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By Root 712 0

more talk of ideological matters in any issue of Arab Studies Journal than in a dozen issues of North Korean Review? The obvious if undiplomatic answer is that most Pyongyang watchers do not understand Korean well enough to read the relevant official texts. But even scholars with the requisite language skills would rather research other topics, usually of a military, nuclear or economic nature. One colleague told me he finds the North Korean personality cult too absurd to take seriously; indeed, he doubts whether even the leadership believes it. But no regime would go to such enormous expense, year in, year out for sixty years, to inculcate into its citizens a worldview to which it did not itself subscribe. (The only institution in the country that did not miss a beat during the famine of the mid-1990s was the propaganda apparatus.) As for absurdity: the examples of Nazi Germany and Pol Pot’s Cambodia show that a dictator and his subjects are capable of believing and acting upon ideas far more ridiculous than anything ever espoused by the Workers’ Party. For all the hyperbole in which it is couched, and the histrionics with which it is proclaimed, North Korean propaganda is not nearly as outlandish as the uninitiated think. No matter what some American Christian groups might claim, divine powers have never been attributed to either of the two Kims. In fact, the propaganda apparatus in Pyongyang has generally been careful not to make claims that run directly counter to its citizens’ experience or common sense. Granted, it has made museum exhibits out of chairs that Kim Il Sung rested on while visiting this factory or that farm, but there is no reason to doubt that he actually did sit on the things. (In most cases there is an authenticating photograph nearby.) This approach can be contrasted with that of Stalin’s Soviet Union, or Mao’s China, where propagandists were not quite so effusive or incessant in their praise of the leader, yet regularly made claims—of bumper harvests, for example—which everyone knew to be untrue.

While ignoring North Korean ideology, the West has assiduously, almost compulsively, added to its pile of “hard” information on the country. Much of this has come from experts in nuclear or economic studies. Aid workers have also contributed accounts of their experiences in the country. An international network of Google Earth users is busily identifying structures visible in aerial photographs.1 Despite all this, experts continue to describe North Korea as “puzzling,” “baffling,” a “mystery”—and no wonder. Hard facts cannot be put to proper use unless one first acquires information of a very different nature. If we did not know that Iran is an Islamic country, it would forever baffle us, no matter how good the rest of our intelligence might be.

Unfortunately a lack of relevant expertise has never prevented observers from mischaracterizing North Korean ideology to the general public. They call the regime “hard-line communist” or “Stalinist,” despite its explicit racial theorizing, its strident acclamation of Koreans as the world’s “cleanest” or “purest” race. They describe it as a Confucian patriarchy, despite its maternal authority figures, or as a country obsessed with self-reliance, though it has depended on outside aid for over sixty years. By far the most common mistake, however, has been the projection of Western or South Korean values and common sense onto the North Koreans. For example: Having been bombed flat by the Americans in the 1950s, the DPRK must be fearful for its security, ergo it must want the normalization of relations with Washington.

These various fallacies have combined to make the West worry less about North Korea’s nuclear program than about Iran’s. The word Confucianism makes us think of Singapore, Asian whiz-kids, and respect for the elderly; how much trouble can a Confucian patriarchy be? Self-reliance does not sound too dangerous either. Communism has a much less benign ring to it, of course, but if there is one thing we remember from the Cold War, it is that it ended peacefully.