"Mostly Propaganda in Nature:" Kim Il Sung, the Juche Ideology, and ...

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"Mostly Propaganda in Nature:" Kim Il Sung, the Juche Ideology, and the Second Korean War NKIDP Working Paper #3 Japan relations, and the elimination of most of the pro-Kim underground groups in the South. Fearful of falling behind in this critical competition, Kim thought it necessary to act to balance the scales. Again, there are subtle differences within the advocates of this position. Some have argued that Kim had a genuine belief that he might spark an indigenous uprising against the Southern government by reassuring Park's domestic opponents of Northern support; 19 others have argued the opposite, suggesting that Kim recognized that no such opposition movement existed in the South in the face of the growing strength of the Park regime, and that he would therefore have to increase efforts to destabilize the government himself. 20 Still others have suggested that Kim knew that he could not directly influence the Southern political situation but thought he might discourage foreign investment into the region by creating unstable conditions, slowing down ROK growth while driving a wedge between the ROK and their foreign investors. 21 Others have claimed that Kim's overseas audience was not limited to the West, but that instead he sought to show the world, particularly the Third World and the smaller Communist states, that the North was not intimidated by Southern advances and was still a power to be taken seriously. 22 Regardless of the specifics, however, this school is rooted in the idea that Kim's paradigm shift in the late 1960s derived largely from the improving domestic situation within South Korea. A fifth framework shifts the focus from the international to the domestic, and suggests that internal conflicts were at the heart of DPRK policy. Two specific interpretations dominate this school. The first focuses on the emergence of a more hard-line faction in DPRK politics. 19 Martin, p. 127 20 See, for example, Charles Armstrong, Necessary Enemies," US-Korea Institute Working Paper Series, WP 08-03, September 2008, p. 6; Bolger, Scenes from an Unfinished War; Balazs Szalontai, Maneuvering Between the Battling Whales: North Korea’s Involvement in the Second Indochina War, 1964-1975, unpublished paper in author's possession. 21 Yong Soon Yim, "The Dynamics of North Korean Military Doctrine," in Kwak, The Two Korea in World Politics, pp. 124-26 22 Wayne Kiyosaki, North Korea's Foreign Relations (Praeger, 1976), p. 80. www.wilsoncenter.org/nkidp 8
Mitchell Lerner NKIDP Working Paper #3 December 2010 Kim, in this argument, began in the late 1960s to rely more closely on a group of conservative, largely military, leaders who supported greater emphasis on military and defense spending, a focus on heavy industrial growth at the expense of consumer products, and a reduction of Chinese influence within their government. The growing influence of these more aggressive figures birthed the more strident military maneuvers against the South, designed both to reunify the country and justify the pro-heavy industry and military development positions of these men, according to this interpretation. 23 Another explanation that focuses on the domestic argues that the economic decline of the 1960s was at the heart of the matter, as Kim is alleged to have created this military crisis with the West in order to distract the public from their economic hardships, to have a convenient scapegoat for his economic failures, and/or to mobilize his people to work even harder to rebuild their manufacturing base in preparation for the inevitable American invasion. Kim, explained Robert Scalapino and Lee Chong-Sik, sought "to keep the tension high in order to justify the new sacrifices for which he was now calling." 24 A final explanation is perhaps the most complicated, and is the one that is largely championed in this paper. This argument also looks inside North Korea to explain Kim's aggressive behavior, but situates it in ideological rather than immediate political and economic imperatives. The critical piece to this interpretation is the ideological construct North Koreans call Juche, which roughly translates into "self-identity" or "self-reliance." Juche, which embraces Korean nationalism above all else, was first introduced by Kim in the 1950s and soon became the nation's governing precept. In this interpretation, various factors in the mid-1960s exacerbated Kim's need to demonstrate that he was still acting in accordance with Juche, specifically its emphasis on Korean nationalism and the cherished value of independent 23 Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung (Columbia, 1988), especially p. 227-248; Mobley, pp. 103-04. 24 Scalapino and Lee, pp. 596-97; Martin p. 127. www.wilsoncenter.org/nkidp 9
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