| Chapter 1: | The Culture and Ideology of the DPRK |
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in the greater context of North Korea’s ideological doctrine of military self-reliance.
In short, the policies designed to uphold the principles of political, economic, and military self-reliance may not be designed to attain maximum material payoff. In fact, they have been largely counterproductive for the development of industry and often detrimental to the welfare of the society as a whole. Nevertheless, the principles were intended to promote nationalism among the masses and to demonstrate the northern regime’s position of superiority vis-à-vis its southern counterpart. As already suggested, it is believed that during this period North Korea increased its sales of weapons, including short-range missiles to selected Middle Eastern states.8
Juche as Paternalist Socialism (1980s)
As the ideology became intimately tied to the regime as an instrument of legitimating its power, the leadership articulated a new theoretical dimension in which the leadership itself was sanctified as the generator and embodiment of the ideology. This process coincided not only with a quantum leap in the charisma of the Great Leader but also with the regime’s need to officially promote Kim Jong Il’s leadership, which began in conjunction with the Sixth Party Congress in 1980. Kim Il Sung saw a great flaw in the socialist systems of the Soviet Union, Vietnam, and China in the almost universal inability of the ruling elite to resolve the succession issue. It was not accidental in North Korea that the hereditary approach became the succession mechanism. The North Korean people had never seen a popularly elected leader in their entire history; the dynastic systems of early modern Korea had been replaced abruptly by Japanese colonial power. Kim Il Sung was quickly and naturally seen as a royal leader of sorts. Thus, deification of the leader’s family did not deviate from the age-old Oriental despotic cultural perspective.9
A significant implication of paternalism is that not only the father himself but indeed the whole family is destined to rule. This naturally