Juche

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Juche
Juche Tower, Pyongyang.
Chosŏn'gŭl: 주체
Hanja: 主體
McCune-Reischauer: Chuch'e
Revised Romanization: Juche

The Juche Idea (also Juche Sasang or Chuch'e; pronounced /tɕutɕʰe/ in Korean, approximately "joo-cheh") is the official state ideology of North Korea and the political system based on it. Kim Jong-il has explained that the doctrine is a component part of Kimilsungism, after its founder Kim Il-sung. The core principle of the Juche ideology since the 1970s has been that "man is the master of everything and decides everything". The official biography Kim Il Sung by Baik Bong had previously described this as saying that the masters of the North Korean revolution are the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and the Korean people, who must remake themselves, under its leadership. Juche literally means "main body" or "subject"; it has also been translated in North Korean sources as "independent stand" and the "spirit of self-reliance".

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[edit] Origin

Kim Il-sung advanced Juche as a slogan in a December 28, 1955, speech titled "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work" in rejection of the policy of de-Stalinization (bureaucratic self-reform) in the Soviet Union. The Juche Idea itself gradually emerged as a systematic ideological doctrine under the political pressures of the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. The word "Juche" also began to appear in untranslated form in English-language North Korean works from around 1965. Kim Il-sung outlined the three fundamental principles of Juche in his April 14, 1965, speech “On Socialist Construction and the South Korean Revolution in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”. The principles are "independence in politics" (chaju), "self-sustenance in the economy" (charip) and "self-defense in national defence" (chawi). Current North Korean leader Kim Jong-il officially authored the definitive statement on Juche in a 1982 document titled On the Juche Idea. He has final authority over the interpretation of the state ideology and incorporated the Songun (army-first) policy into it in 1996. In its theoretical composition, the Juche Idea is an amalgam of Neo-Confucianism, Soviet Stalinism and Maoism.

[edit] Practical application

According to Kim Jong-il's On the Juche Idea, the application of Juche in state policy entails the following: 1) The people must have independence (chajusong) in thought and politics, economic self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense; 2) Policy must reflect the will and aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in revolution and construction; 3) Methods of revolution and construction must be suitable to the situation of the country; and 4) The most important work of revolution and construction is molding people ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to constructive action. The Juche outlook also requires absolute loyalty to the party and leader. In North Korea, these are the Workers' Party of Korea and Kim Jong-il.

In official North Korean histories, one of the first purported applications of Juche was the Five-Year Plan of 1956-1961, also known as the Chollima Movement, which led to the Chongsan-ri Method and the Taean Work System. The Five-Year Plan involved rapid economic development of North Korea, with a focus on heavy industry, to ensure political independence from the Soviet Union and the Mao Zedong regime in China. The Chollima Movement, however, applied the same method of centralized state planning that began with the Soviet First Five-Year Plan in 1928. The campaign also coincided with and was partially based on Mao's First Five-Year Plan and the Great Leap Forward. But North Korea was apparently able to avoid the catastrophes of the GLF.

One of the understated realities of the Juche Idea in practice is that its economic program of "self-reliance" has resulted in economic dependence. Throughout its history, North Korea has been an aid-dependent regime. The country was also the second largest recipient of international food aid in 2005. Notably, in the period after the Korean War, North Korea relied on economic assistance and loans from "fraternal" countries from 1953-1963 and also depended considerably on Soviet industrial aid from 1953-1976. The Soviet Union remained North Korea's greatest economic benefactor until its collapse in 1991. Thereafter, the North Korean economy went into a crisis, with consequent infrastructural failures leading to the mass famines of the mid-1990s. Juche has begun to make cautious pragmatic adaptations to capitalism since 1998.

Besides political economy, the North Korean government has promulgated the state ideology as a political alternative to traditional religion and advocates a strong nationalist propaganda basis. But while Juche is fundamentally opposed to Christianity and Buddhism, the two largest religions on the Korean peninsula, Juche theoreticians have incorporated religious ideas into the state ideology. According to government figures, Juche is the largest political religion in North Korea. The public practice of all other religions is overseen and subject to heavy surveillance by the state. In 1992, American evangelist Billy Graham was invited to North Korea, where he met with Kim Il-sung, spoke at Kim Il-sung University, and preached at Protestant and Catholic churches in Pyongyang. Another American evangelist Rick Warren was invited to preach in North Korea in 2006.

[edit] Relation to socialism, Stalinism and Maoism

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The goal of revolution and construction under Juche is the establishment of socialism and communism within the national borders of North Korea; however, North Korean ideologists have argued that other countries should learn from Juche and adapt its principles to their national conditions. The North Korean government admits that Juche addresses questions previously considered in classical Marxism, but distances itself from and even repudiates aspects of this political philosophy. The official position is that Juche is a completely new ideology created by Kim Il-sung, who does not depend on the Marxist classics.

In 1972, Juche replaced Marxism-Leninism in the revised North Korean constitution as the official state ideology, this being a response to the Sino-Soviet split. Commentators outside North Korea equate Juche with Stalinism and call North Korea a Stalinist country. Kim Il-sung's policy statements and speeches from the 1940s and 1950s confirm that the North Korean government accepted Joseph Stalin's 1924 theory of "socialism in one country". But when a deceased Stalin's cult of personality was denounced at the 1956 Twentieth Party Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, North Korean state authorities ended overt adulation of the Soviet leader. The regime, however, refused to follow the example of Soviet political reform or to abandon its pre-1956 orthodox Stalinist economic program by joining the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance (COMECON). Presently, the North Korean government admits no connection between Juche and the ideas of Stalin, though occasional mention is made of his supposed political merits.

Although the influence of Mao Zedong is also not formally acknowledged in North Korea, WPK ideologists and speechwriters began to openly use Maoist ideas, such as the concept of self-regeneration, in the 1950s and 1960s. Maoist theories of art also began to influence North Korean musical theatre during this time. These developments occurred as a result of the influence of the Chinese Army's five-year occupation of North Korea after the Korean War, as well as during the Sino-Soviet split when Kim Il-sung sided with Mao against Soviet de-Stalinization. Kim attended middle school in Manchuria, he was conversant in Chinese, and he had been a guerrilla partisan in the Communist Party of China from about 1931-1941.

While advocating that Juche is tailored to the national peculiarities of North Korea, as opposed to conforming to the premises of classical Marxist international socialism (e.g., the workers of the world have no nation), the North Korean government does make some reference to the pre-Stalin internationalists Karl Marx, Frederick Engels and Vladimir Lenin as creditable leaders of the socialist movement in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries before the advent of Juche. But the writings of classical Marxism are generally forbidden for lay readers in North Korea.

[edit] Criticism

Human rights monitoring organizations and political analysts in several parts of the world continually report that the actual situation in North Korea bears no resemblance to Juche theory. The country's economy has depended heavily on imports and foreign aid before and after the collapse of the Communist trading bloc. They also claim that the opinions of the people have no actual weight in decision-making, which is under Kim Jong-il's autocratic control. Leading Juche theorist Hwang Jang-yop has joined these criticisms since defecting to South Korea, although he maintains his belief in the Juche Idea as he understands it. Political scientist Han S. Park and theologian Thomas J. Belke liken Juche to a religious movement.[1]

[edit] Juche in other countries

During the Cold War, North Korea promoted Juche and the principle of "self-reliance" as a guide for other countries, particularly third world countries, to build socialism. Indonesian president Sukarno visited North Korea in 1964 and attempted to implement the North Korean economic program in his country, but it resulted in failure. Romanian president Nicolae Ceauşescu was impressed by ideological mobilization and mass adulation in North Korea during his Asia visit in 1971, and began his Systematization campaign shortly afterward with those features.

The North Korean government hosted its first international seminar on the Juche Idea in September 1977. Juche study groups exist in several countries around the world. The Korean Central News Agency and the Voice of Korea sometimes refer to statements by these groups. The International Institute of the Juche Idea in Japan and the Korean Friendship Association in Spain are two of the most prominent of these groups.

[edit] Juche calendar

The North Korean government and associated organisations use a variation of the Gregorian calendar with a Juche year based on April 15, 1912 A.D., the date of birth of Kim Il-sung, as year 1. There is no Juche year 0. The calendar was introduced in 1997. Months are unchanged from those in the standard Gregorian calendar. In many instances, the Juche year is given after the A.D. year, for example, 27 June 2005 Juche 94. But in North Korean publications, the Juche year is usually placed before the corresponding A.D. year, as in Juche 94 (2005). Calendar schemes based on political era are also found in the Japanese era name (Nengo) system and in the Minguo year numbering system used in the Republic of China (Taiwan), though these are not based on the birth of an individual as in the Gregorian and Juche calendars. Incidentally, the year numbers of the Juche calendar and the era of the Republic of China correspond to each other even though both calendar years are not meant to be related.

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Juche (Major Religions Ranked by Size). Retrieved on 2006-10-10.

[edit] References

[edit] External links

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