Maxim Gorky puts it, these requirements amount to a principle of the 'realism of people who are reconstructing and rebuilding the world' and suggests the way in which literature can contribute to their struggle for socialist development.