The Cleanest Race - B. R. Myers [4]
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This book is divided into two parts. The first recounts the historical development of the official culture, starting with its origins in colonial Korea. In the second part I will discuss each of the Text’s main myths in turn, from those of the Korean child race and its motherly leaders to the myth of the “Yankee colony” to the south. Each chapter in part two contains an italicized section in which I take the liberty of condensing the relevant myth to a page or two, telling it sans excursions and in strict chronological order—admittedly, a very un- Korean thing to do. This way the reader can check the main assertions of anti-American propaganda, say, without necessarily having to bother with my ensuing evaluation of it. (These sections were written with a view to the many people who have complained to me about the unreadable diffuseness and repetitiveness of the few North Korean books available in English.) Although I have written these sections in a prose meant to replicate the effusiveness of the original propaganda, I do not want anyone mistaking them for direct quotes; hence the italics.
In closing, let me make perfectly clear that in this book (if not in my last book on North Korean culture) I am more interested in thematic content than aesthetic form.8 I also focus more on propaganda that sheds light on North Korea’s relationship to the outside world than on propaganda regarding, say, the land reclamation project. If this constitutes “essentializing,” to use a trendy pejorative, so be it. Anyone interested in a discussion of the DPRK’s literature as literature, or art as art, is advised to look elsewhere. So too are readers who want to know how the propaganda apparatus is organized, how the broadcast networks operate, and so on.
The McCune-Reischauer system is used throughout this book, with the customary exceptions for names (e.g. Kim Il Sung) and words (e.g. juche) better known in other spellings. Finally, I would like to thank Dongseo University for supporting my research, and Ms Eunjeong Lee for helping me track down certain North Korean materials. Responsibility for all errors in this book is mine.
B.R. Myers, Busan, South Korea, October 2009
PART I
A History of North Korea’s Official Culture
CHAPTER ONE
THE COLONIAL ERA, 1910-1945
Korean schoolchildren in North and South learn that Japan invaded their fiercely patriotic country in 1905, spent forty years trying to destroy its language and culture, and withdrew without having made any significant headway. This version of history is just as uncritically accepted by most foreigners who write about Korea. Yet the truth is more complex. For much of the country’s long history its northern border was fluid, and the national identities of literate Koreans and Chinese mutually indistinguishable.1 Believing their civilization to have been founded by a Chinese sage in China’s image, educated Koreans subscribed to a Confucian worldview that posited their country in a position of permanent subservience to the Middle Kingdom. Even when Korea isolated itself from the mainland in the seventeenth century, it did so in the conviction that it was guarding Chinese tradition better than the Chinese themselves. For all their xenophobia, therefore, the Koreans were no nationalists. As Carter Eckert has written, “There was little, if any, feeling of loyalty toward the abstract concept of Korea as a nation-state, or toward fellow inhabitants of the peninsula as ‘Koreans.’ ”2 It was not until the late nineteenth century, and under Japanese sponsorship, that a reform-minded cabinet undertook measures to establish Korea’s independence and imbue the people with a sense of national pride.
The Japanese freed the peninsula from China only to take it for themselves. In