Perceptions of Juche ideology by expats in North Korea: A qualitative study

The central research question of this qualitative study was: What are expatriate perceptions of North Korean (Juche) ideology? Other studies on Juche have examined Juche from religious, political, or missiological lenses. However, few qualitative studies have been done on this subject. While it is nearly impossible to conduct research with North Koreans living in North Korea, this study collected data from nine expatriates who had lived in North Korea around the time of the interviews. From the data, two major categories emerged: the foundational influences and function of Juche. The results indicate that the participants perceive Juche to be influenced by Korean culture, nationalism, and humanism, while the participants understand the function of Juche as a system of control, a religion, and an ideology.

The religious phenomenon of Juche ideology as a political tool

This study aims to determine the motive that led to the establishment of Juche by Kim Il Sung amidst the influence of communism and its transformation into religion in North Korea. North Korea is a communist country dictated by Kim Jong-Un of the Kim dynasty and known for its cruelty. The country underwent several changes from Marxism-Leninism to familism to determine its strength in Juche. This ideology that acts as a religion was influenced and strengthened Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong-Un and built by shifting the concept of marxism-Leninism to construct a new understanding of Juche. It will be demonstrated that this ideology was influenced by Confucianism, Christianity, Nationalism, Chinese Communism, and Russian Communism. In the modern era, imperialism was used as an ideological tool to restrict backwardness. This theory allegedly helped Kim Il-Sung establish a unitary, one-person rule over North Korea. ‘It will be examined whether Juche ideology is a tool the state has used to convince people of their government. Pronouncements, an intentional religion in which the people were to believe that their Ruler (Kim Il Sung) was a supreme human or an ideology that morphed into a religion’. It will be demonstrated that, when they started honoring Kim as their god, no other religion was permitted.Contribution: This research offers readers an understanding of the value of humanity in the binding ideology of Juche. However, the Juche Ideology can serve as a missiological bridge towards mission goals, which require the experience of spiritual, physical, and social liberation.

Factors Influencing North Korean Worldview: Juche and Trauma

This article examines the worldview formation of North Koreans. While there is debate on what factors influence worldview formation in general, this article discusses two important factors that influence the worldview formation of North Koreans in particular, namely, Juche ideology and the traumatic suffering experienced by the populace. The article offers application points for ministry to and among North Koreans and concludes with suggestions for further research.

Two keys to Pyongyang’s past and future – moral center and Korean War

Pyongyang has been described as a center of evil that threatens the world with nuclear weapons. The city is perceived as both aggressive and controlled. This study explains those particularities of Pyongyang utilizing Wagner, Rudolf (2000) (“The moral center and the engine of change. A tale of two Chinese cities”. In: Peking Shanghai Shenzhen. Städte des 21. Jahrhunderts. Beijing Shanghai Shenzhen. Cities of the 21st Century. Vöckler, K and Luckow, D (eds.). Frankfurt: Campus Verlag, Edition Bauhaus, vol. 7, 452–459) theory of the Northeast Asian city as a moral center under the ongoing Korean War (although a ceasefire has been called, the war has not officially ended). This study starts by drawing similarities between Pyongyang and Hanyang, the capital of the Joseon Dynasty, which was established as a moral center according to the Rites of the Zhou Dynasty. I also look at the influence that the Korean War had on Pyongyang and find that Pyongyang was constructed to express the North Koreans socialist Juche ideology (self-reliance, subjecthood), while Hanyang expressed Confucian ideology. Pyongyang is more than just a moral center; it is “the Holy Land of Revolution” according to the “Administration Act of the Capital City Pyongyang”, where the war still takes place to defend the Juche Ideology and its supreme leader. The Korean War justifies the control in North Korea. The country utilizes the five-family control system inherited from the Joseon Dynasty. Its origin is legalism during the Warring States period (770−221 BC) in China. Control in Pyongyang has been strengthened because of the need for military operations in the unfinished Korean War, compared to Hanyang. Having relaxed political tensions in 2019, North Korea offers a vision for the future of Pyongyang as a “socialist fairyland” (seongyeong 仙境), which is related to Korea’s own Taoism (sinseon sasang 神仙思想). Developing Pyongyang with the Juche ideology from a Confucian tradition in the war, the city now reveals a unique means of cultural entanglement.

UNDERSTANDING JUCHE IDEOLOGY THROUGH PSYCHOLOGY OF PEACE AND CONFLICT IN NORTH KOREA

This paper examined moral justification due to Juche's ideology in North Korea as the main reason for the survival of the authoritarian regime and caused violence. By using Moral Justification analysist from Psychology of peace and conflict, this paper explain how Juche Ideology affected to Violence, How intervention toward north Korean Conflict from international society, and possible scenario to implemented in North Korea. However, North Korean conflict not only affected their national issue, but also international level. High number of Human Right Violation in this country can be understood by psychological of peace and conflict studies.

Historical-legal and linguistic analysis of constitutional construction in the Democratic people’s Republic of Korea

The article investigates the historical, technical, legal and linguistic features of the constitutional construction process in the Democratic people’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). Various aspects of the creation, legal and linguistic content of North Korean Constitutions are analyzed, the reasons for constitutional changes are consi­dered. The influence of Juche ideology and authoritarian governance model on the Constitution and legislation of the DPRK is investigated.

The Japanese Factor in the Making of North Korean Socialism

This article explores a commonly ignored aspect of Japan–North Korean relations: the Japanese factor in the making of Korean socialism. Korea was indirectly influenced by the Japanese Jiyuminken Movement, in the 1910s–1920s serving as a stepping-stone for the creation of a Japanese Communist Party. Wartime mobilization policies under Japanese rule were continued and expanded beyond the colonial era. The Juche ideology built on tendencies first exhibited in the 1942 Overcoming Modernity Conference in Japan, and in the 1970s some Japanese leftists viewed Juche as a humanist Marxism. Trade between Japan and North Korea expanded from 1961 onwards, culminating in North Korea’s default in 1976, from which point on relations soured between the two countries. Yet leaders with direct experience of colonial rule governed North Korea through to the late 1990s.

Songs for the Great Leader

Chapter 1 explores key songs to establish the formative issues and political ideologies of North Korea, from the beginnings of the creation of official history, through the notion of “popular,” to the 1960s, by which time cultural production was being brought into line with the juche ideology of “self-reliance” and the Ch’ŏllima unitary system of work under the cult of the paramount leader, Kim Il Sung. It looks at Soviet and Chinese influence on song production, and at the legacy of Japanese colonialism, as well as the factionalism that was rife among artists in Pyongyang. The chapter explores how a national identity was established in which folk songs were the foundation, though folk songs were remodeled, removing local particularity but accommodating the lyrical style of professional renditions to create a characteristic vocal style known as the juche voice, and censoring or adjusting lyrics to comply with ideology. Key song composers are introduced, distinguishing “songs of the people” from “songs for the people,” and discussing “revolutionary songs” and “immortal songs.”

Bringing North Korea to the negotiating table: unstable foundations of Kim Jong-un’s North Korean regime

This article investigates the linkage between Kim Jong-un’s power consolidation and Pyongyang’s abrupt return to the denuclearization negotiation table in 2018. It argues that behind Pyongyang’s turnabout lie the three unstable pillars of the Kim family’s rule: a faithful winning coalition, the juche ideology, and Chinese patronage. Upon taking office in 2011, Kim had to debilitate his father’s winning coalition to consolidate his power. With the winning coalition enervated, Kim could not expect its willingness to suppress the masses were they to develop into an ejectorate, and therefore introduced market reforms to secure the people’s support. The reforms, in return, inevitably eroded the ideological appeal of the Kim family, thereby rendering his hold on power more vulnerable to economic pressure. Under such circumstances, Chinese patronage increasingly faltered. It is due to the instability of these three pillars that Kim Jong-un returned to the negotiating table.

Visual Regimes of Juche Ideology in North Korea’s The Country I Saw

This article discusses the North Korean film series The Country I Saw, focusing on transformations in the function of the Japanese colonial gaze in post–Cold War North Korean media. By comparing and contrasting the representation of fact-based empiricist journalism in Part One (1988) with the expression of a mediated sovereign exceptionality in the sequels (2009–2010), the essay shows how the series gives aesthetic form to North Korean juche ideology and spectacles of a realized communist utopia in the decolonized DPRK only through the repetition of generally modern visual regimes that are integrally tied to the history of Japanese colonialism and US neocolonialism. It asks us to rethink the history of communist visual cultures, particularly in formerly colonized countries, in relation to this kind of repetition and appropriation of colonial ways of seeing within the media of communist, postcolonial nation-states.