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rage in imperial Japan, and Luftwaffe aces famously flew into battle with Mickey Mouse painted on their fuselages. More to the point, perhaps, South Koreans were as ready in 2008 to believe that America was saving its deadliest beef for their consumption as they were in 2002 to believe that US soldiers had run over two schoolgirls for the fun of it. Anti-Japanese sentiment, for its part, has actually increased in the ROK since a ban on Japanese cultural imports was lifted several years ago. There is little reason, therefore, to believe that smuggled CDs and DVDs will undermine the average North Korean’s hostility to the outside world.

The DPRK is more likely to suffer a mass legitimation crisis if it is seen as failing on its own ideological terms. Such a perception could result from a humiliating retreat in regard to nuclear weapons, but the North Korean leadership is less likely than our own to make that kind of error. The chronic nature of the economic malaise poses a greater problem. It is all well and good for the military-first regime to shrug off responsibility for such matters, but if the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent constituted such a glorious victory over the US, where, the malnourished citizen may well ask, are the material fruits of that victory?

But most dangerous to the regime, as I have already said, is the inevitable spread of public awareness that for all their anti-Americanism, the South Koreans are happy with their own republic and do not want to live under Pyongyang’s rule. There is just no way for the Text to make sense of this highly subversive truth. We should not, however, sit back and gloat over the regime’s troubles, because it is bound to counter any sign of internal unrest by ratcheting up tension with America or South Korea. The result could well be a serious conflict or even another attempt at “liberating” the South. While I take the experts’ word for it that the DPRK would be unable to beat either of its arch-rivals, I do not share their confidence that it would never be foolish enough to try. Although the anti-American and pro-North sentiments expressed in South Korean opinion polls are belied by the continued lack of support for a US troop pull-out, the DPRK has at least as much reason to expect a liberator’s welcome as America had in 2003 when it invaded Iraq.2 In any case, the prevalence of motherly authority figures, the glorification of “pure” racial instincts, the denigration of reason and restraint—all these things encourage rashness among the DPRK’s decision-makers just as they encourage spontaneous violence among average North Koreans. We must be careful what we wish for.

NOTES

Preface

1. Ramstad, “Gulags, Nukes and a Water Slide,” Wall Street Journal, May 22, 2009.

2. Sternhell, “Fascist Ideology,” 318.

3. Schurmann, Ideology and Organization in Communist China, 507.

4. Myers, “Ideology as Smokescreen: North Korea’s Juche Thought,” 161-182.

5. As Alfred Pfabigan noted in regard to his stay in Pyongyang in 1982, “all information that my minders give me, all memorial sites that I visit, all the teachings that are conveyed to me, are contained in the president’s biography.” Schlaflos in Pjöngjang, 58.

6. Propaganda published before the cultural revolution of the mid-1960s cannot be accessed even by the general public.

7. I have also been fortunate enough to visit North Korea on more than one occasion, the last time having been a day trip to Kaesong in 2008.

8. Myers, Han Sǒrya and North Korean Literature, 1994.

Chapter One

The Colonial Era, 1910-1945

1. See Mansourov, “Lessons of History and Contemporary Challenges in Korean-Chinese Relations,” Harvard Asia Quarterly, 1/2006.

2. Eckert, The Koch’ang Kims, 226. See also Shin, Ethnic Nationalism in Korea, 5-6.

3. On Japanese claims to an inherent moral superiority over other races, see Dower, War Without Mercy, 205.

4. It was a desire to reduce the Korean language to the status of a dialect, and not to stamp it out entirely, which induced the colonial authorities to crack down on its use in schools. Song