The North Korean Revolution, 1945–1950 9780801468803

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
1. Revolution on the Margins
2. Liberation, Occupation, and the Emerging New Order
3. Remaking the People
4. Coalition Politics and the United Front
5. Planning the Economy
6. Constructing Culture
7. A Regime of Surveillance
8. The People’s State
Conclusion
Appendix A: A Note on Sources
Appendix B: Statements of General Chistiakov on the Soviet Occupation of North Korea, Fall 
Selected Bibliography
Index

Citation preview

The North Korean Revolution, –

S   E A I, C U The East Asian Institute is Columbia University’s center for research, publication, and teaching on modern East Asia.The Studies of the East Asian Institute were inaugurated in  to bring to a wider public the results of significant new research on modern and contemporary East Asia. A list of selected titles in the series appears at the end of the book.

The North Korean Revolution,  – C K. A

Cornell University Press

  

Copyright ©  by Cornell University All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in a review, this book, or parts thereof, must not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher. For information, address Cornell University Press, Sage House,  East State Street, Ithaca, New York . First published  by Cornell University Press First printing Cornell Paperbacks  Printed in the United States of America A Study of the East Asian Institute Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Armstrong, Charles K. The North Korean revolution, – / Charles K. Armstrong. p. cm.—(Studies of the East Asian Institute.) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN ---- (pbk. : alk. paper) . Revolutions—Korea (North)—History—th century. . Korea (North)—History—th century. I. Title. II. Series. DS. .A  .—dc  Cornell University Press strives to use environmentally responsible suppliers and materials to the fullest extent possible in the publishing of its books. Such materials include vegetable-based, low-VOC inks and acid-free papers that are recycled, totally chlorine-free, or partly composed of nonwood fibers. For further information, visit our website at www.cornellpress.cornell.edu Paperback printing

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For Elia

Contents

List of Illustrations ix Acknowledgments xi List of Abbreviations xv

Introduction

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. Revolution on the Margins

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. Liberation, Occupation, and the Emerging New Order . Remaking the People

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. Coalition Politics and the United Front . Planning the Economy . Constructing Culture

Conclusion

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 

. A Regime of Surveillance . The People’s State

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Appendix A: A Note on Sources  Appendix B: Statements of General Chistiakov on the Soviet Occupation of North Korea, Fall   Selected Bibliography  Index 

Illustrations

Villagers on the way to a rally

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Folk dancing at a political rally

“Look! Young comrades burning with patriotism!” Patients at a Workers’ Rest Center Collecting the agricultural tax

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Russian female doctor and Korean patient Factory workers

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Korean and Soviet students at a New Year’s party in the USSR Accepting a prize as a model farmer

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May Day, : students of the School for Bereaved Families of Revolutionaries

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May Day, : physical education teams on parade “The children of North Korea are so free” Local self-defense forces

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Cover of the illustrated magazine Hwalsal

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Acknowledgments

I thank the many people responsible for the book’s completion, particularly Bruce Cumings, without whose advice, encouragement, and example this project could never even have been imagined, much less carried out. Other scholars at the University of Chicago also did a great deal to inspire and guide me, especially Harry Harootunian, Prasenjit Duara, Tetsuo Najita, and Michael Geyer.They, along with my fellow students Henry Em, Namhee Lee, Suk-jun Han, and many others, made Chicago an exciting and challenging place for the study of modern history in general and modern East Asia in particular. Friends and fellow scholars in Japan, China, the Republic of Korea, and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea have been gracious and helpful during my visits to their countries. At Korea University in Seoul, where I spent the ‒ academic year as a Fulbright researcher, Choi Jang Jip was an inspiring mentor, Kang Man’gil a towering source of information, and Pak Myo˘ngnim an invaluable guide.Over the last ten years I have been privileged to observe a new generation of bright, brave, and diligent South Korean scholars changing the face of contemporary Korean history. I am indebted to Ryu Kilchae, Yi Chongso˘k, Kim So˘ngbo, Kim Chaeyong, and Paik Hak Soon for advice and help, and for their fine scholarship from which I have learned so much. At the National Archives, the indefatigable Pang Sun-ju showed me around the North Korean captured document collection on each of my visits. Professor Pang knows this archive better than anyone else. Rich Boylen and other archivists in Suitland and College Park patiently assisted me in my search for relevant documentary sources. James Palais of the University of Washington, where I spent a year as a lecturer in the Jackson School of International Studies, read the manuscript and xi

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Acknowledgments

offered many valuable suggestions for improvement. Professor Dae-Sook Suh of the University of Hawaii also gave many useful and erudite comments. A year as a visiting assistant professor at Princeton University in ‒ offered me the good fortune of working with and getting much useful feedback from Stephen Kotkin, Gilbert Rozman, David Wolff, David Howell, and other scholars of modern Northeast Asia. At Columbia University, where I have taught since , I have found my work greatly stimulated and enriched by my colleagues in the history department and in the East Asian Institute, especially Carol Gluck, Gari Ledyard, Anders Stephanson, Madeleine Zelin, and Samuel Kim. Under the auspices of Columbia’s Center for Korean Research,Alexandre Mansourov, then a graduate student at Columbia, worked assiduously to obtain and translate many useful Soviet documents relating to the Korean War. Madge Huntington of the East Asian Institute’s publications department did much to help improve the manuscript for publication in the Institute’s series, and Roger Haydon of Cornell University Press has been a superbly helpful and insightfully critical editor. I also thank Wada Haruki, Lim Chul, Carter Eckert, Michael Robinson, and other Korea scholars for their advice and criticism at various stages in this project. Funding for my research was provided by numerous grants and fellowships along the way, including a Foreign Language and Area Studies grant at the University of Chicago, a University of Chicago East Asia Center grant, a Fulbright student research grant, a MacArthur Research and Training Grant, two travel grants from the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, and two junior faculty development grants from Columbia University’s Humanities and Social Sciences Council. The Center for Korean Research at Columbia University financed a visit to the DPRK in  that, although not directly research-related, did a great deal to enhance my understanding of contemporary North Korea. I thank Stephen Linton of the Eugene Bell Foundation for organizing that trip and for the rich insights into North Korean life that he has shared with me on numerous occasions. Final revisions on the manuscript were made during my visit to Seoul on a Fulbright Senior Scholar grant in . I thank Young-ick Lew, director of the Institute for Modern Korean Studies at Yonsei University, for offering me a home base and many valuable resources and contacts during my second Fulbright stay. I also thank Dr. Horace H. Underwood, executive director of Fulbright in Korea, for his flexibility and generosity during this period of research, and Pang Ki-chung of Yonsei University and the students in his contemporary Korean history seminar for many enriching hours of discussion on recent Korean historiography. An earlier version of chapter  was published in Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique , no.  (winter ). I thank the editors of Positions for their kind permission to reproduce it here.

Acknowledgments

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My parents, David and Lea Armstrong, and my entire extended family have shown great patience and understanding during the seemingly interminable process of research, writing, and publication of this book. My work has been greatly inspired by my older daughter, Mira, who has grown up with this book, and her younger sister, Sara, who was born shortly before its completion. Finally, my most important thanks are for Elia, who has been with me throughout the years it took to complete this book and encouraged my work while helping me to put it into proper perspective.

Abbreviations

CCP CPKI DFUF DNUF DYL KCP KCP-NKB KDP KPA KWP NCLU NFPU NKFTU NKPC NKPL NKPPC NKWP RPU SCA SKWP UNTCOK YFP

Chinese Communist Party Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence Democratic Front for the Unification of the Fatherland Democratic National United Front Democratic Youth League Korean Communist Party Korean Communist Party–North Korea Bureau Korean Democratic Party Korean People’s Army Korean Workers’ Party National Council of Labor Unions National Federation of Peasant Unions North Korean Federation of Trade Unions North Korean People’s Committee North Korean Peasant League North Korean Provisional People’s Committee North Korean Workers’ Party Red Peasant Union Soviet Civil Administration South Korean Workers’ Party United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea Young Friends’ Party

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The North Korean Revolution, –

38°N

Map of Korea in , with the th parallel dividing the peninsula between North and South.

Introduction

On September , , a little more than three years after Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule and just three weeks after the Republic of Korea had been founded in Seoul,the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) was established in Pyongyang. Fifty years later, after the Soviet Union that had helped create the DPRK and the East European “People’s Democracies” had fallen into the dustbin of history, after China and Vietnam had moved their economies well down the road of market reform, and after South Korea had eclipsed the North in economic development and international recognition, the DPRK remained—along with Cuba—the last outpost of unreformed Marxism-Leninism. Having once presented itself as part of the wave of the future, North Korea was now a sad or dangerous curiosity, a historic relic with a shattered economy and a society suffering from widespread hunger.Yet the DPRK had outlived forecasts of its imminent demise that had been predicted since at least the late s. A major source of the DPRK’s strength and resiliency, as well as many of its serious flaws and shortcomings, I contend, lies in the poorly understood origins of the North Korean system. This book examines the origins of the DPRK both as an important yet rarely examined example of Marxist-Leninist state socialism and as part of modern Korean history. North Korea is an ideal microcosm for understanding the phenomenon of Marxist-Leninist state socialism, a form of political, economic, and social organization and control that began with the Bolshevik revolution in Russia and, by the middle of the twentieth century, seemed relentlessly on the march throughout Eurasia.1 The Soviet Union was, of course, a major influence . Along with sociologists such as Michael Burawoy and David Lane, I prefer the term “state socialism,” which suggests the implementation of a particular vision of socialism primarily through the

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Introduction

on the DPRK, and many of North Korea’s early leaders had spent a considerable amount of time in the USSR. Like eastern Germany, Poland, and other East European countries, North Korea was occupied by the Soviet Army immediately after World War II. But the DPRK leadership was also intimately linked to the Chinese revolution, and many of the key political figures in North Korea, including Kim Il Sung, had been members of the Chinese Communist Party. The core of the DPRK army was composed of ethnic Korean veterans of the Chinese revolution. Korea, like Vietnam, was a country recently released from colonial rule,and in both of these countries the communist movement had been closely associated with anticolonial nationalism. No other state socialist regime combined close ties with the USSR and China, Soviet occupation, and postcolonial environment as did the DPRK. The North Korean regime must also be seen in the context of several decades of radical nationalism in Korea, in which socialism and association with international communism and the USSR were seen by some as the best solution to the linked problems of colonial subjection and “backwardness.”2 What was attractive to such radical nationalists was the Soviet model of successful and independent industrialization, combined with a more just and equitable distribution of economic benefit: a controlled, rationally planned, anticapitalist and anticolonial modernity. From the perspective of those who brought the DPRK into being, Marxist-Leninist state socialism represented an attempt to link Korea to the dynamic trajectory of world history, to make Korea modern.This was of course equally true for communists and their supporters who came to power in China, North Vietnam, and parts of Eastern Europe. As Milovan Djilas would later recall, in the aftermath of global depression and World War II, Soviet-style communism was an immensely inviting vehicle for those “who desired to skip over centuries of slavery and backwardness.”3 For the proponents and founders of this system, the DPRK was supposed to take Korea on a path of modernity vehicle of the state, for regimes that have been variously called “communist,” “Leninist,” or “MarxistLeninist.” See Michael Burawoy, The Politics of Production (London: Verso, ), , and David Lane, The Rise and Fall of State Socialism (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, ). Lane defines state socialism as “a society distinguished by a state-owned, more or less centrally administered economy, controlled by a dominant communist party which seeks, on the basis of Marxism-Leninism and through the agency of the state, to mobilize the population to reach a classless society” (p. ). I find Lane’s definition generally useful, leaving aside the question of such a state’s sincere intention to “mobilize the population to reach a classless society” and what exactly that means. . I refer to Korean communists and other left-wing nationalists during and immediately after the colonial period as “radical nationalists,” whether or not these individuals grasped Marxist-Leninist theory well enough to be considered “genuine communists.” Cf. Michael Robinson, “Ideological Schism in the Korean Nationalist Movement, –: Cultural Nationalism and the Radical Critique,” Journal of Korean Studies, no.  (–): – . . Milovan Djilas, Conversations with Stalin, cited in John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon, ), .

Introduction



modeled on the Soviet Union, in the postcolonial context of a newly independent country: a specifically noncapitalist, anticolonial modernity that would propel Korea from the status of a backward, subjugated nation into the forefront of social, cultural, and technological progress. For the first two or three decades of its existence North Korea seemed even for its critics to be a success, in economic development if not in political rights;4 since then, North Korea has been viewed increasingly as one of the worst examples of a failed experiment in social engineering in the twentieth century.Yet few have examined how this system worked from the inside to determine the causes and effects of this success or failure. This book is a study of political, cultural, economic, and social change in North Korea in the formative period of the socialist regime, between liberation from Japanese rule and the beginning of Soviet occupation in August  to the outbreak of the Korean War in June . As research on DPRK history within North Korea itself remains largely closed to foreign scholars, I base much of this book on a vast and relatively untapped collection of North Korean documents captured by American forces during the Korean War and currently housed in the U.S. National Archives.5 During – , North Korea was the site of a rapid, widespread, and sometimes violent social and political upheaval that by most common definitions would be considered a revolution.6 Several key elements of this experience constitute my four main themes. First, despite the high degree of Soviet influence and support in constructing a communistoriented regime in their zone of occupation, communism in North Korea almost immediately became “indigenized,” and the distinctively Korean elements . See, for example, United States Central Intelligence Agency, Korea: The Economic Race Between North and South (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ), which suggests that North Korea exceeded the South in per capita GNP growth well into the s. . The collection is listed by the National Archives and Records Administration as Record Group , National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, –, including Records Seized by U.S. Forces in Korea. References to this collection in the text are cited by group, shipping advice, box number, and item number, e.g., RG , SA , /. See appendix A for more details on RG  and other sources. . Theda Skocpol describes a revolution as an event that “marks a fundamental and irreversible change in the organization of a society and the destruction, often rapid and violent, of a previous form of social and political organization, together with the myths which sustained it and the ruling groups it sustained, and their replacement by a new institutional order sustained by new myths and sustaining new rules.” Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ),  – . We now know that communist revolutions are not irreversible, but otherwise Skocpol’s definition fits North Korea extremely well. Of course, there is a difference in origin between a revolution that results from a lengthy indigenous struggle against the old regime (France, Russia, and China) and one that takes place under the supervision of a foreign revolutionary regime. But the end result may be largely the same. Furthermore, all three continental East Asian communist movements (China, Korea, and Vietnam) were deeply interconnected, and none was entirely autonomous from the USSR. The difference for North Korea was the physical presence of the Soviet Army in the formative period of the regime, but even this aspect is shared by parts of China.

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Introduction

of the North Korean system were evident from the very beginning of the regime.This indigenization was not always noticed by outside observers at the time, especially Americans, who tended to view all developments in North Korea as the product of absolute Soviet control. Of course, the context for the North Korean revolution was a Soviet occupation. It is now clear that much of the direction of central policies came either from the Soviet Civil Administration in Pyongyang or directly from Moscow.7 But Soviet involvement tells only half the story.The environment of the Soviet occupation of northern Korea, unlike that in Eastern Europe, was an East Asian agrarian society recently emerged from colonial rule. Certain policies, such as land reform, were immensely popular regardless of whether Russians or Koreans drafted the laws. Moreover, the Korean input into these policies, whether that of the regime in Pyongyang or in the process of ground-level implementation, was greater than a reading of Soviet sources alone would suggest. In the area of ideology, for example, one of the most distinctively Korean elements of communism in North Korea was its emphasis on ideas over material conditions. Koreans shared this Marxist heresy with their counterparts in China and Vietnam, but this humanistic and voluntaristic emphasis was even more pronounced in Korea than in the other two East Asian communist revolutions, which may reflect the fact that Korea had long been more orthodox in its Confucianism than Vietnam or China. Korean communists tended to turn Marx on his head, as it were, valorizing human will over socioeconomic structures in a manner more reminiscent of traditional Confucianism than classic MarxismLeninism. In short, the social and cultural context of the communist revolution in North Korea resulted in a society that looked less like Poland, a country occupied by the Red Army, than Vietnam, a country that was not. North Korea simply cannot be seen as a typical post–World War II Soviet satellite along the lines of East Germany or Poland, where leaders with longstanding ties to the USSR and long periods of residence in the Soviet Union were implanted by the Soviet occupation forces, where the Soviet Army remained the authority of last resort for decades afterward, and where the withdrawal of Soviet support quickly led to these regimes’ demise. The North Korean revolution may not have been entirely autonomous, but its indigenous elements allowed it to endure. Among the most important elements of this indigenization was Korean nationalism, which at the beginning was partially hidden under a veneer of fulsome praise for the USSR and for Stalin. But nationalism and pro-Soviet orientation were not mutually exclusive in East Asia at the time. For Chinese, Vietnamese, and Korean radical nationalists, state socialism was a compelling . Kathryn Weathersby,“Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, –: New Evidence from the Russian Archives,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. , Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, November .

Introduction



route to national liberation and modernity, especially when the USSR had been the only major country to give material assistance to their struggles against colonialism.When such nationalists came to power in their respective countries, they did not see close ties to the USSR and public veneration for Stalin as contradictory to national independence; indeed, in their eyes, these were the very prerequisites for genuine independence. In any case, the distinction between “authentic” and “imposed” communist regimes, with the DPRK almost always in the latter category in taxonomies of socialist states,8 is not an altogether viable distinction. As Janos Kornai has pointed out, all socialist states except for the USSR itself “resulted from combinations of internal forces and external support in varying proportions.”9 Despite its origins under Soviet occupation, the DPRK subsequently followed the pattern of the People’s Republic of China and socialist Vietnam in building on a core of nationalist sentiment, filling a socialist form borrowed from the USSR with a highly nationalist content. And like China and Vietnam, North Korea managed to maintain its political viability even after the collapse of the Soviet Union and its satellites, including the one genuine Soviet satellite in eastern Asia, the Mongolian People’s Republic. The nationalist elements in the formation of the North Korean system, even during the period of Soviet occupation, have long been ignored but are clearly apparent in any close examination of the DPRK. Second, and related to the first theme, is the importance of history and political culture predating the  liberation. North Korea, despite what both its supporters and detractors insisted, did not wipe out Korea’s past and start from scratch.We cannot understand what developed in North Korea before  or since without taking into consideration the background of Japanese colonialism as well as the deeper patterns of culture and behavior carried over from Korea’s past. The most immediate historical legacy for liberated Korea was the political vacuum, social dislocation, and cultural humiliation created by thirtyfive years of Japanese rule, and the sudden end of that rule after a period of wrenching wartime mobilization in –.The Japanese, through their relatively brief but intense colonial occupation, left behind a powerful state apparatus that was used in differing ways by the Americans in the South and the Soviets in the North.10 They also left behind the basis of an industrial economy, . See Robert C.Tucker,“Communist Revolutions, National Cultures, and the Divided Nations,” Studies in Comparative Communism , no.  (autumn ): – . . Janos Kornai, The Socialist System:The Political Economy of Communism (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . Having said that, Kornai nevertheless proceeds to divide socialist states into “indigenous” and “externally imposed” regimes, putting North Korea squarely into the second category. . Bruce Cumings,The Origins of the Korean War, vol.,Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes,  – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ) emphasizes the continuity between the Japanese colonial state, the U.S. military government, and the Republic of Korea (South Korea), especially in the areas of government bureaucracy, police, and military. Such continuities in the North have received very little attention.

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Introduction

especially in the northern part of the peninsula; a highly fragmented nationalist movement, decimated by years of heavy-handed repression; a relatively small and weakening Korean landlord class (particularly in the North) and a mass of disenfranchised farmers.The socialist regime in North Korea attempted to address, and was in turn shaped by, each of these legacies. At a deeper level is the more elusive question of Korean tradition and its influence on the North Korean system. As this system evolved, elements such as the ideological emphasis on humanism over materialism and voluntarism over historical determinacy,hereditary rule,the re-creation of rigid social hierarchies, and other divergences from Soviet communism have struck a number of observers as strongly reminiscent of traditional Korean politics and culture, especially the Confucian traditions of the Choso˘n dynasty (–).11 Consciously or not, the North Korean system has worked through symbols and power structures that have combined modern forms and “traditional” ones in distinctive ways. Reverence for family, the leader, and social distinction, for example, were not abolished in North Korea but transferred and reshaped.The humanistic idealism of Korean Confucian thought was at least one important element of what would become juche (“self-reliance”) philosophy, the official ideology of the DPRK from the s onward, which would ultimately supplant MarxismLeninism.This was indeed turning Marx on his head—or in Korean terms, back on his feet. In their monumental study of communism in Korea, Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee assert that Korea in  lacked “requisites generally considered necessary for a successful Communist revolution,” whatever these may be; the authors do not elaborate, nor give any examples of where such requisites did exist.12 What such observations neglect is the manner in which communism in Korea was absorbed and transformed by the very “hierarchical structure and Confucian social values” of Korea’s “deeply conservative society.”13 Communism took root in North Korea in part because Korean society was so “conservative”—the possibility of breaking down old hierarchies was deeply attractive to many at the bottom of the social ladder, but the revolution created new hierarchical structures even more rigid than the old, and just as resistant to change.14 This was a modern revolutionary project, not an atavistic reassertion . See, for example, Suzuki Masayuki, Kita Chosen: Shakaishugi to dento no kyomei (North Korea: Resonance of Socialism and Tradition) (Tokyo:Tokyo University Press, ). Suzuki also points out the similarities between the cult of Kim Il Sung and the emperor cult of prewar Japan, a question I address in chapter . . Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), :. . Ibid., . . By the s it seems clear that the DPRK had created unusually rigid social divisions based on an individual’s family background—descendants of landlords on the bottom, descendants of revolution-

Introduction



of tradition. But it resulted in a kind of “modernization without modernity,” that is, without the self-reflective, pluralistic elements associated with modern society in many other parts of the world, a system in which Western liberal ideas were for the most part simply irrelevant. North Korea developed with less exposure to Western liberal versions of modernity than any other society in Asia, moving directly from neo-Confucian monarchy to Japanese colonialism to Stalinism virtually without a break. Third, this book emphasizes the totalizing ambitions of the North Korean revolution.The formation of the DPRK, like the creation of Marxist-Leninist states in China, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere, was more than the imposition of a political system: it entailed a new ordering of society, culture, language, and everyday practices. “Bolshevism,” as one early observer of the Soviet Union noted, had to be understood in terms of its “living reality,” in its “daily life, festivals, works of art”; in short “as a civilization as whole.”15 This was a deliberately planned, all-encompassing new civilization that was intended to replace the historically bankrupt civilization of Western (and Japanese) capitalism and imperialism. Its goal was the creation of a new society,“manifest in property relations, social structure, the organization of the economy, political practice, and language . . . a specifically socialist civilization based on the rejection of capitalism.”16 Social relationships, culture and the arts, and everyday life in North Korea were the targets of intense transformative energies in this tumultuous five-year period. In this respect the adaptation of communism in North Korea may be somewhat analogous to the “Confucianization” of Korean society in early Choso˘n.17 Like the dynastic founder Yi So˘nggye and his merit subjects, Kim Il Sung and other North Korean leaders attempted a wholesale transformation of society from the top down—but unlike their Choso˘n predecessors, they were also keenly sensitive to incorporating ideas and input from the lower elements of society as well.This was a new political system as well as a reordering of society, economic activity, culture, and everyday life, justified by a new official ideology imported from abroad—Neo-Confucianism in the earlier case, MarxismLeninism in the latter. And in both cases, Korean elites insisted on ideological purity even after that ideology had collapsed in its place of origin. Like Choso˘n aries on the top.The order of preference had been reversed, but the restrictions on social mobility resonated with Choso˘n. See Minnesota Lawyers’ International Human Rights Committee, Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Minneapolis:AsiaWatch, ),  and . . Rene Fueloep-Miller, The Mind and Face of Bolshevism: An Examination of Cultural Life in Soviet Russia (; New York: Harper & Row, ). . Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), . . Martina Deuchler, The Confucian Transformation of Korea: A Study of Society and Ideology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ).



Introduction

after the Ming dynasty China had fallen to the Manchus in the seventeenth century, when Korean literati refused to acknowledge the legitimacy of “barbarians” ruling China and insisted that only Korea maintained the true Confucian way, North Korean communism outlasted the Soviet Union itself, sticking to the path of “pure” socialism despite the collapse of Marxist-Leninist regimes in Eastern Europe and the radical transformation of the socialist economy in China.18 This metaphor should not be taken too far; the speed, extent, and goals of the communist transformation of North Korea were far different than the Confucianization of Choso˘n. Nor were the communists in North Korea in any way deliberately emulating their Choso˘n predecessors—on the contrary, their goal was the elimination of all “feudal vestiges” as quickly as possible. But the patterns of top-down implementation, comprehensiveness, and insistence on ideological purity bear some suggestive similarities. My fourth and final theme is the DPRK’s attempt to create new collective identities among the North Korean people.Through the agency of the mobilizing state, North Korean society was reconceptualized along new lines of division, categories which were in turn brought together as a unified whole in the single narrative of the nation.A process of ideological construction created not only individual subjects, but also collective subjects, categories such as worker, poor peasant, woman, and youth, as well as the nation itself.These new “imagined communities” were imagined not only by intellectuals and political leaders, but also by the people whose lives were most affected by this change, especially those who were identified as objects of liberation.The poor peasant majority seems to have been largely in favor of many of these social changes in the beginning.Those identified as “workers” probably benefited the most, materially and socially. North Korean women, at least temporarily, experienced a genuine liberation greater than women in any East Asian society of the time. And young people were an invaluable source and target of political mobilization, as well as a source of resistance and opposition. Most studies of the DPRK have focused on the makers of these radical political, economic, and social policies; my concern here is more with the effects of these policies on the people it was specifically targeted to liberate and transform: the rural poor, laborers, women, and youth. The new regime also cultivated intellectuals. Many of the best and most creative thinkers in Korea supported the project of political and cultural construction in the DPRK, including the writers Hong Myo˘nghu˘i and Im Hwa, the . Alexandre Y. Mansourov,“In Search of a New Identity: Revival of Traditional Politics and Modernization in Post-Kim Il Sung North Korea,” Department of International Relations, Australian National University,Working Paper No.  (May ), ; Charles K.Armstrong,“‘A Socialism of Our Style’: North Korean Ideology in a Post-Communist Era,” in North Korean Foreign Relations in the Post–Cold War Era, ed. Samuel S. Kim (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, ).

Introduction



historian Paek Nam’un, and the linguist Kim Tubong, to name only a few.The creative input and political fate of such intellectuals has received very little attention in the English-language literature on North Korea, and will be the focus of one chapter. Given these four themes, let me emphasize that this book is not primarily about leadership politics in the DPRK. The intrigues and power struggles among members of various communist “factions” in the formative years of the DPRK have been well covered already, especially in the work of Dae-Sook Suh.19 Nevertheless, the composition of the emerging North Korean state and the background of its leadership had a critical impact on the policies that were implemented, and must be carefully taken into consideration in a study of this period. The DPRK leadership, many but by no means all having communist backgrounds, was a diverse and dynamic group in the late s.There was considerable dispute and conflict on political programs, ideology, and practical policy.This was not merely “factionalism,” but had also to do with different views of socialism and how it should be implemented in North Korea. Within the Korean communist movement were those affiliated with the USSR (including second-generation Soviet Koreans), others with closer ties to Chinese communism, and still others who had spent the colonial period working underground in Korea or Japan. Such people, who now had the chance to take leading roles in the political system under Soviet occupation, had divergent political perspectives and group identifications, which affected the new state and the creation of the new society in important ways. In particular, I concentrate on Korean communists active in the anti-Japanese guerrilla conflict in Manchuria in the s who came to play key roles in the North Korean regime, especially Kim Il Sung and his close comrades. By  such people had left a deep imprint on the North Korean system, though they did not monopolize the center of power until the s.The Manchurian guerrilla experience fundamentally shaped the worldview of Kim Il Sung and his comrades, and this experience became a kind of mythical point of origin for the DPRK almost as soon as the regime was founded, promoted in books, pamphlets, songs, and films. It is important to understand the history of the guerrilla struggle in Manchuria in order to make sense of the DPRK in , or even in .A new state and society for Korea had been imagined at the interstices of colonial control and unregulated frontier, at the meeting point of rootless intellectuals, political exiles, foreign influence, and a poor but mobile and relatively independent peasantry. Such elements were thrown together out of the unprecedented dislocation and mobility of the Japanese imperial project in Korea, . Dae-Sook Suh, The Korean Communist Movement, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ).



Introduction

a project extended into Manchuria with the creation of the Japanese-controlled state of Manchukuo in . Kim Il Sung and other core leaders of the DPRK emerged out of an unyielding resistance to that project, a fact which—for better or for worse—has profoundly effected the DPRK ever since.20 Korean communism as a whole has received relatively little scholarly attention compared to its Vietnamese and Chinese counterparts. During the colonial period, Koreans formed one of the earliest and most active communist movements in Asia. Koreans comprised more than one-third of the delegates at the first Congress of the Toilers of the Far East, held in Moscow in January and February .The former Choso˘n military officer and anti-Japanese guerrilla leader Yi Tonghwi established Korea’s first “communist-oriented” party, the Korean Socialist Party (Hanin sahoedang), among Korean exiles in the Russian Far East in , three years before the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was formed. By ,Yi’s party had nearly seven thousand members, in comparison to the CCP, which had less than one thousand members as late as .21 To be sure, these early Korean activists were less concerned with communism as an ideology than with Leninist political organization and Russian assistance for the sake of liberating Korea from colonial rule. But by the early s, communism had become an important part of the political discourse of anticolonial resistance in Korea.22 After the construction and dissolution of a number of Marxist and labor-oriented groups in the early s, the first domestic Korean Communist Party (Choso˘n Kongsandang) was established in Seoul in April . Under close Japanese surveillance and constant fear of suppression, the party was destroyed and reconstructed three times, until the fourth and final party was dissolved for good in . But the ending of formal organization did not mean the end of communist activity in Korea, nor of communist-organized anti-Japanese resistance. Communists remained active in labor, peasant, and anticolonial movements within Korea, and worked in communist parties abroad in the Soviet Union and China; in some areas, especially along the border with China in Korea’s northeastern Hamgyo˘ng region, domestic and exile activities remained closely linked. Due to their active and outspoken resistance to colonial rule, which resulted in hundreds of executions and arrests, the left—including the communists— would have inevitably played an important role in Korean politics after libera. Wada Haruki, in his definitive work on Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla background, goes so far as to call the DPRK a “guerrilla-band state.” Wada, Kin Nichisei to Manshu konichi senso (Kim Il Sung and the AntiJapanese War in Manchuria) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, ). . Chong-sik Lee, The Korean Worker’s Party: A Short History (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, ), . . See Michael Robinson, Cultural Nationalism in Colonial Korea, – (Seattle: University of Washington Press, ).

Introduction



tion, especially because many of the conservative nationalists had become highly visible collaborators by the early s. It is impossible to say how the politics of a unified Korea would have played out had it not been for the joint U.S.– Soviet occupation and the division of the peninsula. Given the experiences of China and Vietnam after World War II, a communist state over the whole peninsula is certainly one possible outcome. But in the event, the communists were guaranteed political dominance in one half of Korea and excluded entirely in the other.The socialist regime in North Korea was certainly shaped by its formation under foreign occupation in half of a divided nation, and the failure to resolve Korea’s division—attempted by force in —has affected the DPRK ever since. My argument therefore is that the DPRK was more than a “revolution from abroad,”23 imposed by fiat of the Soviet occupation, but was shaped by local circumstances and recent historical legacies.What emerged in North Korea was a fusion of communist programs initiated from above and local conditions encountered through implementation on the ground. By way of background, chapter  looks at northern Korea and the Sino-Korean border regions before liberation in , paying particular attention to the activities and programs of the Chinese Communist Party’s Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army (NEAJUA) in the s, which included Kim Il Sung and other Korean expatriates who came to positions of power in the North Korean regime.24 Veterans of this movement came to dominate politics in North Korea after , and consequently the Manchurian partisan experience profoundly shaped the DPRK for decades thereafter. The second chapter looks at the immediate aftermath of the Japanese surrender, the brief period of local Korean autonomy, and the emergence of a de facto North Korean regime under Soviet administration in the fall and winter of  –. Chapter  concerns the implementation of far-reaching social reforms in the spring and summer of , the creation of new forms of social classification and identity, and the problematic “liberation” of peasants, workers, women, and young people as newly empowered social agents mobilized by the party and the state. Departing from our chronological narrative, the next four chapters are a more or less synchronous examination of different aspects of the new system that are crucial to understanding how the whole worked.These are the key elements of the total system, culminating in the state and the military. Chapter  deals with political organization at the center and in the provinces, . The phrase is from Jan Gross, Revolution from Abroad:The Soviet Conquest of Poland’s Western Ukraine and Western Belorussia (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ). In areas incorporated directly into the USSR and in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, this expression clearly has some validity. . Steven Levine,Anvil of Victory? The Communist Revolution in Manchuria (NewYork:Columbia University Press, ), .



Introduction

including the local-level “People’s Committees,” interaction among the three main political parties (Korean Workers’ Party, Korean Democratic Party, and Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party), and local political participation and elections. Chapter  examines economic planning and production under the new regime. Chapter  deals with intellectuals and the production of culture. Chapter  looks closely at local-level policing and the creation of a regime of surveillance that sought to bring every aspect of daily life under the watchful eye of the political authorities. Chapter  then moves forward to the creation of the Democratic People’s Republic in , and the militarization of North Korean society leading up to the outbreak of the Korean War in June . It is easy enough in retrospect to see this revolutionary process in North Korea as a dead end, leading by the s to a politically inflexible, economically stagnant, and culturally stultifying society.25 By the s, changing outside circumstances and the inability of the DPRK to respond positively to them had led to conditions of ever-increasing poverty and hunger. But none of this could have been foreseen in . The brief space between liberation from colonial rule and the brutal North-South war was a time of unprecedented possibility, energy, chaos, terror, and enforced discipline. According to their own rhetoric, proponents and sympathizers of the new Democratic People’s Republic took North Korea on the path of Soviet-style state socialism not merely for the sake of extending Soviet interests, but as the answer to economic backwardness, social inequity, political disempowerment, and national subjugation. For them, this was a compelling solution to postcolonial Korea’s problems; for many others, such a program was misguided, dangerous, and reprehensible. This book is a study of how North Korea began on this path. . The mid-s remilitarization of the DPRK seems to have been a turning point, after which the slow erosion of the economy and the rigidity of the political system were never seriously addressed. See B.K.Gills,Korea versus Korea:The Political Economy of Diplomacy (London:Routledge,),and Adrian Buzo, Guerrilla Dynasty:The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, – (New York: Prentice Hall, ).

  

Revolution on the Margins

Northern Korea and the Manchurian Experience In order to understand how communism was subsequently implemented in North Korea, it is important to recognize some of the distinctive features of northern Korea and the Sino-Korean border region before . Communism, of course, took hold north of the th parallel during the – Soviet occupation, and the distinctive nature of the northern region influenced the development of communist society in the North thereafter.Although the leadership of North Korea included people with diverse geographical backgrounds and experiences in Korea itself (including a substantial southern contingent), China, Japan, and the USSR, it was ultimately the group associated with Kim Il Sung and the anti-Japanese struggle in Manchuria who came to dominate North Korean politics. Thus the vision of socialism shaped in exile in Manchuria profoundly influenced the development of the North Korean state. The northern part of the peninsula had been an economically, politically, and socially marginal part of Korea for centuries.Economically,because of its rugged terrain and short growing season, the mountainous north played a much smaller role in Korea’s agricultural production than the plains of southern Korea, especially when compared to the “rice basket”of the Cho˘lla region in the southwest.1 Politically, residents of the northern provinces (P’yo˘ng’an and Hamgyo˘ng) had been virtually excluded from higher office in the state bureaucracy through most of the Choso˘n dynasty (–). Only at the end of the nine. On the other hand, that very mountainous terrain and rich mineral deposits made the region the focus of industrial development in the late colonial period and gave North Korea certain economic advantages over the South, especially in the area of hydroelectric power.





 

teenth century did the number of higher examination passers from the north approach their proportion of the overall population, and among the successful northern examination candidates most were from P’yo˘ng’an province; the northeastern Hamgyo˘ng region continued to be politically marginalized.2 Socially, northerners had long suffered a reputation for unruliness, violence, and independence.The Japanese colonial authorities, like their Choso˘n predecessors, had found the northeast of Korea the most difficult area to bring under control.3 The Hamgyo˘ng region was particularly unusual in its social structure. Tenancy rates in the north were generally lower than in the south, but only in North Hamgyo˘ng province were more than  percent of the peasants ownercultivators.The province with the second-highest ratio of owner-cultivators ( percent) was South Hamgyo˘ng.4 Mutual aid associations (kye) were more prominent in the northeast than in other part of Korea.5 P’yo˘ng’an and Hamgyo˘ng were both caught up in radical thought and politics in the first half of the twentieth century, but in different ways. In P’yo˘ng’an, both nationalist and peasant protest movements were often associated with religion. Pyongyang, the largest city in northern Korea and capital of South P’yo˘ng’an Province,had been the center of Korean Protestant Christianity since the beginning of the twentieth century. Pyongyang missionary schools became important centers of modern education, and by the end of the colonial period many of the prominent Korean nationalists in the P’yo˘ng’an region were Protestant Christians, including Presbyterian elder Cho Mansik, who headed the South P’yo˘ng’an People’s Committee in August  and was the leading nationalist figure in North Korea in the months following liberation.6 By the s, Christianity in northern Korea (as in the South) tended to be an urban and middle-class phenomenon. In the P’yo˘ng’an countryside, organized peasant protest was predominantly led by the Korean Peasant Society (Choso˘n nongminsa) affiliated with Ch’o˘ndogyo, a religion whose roots lay in the great Tonghak peasant uprising that nearly toppled the Choso˘n dynasty and triggered the Sino-Japanese War in  – .7 After the Tonghak rebellion was . Gi-wook Shin, Peasant Protest and Social Change in Colonial Korea (Seattle: University of Washington Press, ),  n. ; according to Edward Wagner, only  of , successful examination passers between  and  were from the northern provinces. See Wagner,“The Civil Examination Process as Social Leaven:The Case of the Northern Provinces in the Yi Dynasty,” Korea Journal , no.  ( January ):  –. . Shin, Peasant Protest, . . Kim So˘ngbo, “Land Reform and Agricultural Collectivization in North Korea” (Ph.D. diss., Yonsei University, ), . . Shin, Peasant Protest, . . For the relationship between Protestant Christianity and nationalism in colonial Korea,see Kenneth Wells, New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea, – (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ). . See Benjamin B.Weems, Reform, Rebellion, and the Heavenly Way (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, ), –.

   



crushed in , many Tonghak believers moved north. By the early twentieth century the geographical center of Tonghak—renamed Ch’o˘ndogyo in — was the P’yo˘ng’an area.8 In  Ch’o˘ndogyo believers formed a “Young Friends’ Party” (Ch’o˘ng’udang) as the political wing of the religious organization.The provincial distribution of the Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party shows a striking concentration in the north:9 Southern Provinces: Kyo˘nggi North Ch’ungch’o˘ng South Ch’ungch’o˘ng North Cho˘lla South Cho˘lla North Kyo˘ngsang South Kyo˘ngsang Total

       

Northern Provinces: Kangwo˘n Hwanghae South P’yo˘ng’an North P’yo˘ng’an South Hamgyo˘ng North Hamgyo˘ng

      ,

Given the prominence of Protestant Christianity and Ch’o˘ndogyo in P’yo˘ng’anarea nationalist and peasant-populist politics during the colonial period, it is not surprising that the two main rivals to the communists in the post- North Korean regime—based in the city of Pyongyang—were the Christian-led Korean Democratic Party (Choso˘n minjudang) under Cho Mansik,and the Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party. This three-cornered struggle will be discussed in chapter . “New religions” such as Protestant Christianity and Ch’o˘ndogyo played less of a role in radical activity in Hamgyo˘ng.There groups associated with the socialist left, especially the so-called “Red Peasant Unions” (Cho˘ksaek nongmin chohap) of the s most often took the lead in protest against the colonial authorities and in expressing peasant grievances.10 The Korean socialists and communists looked at Ch’o˘ndogyo and the Korean Peasant Society with suspicion, considering the latter “reformist”rather than revolutionary.Ch’o˘ndogyo and the Korean Peasant Society only agreed to cooperate with the left against the Japanese in the late s.11 . Kim So˘ngbo, “The Decision and Development Process of North Korean Land Reform,” unpublished manuscript, . . Figures from Cho˘ng Yongso˘, “A Study of the Political and Economic Thought of the Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party under Japanese Colonial Rule” (M.A. thesis,Yonsei University, ), . . Gi-wook Shin’s quantitative analysis determines South Hamgyo˘ng to be the “most radical” province in late colonial Korea, with fifteen organized Red Peasant Unions, followed by North Hamgyo˘ng with seven. Shin, Peasant Protest, . See also Se Hee Yoo,“The Korean Communist Movement and the Peasantry Under Japanese Rule” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, ).“Red Peasant Union” was a term applied to these groups by the Japanese colonial authorities, who assumed that they were led by communists; this was not always the case. . Sin Chubaek, “The Korean Nationalist Movement in Manchuria, –” (Ph.D. diss., So˘nggyun’gwan University, ), –.



 

As Gi-wook Shin convincingly argues, the rank-and-file membership joined the Red Peasant Union (RPU) movement for reasons of immediate interest rather than the abstract economic and nationalist, much less internationalist, goals that left-wing intellectuals espoused.12 Educated young peasants, often associated with left-wing political organizations and with groups and individuals across the border in northeast China, took the leading role in the RPUs. Although the RPU leaders often had no more than a few years of elementary school education,13 the RPUs were particularly active in education, organizing night schools and “reading circles” in farming villages, raising the political consciousness of the local peasants, and directing their protests against the police and local government authorities. RPUs were concentrated in the part of Korea that had the lowest rates of tenancy and the highest proportion of independent farmers.14 As Eric Wolf observed in his classic study of peasant rebellion, it is not the most destitute peasants with “nothing to lose” who are most likely to rebel, but rather the conservative middle peasantry, “located in peripheral areas beyond the control of the central power,” who are prone to radical action under circumstances of sudden change and dislocation.15 Like North China, northern Korea was a place where the “instability and insecurity of rural life . . . despite a low incidence of tenancy, made the peasants more receptive to revolutionary mobilization.”16 This receptivity to radical mobilization is also related to the weakness of colonial state control in the region, which opened a space for rebellion in the northeast, while potential rebellion in the south was effectively crushed by the Japanese authorities. It is probably also the case that the existence of a strong social network, the lack of complete dependence on landlords for survival, and a tradition of resistance to interference from the central state gave peasants in Hamgyo˘ng the capacity and willingness to engage in radical protest in the late s and early s, at the same time that radicalism in the southern countryside declined. The very “traditionalism” of the northeastern countryside helped make it the center of peasant radicalism in the latter part of the colonial period, when the colonial state impinged on this region. Hamgyo˘ng, as it turns out, was also the site of much of northern Korea’s emerging industrial base by the late s, particularly in the cities of Hamhu˘ng and Wo˘nsan, both in South Hamgyo˘ng Province.Thus, the northeast was both . Shin, Peasant Protest, . . Ibid., . . Dae-Sook Suh, The Korean Communist Movement, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,),;Kang Man’gil,“The Life of the Hwajo˘nmin,”in Ilchesidae pinmin saenghwalsa yo˘n’gu (The Life of the Poor in the Japanese Colonial Period), ed. Kang Man’gil (Seoul: Changjak kwa pip’yo˘ngsa, ), . . Eric R.Wolf, Peasant Wars of the Twentieth Century (New York: Harper & Row, ), . . Philip Huang, The Peasant Family and Rural Development in theYangzi Delta, – (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ), .

   



the site of populist peasant mobilization as well as more orthodox Leninist, urban agitation under communist leaders such as future DPRK Labor Minister O Kiso˘p, who was based in South Hamgyo˘ng. The Hamgyo˘ng area in Korea’s northeast was the center of peasant and labor radicalism in the late colonial period, and after a hiatus between  and  became the most active area of radical organization in North Korea immediately following liberation. By the late s and early s the Japanese authorities believed that the northeast was the “front line” of communist activity, and the Korean communists themselves tended to share this view.17 This was both because of the conditions within the region,including the benefit of distance from colonial control,as well as the region’s contact with radical individuals and groups across the border in northeast China. After the tightening of colonial control in the late s, active anti-Japanese resistance among Koreans became, for the most part, an exile movement with centers in Northeast China (Manchuria), China proper, the Soviet Union, and the United States. However, the one area of some continuity and contiguity in anti-Japanese armed resistance was the remote, rugged, politically ambiguous Sino-Korean border region in the far northeast. The postliberation leaders of the DPRK have attributed tremendous historical significance to the anti-Japanese armed struggle in this area, and however exaggerated may be their claims of military success or Korean autonomy (as will be discussed below), it is undeniable that the guerrilla struggle in this region was the formative experience for those who ultimately came to power in North Korea, and as such profoundly influenced the new political and social system created in the North. The Sino-Korean border region had been an area of exile, escape, and experimentation since the late nineteenth century. A general decline in rural living standards throughout the nineteenth century had already disrupted Korean peasant society by the time the Japanese took over.18 One consequence of poverty and social dislocation was frequent peasant rebellion, culminating in the Tonghak uprising of , the largest peasant protest in Korean history.19 Another response to social dislocation and impoverishment was a marked increase . Shin, Peasant Protest, . . See for example Kim Yo˘ng so˘p, Choso˘n hugi nong’o˘psa yo˘n’gu (Studies in the Agrarian History of Late Choso˘n) (Seoul: Ilchogak, ); Kang Chin-ch’ol,“Traditional Land Tenure Relations in Korean Society: Ownership and Management,” in The Traditional Culture and Society of Korea:Thought and Institutions, ed. Hugh H.W. Kang, Occasional Papers of the Center for Korean Studies No.  (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ), ; Ki-baik Lee, A New History of Korea, trans. Edward W. Wagner and Edward J. Shultz (Seoul: Ilchogak, ), –; and William Henthorn, A History of Korea (New York: Free Press, ),  –. . As Dongno Kim has pointed out, the increase in peasant rebellion during the nineteenth century was largely in response to the growing tax burden on the peasantry.Thus, the main targets were corrupt government officials, not landlords. Dongno Kim, “Peasants, State, and Landlords: National Crisis and the Transformation of Agrarian Society in Pre-Colonial Korea” (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, ), .



 

in vagrancy and migration.20 Many poorer peasants were forced into the mountains to attempt a livelihood in precarious slash-and-burn hillside agriculture. Such people were known as hwajo˘nmin,or “fire-field people.” This form of agricultural production, predominantly located in the northernmost areas of North P’yo˘ng’an, South Hamgyo˘ng, and North Hamgyo˘ng provinces, is an economy of mobility and independence, in contrast to the sedentary tenant-based farming of the South.21 But even the remote mountains of northeast Korea were accessible to the extractive hand of the state, and many peasants moved still further north, into Manchuria and the Russian Far East.22 Manchuria in particular was a place of opportunity for the displaced Korean peasant. Koreans began immigrating in large numbers from the latter part of the nineteenth century, especially after the famines and peasant uprisings of the s.23 Initially most Korean immigrants were from the Hamgyo˘ng provinces, but after Japan annexed Korea in , most new immigrants came from the P’yo˘ng’an provinces or southern Korea.24 Nevertheless, it was primarily the immigrants from Hamgyo˘ng who formed the core population of the Korean community in Jiandao (Kando in Korean), the region of eastern Manchuria on the banks of the Tumen River across from Korea that is now the Yanbian Korean Nationality Autonomous Prefecture of China’s Jilin Province.To this day, the language spoken by most Koreans in Yanbian is based on the Hamgyo˘ng dialect.25 By , the Korean population in Manchuria was over ,; by , it was over ,,  percent of whom resided in Jiandao, where they outnumbered the Chinese residents three to one.26 After the creation of Manchukuo in  and Japanese encouragement of Korean emigration to Manchuria, the Korean population expanded still further, approaching  million by . Koreans engaged in a highly productive form of paddy rice cultivation on the fertile Manchurian soil, although at first Korean farmers were not allowed to own land and worked for Chinese and Manchu landlords.27 The Korean population . Lee, New History of Korea, . . See Kang Man’gil,“The Life of the Hwajo˘nmin,” –. . Lee, New History of Korea, . . Henry G. Schwartz, The Minorities of Northern China: A Survey (Bellingham:Western Washington University, ), ; Pak Ch’ang’uk,“Korean Migration in China,” Yo˘ksa pipy’o˘ng, no.  (winter ): . . Sun Chunri,“The Formation of Korean Areas Around Yanbian in Jilin Province,” Minzu yanjiu ( January ): . . For a brief history of the Korean community in China, see Chae-jin Lee, China’s Korean Minority:The Politics of Ethnic Education (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, ). . Choso˘njok ryaksa (Brief History of the Korean Nationality) (Yanji: Choso˘njok ryaksa p’yo˘nchanjo, ), ; F. C. Jones, Manchuria Since  (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . For a contemporary investigation of Koreans in Manchuria, see Yi Hun’gu, Manju wa Choso˘nin (Manchuria and the Koreans) (Pyongyang, ). . Pak Ch’ang’uk,“Korean Migration in China,” , . Indebtedness to Chinese landlords was one reason for the peripatetic lifestyle of the Korean immigrants. Eighty % of the families interviewed

   



of Northeast China was largely peasant, and from quite impoverished backgrounds at that; they were drawn to Manchuria by the opportunity to improve their livelihood and escape economic misery at home.28 But among the poor peasants was a significant number of brigands, outlaws, petty capitalists, and— increasingly—political exiles and anti-Japanese nationalists. As a frontier region, Manchuria was an area of opportunists and vagabonds, exiles and bandits, self-made men and self-governing peasant villages. Between the mid-nineteenth and mid-twentieth centuries, Manchuria was a recurrent focus of international rivalry.29 As Chinese authority weakened and Russia and Japan struggled for control of this vast hinterland at the turn of the twentieth century, the absence of effective state power in the region allowed a space for local autonomy, self-government, antistate resistance, and more than a little criminal behavior. Many settlers were “squatters, wanderers, and outlaws by turn,” and illicit opium production played an important part in the local economy.30 The line between banditry and social reform was not always clear: local bandits known as hong huzi (red beards) were in some places the only “government,” and became quite popular at times for their Robin Hood-like redistributive practices.31 Owen Lattimore remarked that Manchuria probably contained more villages formed by outlaws than any other area in the world,32 and the British explorer H. E. M. James found “well-organized, self-governing fugitive settlements” in the Changbaishan region on the Manchuria-Korean border in .33 Late Qing policies attempting to reestablish taxation in the region encountered well-organized resistance by local village federations (lianchuanghui), established early in this century.34 in Yi Hun’gu’s  survey had moved three to seven times since arriving in Manchuria. Cited in Schwartz, Minorities of Northern China, . . See Yi Hun’gu’s survey of Jiandao residents, reproduced in Kim Chunyo˘p and Kim Ch’angsun, Hanguk Kongsanchuu˘i undongsa (The Korean Communist Movement), vol.  (Seoul: Korea University Press, ), .When asked,“Why did you come to Manchuria?”  out of  respondents (%) answered either,“To improve the conditions of my life,”“Because of poverty at home,” or “Because of economic distress in Korea.” . Rivalry over Manchuria was usually linked to Korea as well. See George A. Lensen, Balance of Intrigue:International Rivalry in Korea and Manchuria, – (Tallahassee:University Press of Florida,). . Kim and Kim, Korean Communist Movement, . Later, communist groups also seem to have had a hand in the opium trade.The Japanese authorities in Manchukuo reported that “the Red Army cultivates opium poppies in the mountains to obtain funds.” Chong-sik Lee, Counterinsurgency in Manchuria: The Japanese Experience,– (Santa Monica:RAND,),.Opium smuggling from Manchuria into northern Korea remained a problem after .See RG ,SA ,/ ,materials on Inje County, Kangwo˘n Province. . Gavan McCormack, Chang Tso-lin in Northeast China, –: China, Japan, and the Manchurian Idea (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ), . . Owen Lattimore, Manchuria: Cradle of Conflict (New York: Macmillan, ). . H. E. M. James, The Long White Mountain, or A Journey in Manchuria (; New York: Greenwood Press, ), . . McCormack, Chang Tso-lin, .



 

It was in this milieu of poor migrants, outlaw bands, clandestine political organization, and local resistance that Korean exiles attempted to forge an armed struggle against Japanese imperialism. From a long-term historical perspective, the communists can be seen as part of a tradition of autonomous outlaw and resistance groups linked with local peasant society. As the Japanese police and military moved in to control Manchuria in the early s, a combination of ruthless force, careful surveillance, and economic incentives “pacified” large segments of the local population, but at the same time pockets of resistance stiffened and became increasingly radicalized, until the last guerrilla bands were driven out in the early s. For a time, then, this peripheral area became the center of anticolonial resistance for an important segment of Korean and Chinese revolutionary nationalists. Not until the late s, with the communist victory in China’s civil war (for which Manchuria was a crucial arena) and the establishment of the DPRK (which drew its most important leadership from the Manchurian struggle) was state control fully asserted in this area and the space for rebellion closed.

Anticolonial Struggle In the sense of formal party organization, the Korean communist movement as such was defunct within Korea after the Korean Communist Party collapsed in . Both Dae-Sook Suh and Scalapino and Lee argue that from then until liberation Korean communists fought abroad under foreign parties.35 However, while Korean communist organizing activities were extremely constrained within Korea proper and communists were underground or scattered in exile for most of the period between  and , the movement was not entirely wiped out within Korea,nor was it absorbed completely into movements abroad. A significant group of exiled communists retreated to a “base area” that had long been a source of anti-Japanese resistance and from there continued to be linked to anti-Japanese activities within Korea. After the Japanese demobilized the Korean Army in , intransigent Korean soldiers created a number of “Righteous Armies” (u˘ibyo˘ng), which engaged with the Japanese military for several years. By around  the last of the u˘ibyo˘ng had been defeated and a number of remaining activists retreated to Manchuria and Siberia where they entered the Korean immigrant communities there. Military centers were established to train guerrilla forces for combat across the border in Korea.36 One of the most prominent of these former sol. Suh, Korean Communist Movement, ; Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), vol. , chapter . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. Even before annexation u˘ibyo˘ng groups had set up exile bases from which to attack the Japanese. In April , for example, a group of about a thousand u˘ibyo˘ng based in the Russian maritime region attacked a Japanese army unit in North Hamgyo˘ng

   



diers was Yi Tonghwi, who went into exile with several hundred Korean troops first to the mountains of northern Korea, then to Manchuria, and finally to the Russian Far East, where in June  he founded the first Korean socialist-oriented party, the Hanin Sahoedang or Korean Socialist Party, in Khabarovsk.37 Thus, Korean communist armed groups in Manchuria and Siberia were both connected to, and built on, a tradition of armed rebellion in exile that extended back several decades.38 The Korean nationalist movement in Manchuria was not an overseas movement in the same sense as those in North America, Russia, or even Shanghai. The border between Korea and Manchuria was extremely porous, and in many ways the Korean community in Jiandao was simply an extension of Korea itself; anti-Japanese activities in southeastern Manchuria and northeastern Korea were closely linked until the late s. As Se Hee Yoo has pointed out in his study of peasant radicalism in colonial Korea, the Hamgyo˘ng provinces adjacent to Manchuria had the highest incidence of radical peasant organization and antiJapanese activity in the s and s, largely in the form of Red Peasant Unions, and both information and the activists themselves moved easily back and forth between these provinces and Manchuria and the Soviet Far East.39 Traditionally a difficult area for the state to control,the two Hamgyo˘ng provinces were a persistent problem for the Japanese authorities until guerrilla movements on both sides of the Korea-Manchuria border were wiped out in the brutal “annihilation campaigns” of the late s.40 But the leadership and institutional infrastructure of the Red Peasant Unions would be revived after liberation, especially in South Hamgyo˘ng Province, where former Peasant Union leaders took the lead in local land reform before either the Soviets or the political leaders in Pyongyang had extended their control into this area.Through the North Korean Peasant League, which will be discussed in chapter , Peasant Union leaders and the reforms they instituted became incorporated into North KoProvince.Mikhail Park,“The Anti-Japanese Korean Independence Movement in Russian Territories:The s and ,” Korea Journal , no.  ( June ): . . Chong-sik Lee, The Korean Workers’ Party: A Short History (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, ), .Yi went on the following year to become premier of the newly established Korean Provisional Government in Shanghai, where he remade his organization into the Korean Communist Party (Koryo˘ Kongsandang) in . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. . “Kim San” (the nom de guerre of Chang Chirak) joined the Chinese Communist Party in the early s and discussed his revolutionary experiences at length with Edgar Snow’s wife, Helen Foster Snow (using the pen name “Nym Wales”) in . Kim describes his entrance into the Manchuria-based military school of the Korean Army of Independence in the s in Nym Wales and Kim San, Song of Ariran (New York: John Day, ), –. . Se Hee Yoo,“The Communist Movement and the Peasants:The Case of Korea,” in Peasant Rebellion and Communist Revolution in Asia, ed. John W. Lewis (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ),  –. . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :.According to Japanese sources, % of arrests in connection with the Red Peasant Movement in  and  were in the Hamgyo˘ng provinces.



 

rea’s  land reform policies. The legacy of the colonial-era peasant movement on the Sino-Korean border helped to make the North Korean revolution more peasant populist than classically Leninist. Myo˘ngch’o˘n county in North Hamgyo˘ng Province offers a well-documented example of this Hamgyo˘ng-Manchuria connection in the anti-Japanese and peasant cooperative movements.41 Myo˘ngch’o˘n was the site of the longestlasting RPU in the region. After the proindependence March First movement of , several nationalist-oriented peasant associations were established in the Myo˘ngch’o˘n area. From the late s, these groups took on a more radical tone, emphasizing anti-Japanese nationalism and the creation of peasant cooperatives. A branch of the Sin’ganhoe, the short-lived nationalist-communist united front organization, was set up in November , but was abolished in a Japanese crackdown in . A leading political role was taken by the Youth Alliance (ch’o˘ngnyo˘n tongmaeng), which led a large but unsuccessful protest of poor peasants against the colonial authorities in January . Finally, the first of a series of peasant cooperatives, or Red Peasant Unions, was set up in . Its leading organizer was Hyo˘n Ch’unbong, a graduate of Moscow’s University of the Toilers of the Far East, who had been a propagandist for the Manchurian Communist Party in the late s until he was captured by the Jiandao consular authorities and imprisoned from  to . Shortly after his release from prison, Hyo˘n crossed the border to Korea, where he brought his experience in the Korean exile movement to the creation of local peasant organizations. As in Manchuria, the principles of the Myo˘ngch’o˘n RPU stressed inclusion of poor peasants, “proletarian democracy,” and a “united front from below” to fight the Japanese.42 The RPU movement in Myo˘ngch’o˘n went through three successive reincarnations until it was finally wiped out in . The connection to the Manchurian “partisan” movement is even closer in the case of the Kapsan region of South Hamgyo˘ng Province.This is an area near the Korean border with Manchuria in which Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla group was known to be active, leading some Western and South Korean scholars to label Kim Il Sung’s group the “Kapsan faction.”43 Kapsan also offers a clear example . Japanese, North Korean, and more recently, South Korean scholars have extensively studied the Myo˘ngch’o˘n cooperative movement based on Japanese colonial documents. My account draws heavily on Chi Sugo˘l,“The Revolutionary Peasants’ Union Movement in the Myo˘ngch’o˘n Area of North Hamgyo˘ng Province,  –,” in Ilcheha sahoejuyu˘i undongsa (History of the Socialist Movement Under Japanese Imperialism), ed. Hanguk yo˘ksa yo˘n’guhoe (Seoul: Hangilsa, ),  – . It should be noted that the term “Revolutionary Peasants’ Union Movement” (hyo˘ngmyo˘ngjo˘k nongmin chohap undong) was a term applied by South Korean scholars in the s to the groups the Japanese colonial authorities called “Red Peasant Unions.”The groups themselves did not use either term. . Chi,“Revolutionary Peasants’ Union Movement,” . . One of the earliest Western/South Korean taxonomies of Korean communists to label Kim Il Sung’s group the “Kapsan faction” is Chong-sik Lee,“Korean Communists and Yenan,” China Quarterly, no.  ( January-March ), –. More recently, there has been a tendency among younger South Korean scholars to use the term “Kapsan group” to refer to indigenous communists in the area and to

   



of the congruence of frontier settlement, independent farmers, communist activism, and anti-Japanese resistance. In the s, self-employed farmers and hwajo˘nmin in the area outnumbered tenant farmers; between  and  the peasant population nearly doubled, with most of the newcomers being independent farmers. Moves toward peasant self-government and reform brought in the Japanese authorities, who attempted to break up the organizations and expel the hwajo˘nmin (seen as particularly troublesome) by force.44 The peasants formed an organized resistance, but their organizations were short-lived. In the early s, socialist activists attempted to create mass organizations in the area, with somewhat greater success.The new peasant-based organizations stressed popular education, agricultural cooperativization, and anti-Japanese nationalism.Its leaders were often people with close connections to the Manchurian armed resistance movement. In , two of these activists, Pak Tal and Pak Ku˘mch’o˘l, crossed into Manchuria from their base in the Kapsan region of South Hamgyo˘ng Province to meet with Kim Il Sung and his group.There they formed the Kapsan Operations Committee (Kapsan kongjak winwo˘nhoe) to coordinate anti-Japanese activities in the border area.45 The group was in turn affiliated with the Manchuria-based Fatherland Restoration Association (Choguk kwangbokhoe).46 Pak Tal visited Kim again several times, but was arrested by the Japanese authorities in October , putting an end to the Kapsan Operations Committee.47

Insurgency and Counterinsurgency Like many other colonial powers, the Japanese had a two-pronged approach to eliminating guerrilla resistance: military pacification of insurgents, and the restructuring of the local society so as to eliminate the insurgents’ popular base. In keeping with the military-dominated dynamic of Japan’s colonial expansion in general and its Manchurian venture in particular,social restructuring was subordinate to military pacification, and both were carried out with often ruthless efficiency. categorize Kim Il Sung—more accurately—as part of an East Manchurian group. See Han Hong-koo, “Wounded Nationalism: The Minsaengdan Incident and Kim Il Sung in Eastern Manchuria” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, ). . Yi Chunsik,“The Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle and the Party Reconstruction Movement,” in Ilcheha sahoejuu˘i undongsa, ed. Hanguk yo˘ksa yo˘n’guhoe, – . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. . Suh, Korean Communist Movement, –.The full name of the umbrella organization was the Fatherland Restoration Association of Koreans in Manchuria (Chae Man Hanin Choguk Kwangbokhoe), a collection of anti-Japanese nationalist groups active in Northeast China and northeastern Korea. . Wada Haruki, Kin Nichisei to Manshu konichi senso (Kim Il Sung and the Anti-Japanese War in Manchuria) (Tokyo:Heibonsha,),– .Pak Ku˘mch’o˘l had already been arrested in October  in an earlier Japanese campaign.



 

Chong-sik Lee, in the only English-language examination of Japan’s antiguerrilla war in Manchuria, calls the effort a “qualified success.”48 From the evidence Lee himself presents in the form of Japanese police and military documents, such an evaluation seems much too generous to the Japanese.They were successful in eliminating open resistance, at least temporarily, but their Draconian tactics certainly did not win the “hearts and minds” of the local population. Peasants maintained strong ties with insurgent groups throughout the s, and despite Japanese efforts to improve the livelihood of local peasants, living standards may have actually declined during this period. The collective hamlet (shudan buraku) system begun in , the main social program of Japan’s counterinsurgency effort in Manchuria, forced millions of peasants off their lands and into remote sanctuaries, cut off from the guerrillas as well as their own sources of livelihood.After the military forced the peasants off their land and burned their villages, moving and housing them was left in the hands of the understaffed and underfunded civilian authorities of Manchukuo.49 Farmers sent desperate petitions begging to be allowed back to their land. As in Korea, the Japanese in Manchuria presented themselves as a modernizing force bringing the benefits of civilization to backward Asian peasants. A Japanese military security report for Manchuria lists among the “progressive aspects” of the collective hamlet program, the “abolition of feudalistic arbitrary burdens on the peasantry,” particularly lowering tenant fees and establishing tenant rights.50 But such benefits were more than offset by the disruption of relocation, the loss of land, equipment and draft animals, and new expenditures. In the end, the Japanese authorities were more interested in eliminating guerrillas than winning the support of the local population. Although pacification was a success and guerrilla resistance was wiped out by the end of the s, the core of the guerrilla group who survived—including Kim Il Sung and his partisan comrades—would ultimately return to institute their own idea of peasant revolution in North Korea, drawing on their experience of local organization and struggle in Manchuria.This Manchurian experience, which will be described later in this chapter, was far more important than Soviet direction in shaping the worldview of Kim and his allies. For their part, peasants were caught in an increasingly vicious struggle between the Japanese military on one side, and on the other a guerrilla movement driven at times to threats and violence, owing to the growing difficulty of obtaining food and supplies, against the local population they claimed to be defending. But if the local peasants felt harassed by both sides, the guerrillas were often seen as the lesser of the two problems.As one petition by a Korean farmer . Lee, Counterinsurgency in Manchuria, . . Ibid., . . Ibid.,  –.

   



to the local Manchukuo authorities put it, “Although Communist bandits are rampant at present, they do not cause much damage. It would be preferable to live on the present land rather than to move into a collective hamlet and suffer instability of livelihood there.”51 If by the end of the s the guerrillas themselves were decimated and demoralized, the climate of opinion was far from favorable to the Japanese. Even after the “bandits” apparently had been eliminated, the local Japanese authorities were wary of their own success. Particularly in Jiandao, with its “long history of bandit infestation,” the Japanese found it “extremely difficult to grasp the true nature of the insurgents” and feared that the “eerie calmness” in the area merely masked continuing hostility beneath the surface.52 For a variety of reasons, including their own internal discipline, the disintegration of other nationalist groups, and new policy directives from the Comintern and the Chinese Communist Party, communists came to dominate the resistance in the s. The ethnic divisions of the Manchurian communist movement in the s turned toward cooperation in the s; organizationally, the Korean communist movement was absorbed into the Chinese. The Comintern’s “December Theses” of  called for the creation of one party in each country, and in Manchuria that meant the organizational monopoly of the CCP. From the perspective of the Comintern and the CCP, the Korean communists were beset with factionalism and “leftist adventurism.” The Korean Communist Party in Seoul early on had established a Manchuria bureau with instructions to build a “United Front with all anti-imperialist elements,” but the bureau was decimated by Japanese infiltrations and mass arrests in late .53 Nevertheless, Korean communists in Manchuria continued to be active. After , they were reinforced by CCP-affiliated Korean communists in China proper, fleeing the collapse of the KMT-CCP alliance and Chiang Kai-shek’s bloody suppression of the Chinese communists.54 In  and  Koreans engaged in various acts of violence and sabotage in Manchuria with disastrous results, later denounced in both PRC and DPRK histories as “ultra-leftist.”55 Shortly before the Manchurian incident of September , which led to the extension of Japanese control into Manchuria, Korean communists came under the organizational control of the CCP. . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. . For a firsthand account of a Korean communist’s experience in the Canton Commune and its disastrous aftermath, see Wales and Kim, Song of Ariran, –. Some of the Korean communists stayed in China, a number participating in the Long March and ending up in Yan’an with Mao.These included (Kim) Mu Cho˘ng, Kim Tubong, Ch’oe Ch’ang’ik, and other members of the so-called Yan’an faction in postliberation North Korea. . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :– .



 

The new CCP line called for the establishment of “Soviet regimes” and a conscious effort to build up mass participation, including peasant associations, mutual-aid associations, and youth and women’s groups.After the first of numerous Japanese “mopping up campaigns” that left thousands of alleged communists and communist sympathizers dead or imprisoned, the new East Manchuria Special Committee of the CCP retreated into the countryside in , where several self-governing “base areas” were established.56 These base areas apparently functioned for several years, until Japanese “annihilation campaigns” in , , and  effectively eradicated the guerrillas in East and South Manchuria, concurrent with similar successes in antiguerrilla campaigns across the Korean border in Hamgyo˘ng.57

Kim Il Sung and the Partisan Movement in Manchuria It was in this milieu that Kim Il Sung rose to prominence within the antiJapanese guerrilla movement. In North Korea’s official history, Kim is said to have single-handedly led a revolution for Korean independence that swept to power in  to the welcome of all the Korean people.58 The area of Kim Il Sung’s guerrilla activities in the Sino-Korean border region is thus portrayed as the “cradle of the revolution,” the functional equivalent of Yan’an in Chinese communist mythology.59 Obviously this representation of Kim Il Sung’s historical role in nationalist resistance and national leadership is greatly exaggerated, to say the least, and critics of the DPRK and of Kim Il Sung—especially in South Korea—have strongly denied the significance of Kim and his guerrilla associates in the struggle for national independence. The evidence now available clearly shows that Kim did play an important role in the anti-Japanese armed resistance in Manchuria, becoming by the late s one of the leading figures among both the Korean and Chinese guerril. Ibid., :. Scalapino and Lee, apparently relying on Japanese documents, refer to five such districts; Chinese sources mention as many as eight “Red Base Areas” dating back to the s. See Pak Ch’ang’uk,“Korean Migration in China,” . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. . See among others, Baik Bong, Kim Il Sung, vol.  (Beirut: Dar al-Talia, ), and Kim Il Sung’s autobiography, Reminiscences:With the Century (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, – ).The first six volumes of Reminiscences were published before Kim’s death in ; volume  was published posthumously, and ends in  when Kim was at the peak of his fame just before his retreat to the USSR. . For the Chinese experience, see Mark Selden, TheYenan Way in Revolutionary China (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ). For Yan’an as myth, see David E. Apter,“Yan’an and the Narrative Reconstruction of Reality,” Daedalus , no.  (spring ):–. DPRK histories include Kim’s own “Long March,” a trek from northern Manchuria to the Korean border region in late  and early  called the “Arduous March,” which became the official metaphor for overcoming the food crisis in the DPRK in the late s. Kim Il Sung, Reminiscences, vol. , –.

   



las.60 After the death of Chinese guerrilla commander Yang Jingyu in February , Kim was for a time the most prominent anti-Japanese partisan, and the target of a special “Kim Il Sung Activities Unit” of the Japanese authorities.61 Partly because of Kim’s prominence in the guerrilla movement, it was his group that ultimately came to power in North Korea.Therefore, the attitudes formed out of the guerrilla experience have profoundly influenced North Korean politics to this day. Half a century later, North Korea was still being led by men who had been fundamentally shaped by the harsh environment of anti-Japanese struggle in Manchuria. Examining the activities of Kim and his group in Manchuria enables us to establish certain continuities across the divide of August , .Though, as we shall see, the Manchurian guerrillas attempted to carry out their anti-Japanese struggle even in the period of Soviet exile between  and , these activists did not build up a base of popular support gradually and over a large geographical area in their own country like the Chinese and Vietnamese communists. Rather, they learned from their Chinese and Manchurian exile and applied this experience to Korea in a similar environment. The Anti-Japanese United Army There is very little documentation on Kim Il Sung before  that can be verified as genuine; his writings and the descriptions of his political activities from that period in DPRK literature are often quite literally incredible, having steadily attributed ever greater revolutionary feats to the young Kim as the cult of the Great Leader has developed.The main purpose of this material is not so much history as myth-creation, a subject which I have discussed elsewhere.62 Contemporary references to Kim appear primarily in two places: Japanese police records, and Chinese Communist Party records. Along with a judicious reading of North Korean sources, these materials offer a fairly clear picture of the Manchurian communist resistance and Kim’s place in it. Kim Il Sung was born Kim So˘ngju in the village of Man’gyo˘ngdae near Py. Although contemporary Japanese sources clearly indicate that Kim was at the top of their “most wanted” list by , the Chinese sources published since the early s give a much more detailed picture of Kim’s activities in the guerrilla struggle than was previously available. For good syntheses of the Chinese material relevant to Kim’s background, see especially Wada, Kin Nichisei; Sin Chubaek, Manju chio˘k Haninu˘i minjok undongsa, – (History of the Korean Nationalist Movement in Manchuria,  –) (Seoul:Asea munjesa, ); and Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung:The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :; Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . . Charles Armstrong, “Centering the Periphery: Manchurian Exile(s) and the North Korean State,” Korean Studies, no.  ().



 

ongyang in , and migrated with his family in  to Manchuria. Except for a brief return to Korean in  –, Kim spent his formative years in Manchuria from the age of seven until the age of twenty-eight, when he fled with other anti-Japanese guerrillas to the Soviet Far East in the fall of .63 He attended Chinese schools and was fluent in Mandarin. Kim became involved with communist circles during his middle school years, was first arrested for anti-Japanese activities in , and joined the CCP in . His guerrilla activities began in the town of Antu near the Korean border in , working with the Chinese National Salvation Army. In  Kim’s unit became subsumed under the CCP’s East Manchuria Special Committee.Although Kim later claimed to have been involved in revolutionary activities across the border in Korea as early as ,there are no contemporary records of such activities involving Kim before early .64 Kim’s major guerrilla activities were with the CCP-directed Northeast AntiJapanese United Army (Dongbei kangri lianjun, NEAJUA) between about  and .The fact that Kim fought under Chinese command and was himself a member of the CCP disappeared from North Korean histories after the Korean War.With the rise of Kim’s cult of personality in the s and s,North Korean histories of the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle in Manchuria referred instead to Kim’s leadership of a “Korean People’s Revolutionary Army”(Choso˘n inmin hyo˘ngmyo˘nggun), based apparently on the Second Army of the CCP’s “Northeast People’s Revolutionary Army” (Dongbei renmin gemingjun), which was composed of ethnic Koreans and was active in Manchuria from September  until it fell victim to a Japanese “punitive expedition” in February .65 On the other hand, the purpose of the Chinese materials is clearly to glorify the CCP and the Chinese revolution, and the participation of Kim and other Koreans is rarely emphasized. Indeed, Chinese sources give the impression that Korean communists were relatively ineffective, ridden with factionalism and “leftism,” until they came under the wise leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.66 . For Kim’s early background, see Suh, Kim Il Sung, chapter ;Wada, Kin Nichisei, – ; Kim Il Sung, Reminiscences, vols. –. . Suh, Korean Communist Movement, . . Dongbei kangri lianjun shiliao (Historical Materials of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army) (Beijing:Zhonggondang shiliao chubanshe,),vol.,;Scalapino and Lee,Communism in Korea,:. North Korean materials from the late s do refer to Kim’s involvement with the CCP, but such references disappear in the s. . As one PRC publication puts it,“The Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army was the anti-Japanese armed struggle of the various nationalities of the Northeast, created and led by the Chinese Communist Party.” Dongbei kangri lianjun shiliao, . For a criticism of this CCP-centered approach by an ethnic Korean in China, see Pak Ch’o˘ngsan,“Serious Distortions in Studies of Korean Nationality Activities in China,” Yo˘ksa pip’yo˘ng, no.  (winter ): –.

   



Understandably, both Chinese and North Korean sources downplay or ignore the very real tensions between Korean and Chinese activists, as well as among the population as a whole, but in different ways: the Chinese by making the Koreans an “important minority group” in the Chinese revolution, the Koreans by treating Korean activities as completely independent of the Chinese Communist Party.67 Following the Comintern’s “one country, one party” directive of December , Korean communist partisans were absorbed into the CCP. But the “Chinese” communist movement in the Northeast was built initially on a predominantly Korean membership. When the merger of Korean communists with the CCP was completed in April , more than  percent of the CCP members in Manchuria as a whole were Koreans; in East Manchuria, where the bulk of the Korean immigrants lived, the Korean membership of the CCP was . percent.68 The CCP saw the Korean border regions as the most promising areas of anti-Japanese resistance when the united guerrilla army was established in the early s.69 Even after the Korean communist movement in Manchuria was subsumed into the organizational structure of the Chinese Communist Party, then, Koreans made up a large proportion of the Manchurian resistance fighters.70 Even in the late s, the majority of the anti-Japanese fighters in East Manchuria were ethnic Koreans.71 Many were reluctant to submit to CCP control and never lost sight of Korea’s liberation as their main goal. After liberation, Kim Il Sung and the members of his group in particular emphasized their nationalist bona fides; Kim Il Sung told the writer Han Chaedo˘k that liberating Korea had always been his “ultimate objective.”72 A member of Kim’s guerrilla unit told Han that “we fought for the liberation of the Korean nation and the independence of the fatherland,” which been their only reason for uniting with “China’s . Some Chinese sources do, however, lend equal weight to Chinese and Korean activists in Manchuria as engaging in a joint struggle for the independence of China and Korea, respectively. See Jiang Niandong et al., Wei Manzhouguoshi (History of Manchukuo) (Changchun: Jilin Renmin Chubanshe, ), . . Han,“Wounded Nationalism,” . . Anthony Coogan,“Northeast China and the Origins of the Anti-Japanese United Front,” Modern China , no.  ( July ): –. . Of  anti-Japanese activists arrested in Kando in ,  were Korean members of the CCP. See Kim and Kim, Korean Communist Movement, . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, who had led the Korean guerrillas in northern Manchuria, joined forces with Kim’s group in . Kim and Ch’oe were the two leading Korean guerrillas when the partisans retreated to the USSR in , and Ch’oe was to be a leading figure in the DPRK under Kim as well. . United States National Archive and Record Administration Record Group , National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, –, Records Seized by U.S. Military Forces in Korea, Shipping Advice , item /. Han Chaedo˘k, Kim Ilso˘ng changgun kaeso˘n’gi (Record of the Triumphant Return of General Kim Il Sung) (Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, ), .



 

anti-Japanese revolutionary forces.” He insisted that their unit had even been superior to other ethnic Korean units in their nationalism, discipline, and fighting record.73 Despite the rhetoric and practice of solidarity with the Chinese communists, Kim and other Korean partisans had reason to be wary of Chinese prejudice toward Koreans in the Manchurian communist movement, a prejudice vividly expressed in the purge and execution of hundreds of Korean communists in the Minshengtuan (Minsaengdan in Korean pronunciation) incident of the s.74 The Minsaengdan (People’s Livelihood Corps) was formed by pro-Japanese Korean migrants to Manchuria in February .75 The Minsaengdan sought Japanese protection from both the communists and the Chinese authorities, and petitioned the Japanese government for Korean self-rule (under Japanese auspices) in Kando. In fact the group never received the financial or military support from the Japanese authorities that they requested,and the Minsaengdan was dissolved in October . But suspicions that any Korean could be secretly a member of the pro-Japanese and anticommunist Minsaengdan ran deep among the Chinese communists in Manchuria. In a series of purges from  to , over one thousand Koreans were arrested and expelled from the Chinese Communist Party as Minsaengdan suspects, including Kim Il Sung, who was arrested in late  and exonerated in early .76 All those arrested were ethnic Koreans, and some five hundred were killed.77 The united Chinese and Korean guerrilla forces of the mid- to late s were still recovering from the wounds created by the Minsaengdan incident, which may help to explain the Korean communists’ insistence on autonomy within the movement and their emphasis on national autonomy—despite close relations with the Chinese—after Korea was liberated.78 According to a Japanese security report from , the NEAJUA was created in  as an alliance of several different military organizations formed to fight the Japanese in the early s.The most important of these was the Northeast People’s Revolutionary Army (NPRA), led by a Chinese named Yang Jingyu.79 The NPRA in turn had developed out of a merger of other groups, including the Northeast Volunteer Army (Dongbei yiyongjun), the Northeast Anti-Jap. Han, Kim Ilso˘ng changgun, –. . Suh, Kim Il Sung, – . . Han,“Wounded Nationalism,” . . Ibid.,  –. . Ibid., .The figure of  killed is according to Kim’s own  unit report; contemporary Japanese sources record about  killed (Manshu kyosanhi no kenkyu, ) and later sources from Korea and China suggest as many as ,–, executions of alleged Minsaengdan members. . The Koreans’ demand for ethnic self-rule in Manchuria itself was finally realized during the Korean War, when the Jiando area of East Manchuria became the Yanbian Korean Nationality Autonomous Zone. . Lee, Counterinsurgency in Manchuria, .

   



anese National Salvation Army (Dongbei kangri jiuguojun) and the Big Sword Society (Dadaohui). A significant number of their members, including commanders, were Korean.80 Between its founding in  and the end of , the NEAJUA expanded to eleven armies operating throughout Manchuria, each acting largely independently of the others; in  it was reorganized into three “route armies.”81 Kim Il Sung, who already had a track record as a guerrilla fighter with the CCP, joined the NEAJUA Second Army in June . He eventually was put in charge of the Second “Directional Army” ( fangmianjun) of the First Route Army and commanded a number of small detachments.82 At his peak, Kim commanded perhaps three hundred men, but in a guerrilla movement of only a few thousand partisans, this was not an insignificant number. Kim’s group carried out numerous raids both within Manchuria and across the border in Korea, the most important of which was an attack on a Japanese police garrison in the village of Pojo˘n (renamed “Poch’o˘nbo” after ), South Hamgyo˘ng Province, in June .83 Though perhaps not as historically significant as later DPRK accounts made it out to be,84 the Pojo˘n raid was taken seriously by the Japanese authorities, who considered it a worrisome sign that guerrillas could still continue to strike from Manchuria with impunity. As the Japanese “annihilation campaigns” of the late s decimated the ranks of the Manchurian guerrillas, Kim continued to operate, staging attacks on Japanese targets both in Manchuria and, on at least one further occasion, in Korea itself. For a time, after the capture and death of Yang Jingyu in February , Kim was the most wanted insurgent in Manchuria.85 But the Manchurian guerrilla movement finally succumbed to the severing of its popular base and the arrest, defection, or death of most of its leaders. In October , a massive punitive expedition combining troops of the Guandong Army, the Manchukuo Army, and Japanese police effectively crushed the NEAJUA and ended their activities in Manchuria.86 Finally, in  the remnants of the NEAJUA decided . Ibid., . See also Piao Fengzhu, Dongbei yiyongjun renwuzhi (Figures of the Northeast Volunteer Army),  vols. (Shenyang: Liaoning renmin chubanshe, ). . Suh, Kim Il Sung, . . Yang Zhaoquan,“Comrade Kim Il Sung as Representative of Korean Communists Who Joined the Anti-Japanese Struggle with the Chinese People,” Zhong-Chao guanxishi luwenjin (Collection of Papers on Chinese-Korean Relations) (Beijing: Shijie zhishi chubanshe, ), , . In  the bulk of the Second Army was Korean, including their commander, Chu Chin. See Dae-Sook Suh, Documents of Korean Communism, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . . Suh, Kim Il Sung, – . Kim’s Manchuria-based guerrilla group was assisted by activists based on the Korean side of the border, including Ch’o˘ndogyo affiliates. . The “Battle of Poch’o˘nbo” has long held a prominent place in DPRK historiography. See Kim Il Sung, Reminiscences, vol. , which devotes two chapters to the incident ( –). . Suh, Kim Il Sung, . . Wada, Kin Nichisei, .



 

to “raise the Northeast anti-Japanese struggle to a new level”—in other words, to retreat from Manchuria and regroup in the Soviet Far East.87 In late , Kim and his unit crossed the Soviet border and joined Chinese and Korean guerrillas in two Soviet base camps.88 By the end of the year, there were some  Korean and Chinese guerrillas at “Camp A” near Khabarovsk, and another , including Kim Il Sung, at “Camp B” near Vorosilov. In midJuly , the guerrillas in the two camps were reorganized as the th Special Reconnaissance Brigade of the Soviet th (Far Eastern) Army, an international unit under the command of Zhou Baozhong, one of the senior Chinese leaders of the Manchuria campaigns.89 There Kim attained the rank of captain in the Soviet Army.The two top Koreans under Zhou were Kim Il Sung and Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, but Zhou seems to have had a personal fondness for Kim, going back to the beginnings of the NEAJUA in .90 Apparently the partisans continued to send small units across the border into Manchuria (one Chinese source refers to “more than three hundred incursions” between  and ),91 including some involving Kim Il Sung.92 But clearly the Manchurian guerrilla phase of the anti-Japanese struggle had passed, and the partisans placed their hopes more than ever on a successful Soviet entry into the war against Japan. For the first time, the USSR was giving shelter and direct assistance to the partisans, even if that meant the latter’s absorption into the Soviet Army.“Internationalism” among Koreans, Chinese, and Soviets had reached a new stage, and when the war was over, the Soviet Army would also be directly involved in establishing a new order in Manchuria and northern Korea. . Yang Zhaoquan,“Comrade Kim Il Sung,” . . Wada, Kin Nichisei, ; Suh, Kim Il Sung, . Suh gives the date of Kim’s retreat as “sometime after March ” (), but Chinese sources record that Kim and his unit crossed into the USSR on  October . Shin, Manju chio˘k,  n. . . For Zhou’s background and activities in Manchuria and the USSR, see Zhao Sufen, Zhou Baozhong jiangjun zhuan (Biography of General Zhou Baozhong) (Bejing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, ), and Zhou Baozhong, Dongbei kangri youji riji (Diary of the Northeast Anti-Japanese Guerrilla Struggle) (Beijing: Renmin Chubanshe, ). Zhou apparently had not made contact with the Soviets before . Japanese intelligence in the late s reported that the guerrillas maintained a base on the Soviet border, but did not have active Soviet support. See Lee, Counterinsurgency in Manchuria, . According to later North Korean sources, the th Brigade was a compromise between maintaining the NEAJUA as an independent unit under CCP command, which was Zhou Baozhong’s desire, and absorbing the Korean and Chinese guerrillas into local Soviet units, as the Soviets had initially intended. See Sydney A. Seiler, Kim Il-song, –:The Creation of a Legend, the Building of a Regime (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, ), . . Sin, Manju chio˘k, ;Wada, Kin Nichisei, –. Zhou, incidentally, was not ethnically a Han Chinese but a member of the Bai minority nationality, which might have helped him maintain closer relations with Korean guerrillas than was the case for most of the Chinese partisans. . Dongbei kangri lianjun shiliao, vol. , . . Heilongjiangdang shiziliao (Historical Materials of the Heilongjiang [Communist] Party) vol. , .

   



Guerrilla Base Areas Unlike the Chinese communists in Yan’an, the Korean guerrillas in Manchuria never established a long-term base from which to carry out a program of political and social reform. Numerous attempts to create such areas were made, usually in remote regions; a Japanese report from  mentions a “small number of mountain strongholds”but says that “most large units roam the countryside.”93 While records are scanty, a number of relatively short-lived “Soviet districts” were indeed set up, giving some clue as to the political goals of the Korean communists and the type of society they desired to build. Kim Il Sung spent much more time, at a more formative period of his life, among the guerrillas in Manchuria than as an exile in the USSR between  and . Much of what subsequently emerged in North Korea after liberation, including land redistribution, united front politics, and social reform, has its precedent in the areas of Manchuria under guerrilla control in the s. In this as in other respects, post- North Korea was more a product of anticolonial struggle than Soviet manipulation. The communist guerrillas were not always on the best of terms with the local population whose interests they claimed to represent and on whom they depended for survival. Japanese records, which had little stake in presenting a favorable image of the insurgents, give a relatively positive impression of the guerrillas’ popularity. In villages and cities, the guerrillas would attempt to win support by propaganda, stressing nationalism first and social reform second, and using intimidation only as a last resort. As elsewhere in China, the communists used posters, speeches, political theater, and songs to bring their message to the general population.94 While forced recruitment, kidnapping of wealthy peasants for ransom, and occasional “atrocious actions” were not unknown, the Japanese authorities concluded that “on the whole, the people have favorable feelings toward the insurgents and have been helping them.The power of the Red Army has spread among the masses far beyond expectations. . . .The relationship between the insurgents and the people is very close and it is difficult to distinguish one from the other.”95 Between  and , the Manchurian partisans established a number of small, self-governing guerrilla base camps in eastern Manchuria.The largest of the camps held around six thousand men, women, and children; most camps had a population of two to three thousand. The combined population of the base . Lee, Counterinsurgency in Manchuria, . . “Before spreading communist propaganda,” a Japanese report notes, the communists would first “stress recovery of the lost territory, saving the nation and love of the people.” Ibid., . . Ibid., .



 

areas was around twenty thousand persons.96 These “Soviet governments,” later renamed People’s Revolutionary Governments, emphasized national independence, resistance to Japan and the Guomindang government in Nanjing, unity of the masses, land reform, and equality regardless of gender, race, or religion.97 Leaders were democratically elected by all adults above the age of sixteen, and various patriotic, peasant, youth, and women’s groups were organized. In addition, schools were set up in some of the camps and revolutionary magazines and newspapers were published.The main goal of these camps was, however, to train armed guerrillas to fight the Japanese, and most of their resources were applied to that end. In light of its possible influence on the subsequent North Korean land reform of March , land reform in the People’s Revolutionary Governments deserves special notice. According to Japanese intelligence, methods of confiscating and dividing land included the following: . Taking land only from the landlord class and “puppets” (whether Chinese, Japanese, or Korean), keeping it out of the hands of rich and middle peasants. . Redistribution on the basis of “work ability” (nodongnyo˘k), always keeping in mind the interests of the poor peasant. . Emphasis on distributing land to women and in “eliminating completely the vestiges of feudalism.” . After redistribution, any remaining land would be under the management of the “Soviet.” For the time being ordinary land could be bought and sold, but eventual “nationalization” of the remaining land would be promoted and efforts made toward reverting some of the land to collective use.98

The similarities between the above program and the  North Korean land reform will be covered in detail in chapter . More generally, the emphasis on benefiting the poorest segment of the peasantry, on women’s rights and eliminating the “vestiges of feudalism,” and on the temporary nature of redistribution leading toward eventual nationalization and collective use are all reflected in the social reforms of immediate postliberation North Korea. In these areas, it appears that the North Korean leadership was motivated not only by Soviet directives and Chinese influences, but by their direct experience in the creation of local governments in Manchuria. However, none of these People’s Revolutionary Governments lasted more . Yi Chongso˘k,“The North Korean Leadership and the Anti-Japanese Armed Struggle,” in Haebang cho˘nhusa u˘i insik (Understanding Pre- and Post-Liberation History), ed. Kim Namsik et al., vol. , North Korea (Seoul: Han’gilsa, ), –, based on contemporary Japanese records. . Yi, “North Korean Leadership,” ; Manshu kyosanhi no kenkyu (Study of Manchurian Communist Bandits) (Shinkyo, ),  –. . Manshu kyosanhi no kenkyu, .

   



than two and a half years before being discovered and eliminated by the Japanese, hardly enough time to carry out a thoroughgoing political and social reconstruction. It is difficult on the basis of extant documents to determine how effectively reform policies were carried out, and how well they were received. In addition, the role of Kim Il Sung and other future North Korean leaders in these base camps is somewhat murky. Although Kim apparently was in command of a base area for a time and other Korean guerrillas did participate in such governments, Kim was hardly the leader of a large, long-lasting Korean “Soviet” in Manchuria, as later North Korean histories have claimed.99 The guerrillas’ main purpose in forming the base areas was not social reconstruction, which could be deferred until an independent socialist state was created, but harassing the Japanese authorities.They had little hope of defeating the colonial power by themselves; rather, they attempted to demoralize and destabilize local Japanese authority as part of a long-range strategy of resistance,linked ultimately to the defeat of Japan by revolutionary forces in China and by the Soviet Union. There is one interesting critique on the base areas and the guerrilla struggle in Manchuria written by Kim Il Sung himself. Possibly the only verifiable piece of writing by Kim before liberation, this “unit report” on the First Army of the NEAJUA was written in , after Kim’s retreat to the Soviet Union.100 Writing in Chinese, which had been the primary language of Kim’s education, Kim gives a frank appraisal of the First Army in which he fought, its successes, shortcomings, and ultimate failure. He gives a sense of the difficulty of the antiJapanese struggle in the face of tremendous physical, geographical, and political obstacles. In , according to Kim, base areas and “Soviet governments” were established in four provinces of East Manchuria, the area covered by the First Army. Later called People’s Revolutionary Governments, nine such areas were created in all. On November , , a Japanese force of about a thousand attacked the guerrillas, who finally repulsed the invaders after a sixteen-day battle.The cost of their success was high: in Yanji county alone  Japanese, and over five hundred guerrillas, were killed.The revolutionary bases had to be abandoned after . . For Kim Il Sung’s activity in the guerrilla base areas, see Wada, Kin Nichisei, –. North Korea did not begin publishing Kim Il Sung’s alleged writings from his guerrilla days until the s, although his partisan activities were widely publicized immediately after liberation, along with those of other guerrilla movement veterans. See Dae-Sook Suh, Korean Communism, – (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press,),.For a collection of writing on the Manchurian partisan movement published shortly after liberation, see RG , SA , /. Panil t’usa yo˘nso˘ljip (Collection of Speeches by Anti-Japanese Fighters) (Pyongyang: Pariro haebang ilchunyo˘n kinyo˘m chungang chipjun wiwo˘nhoe, ). . Kim’s report,“Kanglian diyi lujun lueshi”(Brief History of the First Anti-Japanese United Army) appears in Dongbei kangri lianjun shiliao, vol. , – . Kim Ch’aek and Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, two of the most prominent Manchurian veterans in the later DPRK leadership, also submitted reports that appear in this volume.



 

In August  the Northeast Anti-Japanese People’s Revolutionary Army (NEAJPRA) was created. Kim joined the First Independent Army of the NEAJPRA, which was composed mostly of Koreans, although its commander,Yang Jingyu, was Chinese (its political commissar, Song Ch’o˘l’an, was Korean).This may also be a source for Kim’s later claim to have led a “Korean People’s Revolutionary Army” in Manchuria. Kim notes several “errors” in the East Manchurian guerrilla movement of the early s. First, the guerrillas “engaged with the Japanese unnecessarily several times instead of building forces gradually.” Second, they took a “leftist” line against landlords and peasants, as well as refusing to combine forces with other nationalist groups, rather than forming a united front.Third, constant Japanese surveillance and suspicion of infiltration led to self-destructive purges. The anti-Minsaengdan struggle in particular led to the deaths of “more than a few innocent comrades.”These “left errors” were corrected after  with the establishment of a united front and the NEAJUA. The period between  and  was a high point for the First Army, in which its forces expanded and engaged successfully with the Japanese. But this period of success was brief.The years  to  “could be called the period when our forces suffered loss,” as Kim euphemistically puts it. Massive punitive expeditions decimated the guerrillas’ ranks. In the end there was “too great a gap between the enemy forces and our own.” The guerrilla movement, Kim admits, ended in disappointment. This is not the Kim Il Sung of North Korean state mythology, who led an ever-victorious Korean army in dealing blow after telling blow against a fierce but ultimately fallible Japanese imperialist force. But it is the record of an observant, dedicated guerrilla fighter. It describes a group of partisans with a tremendous determination to win against overwhelming odds, willing to take enormous and at times foolhardy risks, who felt themselves the only legitimate representatives of a people oppressed by imperialism and “feudal vestiges,” and who attempted to link themselves with the poor peasantry of the remote Manchurian countryside in order to win back for them the land stolen by ruthless invaders. It was an experience that fostered determination, secrecy, united front tactics, and an emphasis on mobilizing the marginal elements of society— including poor peasants, women, and youth—and, as well, a lack of tolerance for dissent, ruthlessness to the enemy, a driving nationalism, and a fierce antiimperialism.That all of these elements became dominant themes North Korean politics may not be entirely attributable to the Manchurian guerrilla struggle, but this experience played a crucial role in the evolution of North Korea’s political culture. Manchuria remained an important arena for both the Korean and Chinese revolutions after liberation from Japan, and indeed into the Korean War. Both

   



the CCP victory in the Chinese civil war and the survival of the North Korean state after the U.S. entry in the Korean War depended, to a great extent, on Chinese-Korean cooperation in Manchuria. If nationalism inspired revolutionaries to struggle there, they soon came to realize that internationalism was their only hope for success. Kim Il Sung’s first hagiographer and ghostwriter, Han Chaedo˘k (who later defected to the South and bitterly denounced Kim),101 has Kim say that “we clasped hands with the anti-Japanese revolutionary forces of China because we loved the nation and for the sake of national independence.”102 Similarly,Kim San told Helen Foster Snow in  that he and other Koreans fought for the Chinese revolution because success in China would be best for Korea.103 Ultimately, however, revolution in East Asia was linked to inspiration and, if possible, active support from the Soviet Union. Of course, as is well known, Stalin was a cautious diplomat who hedged his bets and more often than not supported noncommunist nationalists over potentially troublesome revolutionaries. But the Soviet Union was the “elder brother,” as the Chinese Communist Party often said, leading the global revolution.104 By the s, Chinese and Korean communists looked increasingly to the USSR to enter the war against Japan and open up a space for revolutionary success.105 Korean communists,like their Chinese andVietnamese counterparts,saw themselves as part of a broad international struggle against imperialism under the leadership of the USSR. This internationalism was expressed most literally in Manchuria, where Koreans and Chinese fought under a unified command for nearly a decade.The revolutionaries based their hopes not on the guerrilla struggle alone, which few had any illusions would defeat Japanese imperialism, but on the entry of the Soviet Union in the war against Japan. Manchurian guerrillas saw themselves in a supplementary role: “If there is a war between Japan and the Soviet Union,” as one guerrilla report put it,“the Red Army will disturb the rear of the Japanese army.”106 In the end, it was the defeat of Japan in World War II and Soviet intervention that brought down Japanese rule in Manchuria, as well as in Korea. . In a book entitled, appropriately, “I Denounce Kim Il Sung” (Kim Ilso˘ngu˘l kobalhanda) (Seoul: Naeoe munhwasa, ). . Han, Kim Ilso˘ng changgun, . . Wales and Kim, Song of Ariran, . In a sad irony, one year after his interview with Helen Foster Snow, Kim San/Chang Chirak was executed by the Chinese communists on charges of spying for Japan. Sun-Ki Baik, “A Critical Reflection on ‘Song of Ariran,’” Journal of Modern Korean Studies  (August ): . . Edward Friedman et al.,Chinese Village,Socialist State (New Haven,Conn.: Yale University Press, ), . . As Kim San put it,“If Japan is defeated, a revolution at home is sure.Then Japan will join with China and Korea in a strong democratic revolutionary union, and the center of world political forces will shift to the East, with Soviet Russia strategically in the middle.” Wales and Kim, Song of Ariran, . . Lee, Counterinsurgency in Manchuria, .

  

Liberation, Occupation, and the Emerging New Order

The Soviet Entry After the defeat of Nazi Germany in May , the members of the th Special Brigade in the Soviet Far East prepared for the imminent Soviet entry into the war against Japan and the liberation of their respective countries. In late July, Zhou Baozhong organized a conference of Manchurian guerrilla exiles, during which the group was divided into separate Chinese and Korean units that would return to their home countries and work for national reconstruction. Kim Il Sung, Kang Ko˘n, Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, Kim Ch’aek, and other Koreans from the th Brigade formed a Korean Work Team (Choso˘n kongjaktan), with Kim Il Sung as military commander and Ch’oe Yonggo˘n as political commissar.1 Apparently, by this time Kim Il Sung had proven himself as the most prominent of the Korean guerrilla commanders, and the Korean group chose Kim as their leader in the summer of  over older and more experienced partisans.2 Kim Il Sung, Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, Kang Ko˘n, and Kim Ch’aek were all captains; the highest-ranking Korean in the th Brigade was Major Yi Tonghwa. Both Kim Il Sung and Kang Ko˘n had been brigade leaders.Yet through a combination of . Sydney A. Seiler, Kim Il-song, –:The Creation of a Legend, the Building of a Regime (Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, ), . Seiler’s information is based on interviews conducted with Korean-Chinese participants in these events, published in the South Korean monthly Sin Tonga in . . Wada Haruki, Kin Nichisei to Manshu konichi senso (Kim Il Sung and the Anti-Japanese War in Manchuria) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, ), – . Sin Chubaek suggests that Kim was actually the number-two man in the Korean Work Team, behind Ch’oe Yonggo˘n. Sin, Manju chio˘k Haninu˘i minjok undongsa,  – (History of the Korean Nationalist Movement in Manchuria, –) (Seoul:Asea munjesa, ), . Kim and Ch’oe had operated in separate units, Kim in southern Manchuria and Ch’oe in the north.



, ,     



luck, political maneuvering, and force of personality, at the time of liberation thirty-three-year-old Captain Kim Il Sung was the leading Korean among the Manchurian partisan exiles in the Soviet Far East. Kim’s emergence as leader of the Korean group does not arise from his being the handpicked choice of the Soviets for their occupation government,which was the assumption of many Western observers, both at the time and since. Although Kim allegedly visited Moscow before the end of the war, accompanying Zhou Baozhong, and may have met and made a favorable impression on Stalin,3 he seems not to have been “Moscow’s man” in Pyongyang until at least October . Indeed, Stalin himself apparently vetoed the proposal to utilize the th Brigade troops in the liberation of Korea, preferring the more trustworthy “Soviet-Koreans,”with more long-term attachments to the USSR,to the Manchurian partisans.4 To their doubtless disappointment and frustration, the Koreans in Kim’s group were not direct participants in the liberation of Korea and did not even enter the country until a month after the Japanese surrender. The USSR had maintained its “strange neutrality” towards Japan until the American atomic bombing of Hiroshima, despite American and British solicitation of Soviet support going back to the beginning of the Pacific War.5 After Germany’s defeat, American planners expected a protracted battle for the Japanese home islands, which could have been made easier by a Soviet drive into Manchuria to hold down Japanese troops on the northeast Asian mainland.The terms for entering the war within “two or three months” after the end of fighting in Europe,as expressed in Stalin’s position at theYalta conference in February , clearly indicated a Soviet desire to return to the status quo preceding Russia’s loss to Japan in the – Russo-Japanese War. Stalin requested port and railroad rights in Manchuria, the return of southern Sakhalin and the Kurile Islands, and the maintenance of the pro-Soviet government in Outer Mongolia.6 Soviet behavior in East Asia, as in Europe, was driven in large part by the poverty and deep insecurity of the war-ravaged USSR.7 Japan’s defeat offered . Seiler, Kim Il Sung, . Soviet testimonies also allege that Kim Il Sung met Stalin before Kim’s return to Korea in September , although accounts differ on when the meeting(s) took place and how much authority Stalin conferred to Kim. See Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok: Choso˘n Minjujuu˘i Inmin Konghwaguk (Secret Record: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), vol.  (Seoul: Chung’ang ilbosa, ),  –. . Seiler, Kim Il Sung, . . George A. Lensen, The Strange Neutrality: Soviet-Japanese Relations during the Second World War, – (Tallahassee: Diplomatic Press, ), . . Steven Levine, Anvil of Victory? The Communist Revolution in Manchuria (New York: Columbia University Press, ), ; John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (New York: Oxford University Press, ), . . This was especially evident in Europe, where the stakes for the USSR seemed far higher than in East Asia and Soviet insecurity greatly exacerbated East-West tensions.Vojtech Mastny, The Cold War and Soviet Insecurity:The Stalin Years (New York: Oxford University Press, ), .



 

the USSR an opportunity for extracting goods to help revive the shattered Soviet economy and to reestablish a zone of protection along the Russian Far East. There seems to have been little initial Soviet planning for postwar East Asia beyond those two immediate goals.That is, Soviet goals in Manchuria and Korea were defensive and minimalist, not designed for territorial aggrandizement or expansion. On the positive side, these goals included access to ports in Manchuria and Korea, beneficial economic arrangements—including the extraction of industrial goods and raw materials as “war booty”—and if possible the creation of “friendly” governments on the Soviet Far Eastern periphery. But Soviet foreign policy reports, opened to scholars after the end of the Cold War, stress that the Soviets’ greatest fear in northeast Asia was a revitalized and remilitarized Japan. Korea in particular, from the Soviet perspective, could not be allowed to fall into the Japanese sphere of influence again. A June  report from the Far Eastern Department of the Soviet Foreign Ministry asserted that “Japan must be forever excluded from Korea, since a Korea under Japanese rule would be a constant threat to the Far East of the USSR.”8 All of this could be satisfied by a Great Power condominium over northeast Asia that would recognize Soviet interests and give the USSR a role in Northeast China and a neutralized Korea. Soviet policymakers do not seem to have either anticipated or advised the creation of communist states in East Asia until well after the end of World War II. The evidence now available on Soviet postwar policy indicates that in East Asia, caution rather than adventurism ruled the day until early . In the first few years of postwar occupation, Stalin overplayed the Soviet hand in Europe, and underplayed it in Asia.The Soviet occupation authorities in Eastern Europe were much more heavy-handed than their American counterparts; the opposite is true in Korea.9 Stalin viewed Korea defensively, doing little at first to take advantage of Korea’s potential for indigenous revolution,perhaps one of the best opportunities for communist victory along the entire Soviet periphery at the end of World War II.10 By the time Stalin put Soviet support behind a communist takeover of the Korean peninsula, he had made a major strategic mistake . Kathryn Weathersby, interviewed by Chong-sik Lee,“What Stalin Wanted in Korea at the End of World War II,” Korea Focus (): .Thus the Soviets were quite concerned by the American retention of former Korean members of the Japanese colonial bureaucracy in positions of power in South Korea. . Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany:A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, –  (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ); Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ). . Kathryn Weathersby, “Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, –: New Evidence from the Russian Archives,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper No.  (November ), .

, ,     



in underestimating the American willingness to defend South Korea.11 In North Korea, events often ran ahead of Moscow’s plans, which is not to say that Soviet authorities in Pyongyang itself did not attempt to exert a great deal of local control. There is little evidence that the Soviet occupation of North Korea was a “preconceived formula for a take-over” as the State Department asserted at the time, and whose process later scholars tried to reconstruct on the basis of very limited evidence from the Soviet and North Korean side.12 A pro-Soviet, communistdominated state in North Korea was not on Moscow’s agenda at the end of World War II and evolved out of a series of events having to do with U.S.–Soviet rivalries in Europe, political alignments among Koreans in both occupation zones, and the hardening of American and Soviet positions on the Korean issue.13 To begin with, the Soviet military was seriously understaffed and unprepared for the occupation.14 Initial plans for the occupation were not drawn up in Moscow, but on an ad hoc basis by the th Army in the Russian Far East.The unexpectedly rapid surrender of Japan, nine days after Hiroshima and seven days after the Soviet declaration of war on August , took the Russians by surprise. As the Americans made clear, the USSR would not participate in the occupation of Japan,15 but the American proposal of joint occupation of Korea was accepted.The Red Army moved quickly overland into Manchuria and down the East Coast of the Korean Peninsula. On August  and  Soviet forces landed at ˘ the ports of Unggi, Najin, and Ch’o˘ngjin.16 On August , the South P’yo˘ng’an . Alexandre Y. Mansourov, “Communist War Coalition Formation and the Origins of the Korean War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, ). . United States Department of State, North Korea:A Case Study in the Techniques of Takeover (; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ), ; Dae-Sook Suh,“A Preconceived Formula for Sovietization:North Korea,”in The Anatomy of Communist Takeovers, ed.John Hammond (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, ). . The Americans perceived that the Soviets started taking a hard line on the Korean issue in October , which may have been related to the United States’ rejection of Soviet requests to participate in the occupation of Japan after the London Conference of Foreign Ministers, September  to October . National Archives and Record Administration, Record Group , Intelligence Summary North Korea (ISNK ), no.  ( – November ), . . Eric Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea, – (Oxford: Berg, ), . . Responding to Truman’s  August  draft telegram of “General Order No. ” for the surrender of Japan, Stalin reminded Truman that the Soviets expected to participate in the occupation of the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido.Truman ignored the remark. In October, the United States reaffirmed its decision to exclude the USSR from the occupation of Japan. See United States Army Center of Military History, File  –. BA, Office of the Chief of Military History, History of the Occupation of Korea (), part , and Michael Schaller, The American Occupation of Japan:The Origins of the Cold War in Asia (New York: Oxford University Press, ). . Pak Chaegwan,“Post-Liberation Soviet Policy toward North Korea,” Haebang cho˘nhusa u˘i insik (Understanding Pre- and Post-Liberation History), ed. Kim Namsik et al., vol. , North Korea (Seoul: Han’gilsa, ), .Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, – .



 

Provincial People’s Political Committee, the de facto government of northern Korea’s most populous province, held a welcoming rally for the Soviet army in Pyongyang.17 The Soviets were enthusiastically greeted as liberators, as were later the Americans in the South.18 The ubiquitous presence of pro-Soviet imagery in North Korea, portraits of Stalin in particular, was striking to witnesses at the time and has been taken to indicate the complete control of all things North Korean by the occupying Soviet forces.19 Pyongyang was festooned with posters of Marx, Lenin, and Stalin; portraits of Stalin were invariably displayed alongside those of Kim Il Sung at public gatherings from late  until the Red Army withdrew in ; slogans praising Marshal Stalin appeared frequently in the press, on banners, and in party and government publications. In this respect North Korea certainly did resemble Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe, but even more closely resembled Northeast China, another area liberated from Japanese occupation by the Red Army. Indeed, the pro-Stalin propaganda in Manchuria far outlasted that in North Korea. In Pyongyang, only one large portrait each of Marx and Lenin remained in the city center, looking down on Kim Il Sung square, by the s; the small monument to the Red Army,called the “Liberation Tower”(Haebangu˘i t’ap),rested inconspicuously on a hill above an amusement park. In the city centers of Manchuria,in contrast,statues commemorating the Red Army stood long after SinoSoviet relations had soured and the Soviet Union itself collapsed, and to this day the main thoroughfare of Changchun, the former capital of Manchukuo, is called “Stalin Street.” Pyongyang’s “Stalin Street” was renamed “Victory Street” after the Korean War. The bombastic Soviet propaganda in North Korea between  and , while certainly demonstrating the energetic public relations efforts of the occupying Red Army and its supporters, does not in itself prove complete Soviet manipulation of North Korea’s internal affairs. At first, the actual behavior of Soviet forces belied the enthusiastic welcome displayed in the propaganda.In northern Korea,as in Manchuria,the initial wave of Red Army liberators behaved with widespread, sometimes indiscriminate, violence toward the local population. Rape of women and other physical assaults on civilians, confiscation of food and living off the land, as well as the dismantling of factories and the hauling of industrial booty back to the USSR, were common occurrences in areas of Soviet occupation.These wanton acts of loot. Hak Soon Paik,“North Korean State Formation, –” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, ), . . See appendix B for the statements of General Chistiakov regarding the Soviet occupation. . U.S. intelligence reports frequently allude to the ubiquitous pro-Soviet, and especially proStalin, propaganda in Pyongyang and other parts of North Korea. See also O Yo˘ngjin, Hanau˘i chu˘ngo˘n (An Eyewitness Report) (Pusan: Kungmin sasang chidowo˘n, ), ;Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, ; Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung:The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, ), .

, ,     



ing and violence on the part of Soviet soldiers, attested in many contemporary eyewitness accounts, did not endear them to the Korean people.20 U.S. military intelligence surmised in December  that It is doubted that the Russians intended to remain in Northern KOREA. They did little to gain the respect of the Korean people and much which would alienate them.They were ruthless in their manner of occupation. . . . Looting, rape, pillage and levies laid on the populace for food supplies and transportation could result only in a feeling of ill-will towards the Red Army.21

As Anna Louise Strong recounted,“The first troops that came in fighting were tough babies from the German front,” soon replaced by technical experts “whose functions were quite clearly circumscribed.”22 By October  violent acts on the part of Soviet soldiers seem much less common. By November,  percent of Soviet military personnel in northern Korea were female.23 Nevertheless, the image of the Soviet Army had been badly tarnished in the eyes of many of the Koreans they had come to liberate. The novelist Han So˘rya, who later became head of the North Korean writers’ league and Kim Il Sung’s official hagiographer, attempted to reconcile the violent acts of individual Soviet soldiers with a sympathetic attitude toward the Red Army as a whole in his short story “Moja” (The Hat), which appeared in the inaugural issue of the North Korean Arts Federation’s journal Munhwa cho˘nso˘n (The Cultural Front), published in July .24 “Moja” concerns a Red Army captain from the Ukraine known only as “I” (na), who comes with the initial wave of Soviet liberators in August .The soldier’s drunken rages, during which he intimidates and roughs up innocent Koreans and fires his pistol mindlessly into the air, are explained by his difficult childhood, his harrowing experiences on the Western front, and his lack of appreciation for Korean culture and customs. Eventually the soldier is befriended by a Korean named “K” who, among . Ch’oe Po˘mso˘, Puk Hanu˘i cho˘ngch’i sangse (Political conditions in North Korea) (Seoul, ), cited in Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), :; Cumings, Origins, vol. , –, and vol. ,The Roaring of the Cataract, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . . ISNK, no.  (–  November ), . . Anna Louise Strong, Inside North Korea: An Eyewitness Account (Montrose, Calif.: Anna Louise Strong, ), . . ISNK, no.  ( – November ), . . RG , SA , /. Munhwa cho˘nso˘n , no.  ( July ): –. For a biography of Han, see Brian Myers, Han So˘rya and North Korean Literature:The Failure of Socialist Realism in the DPRK (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ). Myers, and South Korean scholars until recently, have had to rely on secondhand accounts of “Moja” because the original story can only be found in copies of Munhwa cho˘nso˘n held in the American and Russian archives.



 

other things, takes him to the theater to see performances of traditional Korean music and dance.The Soviet soldier comes to realize the beauty of Korean culture and develops a fond relationship with his Korean comrades, with whom he shares the common goal of socialist liberation and a deep love for Generalissimo Stalin,“the Sun of Humanity”(Illyu u˘i t’aeyang).25 Finally the Soviet soldier gives a young Korean boy the hat he had kept for his own son, as a token of his friendship and symbol of the new socialist world young Koreans would bring into existence. Unfortunately for Han So˘rya, even this happy ending did not make up for his unflattering portrayal of a Red Army officer, and the Soviet Civil Administration quickly withdrew the offending issue of Munhwa cho˘nso˘n from circulation.26 Rape and pillage by invading armies are as old as war itself, but such acts had a particular character in the areas occupied by the Soviet Union immediately after World War II. Especially in eastern Germany and Manchuria, assaults on “enemy” women were widespread and do not seem to have been much discouraged by commanding officers. In Germany as many as  million women were raped by members of the Soviet occupation forces. Such assaults “continued long into the occupation, and the wanton violence committed by Soviet soldiers left a significant segment of the population in the East angry and embittered.”27 Rape is also widely cited in Japanese and American sources as a major problem in Soviet-occupied Manchuria between August  and the Red Army withdrawal in April , mostly rapes of Japanese women by Soviet soldiers.28 By comparison, the period of widespread assaults on Korean women in the Soviet zone of occupation was relatively short-lived.“Enemy” women were the target of Soviet assaults in both Europe and East Asia, and it seems that the Soviet authorities in Korea made a greater effort to restrain soldiers there than in Germany and Manchuria. As for pillage, wholesale economic extraction was standard practice in areas under Soviet occupation.The Red Army lifted enormous quantities of war booty from industrialized areas of Eastern Europe (especially Germany) and from Manchuria to revive the shattered Soviet economy.The  reparations mission to investigate the disposition of Japanese industrial goods in the areas of So. It was Han So˘rya who first used the term “Sun of the Nation” (Minjogu˘i t’aeyang) for Kim Il Sung, suggesting perhaps a subsidiary—one might say, satellite—relationship between Kim and the greater Sun, Stalin. See RG , SA , /. Han So˘rya et al., Uri u˘i t’aeyang (Our Sun) (Pyongyang, ). . Yi Kibong, Pugu˘i munhak kwa yesurin (North Korea Literature and Artists) (Seoul: Sasayong, ), . . Naimark, The Russians in Germany, . See also Atina Grossman,“A Question of Silence:The Rape of German Women by Occupation Soldiers,” October, no.  (spring ):  – . . Lori Watt,“When Empire Collapses: The Repatriation of Japanese Citizens from Northeast Asia after World War II” (M.A. thesis, Columbia University, ), .

, ,     



viet occupation, led by U.S. Ambassador Edwin W. Pauley, estimated $ million in direct damage and $ billion in lost production and replacement cost inflicted by the Soviets in Manchuria.Within a matter of weeks after the Soviet entry, the bulk of Manchurian industrial goods and equipment had been moved to the USSR.29 In North Korea, Soviet economic extraction was not so extensive, and Soviet policy soon shifted from pillage to rehabilitation.To be sure, the first group of Red Army soldiers engaged in sometimes spectacular acts of pilferage: in the city of Wo˘nsan, Soviet soldiers allegedly took ,, yen from local banks at gunpoint,30 and Russians were also reported to have dismantled generators, water turbines, and transformers at the Yalu River power plants.31 However, the Pauley Commission’s investigation of northern Korea, May  to June , , concluded that most of the heavy industry there was functioning and had not been stripped by the Soviets.32 Although Pauley’s group was hampered by restrictive Soviet supervision and was denied access to Hu˘ngnam and Ch’o˘ngjin, two of the five industrial centers in the north and the sites where the greatest amount of industrial removal had been reported,33 their overall assessment was that, by the spring of  at any rate, the Soviet occupation authorities were assisting rather exploiting the North Korea economy. The Japanese themselves had caused considerable damage to Korean industry before the Russians arrived.At the end of the colonial period some  percent of Korean industry, and  percent of heavy industry, was in the northern part of the peninsula.34 North Koreans told Anna Louise Strong that “the Japanese destroyed everything they could before they surrendered,”which included removing locomotives and track, flooding dozens of mines, letting steel mills cool, and attempting to blow up the Hu˘ngnam chemical factory, the largest industrial enterprise in Korea at the time.35 The North Korean economy will be discussed in more detail in chapter ; the major economic problems in the northern zone were not caused by Soviet pillage, but were the result of Japanese sabotage, loss of Japanese technical experts, and northern Korea’s sudden separation from South Korea, Manchuria, and Japan. Over the next few years the Soviets and their allies would bring North Korea, as well as Northeast China, . Levine, Anvil of Victory, . . United States Military, Far East Command, Record Group , box ,“Events and Conditions in North Korea,” G- Periodic Report, No. , enclosure no. ,  December . . ISNK, no.  (–  November ), . . George M. McCune, Korea Today (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), . . ISNK, no.  ( – May ), .The other three sites were Sinu˘iju on the Chinese border, Wo˘nsan, and Chinnamp’o. . McCune, Korea Today, . . Strong, Inside North Korea, . During the Korean War, the U.S. Army accomplished what the Japanese had only attempted in , blowing up the Hu˘ngnam chemical works because of their military potential.



 

into a much closer economic relationship with the USSR,36 but the degree of integration would never equal that of the Japanese colonial period. Japanese residents of northern Korea had, at first, more to fear from the Soviets than from the Koreans.37 Reports of violent reprisals against ordinary Japanese on the part of local Koreans are surprisingly few. Korean resentment toward Japanese, of course, ran high; Korean-run People’s Committees apparently put Japanese to work on public projects, and the Russians made little effort to restrain People’s Committees from driving Japanese civilians out of homes, farms, and factories.38 Japanese soldiers fared less well, working as forced labor for the Soviets or taken as prisoners to the USSR.39 But Korean assaults on ordinary Japanese seem mostly to have been isolated incidents. The response of most Japanese in Korea was to move, in enormous numbers and often on foot, toward the ports to board ships back to Japan. One eyewitness report estimated , Japanese refugees in Wo˘nsan, on the east coast of northern Korea, in early September. Most of these were women and children, dying at a rate of ten per day.40 At the time of the surrender some , Japanese soldiers and , civilians lived north of the th parallel; , Japanese lived in the American zone.41 Many of them moved south on their way back to Japan via Pusan, Korea’s largest port, located in the far southeast of the peninsula.They,and the Koreans who also moved south,contributed to the massive population movement throughout the Asia-Pacific that followed the Japanese surrender, of which the shift in population from northern to southern Korean was only one part. Millions of people were “repatriated” from throughout the Japanese empire, not always voluntarily, and sometimes to “homelands” they had not seen in decades or had never seen before. Until the land reform of March-April  triggered the largest pre–Korean War migration to South Korea, most Korean refugees to the American zone were not “voting with their feet” to flee communism (although some certainly . Cumings, Origins, vol. , . . The South P’yo˘ng’an branch of the Korean Communist Party announced on  September , “The Soviet Army will protect fully Japanese persons and property. Some people misunderstand the Soviet Army and think it plunders, murders, and terrorizes.We are regretful in this regard. Let us rely on and cooperate fully with the Soviet Army.”ATIS, box , item , enclosure no. , translation no. . . RG , box ,“Repatriation,”  January , ; ISNK, no.  (– December ), . . “Repatriation,”  November , . . Ibid.,  January , . . Ibid.,  – . Most of the Japanese in northern Korea at the time of surrender were in the vicinity of Pyongyang (South P’yo˘ng’an Province) and in the Hamgyo˘ng provinces in the East.The United States Armed Forces in Korea (USAFIK) gave the following provincial distribution of Japanese civilians: North Pyo˘ng’an , Hwanghae , South P’yo˘ng’an , North Hamgyo˘ng , South Hamgyo˘ng ,

, ,     



were) but returning to their places of origin after having been relocated under Japanese colonial rule. By December , the U.S. occupation authorities had recorded nearly half a million Koreans entering the American zone,“a large portion” of them “refugees from  or ,” along with , Japanese.42 By early January  the repatriation of Koreans from Japan and Japanese from Korea was considered complete, according the American military government in Seoul.43

From Freedom to Discipline Korea’s sudden liberation from Japanese colonialism in  created an enormous space for politics, releasing a cacophony of contesting voices claiming to represent Korean society. If the defeated Japanese reacted to the news of surrender with stunned silence, their former colonial subjects reacted with a release of noise, music, and speech, as one eyewitness later recounted. Every street, every road, every alley is packed with people, waving flags, singing, shouting, greeting each other, everyone. Noises and sounds of all kinds fill the air— drums, bugles, whistles, buckets, pots and pans, bells . . . the whole town is exploding with ecstasy, vibrating the hot air.44

The long-repressed resentments against colonial repression were suddenly released through speech, celebration, and physical attacks on the symbols of Japanese rule: Japanese flags, Shinto shrines, and police stations, among others. Within days after liberation, the initial euphoria and chaos had given way to widespread attempts to create or impose a new kind of order: at the level of local policing, at the level of a centralized political system, and in the restructuring of society as a whole. As it turned out, these attempts to discipline Korean society would continue under the aegis of separate occupation authorities,which gradually solidified into two opposing states across the artificial divide of the th parallel.Though not without its share of violence and disruption, the creation of a new order in North Korea was in many respects more rapid, more disciplined,and more thoroughgoing than in the South.The system that emerged was not simply a Soviet imposition, but came out of a complex interplay of interests, motivations, and actions on the part of the Soviet occupation authori. ISNK, no.  (– December ), . . USAFIK, RG , box , “Korean Repatriation from North Korea.”This document gives a somewhat higher figure for Japanese in northern Korea in August , at ,. . Richard Kim, Lost Names: Scenes from a Korean Boyhood (New York: Praeger, ),  –. Kim was a resident of northern Korea at the time.



 

Villagers on the way to a rally, led by members of the Democratic Youth League, Inje County, Kangwo˘n Province, . Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

ties, North Korean leaders in Pyongyang, and the local groups, organizations, and individuals with which the former two interacted. Local Organization In the brief space between liberation and the arrival of foreign occupation authorities, Koreans had attempted to create their own political organizations, both at the center and in the regions.This was by no means a coordinated venture, and local organization took on a wide variety of forms and political complexions in different regions of the peninsula. The local organizations created were generally called People’s Committees (inmin wiwo˘nhoe) although there were other nomenclatures as well, especially in the North.45 Both because of . Bruce Cumings’s Origins, vol. , is the best work on the People’s Committees in English, although he concentrates primarily on South Korea. See especially chapters  and .The People’s Committees in the North have not been the subject of much extensive study, in part because documents from the first few months after liberation are quite scanty. See Kim Yongbok,“Organization and Activities of North Korean People’s Committees After Liberation,” in Haebang cho˘nhusau˘i insik (Understanding Preand Post-Liberation History), ed. Kim Namsik et al., vol. , North Korea (Seoul: Han’gilsa, )  –  (hereafter HCI ), and Ryu Kilchae, “North Korean State Formation and the Role of the People’s Committees,  –” (Ph.D. diss., Korea University, ).

, ,     



their policy of not recognizing any preexisting Korean political authority and because of concern over leftist subversion within the People’s Committees, the Americans deliberately dismantled the People’s Committees (PCs) in the South. In the North, the Soviets recognized the authority of the PCs—while attempting to make them more pro-Soviet—and the PCs became the basis of a central government in Pyongyang, called the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee (NKPPC) in February , and renamed the North Korean People’s Committee (NKPC) in February . Kim Namsik, a South Korean scholar who witnessed this period in the North, writes that “the People’s Regime of North Korea was founded on the basis of the People’s Committees spontaneously organized after liberation.”46 While this statement is true as far as it goes, the disparate People’s Committees of  were significantly reshaped by the central authorities as they developed into the North Korean People’s Committee of . Both a nascent central government and local political organizations emerged in Korea immediately after liberation, but the relationship between them was often tenuous, or indeed nonexistent.While Yo˘ Unhyo˘ng and other Korean nationalist were creating the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence (Choso˘n ko˘n’guk chunbi wiwo˘nhoe, CPKI) in Seoul as an interim government,local PCs were being formed throughout Korea.47 The CPKI mobilized a peace-preservation force (ch’iandae) and sent youth to organize similar security forces in the countryside; there were, however, a considerable number of local peacekeeping groups already in existence.48 By the end of October, there were some  CPKI branches in the provinces.49 Generally these branches were concerned with local order, maintenance of food supplies, and the like and were not closely directed from the center.50 It seems likely that for the most part, the CPKI branches merged with, or were subsumed under, the local People’s Committees. Local autonomy was more pronounced in the North than in the South, especially in the more remote regions. Kim Namsik argues that while on the one hand the North Korean PCs were created independently of the Soviets, on the other hand branches of the Seoul-based CPKI did not reach most areas of North Korea.Therefore, “the People’s Committees were not created from the center but organized from the bottom up.”51 There is a distinct lack of local docu. Kim Namsik, “Rethinking Pre- and Post-Liberation North Korean History,” HCI, vol. , . . For the organization of the CPKI, see Cumings, Origins, vol. , chapter , and So˘ Chungso˘k, Hanguk hyo˘ndae minjok undong yo˘n’gu (A Study of the Modern Korean National Movement) (Seoul: Yo˘ksa pip’yo˘ngsa, ), –. . Cumings, Origins, vol. , . . Choso˘n haebang illyo˘nsa, . Cumings believes the actual number was probably higher. See Cumings, Origins, vol. , . . So˘, Hanguk hyo˘ndae minjok undong, . . Kim Namsik,“North Korean History,” .



 

Folk dancing at a political rally, Inje County,Kangwo˘n Province,.Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

mentation from the North in the first few months after liberation, but enough material exists by way of memoirs and testimonies to give a reasonable picture of the range of political conditions in the northern provinces. Provisional or “preparatory” People’s Committees were set up in North and South P’yo˘ng’an, the Hamgyo˘ng provinces, and Hwanghae Province within a few days after liberation. Kangwo˘n was the last to form a provincial PC, on September . On August , the city of Sinu˘iju organized a “Provisional Political Committee,” and other cities established similar organizations.52 Local political organizations of various names were founded in the counties and villages. More than their counterparts in the South and the CPKI, the PCs in the northern provinces were usually dominated by conservative nationalists.53 There were communists in virtually all the provincial PCs in northern Korea, but commu. RG ,SA ,/. DPRK Culture and Propaganda Department, Haebang sanyo˘nganu˘i kungnaewae chungyo ilgi (Chronology of Important Domestic and International Events in the Four Years since Liberation) (Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, ), –. . So˘, Hanguk hyo˘ndae minjok undong, ; Kim Yongbok,“Organization and Activities,” –.

, ,     



nists and other leftists tended to be a minority, and there was often friction between the local communist parties and the PCs.54 The notable exception to this was South Hamgyo˘ng.As we recounted in the previous chapter, this province had the most active leftist movement in the late colonial period and retained strong ties with the guerrilla struggle in Manchuria. South Hamgyo˘ng had also been the main center of heavy industry in northern Korea, especially the areas around Wo˘nsan and Hu˘ngnam, the one place in North Korea with a substantial and visible urban proletariat. One of the most active labor organizers in the area had been O Kiso˘p, who became labor minister in the DPRK.55 Not surprisingly, leftists dominated the provincial People’s Committee after liberation. Within a few days of their release from Hamhu˘ng prison, a group of some one hundred activists had also reorganized the local communist party and created new labor and peasant unions.56 In late November, a conference of national People’s Committee representatives was held in Seoul.Yi Kangguk, who presided over the conference, spoke glowingly of a “natural, spontaneous mass movement” centered on the PCs and leading to national unification.57 PCs were active in all provinces and major cities, and in over , townships.58 Of the , PCs at all levels,  were in the North, reflecting the difference in population. Despite its national character,the conference was attended by very few northerners. Of these, only the Kangwo˘n and South Hamgyo˘ng representatives spoke at length, and presented two very different images of the political conditions in their respective provinces.While Kangwo˘n was the site of considerable struggle between left and right, in Hamgyo˘ng the left dominated from the beginning. The Kangwo˘n representative announced that administration and law were in the hands of the PCs, but there were still problems of tax collection and dealing with “national traitors.” The PC was preserving local security and had set up several People’s Courts (inmin chaep’anso).A group of national traitors had organized a “suicide squad” (kyo˘lsadae) to wreak terror, but had been apprehended.59 In contrast,the South Hamgyo˘ng representative recounted the arduous struggle of workers and peasants in the province before liberation and the rise of . Kim Yongbok, “Organization and Activities,” , drawing on the memoirs of the Korean Quaker minister Ham So˘kho˘n, a resident of Sinu˘iju who was in charge of the North P’yo˘ng’an Provincial Political Committee. . Carter Eckert,“Total War,” in The Japanese Wartime Empire, ed. Peter Duus et al. (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . . Kim Yongbok,“Organization and Activities,” . . Cho˘n’guk inmin wiwo˘nhoe taep’yoja taehoe u˘isarok (Record of the National People’s Committee Representative Conference) (Seoul: Choso˘n chongp’ansa, ), . . Ibid., . . Ibid., .



  Table 2.1. People’s Committees in North and South Korea (as of late November 1945)

Township (myo˘n) Village (u˘ p) Island County (kun) City Province

Total North and South

South of 38th Parallel

North of 38th Parallel

2,244

1,667 (no PC in 13 townships) 75 2 148 12 7

564

103 2 218 21 14

28 — 70 9 7

Source: Ryu Kilchae, “North Korean State Formation and the Role of the People’s Committees, 1945 –1947” (Ph.D. diss., Korea University, 1995), p. 618.

“revolutionaries” to power immediately after liberation.After August , , “about , revolutionary leaders”met in Hamhu˘ng and “joined hands to construct a People’s Regime” (inmin cho˘ngkwo˘n). A People’s Conference was held and provincial, county, and village PCs were organized.“After thirty-six years,” the representative declared,“we created an administration and police force with our own hands.A revolutionary fighter held the position of Police Chief, peasants were in control of all county administration.” Farmer’s and worker’s cooperatives drew in about , members. There were, however, forces of reaction.A group of some three hundred national traitors and reactionaries formed a counterrevolutionary organization on the day of liberation.They attempted to break up the PCs, but “the Red Army came to our assistance.”The latter comment drew a round of applause from the audience.60 By November  the Soviet occupation was very much a presence in northern Korea and had already played a key role in shaping the People’s Committees there. Soviet Administration Immediately after Red Army troops entered Korea, the Soviets established komendaturas, or bureaus of local commanders, to disarm the Japanese and establish order at the provincial, county, and township levels.61 The duties of the komendaturas soon expanded to involve advising, and sometimes creating, local People’s Committees, but except in North Hamgyo˘ng where Soviet troops first entered Korea, North Korean PCs were established under Korean rather than . Ibid.,  –. . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, ; In Ho Lee,“The Soviet Military Government in North Korea,” Korea Observer , no.  (winter ): . Both Van Ree and Lee base their accounts on Soviet testimonies.

, ,     



Soviet direction.62 Fighting in northern Korea ended August ; provincial PCs had all been reorganized under Soviet guidance by the end of August; and by the end of September the number of komendaturas was reduced from  to .63 When Japan surrendered, responsibility for local security in Pyongyang was taken over by the newly created South P’yo˘ng’an Security Maintenance Committee, headed by Cho Mansik.Two days later, on August , the committee was reorganized as the South P’yo˘ng’an Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence to coordinate with the central CPKI in Seoul, which became in turn the South P’yo˘ng’an Provisional People’s Political Committee.64 On August  the Red Army arrived in Pyongyang and formally transferred authority from the disarmed Japanese to the Provisional People’s Political Committee. To facilitate government administration in Pyongyang, and by extension the rest of northern Korea under Soviet occupation, the Soviet authorities then set up what they called a “Civil Administration” (Grazhdanskia Administratsiia). The Soviet Civil Administration (SCA) was established on October , , on the recommendation of th Army Commander, General Ivan Chistiakov. Its first director was General Andrei Romanenko. But the SCA was largely the brainchild of General Terentii Shtykov, a member of the Military Command of the Maritime District who later became the first Soviet ambassador to the DPRK. According to Soviet accounts, Shtykov was instrumental in formulating Soviet policy toward Korea, had direct access to Stalin, and for most of the occupation period “exercised extremely close supervision over political events in North Korea.”65 As General Nikolai Lebedev, who took over the SCA from Romanenko in , recounted,“There was not an event [in North Korea] in which Shtykov was not involved.”66 The SCA functioned as a kind of parallel government for North Korea until the creation of the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee in February .67 The Five-Province Administration created in November  to oversee government in the North was led by Koreans, but had Soviet advisors for each of the ten departments, and Red Army officers also worked as advisors to the provincial People’s Committees.68 The Soviet occupation forces thus played a key role behind the scenes—even if they did not create a full-blown . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . . Ibid., . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :–. . Kathryn Weathersby,“Soviet Aims in Korea,” ; Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, –; Cumings, Origins, vol. , ; Wada Haruki, “The Soviet Union’s Korea Policy, August–September ,” Shakai kagaku kenkyu , no.  (November ): . . Hyun-su Jeon with Gyoo Kahng, “The Shtykov Diaries: New Evidence on Soviet Policy in Korea,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos.  – (winter – ): . See also Cho˘n Hyo˘nsu [Hyun-su Jeon],“North Korean Regime Formation According to the ‘Shtykov Diaries,’” Yo˘ksa pip’yo˘ng, no.  (autumn ): – . . Lee,“Soviet Military Government,” . . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, , .



 

military occupation government like the Americans in the South—in reforming the political system in North Korea and were active in constructing its legal and cultural institutions.69 But they were cautious in instigating social revolution in Korea, even acting to inhibit radical change. Stalin himself initially ordered restraint against landlords and pro-Japanese elements,70 and was extremely wary of provoking the Americans by supporting revolution in the South.71 Soviet archives reveal, as many scholars have suggested, that Stalin’s aim was to maintain a “friendly” regime in the North, in order to prevent an attack on Soviet territory and benefit from Korea’s economic resources.72 For that, the Soviet Union did not need, nor did it attempt, pervasive control of North Korean society. The impetus for radicalization came from Korean communists themselves—young enthusiasts like Kim Il Sung who pushed the Soviet authorities toward more thorough change, and ultimately to a military takeover of the South. Thus, the Soviet occupation was not the locus of complete manipulation at all levels of North Korean society.The Soviets had control in what mattered to them, in particular North Korea’s foreign policy, trade, and the maintenance of a generally pro-Soviet leadership. Soviet influence was exerted mostly in Pyongyang. But the Soviet occupation authorities took care to ensure that “friendly” Koreans were well placed in Pyongyang and in the provincial administrative bodies. Immediately on entering Korea, the Soviets set about shifting the political center of the provincial PC leadership to the left.After eliminating most of the remaining Japanese from positions of authority and legitimizing the role of the PCs, Soviet authorities helped to install a considerable number of Korean communists, who became the majority in most provincial committees. The Soviets also strongly influenced personnel and security structures.73 Below the provincial level, however, Soviet influence did not appear to have had much of an impact.74 While the Red Army moved across Manchuria and northern Korea in August , the members of the now-disbanded th Brigade remained in their Russian camps.According to Zhou Bazhong, the Chinese and Korean guerrillas began to scatter in early September, returning to engage in political organization in Manchuria, China proper, and Korea. Kim Il Sung and his group of . Weathersby,“Soviet Aims in Korea,” –, –. . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . . Weathersby,“Soviet Aims in Korea,” . . Ibid., . . Kim Yongbok,“Organization and Activities,” . Kim gives a detailed account of this personnel restructuring in each province, –. . Perhaps the closest parallel in Eastern Europe is Czechoslovakia, where “people’s committees” were also established and gradually taken over by the communist party. See Zbigniev Brzezinski, The Soviet Bloc: Unity and Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), .

, ,     



sixty partisans attempted to enter Korea overland, but because of a bombed-out bridge at Sinu˘iju were forced to go to Vladivostok and from there by sea to Korea.The Soviet ship Pugachev docked at Wo˘nsan harbor with Kim and his group on September . Kim reached Pyongyang on September .75 Thus, Kim Il Sung was neither the handpicked puppet of Moscow groomed well in advance of the Soviet occupation, nor was he the heroic leader who fought his way through the remaining Japanese forces to liberate Korea,as DPRK hagiography has sought to portray since the beginning of the regime. He was the chosen leader among his guerrilla cohorts, but did not himself engage with the Japanese at the end of the war, and his arrival on Soviet transport was almost a fluke. It was a rather innocuous beginning for a man who shortly was to rise to the pinnacle of power in North Korea. When Kim arrived in his home city, he found Pyongyang with a functioning Soviet administration and a local People’s Committee dominated by the conservative Christian nationalist Cho Mansik.All provincial PCs had been reorganized by September , but ironically, the province that seemed least amenable to communist domination was South P’yo˘ng’an.76 Pyongyang had been the center of Korean Protestant Christianity since the early twentieth century, and the leading nationalist figure there was Cho, Presbyterian elder and former head of the nativist Korean Goods Promotion movement in the s. Although sometimes called the “Gandhi” of Korea because of his insistence on a nonviolent path to Korean independence and promotion of native economic production—both inspired by Mahatma Gandhi’s nationalist movement in India—Cho, like many other conservative nationalists, publicly encouraged students to volunteer for the Japanese war effort in late , which did some damage to Cho’s nationalist reputation.77 Cho’s support base was among Christians and the propertied classes, a constituency from which he built the Korean Democratic party (Choso˘n minjudang) in early November . Cho and his supporters came into increasing conflict with the communists and the Soviets over the course of the occupation. After the Moscow Foreign Ministers’ Conference concluded in December  with a decision for trusteeship over Ko. Wada, Kin Nichisei, –. This group did not include Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, who accompanied Zhou to help organize CCP activities in northeast China and did not arrive in Korea until October. See Zhao Piaofeng, Zhou Baozhong jiangjun zhuan (Biography of General Zhou Baozhong) (Bejing: Jiefangjun chubanshe, ), – . . As late as December  South P’yo˘ng’an was the only provincial administration not dominated by communists. See United States Armed Forces in Korea, Record Group , box , item , “Events and Conditions in North Korea,” . . See Cho Yong’am, Kodang Cho Mansik (Pusan: Cho˘ngch’i sinmunsa, ), – . After replacing Cho as head of the Korean Democratic Party in early , Ch’oe Yonggo˘n fiercely attacked Cho as a “pseudonationalist” who “praised and encouraged the Korean people to be subjects of the Japanese.” United States Army, Far East Command,Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), box , item , translation no. , .Translated from Pyongyang minbo,  April .



 

rea, rather than immediate independence, Cho Mansik, like other conservatives both in the North and in the South, vehemently opposed the decision.78 As a consequence,the Soviet authorities put Cho under house arrest in January , and Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, Manchurian guerrilla veteran and close associate of Kim Il Sung, became head of the Korean Democratic party.79 Thus the peculiar political character of South P’yo˘ng’an in general and Pyongyang in particular created problems for the Soviet occupation authorities. They found themselves based in the most conservative province in northern Korea working with a man who was less than amenable to their cause, a man whom they eventually eliminated.80 While attention to new Soviet sources gives a more balanced picture of the North than was previously available, these sources are mainly concerned with the Soviet advisors and their relationship with Korean leaders in Pyongyang and tell us little about the rest of North Korea. Eric Van Ree, for example, claims that Soviet policy between  and  was “more dictatorial in North Korea than it generally was in Eastern Europe.”81 Except for the presence of Soviet advisors at the center, this judgment is not supported by Van Ree’s own evidence.This interpretation also ignores popular support for reforms instituted under Soviet occupation and the weakness of opposition, which was much less organized and rooted than in many parts of Eastern Europe. Even if Soviet advisors were commonplace, the Russian presence did not provoke widespread resistance.82 Neither religious opposition, long-standing and legitimate noncommunist political organization, nor class-based discontent offered the Soviets or the Korean communists the kind of violent resistance seen in Poland, for example.83 Many of the landlords, intellectuals, and religious conservatives who disliked the course of events in North Korea simply moved South. In any case, it was rarely opposition to the Soviet presence as such that created discontent; what would have mattered to most is not who formulated these policies or . Cumings argues that opposition to trusteeship gave the right wing in the South its first opportunity “to mobilize popular support for its policies” (Cumings, Origins, vol. , ). In the North, the antitrusteeship movement cost Cho Mansik the leadership of the KDP and severely weakened the North Korean conservatives. . Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, –.The Korean Democratic Party will be discussed further in chapter . . Cho disappeared after the Korean War broke out, and sources in Moscow suggest that Cho was executed (apparently by Koreans) in the early days of the war. See Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, –. . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . . Van Ree estimates  Soviet advisors in North Korea in , including  in Pyongyang, hardly enough to be seen as an occupation force by most Koreans in the provinces. Socialism in One Zone, . . Kim Inyong, “Comparison of Socialist Construction in Eastern Europe and North Korea,” in Puk Han ch’eje u˘i surip kwajo˘ng (The Process of Constructing the North Korean System), ed. Kim Ilp’yo˘ng et al. (Seoul: Kyo˘ngnam University Far Eastern Institute, ), .

, ,     



where they originated but how they were received and implemented, not the creation of policies but their effects. On the ground, the Russian presence was often not visible or seen as important. Visiting North Korea in , the American journalist Anna Louise Strong felt that the North Koreans were “a bit naive” in their belief in their own empowerment. “The Russians liberated us from the Japanese,” she reports her Korean informants as saying, “but we Koreans did the rest.”84 The Koreans seemed to her like “hopeful adolescents” not yet acquainted with hard political realities, still infatuated with their newfound liberation and the construction of a new and more equitable society.“Their real class struggle is coming; it hasn’t really hit them yet.”

The Party and the People Immediately after liberation, Korean leftists emerged from underground and rapidly began to rebuild the Communist Party.85 Or rather, they began to (re)build communist parties; as Cumings aptly notes,“no disciplined, strongly organized communist party existed in Korea at this time,”86 nor had such a party existed at any time since the s. Reconstructing the Party While communists in the South continued the colonial tradition of factionalism and infighting, in the North several distinct communist organizations became rapidly unified. By August  communist parties in the North had united to form the North Korean Workers’ Party, and by June  the North and South Korean Workers’ parties were merged into the Korean Workers’ Party as the sole political representation of the left throughout the peninsula—although in practice Pyongyang was very much in control. Despite official deference to the “party center” in Seoul which continued for . Anna Louise Strong, “First Report from North Korea,” Soviet Russia Today (October ), . . See especially Suzuki Masayuki,“Party-Building in North Korea,” in Kaiho to Kakumei—Chosen Minshushugi Jinmin Kyowakoku no Seiritsukatei (Liberation and Revolution:The Organizing Process of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), ed. Sakurai Hiroshi (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, ),  –;Wada Haruki,“The Establishment of the North Korean Branch of the Korean Communist Party,” Shakai kagaku kenkyu , no.  (): – ;Yi Su˘nghyo˘n,“The Formation and Meaning of the North Korean Workers’ Party,” in Yonsei University North Korean Contemporary History Research Group, Puk Han hyo˘ndaesa (Contemporary History of North Korea) (Seoul: Kongdongch’e, ),  –, and Nakagawa Nobuo,“The Korean Left after Liberation,” in Hanguk hyo˘ndaesa yo˘n’gu I (Contemporary Korean History), ed. Kazimura Hideki, trans. Kim Tongch’un (Seoul: Yiso˘ng kwa hyo˘nsilsa, ). . Cumings, Origins, vol. , .



 

some months, a de facto northern center of Korean communism emerged in Pyongyang on August ,,with the formation of the South P’yo˘ng’an Area Committee of the communist party, including Hyo˘ n Chunhyo˘ k, Kim Yongbo˘m, and Pak Cho˘ngae.87 But the P’yo˘ng’an Area Committee itself was not in control of events throughout the North, as communist groups reconstituted themselves in such areas as Ch’o˘ngju, Sinu˘iju, Haeju, and above all South Hamgyo˘ng.88 The communist parties in Hu˘ngnam,Hamhu˘ng and Wo˘nsan were particularly strong, and quite independent of either Pyongyang or Seoul.89 While internecine squabbling and conflict both with southern rightists and the American military government preoccupied communists in the South and the politics of the occupation inhibited North-South contact, the northern communists began to consolidate a unified organization.90 The first step toward a centralized northern party was the lengthily titled Conference of Korean Communist Party Members and Enthusiasts in the Five Northwestern Provinces (Choso˘n Kongsandang so˘buk ododang tangwo˘n mit yo˘lso˘ngja yo˘nhap taehoe), held in Pyongyang October  –.The conference resulted in the creation of the Korean Communist Party—North Korea Bureau (Choso˘n Kongsandang Puk Choso˘n punguk, KCP-NKB), which—despite the presence of representatives from Seoul and the acknowledgment of the Seoul-based Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng as leader of the communist party—became the foundation of a separate northern party.91 During the conference Kim Il Sung pushed for the establishment of the KCP-NKB due to the “peculiarities” of the current situation in Korea, presumably referring to the joint occupation of the country and the need to oversee party work in the northern provinces.92 His proposal won out over the opposition of some of the “domestic” communists.The day after the conference ended, October , Kim Il Sung made his first public appearance . Haebang sanyo˘ngan u˘i kungnaewae chungyo ilgi, . Hyo˘n Chunhyo˘k, the leading communist based in Pyongyang and, along with O Kiso˘p from Hamgyo˘ng, one of the two top “domestic” communists from northern Korea, was assassinated in September , probably as a result of conflict with other “domestic” communists. See Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, –. . Puk Han cho˘ngch’iron, ;Yi Su˘nghyo˘n,“North Korean Workers’ Party,” . . In late  U.S. intelligence sources indicated that Wo˘nsan was “the present Communist stronghold in North Korea.” ISNK, no.  (– January ). . The complex struggles among southern communists and the politics of U.S.–occupied south Korea are only peripherally related to this study and will not be discussed here. In addition to the usual English-language works on Korean communism, a good overview of the southern communist movement may be found in Kim Namsik, Namnodang yo˘n’gu (A Study of the Southern Worker’s Party) (Seoul: Tolbegae, ). . The conference minutes are reproduced in Choso˘n sano˘p nodong chosaso (Research Institute for Korean Industry and Labor), ed., Oru˘n noso˘n (The Correct Line) (Tokyo: Minjung sinmunsa, ),  –. The DPRK later referred to this conference as the founding meeting of the Korean Workers’ Party and celebrated October  as “Party Foundation Day,” although the North Korean Workers’ Party as such was not actually established until August . . Ibid., .

, ,     



since his return to Korea, introduced by Cho Mansik at a Soviet-sponsored citizens’ rally in Pyongyang. From this point on Kim’s star rose rapidly in North Korea. Another position that Kim advocated at the October conference was a “national united front” or “united people’s regime,” a political coalition that would include capitalists and noncommunist nationalists.93 This was rejected in favor of an exclusive “proletarian”-based “people’s front” supported by more orthodox communists such as O Kiso˘p. But Kim had pursued united front tactics and emphasized national unity over class conflict since his guerrilla days, a position he reiterated after liberation.94 Over the next several months, as the North Korean Communist Party rapidly grew, the party would move toward Kim’s position—that of a more socially inclusive but political disciplined organization. By the Third Enlarged Executive Committee Meeting of the KCP-NKB, December –, , Kim Il Sung had become secretary-in-chief of the North Korean party.95 KCP-NKB membership had increased from a few hundred to ,, of whom  percent were said to be workers,  percent peasants, and  percent intellectuals, entrepreneurs, and “others.” This hardly constituted a party of the working class, as Kim Il Sung himself was quick to point out.96 On the other hand, it was clear to many communists that Korea’s current circumstances called for a broad anti-imperialist, anti-”feudal” united front.According to this analysis,“the stage of the Korean revolution is the stage of capitalist revolution. It is necessary to eliminate Japanese imperialism and distribute landlord’s land among the peasants.” In order to carry this out, it was necessary to unify the masses (minjung) under a mass party.97 Throughout the first few months after liberation, there was a pronounced tension between the image of a Bolshevik-style party led by the proletariat, perhaps best represented by O Kiso˘p, and a more mass-based party centered on workers and peasants but including “national capitalists” (minjok chabonja) and other progressive elements.The party line settled firmly on the latter through a dual process of negotiation: between the Korean Communist Party and the Sinmindang (New People’s Party), centered around Korean CCP veterans from Yan’an; and between the party elite and the masses whom they attempted to mobilize. In order to understand the changes in the direction of the communist party, and by extension the nascent North Korean state, it is necessary first to . Ibid., , . . RG , SA , /. Kim Il Sung, Minjok taedong tan’gyo˘re taehaya (On the grand unity of the nation) (Pyongyang, October ). . Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, . . Kim Il Sung,“Mistakes and Weaknesses of the Northern Branch of the Communist Party,” reproduced in Puk Han yo˘n’gu charyojip (Materials on North Korea), ed. Kim Chunyo˘p et al., vol.  (Seoul: Korea University Asiatic Research Center, ), . . Oru˘n noso˘n, –.



 

understand the influence of local events and the popular responses to the communist party in North Korea. Hegemony and Resistance Local KCP documents clearly show this shift from a more orthodox proletariat-based party to a more inclusive mass-based party. In the port city of Chinnamp’o in South P’yo˘ng’an Province, the Korean Communist Party welcomed Korean liberation in the language of pro-Soviet internationalism. On August , the local Preparatory Committee for the Reconstruction of the Korean Communist Party (Choso˘n Kongsandang chaego˘n chunbi wiwo˘nhoe) announced a rally supporting the Soviet occupation.The announcement praised the Soviet struggle against the Nazis and called the USSR “the fatherland of the world’s proletariat.” It ended with a series of mansei’s for the Korean revolution, the Red Army, the “Japanese revolution,” and Comrade Stalin. In September, the Chinnamp’o communists still prominently upheld the USSR as “the fatherland of the world’s working masses and the champion of the world’s oppressed nations,” and referred to “the International Red Worker’s Movement” and “world revolution.”98 By the end of  and beginning of , local party documents had markedly shifted their emphasis to united front tactics and nationalist themes. Although national liberation and proletarian revolution had been intertwined since the beginning of the communist movement in Korea, the party now began to stress elimination of colonial and feudal vestiges and unification of the Korean people rather than focusing on the working class. Or rather, in what was to become one of the most distinctive features of North Korean socialism, the nation became a kind of substitute for the working class as the primary subject of revolution, a move one might call “proletarian nationalism.” Communism made its adherents more nationalistic, indeed the only genuine nationalists; as the Chinnamp’o KCP put it:“Today in Korea only the proletariat can represent the benefit of the liberation of the whole nation, and therefore we party members are the most important representatives of the whole nation.”99 However,“proletariat” was quite loosely defined. Love of the nation and hatred of Japanese imperialists and their “running dogs” were more important than strict class background.“Who opposes the united front of all parties and classes?” asked one leaflet.“Japanese running dogs and national traitors!!” Stressing “unity in thought and action,”the leaflet continued,“Let us love our language and writ. RG , SA , /, propaganda leaflets belonging to the Korean Communist Party and other organizations, –. . RG , SA , /. Propaganda Branch, Korean Communist Party Chinnamp’o City Committee, Tangwo˘nu˘i sasang suyang (Mental Cultivation of Party Members),  January , .

, ,     



ing. Not knowing hangu˘l is the people’s shame.”100 Anticolonial nationalism, not Soviet-style socialism, was the dominant theme of this Korean communist literature, as it would be the dominant theme of North Korean politics as a whole. Party members were given instruction in organization, recruitment, and ideology that not only followed Soviet models, but also displayed elements of a Chinese-style mass line philosophy, often with direct translations of CCP materials.This was probably introduced by guerrilla veterans from China and Manchuria, and helped to influence the party in a more populist direction.A pamphlet entitled “Method of Leadership” (Yo˘ngdo pangbo˘p) contained such well-known Maoist expressions as “the party must be completely within the masses” (kunjungsok eso) and must “unite the positive elements” (cho˘kgu˘kjo˘k punja) of society. Quoting Mao directly, the pamphlet urged “creativity” and opposition to bureaucratism.101 There is also evidence of what Kim Il Sung chastised the party for in December, lack of careful screening of party recruits which allowed “impure elements” into the party.This might seem to contradict the narrow definition of the early postliberation KCP as a party of the working class, and indeed this contradiction appeared within the party’s own propaganda. For example, a pamphlet called “Party Life” (Tangu˘i saenghwal ) began by stating The Korean Communist Party is the political party of the proletariat class. Its ultimate purpose is completing the proletarian revolution and constructing a communist society. Then what is the proletariat? The proletariat can be called the workers.The workers not only are without houses and land, they do not have factories that make things, nor do they have farm implements for farming.They work completely for the capitalists.

After this restrictive definition of the party and the class it represents, the pamphlet goes on to list who can enter the party: factory workers and farm laborers foremost, also farmers (especially poor peasants), small manufacturers, revolutionary intellectuals. . . . People of completely different class composition cannot become party members, such as wealthy farmers. However, this rule is not absolute.102 . RG , SA , /. . RG , SA , /.. Propaganda Branch, KCP Chinnamp’o City Committee, Yo˘ngdo pangbo˘p, n.d., probably late . . RG , SA , /. KCP Chinnam’po City Committee Propaganda Branch, Tangu˘i saenghwal,  February , –. Loose definitions notwithstanding, this publication did come out after party reforms had made screening more restrictive by a system of recommendations from existing party members.



 

In short, almost anyone could join this “proletarian” party. As would be the case in China, being part of the proletariat was more a matter of ideology (sasang) or attitude (t’aedo) than of socioeconomic background per se. A section of the above-mentioned “Mental Cultivation of Party Members” entitled “Self-Criticism” (cha-a pip’an) brings to light the problems of concealment, deception, and lack of party discipline.The rapid expansion of the party in late  had brought in many “opportunists” who had joined the party for personal gain, without fully understanding or implementing the party’s ideological position. Self-criticism was “an important weapon in the development of our party and its revolutionary activities,” but “there are many new party members recently, including many comrades who don’t know how to carry out this weapon of self-criticism.” Self-criticism was “nothing to be afraid of, merely a way of correcting mistakes and weaknesses in one’s work.”103 Unfortunately, mistakes were being hidden rather than exposed and corrected. “In some areas,” the text went on, “the habits of ‘Deceive those above, don’t deceive those below’ and ‘Conceal from each other and all is harmonious’ have become very fashionable.”104 This was not the way to resolve the problems of the party or the work of its members. If responses to the party ranged from active participation to accommodation to subtle forms of manipulation and opportunism, there were other, more overt problems of direct resistance. The targets of resistance existed on three levels. First, there was opposition to the Soviet occupation, motivated by the violence of the initial occupation forces, food procurement by the Red Army, and the withdrawal of industrial plant and machinery by the Russians.105 Second, there was opposition to the predominance of communists in the People’s Committees, which was linked to the first, inasmuch as the Russians established and in places enforced a  percent role for communists in all provincial PCs. Finally, there was resistance to the loss of social position on the part of elites, particularly landlords, former colonial functionaries, and other “reactionary” and “proJapanese elements.”All of these factors came together in the most serious social disturbance in the formative months of the northern regime, the Sinu˘iju incident of November , .The Sinu˘iju incident represents a turning point for the regime and the party, one in which Kim Il Sung played a decisive role. Kim, sent by the Soviet Civil Administration to deal with the Sinu˘iju incident immediately after it happened, apparently saw in Sinu˘iju the need for a more socially inclusive but politically disciplined mass party, one that would in particular incorporate the energies of North Korea’s potentially troublesome young people. Beginning with the national youth organization, communist social and po. Tangwo˘nu˘i sasang suyang, .We will return to this technique of self-criticism in chapter . . Ibid., . . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone,  –.

, ,     



litical organizations in North Korea after Sinu˘iju would become more inclusive and populist, less ideologically rigid and politically restrictive. In Kim’s terms, the lesson of Sinu˘iju was for communists to “learn from the masses” in order to lead them.This move represented, in part, a return to the nationalist united front tactics of Kim Il Sung’s own youth, a form of coalition-building that was also encouraged by the Soviet occupation at the time. In the early afternoon of November , several hundred middle school pupils (estimates range from five hundred to over a thousand) assembled in front of the former colonial courthouse in Sinu˘iju, capital of North P’yo˘ng’an Province just across the Yalu River from Manchuria, which had become the headquarters of the North P’yo˘ng’an Provincial KCP.The immediate object of protest was the removal of a middle school principal by the communist-dominated People’s Committee, which symbolized the interference of the communists in education and other public affairs,and by extension the meddling role of the Soviet occupation authorities. In an apparently peaceful and unarmed demonstration, the students demanded the principal’s reinstatement and an end to such interference.106 Troops, a mixture of Korean security forces and Soviet soldiers and secret police, fired on the students, killing some two dozen and wounding several hundred others.107 Rumors of the incident spread, touching off anti-Soviet and anticommunist demonstrations elsewhere in North Korea. Both the occupation authorities and the KCP saw this as a serious blow to their prestige and dominance in North Korean politics, and made immediate attempts at damage control. From the perspective of later events in the American zone, the repression at Sinu˘iju was a deplorable but relatively minor incident; it does not began to compare, for example, to the more than two thousand guerrilla and civilian deaths in the Yo˘su rebellion in the summer of  or the tens of thousands massacred on Cheju Island later that year. However, the important comparison is not merely one of moral equivalence, but the way in which the northern regime reacted to the incident and learned from it. Within a day or two of the incident, Kim Il Sung flew to Sinu˘iju to inspect the situation. According to later eyewitness accounts, Kim held a “citizens’ assembly” (simin taehoe) on November  in which he explained that “genuine communists” could not have perpetrated such an act; the problem was that “fake communists” had entered the party. He promised to bring the incident up be. The Republic of Korea in the South subsequently portrayed this incident as a great “Anti-Communist Uprising” and erected a monument to the Sinu˘iju students at the “Freedom Center” in Seoul in the s. See Sinu˘iju Siminhoe, Sinu˘iju siji (Sinu˘iju City Gazetteer) (Seoul: Kukje ch’ulp’ansa, ), –.  Ibid., ; ISNK, no.  (– December ).



 

fore the provincial authorities and the People’s Court. Kim also met the following day with student representatives at Sinu˘iju East Middle School.108 Sinu˘iju seems to have made a profound impact on Kim and convinced him of the dangers of a ruling party alienated from important segments of the population, particularly the youth. It was shortly after the Sinu˘iju incident that the Communist Youth League changed its name to the Democratic Youth League (despite the resistance of many communists within the Youth League), and the word communist was dropped from many party organizations, including—the following year—the communist party itself. In his criticism of the North Korean Communist Party, Kim spoke at length of the need to both “strengthen ties with the masses” and “lead the masses.” Because cadres did not know “the real situation in the regions,” Kim said, we have seen in Sinu˘iju the students take up arms under the leadership and manipulation of the [Korean] Democratic Party and attack the [Communist] Party Committee. Not only that, there have been other similar incidents. All these facts are because the Communist Party members did not carefully work with the masses, and did not know their direction.

Kim admonished party leaders for sitting in their offices rather than going directly to farms, factories, and mines to organize the population as well as to learn from them.The party, Kim said, “is not only the proletariat, but also the nonproletariat masses.”109 Kim was particularly critical of the South Hamgyo˘ng party, still dominated by O Kiso˘p and other old-line “domestic communists,” for its heavy-handed response to domestic unrest. He urged greater cooperation with noncommunist elements, but at the same time a greater wariness of conservatives entering the party.He called for the issuance of party cards,a purge of pro-Japanese and rightist elements, and a system of recommendations in which no one could enter the party without an introduction by an experienced party member.110 In short, Kim advocated a party that was politically disciplined but which cooperated with a broad range of social groups in a national united front. “To the Masses, From the Masses” The North Korean regime thus did not merely enforce changes on the populace but was responsive to the demands of society. Nevertheless, Kim did not quite have Mao Zedong’s faith in the peasant masses as the source of political . Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, –. . Kim,“On Mistakes and Weaknesses,” . . Ibid., ; Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, .

, ,     



change and creativity.While cadres could learn from the masses, they must first of all lead them; thus, if Mao’s dictum was “from the masses, to the masses, from the masses,” Kim left off the first part, believing political change must be responsive to society but must be initiated from the top.111 There was a high degree of centralization and top-down direction in the party from as early as December , but there were also the forerunners of the “on-the-spot guidance” that Kim was to practice frequently as leader of the DPRK, with Kim and other leaders going directly to the countryside and to factories, meeting local people and investigating local circumstances. Kim’s own experiences both before and after Korea’s liberation seem to have convinced him of the need to keep in close contact with “the masses” and keep his ears open to popular opinions and grievances, but at the same time maintain tight control over central authority. Kim’s Korean communism was populist but did not have the spontaneous, even anarchistic overtones of Mao’s Chinese communism. North Korea, for better or for worse, would over the long run have a much more disciplined and stable politics than communist China. This was the result not merely of Kim’s idiosyncrasies but reflected Korea’s long-standing political culture, which had tended toward orthodoxy and stability far more than China in recent centuries. In addition to Sinuiju and other troublesome incidents,a factor which pushed the Korean Communist Party in a populist direction was the influence of, and eventual fusion with, the so-called “Yan’an faction,” Korean veterans of the Chinese communist movement in China proper, as opposed to Manchuria (many, but not all, of the “Yan’an group” had encamped with Mao’s soldiers in Yan’an). Calling themselves the Korean Volunteer Army (Choso˘n u˘iyonggun), some fifteen hundred of these communist troops crossed the border into Korea at Sinu˘iju in October ,where they were disarmed by the Soviets.The renamed Korean Independence Alliance (Choso˘n tongnip tongmaeng), led by Kim Tubong, (Kim) Mu Cho˘ng, Ch’oe Ch’ang’ik, and others quickly entered the political scene in North Korea and became a de facto second communist party. Strongly influenced by the peasant populism of Mao and by their experience in the Chinese revolution, this group, which became organized as a political party under the name Korean New People’s Party (Choso˘n Sinmindang) in late February , had a highly inclusive political outlook in which the proletarian revolution and national liberation were inseparable. Ch’oe Ch’ang’ik, in a  pamphlet discussing the history of the preliberation “Korean Democracy Movement,” effectively collapsed the class struggle into the national struggle, a move which has become a hallmark of North Korean ideology. In describing the economic effects of Japanese colonialism, Ch’oe said that “the Korean econ. Cumings, Origins, vol. , .



 

omy, under the rapid overall destruction of the forces of invading Japanese capital, made most of the Korean population into proletarians.”Thus, through resistance to colonialism, both “national consciousness and class consciousness were awakened.”112 The language of class struggle was, Ch’oe argued, a language of anticolonial national struggle in the Korean case. In January and February , Kim Tubong called for the strengthening of mass organizations and proclaimed that “at the present stage, the work of constructing a new Korea was not the task of one class or one party, but the basic task of the whole nation.”113 The creation of a united front suggested by the New People’s Party coincided with the populist leanings of Kim’s communist party, and helped further push the KCP in that direction. It also fit with the coalition policies of the Soviet occupation authorities, who were encouraging such coalitions in the occupied countries of Eastern Europe as well as in North Korea.114 It was primarily the “domestic” communists, with their more orthodox Leninist approach to party-building, who stood out. In the end, this latter group lacked the support of the Soviets, failed to win a popular base, and finally did not have the military muscle or experience of Kim’s group or the Yan’an veterans. In August , the northern branch of the KCP and the New People’s Party merged to form the North Korean Worker’s Party (Puk Choso˘n Nodongdang), with Kim Tubong as chairman and Kim Il Sung vice-chairman. A powerful, mass-based party was firmly in place and began the process of what Kim called “iron discipline.”

Toward a Central State Like the Soviet Union and other state socialist regimes, the DPRK was to be a dual party-state, with parallel organizational structures, and frequently overlapping personnel, in both the government apparatus and the ruling party.The Communist/Workers’ Party was, like its Soviet counterpart, in theory a voluntary organization, and even when the DPRK was founded in  the KWP was not officially designated the ruling party.115 The regime that had emerged in North Korea in  and  was ostensibly a coalition of the KWP, the . Ch’oe Ch’ang’ik, . ijo˘n Choso˘n minju undongu˘i sajo˘k koch’al (Historical Study of the Pre-Liberation Korean Democracy Movement) (Pyongyang: Hyo˘ngmyo˘ng ch’ulp’ansa, ), . Emphasis mine. . Cited in Yi Su˘nghyo˘n,“North Korean Worker’s Party,” . . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . . Sung Chul Yang, The North and South Korean Political Systems:A Comparative Analysis (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, ), .

, ,     



Korean Democratic Party, and the Ch’o˘ndogyo-based Young Friends’ Party, a coalition that will be discussed in more detail in chapter . In practice the communists had the dual advantage over other political parties of greater party discipline and, above all, the backing of the Soviet occupation forces. At the same time that a northern communist party was forming in Pyongyang, the Soviets and their allies were creating a centralized state as well, built upon a network of disparate local People’s Committees. As mentioned earlier in this chapter, various kinds of local self-governing bodies emerged throughout Korea in the wake of the Japanese surrender,charged with maintaining law and order and carrying out administrative duties in the absence of an effective central government.116 Once the Soviet army arrived, it attempted to reshape these local People’s Committees into a more “proSoviet” form, usually by overseeing the merger of local communist organizations and noncommunist nationalist bodies into a single committee with an equal number of communists and noncommunists. In the city of Hamhu˘ng, South Hamgyo˘ng Province,the South Hamgyo˘ng Provincial Communist Council and the Hamhu˘ng branch of the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence combined to form the South Hamgyo˘ng Provincial People’s Committee in late August,under the supervision of General Chistiakov,who required that the new PC be composed of an equal number of members from the Communist Council and the noncommunist CPKI.117 Such tactics were repeated elsewhere in North Korea, although, as we have suggested, the South P’yo˘ng’an Provincial People’s Committee was the least amenable to communist dominance.118 The provincial PCs moved toward central coordination in early October, shortly after the Soviet Civil Administration was founded. On October –,  delegates from the provincial PCs met for a Joint Conference of People’s Committees in the Five Provinces of North Korea (Puk Choso˘n odo inmin wi. The NKPC and DPRK frequently referred to these original People’s Committees as the basis of the regime. See RG , SA , /. Propaganda Section, North Korean Provisional People’s Committee, So˘n’go˘ so˘njo˘n kwa uriu˘i immu (Election Propaganda and Our Task) (November ), ; and RG , SA , /. DPRK Culture and Propaganda Department, Haebanghu sanyo˘nganu˘i minju ko˘nso˘ru˘l wihan pukbanbu inminduru˘i t’ujaeng (The North [Korean] People’s Struggle for Democratic Construction in the Four Years since Liberation) ( August ), –, among others. . Wada Haruki,“Soviet Policy toward Korea,” . . The South P’yo˘ng’an branch of the CPKI, organized in Pyongyang on August  and headed by Cho Mansik, had sixteen members, of whom only two were communists. One of the two communists was Han Chaedo˘k, who later defected to the South and recounted his experience in setting up local administration in Pyongyang in Kim Ilso˘ngu˘l kobalhanda (I Denounce Kim Il Sung) (Seoul: Naeoe munhwasa, ), . See also O Yo˘ngjin, Hanau˘i chu˘ngo˘n, –. On August , under Chistiakov’s direction, the South P’yo˘ng’an CPKI was merged with the South P’yo˘ng’an KCP District Committee (under Hyo˘n Chunhyo˘k) to form the South P’yo˘ng’an Provincial People’s Political Committee, with sixteen members from each of the two groups.



 

wo˘nhoe yo˘nhap hoeu˘i).119 The conference sought to integrate the heretofore largely autonomous provincial PCs that had varied widely in personnel, duties, and even names since their emergence in late August and September.The bottom-up politics of the period immediately after liberation would be developed into, and then subsumed under, the top-down politics of the central authorities in Pyongyang. The Five-Province Conference resolved to standardize the names, number of members, duties, and electoral processes for the formation of PCs at the provincial, city, county, township, and village levels.Villagers would elect a village leader (ijang); village leaders would choose seven to nine members for the township-level PC, whose members would in turn choose thirteen to fourteen people for the county PC, and, parallel with the county level, city residents would choose fifteen to seventeen members for their city PC. Finally, each provincial PC would have nineteen elected members.120 An election for all village and township-level PCs was scheduled for November , but was delayed by one year. The Five-Province PC Conference also resolved to form a Five-Province People’s Committee Council (Odo inmin wiwo˘nhoe hyo˘pu˘ihoe) to oversee the centralization of government administration.This in turn led to the Five Province Administrative Bureau (Odo haengjo˘ngguk) implemented on November , with Cho Mansik as chairman.121 The bureau consisted of ten departments— transportation, industry, agriculture, communications, trade, education, health, justice, security, and finance—in parallel with the departments of the SCA.122 Every department had a Korean department chief as well as a Soviet advisor.123 Unlike the Americans with their military government in the South, the Soviets in the North let Koreans run the show early on, while exerting a powerful influence behind the scenes.And at the local level, as we have seen, Koreans were in fact in charge, with the bottom-up structure of the PCs ensuring that Korean input would move from the periphery to the center. By January  the nationalist-communist coalition had been deeply shaken by the trusteeship issue, which brought conservatives in the Korean Democratic Party and elsewhere into direct confrontation with the Soviet Union over implementation of the Moscow Agreement. In the meantime, labor and peasant . See RG , SA , /. NKPPC Propaganda Bureau, Choguk haebang kwa Puk Choso˘n minju ko˘nso˘l (Liberation of the Fatherland and the Democratic Construction of North Korea) (Pyongyang, ), ; RG , SA , /, Election Propaganda, ;Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, – ; Cho˘n Hyo˘nsu, “The Soviet Military Occupation of North Korea and North Korea Policy,” Hanguk tongnip undongsa yo˘n’gu (Studies of the Korean Independence Movement), no.  (): –. . RG , SA , /. Election Propaganda,  –. . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, ; Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, . . RG , SA , /. Haebanghu Sanyo˘nganu˘i kungnaeoe chungyo ilgi, . . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, .

, ,     



associations, often with close ties to the communist party, had organized hundreds of thousands of individuals in the North, a subject we will explore further in the next chapter.124 With the conservatives sidelined—their leading figure, Cho Mansik, under house arrest—and the growing “social organizations” a potential source of considerable support, in early  Kim Il Sung suggested that the time was ripe for implementing the next stage of “democratic reform.”This would require an effective central government in Pyongyang and could not wait for the interim Korea-wide government required by the Moscow Agreement.125 The solution was a provisional central government built on the local People’s Committee structure, a North Korean Provisional People’s Committee (NKPPC). Politics from the bottom up would thus translate into social reform from the top down. The leaders of the Five-Province Bureau, the heads of the political parties and social organizations, and representatives of the provincial People’s Committees met in Pyongyang on February , .126 The next day they convened an “Enlarged Conference of the Leaders of North Korean Political Parties, Social Organizations, Administrative Departments, and Provincial, City, and County People’s Committees” (Puk Choso˘n kakjo˘ngdang, sahoe tanch’e, kakhaengjo˘nggukgu˘p, kak to, si, kun inmin wiwonhoe taep’yo hwakdae hyo˘puihoe) presided over by Kim Tubong. Here Kim Il Sung delivered his speech on the need for a Provisional People’s Committee.127 At the top of the agenda was the strengthening of political organizations and the elimination of “pro-Japanese and antidemocratic elements,” followed by land reform, economic revitalization, democratic reform, and culture work.128 The conference voted unanimously to create a central government administration, and thus the NKPPC was born on February , , with Kim Il Sung as chairman and Kim Tubong vicechairman. The NKPPC was the first decisive step toward a separate state in North Korea and was the basis for the North Korean People’s Committee established in February  (no longer “Provisional”) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea established in September .The Soviet Civil Administration was relegated to the status of an advisory body; as even a study highly critical of the . The Soviets estimated that as early as October  there were , members of labor unions and more than , members of peasant organizations. Cho˘n,“Soviet Military Occupation,” . . RG , SA , /. Kim Il Sung,“On the Present Political Situation in Korea and the Organization of the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee,” Choso˘n minjujuu˘i inmin konghwaguk suripu˘i kil: chungyo pogojip (The Road to the Establishment of the DPRK: Collection of Important Reports) (Pyongyang, ), . . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, ; RG , SA , /. Choguk haebang, . . RG , SA , /. Kim Il Sung, Minju Choso˘n charip tongnipu˘i kil: Chungyo nonmunjip (The Road to the Independence of Democratic Korea: Collection of Important Theses) (Pyongyang, ), –. . RG , SA , /. Kim Il Sung, Minju Choso˘n, –.



 

Soviet occupation admits, ultimate decisions were in the hands of Koreans.129 Chairmanship of the NKPPC was also the first leading administrative position for Kim Il Sung, who had become head of the North Korean Communist Party in December . In the coming six months, Kim Il Sung and the NKPPC were to instigate revolutionary changes that would turn North Korean society upside-down. . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, .

  

Remaking the People

Social Reforms The “democratic reforms” initiated by the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee (NKPPC) in the spring and summer of  included land reform, new regulations on labor, legalized equality between the sexes, and the nationalization of major industries.The nationalization law will be addressed in chapter .The first three of these reforms, along with the creation of large-scale “social organizations” (sahoe tanch’e), were directed toward the traditionally underprivileged elements of Korean society, particularly poor peasants, workers, women, and youth.The mobilization of these elements by the nascent North Korean regime was part of an expansion of the party-state constituency, the inclusive and populist direction we saw emerging in the previous chapter. Land reform in particular helped to give the Communist Party, soon to be renamed the Workers’ Party, a powerful support base among the poor peasant majority of North Korean society. Garnering support among the poor and marginal elements of society, rather than working through a small, elite vanguard party in the typical Leninist fashion, was a method favored by Kim Il Sung as well as the Yan’an communists represented by Kim Tubong and his New People’s Party. It was not standard Soviet practice, but it was a method resonant with the experiences of the Korean communists who had spent years attempting to mobilize a popular resistance in China. But in addition to the benefits of political support for the emerging regime, it was through this political mobilization and organization that individuals came to be identified, and identify themselves, with collective identities that were in some respects quite new.Within a matter of months, the population of North 



 

Korea was redefined according to new social categories, identities that appeared in a multitude of forms—legal documents,job applications,educational records, and the records of the political and social organizations themselves. Organization initiated by the NKPPC became part of the fabric of social identity in North Korea. That is, women, poor peasants, workers, and youth were not merely preexisting, self-conscious groups waiting to be politically activated; these groups were also in part constructed categories, shaped by the modern state that gave them political voice and sought their support.Women, for example, had obviously existed throughout Korean history, but the idea of “woman” (yo˘so˘ng) as a category of people with rights of their own and needing to be “liberated” was quite novel, conceptualized as such only since the nineteenth century.1 Similarly, workers had only really begun to develop a consciousness as a class in the colonial period, as we have seen in chapter . Even the category of poor peasants ( pinnong), as a group with specific collective interests, was a new concept that seems partly influenced by Russian and Chinese revolutionary experiences.2 And youth,that ambiguous and volatile category between childhood and adulthood, was a new target for mass education and a source of strength for anticolonial movements, right-wing political organization, and communist mobilization alike; the Sinu˘iju incident had demonstrated to Kim Il Sung and other communist leaders just how important it was to maintain support among the youth. Each of these groups was “liberated” by the new regime and mobilized into vast social organizations that were to function as key instruments to support and implement state policy. Overturning social hierarchy had a particularly powerful and distinctive meaning in the North Korean revolution. Social stratification had been one of the most enduring characteristics of Korean society before the twentieth century, although Japanese colonialism and nascent industrialization had shaken up the social order to a considerable degree. Rather than push for the elimination of social distinction at first, the emerging North Korean regime attempted to make social categories more explicit by carefully recording the social stratum (so˘ngbun) of each individual. Once this categorization was carried out, however, the state attempted to reverse the previous hierarchy and to put those of “good so˘ngbun,” or the formerly “persecuted classes,” on top.Taken as a whole, these reform measures were an attempt to transform fundamentally North Korean society, reversing age-old social hierarchies and empowering the historically most oppressed and subordinated elements.The result of the North Korean revolu. For background, see Kyung Ae Park, “Women and Revolution in North Korea,” Pacific Affairs , no.  (winter –): – . . Suzanne Pepper argues that the category of “poor peasants” in the Chinese revolution “apparently had its origins in the Russian countryside.” Pepper, Civil War in China:The Political Struggle, –  (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), .

  



“Look! Young comrades burning with patriotism!” Song Unit of the Inje County People’s Committee, Inje County, Kangwo˘n Province, . Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

tion—and this became clear after the Korean War—was not the elimination of social hierarchy as such, but a radical change in the content of hierarchy. In this we can see the “neotraditionalism” of North Korean socialism, for hereditary social stratification was one of the striking features that distinguished Choso˘n from its ostensible model, China.3 The hereditary three-tiered structure of “core class,”“wavering class,” and “hostile class” that became explicit in North Korea from the s onward was based on the actions of oneself or one’s ancestors during the colonial period and the Korean War. Such stratification was made possible by the careful categorization of all North Korean citizens by social strata beginning in  and resonated with the three-class structure of yangban,commoner, and outcast/slave that dominated Choso˘n society.4 The content of hierarchy was vastly different between Choso˘n and the DPRK, but for both the fluid nature of liberal society was an anathema. . James Palais has called the ruling elite in Choso˘n an “aristocratic/bureaucratic hybrid,” in which merit-based entry into the upper strata supplemented, but never replaced, hereditary elite status. Palais, “Confucianism and the Aristocratic/Bureaucratic Balance in Korea,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies , no.  (December ): –. . North Korea’s three-class social structure is not, of course, an explicit policy of the DPRK, but North Korean defectors have consistently referred to it. See Minnesota Lawyers’ Human Rights League, Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Minneapolis:AsiaWatch, ).



 

The social changes brought about by the reforms of the spring and summer of  were unprecedented in scope and speed, turning North Korean society upside-down virtually overnight. Sudden as these changes were, however, they were not merely imposed from the top, but—especially in the case of land reform—combined central dictates with local participation, implementation, and input. This top-down/bottom-up movement between central authorities and popular constituencies was a continuous dialectic in the formation of the DPRK; we have seen examples of this in the political realm in the previous chapter, and in the area of social reform this back-and-forth flow was even more evident. The results of the social reforms initiated in  were far-reaching and profound. Even strongly critical sources, such as the U.S. military government in the South, could see that “sweeping changes have been wrought in the accepted social pattern of North Korea,”5 changes that constituted a “far-reaching social revolution.”6

Land Reform and the Peasants As the NKPPC saw it, fundamental social reform was crucial in drawing the lower-class elements into political participation and in winning their support. Retrospective North Korean accounts have called the reforms carried out between March and August  the period of “anti-imperialist, antifeudal democratic revolution,”preceding the period of true “socialist revolution”that began in .7 The earliest and most important step was land reform, the basic instrument of destroying the old society and creating the new. NKPPC documents described land reform as the first of the “urgent tasks” necessary to overthrow the “colonial semifeudal society” and establish a “firm democratic base,”8 the “concrete realization of the current state of the Korean . United States Armed Forces in Korea,Assistant Chief of Staff, G-, Record Group , box , “North Korea Today,” . . Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), :. . Kim Sijung,“The Origins and Development of People’s Democracy in Our Country,” Yonsei University North Korean Contemporary History Research Group, Puk Han hyo˘ndaesa (Contemporary History of North Korea) (Seoul: Kongdongch’e, ), –. This is a reprint of an article from a  issue of the DPRK journal Ryo˘ksa kwahak (Historical Science), which was in turn the result of an academic conference held on the tenth anniversary of the founding of the DPRK, which sought to define the current stage of socialist revolution in the North. See also Kim Namsik,“The Process of Communization in North Korea and the Class Line,” in Puk Han kongsanhwa kwajo˘ng yo˘n’gu (Studies in the Communization of North Korea), ed. Research Center on the Communist Bloc (Seoul: Korea University Asiatic Research Center, ). . Kim Chuhwa, “People’s Democratic Revolution and Socialist Revolution in Postliberation North Korea,” in Haebang cho˘nhusa u˘i insik (Understanding Pre-and Post-Liberation History), ed. Kim Namsik et al., vol , North Korea (Seoul: Han’gilsa, ), . Hereafter HCI, vol. .

  



revolution, which is to eliminate feudal vestiges of land relationships.”9 Negatively,the goals of land reform were to break the power of the landowning classes and eliminate Japanese collaborators, categories that often overlapped; positively, the goal was to incorporate a large stratum of landless and poor peasants into the political system and win their support for the new regime. Peasant demand for land was a basic feature of postliberation Korea. As we have seen in chapter , tenancy and landlessness among the Korean peasantry had become acute under Japanese colonialism.In explaining the appeal of North Korean land reform to the Korean peasants, researchers for the U.S. State Department during the Korean War noted the extent of the tenant problem, in which the rate of tenancy in Korea had doubled during the colonial period; by ,  percent of the cultivable land in the country was farmed by tenants, half of all farm households were completely landless, and another third rented part of the land they farmed.10 Landlords—who were mostly Koreans, the Japanese colonial regime having retained rather than replaced traditional landholding elites of Korea—extracted crushing rents, as much  percent of the total crop, and much of the remainder went to cover expenses, leaving the bulk of the Korean peasantry living at the level of bare subsistence. Any regime that redressed the enormous imbalance in land ownership and income level, giving land to the great majority of peasants who tilled it, would have won the instant support of the greater part of the Korean peasantry. Land reform was something the regime emerging in South Korea after liberation pursued slowly, and with great reluctance, until the Korean War. North Korea,on the other hand,carried out land reform throughout the northern zone quickly and decisively in the spring of . “By this one stroke,” the Americans observed, half the population of north Korea was given a tangible stake in the regime and at the same time the north Korean government gained an important propaganda weapon in its campaign against the south.11

Land reform in North Korea is perhaps the most important example of rapid and radical change in the years after liberation that combined initiatives from above with input from below, decisions made in Moscow with decisions made on the ground in Pyongyang by the Soviet occupation authorities and the North Korean leadership. Here we can see clearly where the context of the So. RG , SA , /. Propaganda Section, Korean Communist Party—North Korea Bureau,“Interpretation of North Korean Land Reform,” Pyongyang, March , . . United States Department of State, North Korea:A Case Study in the Techniques of Takeover (; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ), . . Ibid., .



 

viet occupation allowed for the implementation of radical reforms with deep roots in the Manchurian guerrilla struggles of the s and the social conditions of Korea of the s, the “Koreanization” of Marxist-Leninist communism. According to North Korean sources, at the end of the colonial period, some  million Korean peasants were either totally landless or lacked enough land for basic subsistence.12 In fact, peasants had taken matters into their own hands well before the land reform law of March . Shortly after liberation, local People’s Committees in several areas of northern Korea instituted a “ – System” in which  percent of the harvest was given to the tenants who had farmed it,  percent to the landlords.The local tax systems were also reformed.13 Local land reform measures were carried out throughout the latter part of , with poorer peasants often seizing land abandoned by landlords who had fled south when the Russians arrived, so that in many places the land reform law simply legitimized the existing reforms in the name of the NKPPC.14 In February  local peasant organizations petitioned the NKPPC for a “land to the tiller” policy. On the anniversary of the March First uprising, over a million peasants “took up sickles and hoes,” as North Korean sources put it, and demonstrated for land.15 On March , the newly formed Peasant League (nongmin tongmaeng) presented a plan for reform, which the NKPPC adopted and promulgated two days later. Land was to be confiscated from former Japanese holdings, “national traitors” or known collaborators, landlords with over five cho˘ngbo (one cho˘ngbo being approximately . acres),absentee landlords,and religious organizations, and distributed to agricultural laborers, landless tenants and peasants with less than five cho˘ngbo. Families received land on the basis of “work ability” (nodongnyo˘k), with adults receiving one full “labor point,” and youth, children, and the elderly receiving declining fractions of a point.16 In all, slightly over  million cho˘ngbo were confiscated and some , peasant households received land.17 Less than  percent of the confiscated land was placed un. RG , SA , /. Choso˘n haebang kwa Puk Choso˘n u˘ i minju palcho˘n (Korean Liberation and Democratic Development in North Korea) (Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘n ch’ulp’ansa, ), . . RG , SA , /, Haebanghu Choso˘n (Korea After Liberation) (n.p., n.d., between  and ), . . John N.Washburn,“Russia Looks at Northern Korea,” Pacific Affairs , no.  (February ): . . Haebanghu Choso˘n, .This source puts the number of demonstrators at  million, whereas later North Korean sources say  million—one of the few cases where numbers supporting the regime were reduced rather than inflated over time. See Kim Il Sung,“The Results of the Agrarian Reform and Future Tasks,” in Selected Works, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), . . RG , SA , /. Puk Choso˘n po˘mnyo˘ngjip (Collection of North Korean Laws), , ; United States Army Military Government in Korea, Record Group , G- Weekly Report, no.  ( April ), . . Minjujuu˘i minjok cho˘nso˘n, Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo (Yearbook of Korean Liberation) (Seoul: Munu inso˘gwan, ), .

  



der state ownership,18 although the peasantry became newly dependent on the state-operated Farmers’ Bank for loans to purchase seed, fertilizer, and equipment.Whether such dependency made North Korean peasants “state serfs,” as U.S. military intelligence asserted,19 is a question we will explore in chapter . The reform itself was carried out by village committees (Nongch’on wiwo˘nhoe), elected by local residents under the supervision of the township People’s Committee. Most of the village committee members were from the lower echelons of rural society, including tenant farmers and agricultural workers.20 Local landownership records were investigated, village meetings were held, and landlords were publicly tried and criticized. Former landlords could receive small plots of land, but only in another county. The majority of landlords apparently chose instead to go to the cities or to South Korea.21 The redistribution was to be completed by March , probably in order to assign lands for the spring sowing,22 and barely three weeks after it had begun, the reform was declared a success: the power of the traditional landholding class was broken, and poor and formerly landless peasants had both land and political voice in the local countryside.The North Korean land reform was one of the most rapid and thoroughgoing land redistribution efforts in history, and yet took place with very little violence, certainly nothing remotely approaching the bloodshed that accompanied initial land reform in the Soviet Union, China, or Vietnam. Where did this land reform plan come from? In truth, North Korea’s land reform was the offspring of several parents. First, there were the Soviets. Earlier Western and South Korean scholarship had assumed, without evidence from internal Soviet documentation, that the Soviets had formulated the land reform plans.23 With the benefit of post–Cold War access to Soviet archives, Kathryn Weathersby has found among the Soviet materials detailed plans for social reform legislation in North Korea, leading her to conclude that this reform was the product of Soviet initiative imposed on their North Korean clients.24 But a careful reading of both North Korean and Soviet sources reveals a dynamic interaction among the Soviet government, the Soviet occupation authorities, the North Korean leadership, and grass-roots demands for reform. . Mun Woong Lee, Rural North Korea under Communism:A Study of Sociocultural Change (Houston, Tex.: Rice University, ), . . United States Armed Forces in Korea,Assistant Chief of Staff, G-, Record Group , box , “North Korea Today,” . . State Department, North Korea, . . Lee, Rural North Korea, . . United States Armed Forces in Korea, G- Weekly Report, no. , . . Joseph Man-Kyung Ha, “Politics of Korean Peasantry: A Study of Land Reform and Collectivization with Reference to Sino-Soviet Experiences” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, ), . . Kathryn Weathersby, “Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, –: New Evidence from the Russian Archives,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. , Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, November .



 

Patients at a Workers’ Rest Center, date and place unknown. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Kim So˘ngbo, having closely examined both the captured North Korean materials and the Soviet documents relating to North Korean land reform, has found that the Soviets were considering a land reform program for North Korea as early as the end of .25 As in Eastern Europe, Moscow’s initial idea for land reform in North Korea was that land belonging to the former occupiers, in the Korean case the Japanese, would be distributed to the peasantry. In February  the Soviet Foreign Ministry went one step further, proposing that land confiscated from major Korean landlords be confiscated and sold to former tenant farmers.But General Shtykov suggested from Pyongyang that confiscated land be distributed to poor and landless peasants without compensation, and this is . Kim So˘ngbo,“The Decision and Implementation Process of North Korean Land Reform,” unpublished manuscript, . See also idem,“Land Reform and Agricultural Collectivization in North Korea” (Ph.D. diss.,Yonsei University, ).

  



the plan the North Korean authorities ultimately carried through in March.26 Shtykov had reached this decision in close consultation with the Korean communist leadership in Pyongyang and was much closer to events unfolding in North Korea than were the bureaucrats in Moscow. The second element contributing to the North Korean land reform was the Korean Communist Party’s own move toward a more radical position on the issue in early . Kim Il Sung’s initial position, as expressed in his October  speech “On the Grand Unity of the People (Minjok taedong tan’gyo˘l taehaya),” like that of the Soviets, called for the confiscation of land only from the Japanese and their “running dogs.”27 But by February  the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee had shifted to a call for confiscating land from “big landlords” (tae chiju) as well, and both the historical experience of the North Korean communists, especially the Manchurian group, and events in the North Korean countryside, contributed to that shift. A third element can be traced to the experience of the Manchurian guerrillas in the preliberation period. If we compare the  land reform with the reforms carried out by the Manchurian “People’s Revolutionary Governments” described in chapter , the similarities are apparent. In both cases, land was to be taken away from “puppets” or colonial collaborators, redistribution was on the basis of nodongnyo˘k or labor power, emphasis was on benefiting the poorest segments of the peasantry, and the remaining land was to be managed by the state. A final element in the  land reform was the influence of pre- peasant radicalism in northern Korea itself.The initiative in the “ – movement” in the fall of  was taken by the veterans of the Red Peasant Unions of the s, and it is no accident that local land reform began in the Hamgyo˘ng region, where the RPUs had been most active.28 The NKPPC advocacy of land appropriation from “big landlords,” not only from Japanese and their collaborators, was in part a response to the revival of older peasant organizations centered around veteran RPU and Ch’o˘ndogyo activists.For example,in a “Letter to Secretary Kim Il Sung of the Korean Communist Party—Northern Bureau” dated February , , the Peasant Committee of So˘nch’o˘n County in South P’yo˘ng’an Province called on the NKPPC to authorize the confiscation of land from Korean landlords, something that in any case the local peasant organiza. Kim So˘ngbo,“North Korean Land Reform,” . . RG , SA , /. Kim Il Sung, Minjok taedong tan’gyo˘l taehaya (On the Grand Unity of the People), handwritten copy, .A printed version was published in China by the Tianjin City Committee of the Korean Communist Party in March . See RG , SA , /. In this text Kim spends much space praising the Chinese communists and Mao’s “New Democracy,” and his call for a united anti-imperialist front in Korea resonates with the Chinese revolutionary experience. In other words, Kim was not simply parroting the Soviet line. . Kim So˘ngbo,“North Korean Land Reform,” .



 

tion was already doing.29 Even if the decision for land reform involved the input and approval of the Soviets, the content and implementation of this policy were intimately related to the experiences of rural reform efforts by Koreans in Manchuria and northern Korea during the Japanese colonial period. But land reform policy in Korea had a history going back far earlier than the activism of the s. Centuries before there was such a thing as communism, Korean social reformers had regarded land reform as crucial for social reorganization and improvement.30 Land redistribution had been discussed in China and Korea for two thousand years, and the distribution of land according to age, sex, and number of family members in North Korea is similar in general approach, if not in precise detail, to the “equal-field” (Korean kyunjo˘n) system of China’s Northern Wei and Tang dynasties.31 Korean scholars had discussed alternatives of land reform, based on models from Chinese history and classical writings, throughout the late Choso˘n dynasty. Many Choso˘n reformers believed that state-directed distribution of land was essential to building an ideal society, and some—such as the prominent seventeenth-century reformer Yu Hyo˘ngwo˘n—also called for the abolition of private property.32 In short, Koreans could draw on their own traditions as well as Soviet and Chinese communist “models” to construct a program of land reform, and the centrality of state-initiated land reform to social change in Korea was not an idea unique to the twentieth century. Not surprisingly, land reform in North Korea also resembled the concurrent communist land reform in Manchuria and northern China, which the North Koreans observed closely and with approval.33 As in North and Northeast China, tenancy was not widespread enough in northern Korea to make the elimination of tenancy alone the basis for cultivating mass support.Therefore, communists in both areas “directed their main appeal not to tenant farmers as such, but to a much larger group of peasant and farm workers.”34 Most evidence indicates that the North Korean reforms met with widespread approval, except of course among landlords.What is most remarkable about the reform is the speed with which it was carried out and the lack of bloodshed.This can largely be ex. Cho˘ngno,  February . . James Palais, Confucian Statecraft and Korean Institutions: Yu Hyo˘ngwo˘n and the Late Choso˘n Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, ), . . Kim So˘ngbo,“Land Reform and Agricultural Collectivization,”  –. . Palais, Confucian Statecraft, .Yu regarded a close approximation of the Chinese “well-field” system (cho˘ngjo˘n) as the ideal way to organize rural society, along with elements of the “equal-field” system allowing for distribution according to social rank.Yu also saw ownership of land as the primary cause of the well-field system’s demise in ancient China and the primary obstacle to the improvement of rural society in Korea. . See “Fundamental Changes in the Northeast [China] War Situation,” Puk Choso˘n t’ongsin (North Korea News), no.  ( July ): . . Pepper, Civil War in China, .

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

plained by the relatively moderate nature of the reform, which was a “land to the tiller” policy rather than collectivization, and the availability of South Korea as a refuge for former landowners.35 Nevertheless,there were,as Kim Il Sung admitted,“errors” committed in the reform process. Local PCs and village committees acted arbitrarily and overzealously.36 Moreover, land reform encountered pockets of fierce resistance, not only from landlords, “reactionaries,” and terrorists, but also from some poor peasants who defended landlords.37 For the most part, however, poor peasants not only benefited from and supported the land reform, but actively participated in carrying it out. In addition to winning support among the poor peasantry in the North, the land reform succeeded in another of its goals, which was to set an example for South Korean peasants, who could easily see the contrast with the continuation of landlord power under the protection of the U.S. military government. Hearing news of the northern land reform, southern peasants, who on the whole suffered a greater maldistribution of land than their northern counterparts, became more opposed to the land policies of the southern government.38 Indeed, the land reform in the North, taking place in an area with relatively lower tenancy and from which many landlords had already fled, was far swifter and more peaceful than any comparable reform could have been in the South.When peasant discontent did erupt in South Korea in the autumn of , the social upheaval was tremendous, and the countervailing repression equally brutal.39 No mention of socialism was made during this reform process. Reform was portrayed as broad-based and democratic, patriotic and anti-Japanese. Party materials emphasized that “the current stage of Korean social development is the democratic stage of capitalist production.” Korea was leaving “feudalism” behind but going in the direction of neither monopoly capitalism nor Soviet-style socialism; instead, land reform was the “material base for establishing a progressive democratic society.”40 The North Korean Peasant League (Puk Choso˘n nongmin tongmaeng, NKPL) was established on January , , and seems to have built on, absorbed, and ultimately replaced the northern sections of the National Federation of Peasant Unions (Cho˘n’guk nongmin chohap ch’ong yo˘nmaeng, NFPU), which itself drew upon preliberation peasant unions and postliberation local peasant groups. Peas. Pre-Korean War refugee movement from North to South peaked around the time of the land reform, with over fifty thousand going south in April . Lee, Rural North Korea, . . Kim Il Sung,“Results of the Agrarian Reform,” . . Eric Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea,  – (Oxford: Berg, ), . . Gi-wook Shin,“Social Change and Peasant Protest in Modern Korea,” unpublished manuscript, . . See Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), chapter . . “Interpretation of North Korean Land Reform,” .



 

ant committees, peasant unions, and peasant leagues had sprung up in various parts of Korea immediately after liberation.According to NFPU sources,a group of organizers led by Hong Chaedong decided to form an umbrella organization on November , , in order to effect land reform and “strengthen the unity of the peasant masses.”41 The founding congress of the NFPU, held December –, , in Ch’o˘ndogyo Memorial Hall in Seoul, was attended by some  Peasant Union representatives from counties throughout Korea, although  northern counties could not send representatives due to problems crossing the th parallel.42 The group sent a message to Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng, referring to him as the supreme leader (suryo˘ng) of the Korean Communist Party and leader (chidoja) of Korea’s working masses, and a message to the Korean People’s Republic reminding the KPR that “Korea is a nation of peasants” and that the land problem must be solved in order for there to be a true liberation of Korea.43 Representatives gave accounts of peasant organization in each province. In many parts of the North, local peasant groups had been established and land confiscated from Japanese owners and “national traitors” for distribution among the poorer peasantry. This process was as yet uncoordinated and had various problems; in South P’yo˘ng’an, for example, children of tenants were assaulting children of landlords, and People’s Courts (inmin chaep’anso) were being set up to resolve disputes peaceably.44 Nevertheless, the kind of local self-rule we have described in chapter  was prevalent, with elections for Peasant Unions carried out,“Worker-Peasant”schools and hospitals set up,and Peace Preservation Units established. In general, according to the northern representatives, “authority is in the hands of the people.”45 Peasants were most active and Peasant Union membership largest in the far northern region of the Hamgyo˘ng provinces and North P’yo˘ng’an.This is probably due to two factors: first, tenancy in these areas was lowest, and thus there was less of an entrenched landlord class to block reform and land redistribution; second, peasants in the far north had already experienced organization and resistance in the colonial period, especially in connection to communist groups on both sides of the Sino-Korean border. It seems that such a practice of resistance contributed to the creation of postliberation peasant organizations. Both Bruce Cumings and Gi-wook Shin have suggested that colonial experience in organized resistance was crucial to postliberation peasant mobilization, . Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo, . . National League of Peasant Unions, Cho˘n’guk nongmin chohap ch’ong yo˘nmaeng kyo˘lso˘ng taehoe hoeu˘ irok (Minutes of the Founding Congress of the National League of Peasant Unions) (Seoul: National League of Peasant Unions, ), . . Ibid.,  –. . Ibid., . . Ibid., .

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

but have done so almost entirely in the context of peasant organization and discontent under U.S. military rule in the South.46 The connection between preand postliberation peasant activism is equally clear in North Korea—perhaps even more so, given the relatively small temporal gap between the end of the RPU movement in northern Korea and the revival of peasant radicalism after liberation. Peasant organization took place in the North most extensively, and peasant union membership was proportionately highest, precisely in those provinces where the Red Peasant Unions were most active in the colonial period, as the following breakdown of NLPU membership by province shows:47 Kangwo˘n Hwanghae South P’yo˘ng’an North P’yo˘ng’an South Hamgyo˘ng North Hamgyo˘ng

, , , , , ,

It is particularly noteworthy that South Hamgyo˘ng, despite its relatively low population, had by far the largest number of peasant union members in North Korea, while the inverse is true for South P’yo˘ng’an. As we have seen in chapter , South Hamgyo˘ng had the most active Red Peasant Unions and the most continuous contact with the guerrilla movement in Manchuria in the latter part of the colonial period. Indeed, the NLPU referred to the Red Peasant Union Movement in these areas as part of its own prehistory in the struggle Korean peasants had waged since the Tonghak uprising.48 The North Korean Peasant League was established at the end of January , ostensibly not as a separate entity from the NFPU but in order to resolve the problems of the North Korean peasantry with its “special circumstances.”49 In practice the new Peasant League, centered in Pyongyang and closely linked to the Korean Workers’ Party, effectively replaced the NFPU. United States intelligence estimated that  percent of North Korean peasants joined the new Peasant League, of whom some  percent were also members of the NKWP.50 The league itself claimed a membership of ,. The Peasant League acted as a link between the central government and the local peasant committees.Through local Peasant League meetings, peasants were encouraged to forward grievances to the government and received regular lec. Cumings, Origins, vol. , –; Shin,“Social Change and Peasant Protest,” . . Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo, . . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . U.S. Army, Far East Command, Record Group , box , “Communist Indoctrination of North Korean Civilian Populace,”  November , .



 

Collecting the agricultural tax, Kangwo˘n Province, . Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

tures on world politics, the history of communism, Soviet collective farming, and recent Korean history. One of the most important functions of the league was to enforce the collection of the  percent annual tax-in-kind on agricultural goods introduced in June .51 This tax, while officially much less than the  percent or more of crops often extracted by landlords during colonial times, was nevertheless fiercely resisted in places.52 In fact, due to the way the quota was established by local township officials based on optimum production figures, the actual percentage of crops taken was often considerably more than  percent.53 The Provisional People’s Committee argued that the tax “is furthering the improvement of the peasants’ material and cultural life, and ensures the harmonious supply of foodstuffs to the workers and samuwo˘n of the cities.”54 Local peasants might have believed the latter . RG , SA , /.Text of Agricultural Tax Law, .The average official tax was %, which broke down to % for paddy field, % for dry field, and % for “fire field” (hwajo˘n). See State Department, North Korea, . . See Soryo˘ngunjo˘ngu˘ i simal (Beginning and End of the Soviet Military Government) (Taehan Min’guk kongboch’o˘, ), .While this South Korean publication is highly polemical, resistance to the agricultural tax does seem to have been a real problem, as we will discuss in chapter . . “Communist Indoctrination,” ;“North Korea Today,” . . Haebanghu Choso˘n, .

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

reason was the more important motive for the tax, especially when the center began to exhort peasants to greatly increase production.55 It may have been true that the tax-in-kind extracted by the North Korean state at times approached  percent of a farmer’s harvest, coming close to the  – percent appropriated by landlords in the late colonial period. But the fact of land ownership went a long way toward alleviating peasants’ antagonism toward the new regime. Even after the outbreak of the Korean War, U.S. militaryconducted interviews with local farmers in UN-occupied North Korea found that the peasants “preferred ownership status, even within these pervasive restrictions, to the former tenant relationship.”56 The U.S. military itself estimated that in the aftermath of land reform “ percent of the farmers were ardent supporters of the new North Korean government,” and although by  this support was thought to have dropped to  percent, North Korean peasants had little confidence that their interests would be better served by the South Korean regime than by the communists.57 Local Peasant League branches were not only involved in agricultural production, but also worked in organizing People’s Committee elections, setting up policing and village self-defense forces (kyo˘ngbidae and nongch’on chawidae respectively), and in education and propaganda.58 The Peasant League worked through a network of local village group leaders or panjang, a structure which dated from precolonial times, but whose composition was radically changed. Whereas in the past leadership was based on age, birth, and education, village and Peasant League leaders were now to be selected “regardless of economic status, social background, education level or religious belief.”59 Rosters of village leaders show a high proportion of people under age thirty-five and of poor peasant background.60 The Peasant League, like the People’s Committee, was a bottom-up structure that was built through a series of elections from the village,township,and county . Kim Il Sung exhorted the peasants to “devote themselves to increasing production for their own well-being and for the benefit of the country.” “Results of the Agrarian Reform,” . Apparently the spring plowing was not being carried out, in part due to the disruption of the land reform. . State Department, North Korea, . . “Communist Indoctrination,”  – . U.S. military assessments had something of a fixation on such statistics of support for the communist regime, however unscientific they may have been, based on rather haphazard testimonies of spies and defectors. It is interesting to note that even after the Korean War broke out,North Korean peasants—by the U.S.military’s own estimation—were “undecided”about the UN occupation. In late  a U.S. military report on the North Korean peasantry concluded that “although the government did not help them very much, a high percentage still believe that Communism as practiced in the Soviet [sic] is their only hope.”“Communist Indoctrination,” . . RG , SA , /. “Minutes of Peasant League Committee, Simjo˘ng-ri, So˘hwa Township, Inje County, Kangwo˘n Province,”  February . . “Minutes of Peasant League Committee,”  March . . See RG , SA , /. Kangwo˘n Provincial People’s Committee, Hongch’o˘n County, “Study Meeting Leaders in Each Village,” n.d.



 

levels to the provinces. After the  land reform, Kim Il Sung called for an amalgamation of the rural PCs and peasant associations, drawing these formerly autonomous groups into a network controlled by center.61 By , the Peasant League had become fully subordinated to the demands of the state: its new platform referred to strengthening the Democratic National United Front, supporting the laws of the DPRK, and even maintaining “friendly relations” with the Soviet Union and other democratic countries.62 The first few months of liberation had given the poorer strata of peasants in the North land, freedom from dependence on landlords, and the right to organize and govern themselves, benefits that were widely popular. But it is not clear that peasants were equally supportive of their prescribed role in the national economy and their integration into a national organization centered in Pyongyang, or that they wanted a unified national state in the same way as did the political elites.63 Evidence from surveys conducted by the U.S. military during the Korean War suggests that even among the poor peasantry, support for the regime had drastically declined by , above all because of the agricultural tax-inkind.64 The next stage of integrating peasants into a state-directed national economy, organizing farms into cooperatives, was announced in December  but was not carried out until after the war.65 Given the experience of collectivization in other socialist countries, including China and Vietnam, it seems likely that collectivization in North Korea would have provoked much bloodier resistance than the  land reform.

Workers In addition to an “enlightened” peasantry, who were to be the main source of political support, the regime targeted the North Korean working class through new laws on labor regulation and social insurance passed in June. Industrial workers were an important constituency both theoretically—commu. Kim Il Sung,“Results of the Agrarian Reform,” . . RG , SA , /. National League of Peasant Unions, So˘myo˘n Committee. “Regulations of the North Korean Workers’ Party and National League of Peasant Unions,” . . James Scott argues that in a revolutionary situation peasants are more likely to “seek autonomy rather than national integration,” although he points out that the Chinese and Vietnamese revolutions were among the few to successfully link the urban cadre to the villagers. One might add North Korea to this short list. Scott,“Revolution in the Revolution: Peasants and Commissars,” Theory and Society , no.  ( July ):  –. . National Archives and Record Administration, Record Group , box , Headquarters, st Counter-Intelligence Corps Detachment, st Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force, “Communist Indoctrination of North Korean Civilian Populace,”  November , , suggesting a decline in support for the regime among peasants from % in  to % in . . Lee, Rural North Korea, –.

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

nists were after all striving to create a “workers’ state” in Leninist parlance—and also practically, because unlike other Asian revolutionary societies, North Korea had a relatively sizeable urban proletariat. As mentioned in the introduction, Japanese colonialism had left a significant industrial base in northern Korea, especially in Pyongyang and in the eastern cities of Wo˘nsan and Hamhu˘ng. Unlike Vietnam and most of China (except in the industrial northeast), North Korea could legitimately claim to have a significant working class to be “liberated.” Such workers would, as it turned out, become the most loyal supporters of the new regime. The new labor laws called for an eight-hour work day,fixed daily food norms, a standardized wage scale, two weeks’ paid annual holiday, the right to collective bargaining, and the elimination of child labor in dangerous industries.66 In short, the new laws offered workers many, if not all, of the demands workers’ movements had fought for and been denied under colonial industrialization. Sources highly critical of the North Korean regime nevertheless admitted that the regime’s stress on labor reform, even if the material benefits were not immediately forthcoming, also “raised somewhat the level of the working class in the eyes of the people of North Korea.”67 Like peasants, workers in Korea had a history of organization and activism during the colonial period, which reemerged after liberation. However, workers’autonomy from the state was briefer and less well defended than that of peasants, in part because of their smaller numbers and the weakness of worker organization. Korea’s industrial proletariat constituted  or  percent of the total population by the end of the colonial period.68 Even in the North, where industry was disproportionately located, working class consciousness was only beginning to develop, despite sometimes powerful workers’ movements in northern industrialized cities, and Korean workers were barely removed from being peasants. As in the case of peasants, the North Korean state appropriated labor organization from a pan-Korean network of organizations that developed shortly after liberation. Unions and labor leaders emerged from underground throughout Korea, often participating in local government. Union representatives met in Seoul on November  and , , to establish the National Council of Labor Unions (Choso˘n nodong chohap cho˘n’guk p’yo˘ngu˘ihoe,NCLU),which claimed a membership of ,—out of a total “worker”population of some ,— one-quarter of whom were women.69 Later that month, all labor unions in the . Washburn,“Russia Looks at Northern Korea,” ; Kim Doo Yong,“Labor Legislation in North Korea,” Amerasia , no.  (May ): – . . “North Korea Today,” . . Andrew Grajdanzev, Modern Korea (New York: John Day, ), . . Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo, .



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North were combined into the North Korean Federation of Trade Unions (Puk Choso˘n chigo˘p tongmaeng, NKFTU).The North Korean organization was not restricted to industrial workers but included all wage laborers, including artisans and white-collar workers (samuwo˘n).70 It became independent of the NCLU in May , in order to “match the development of North Korean democracy.”71 Generalissimo Stalin and General Kim Il Sung were named honorary chairmen of the NKFTU. A year later the NKFTU membership included , of North Korea’s , workers.72 The NKFTU was active in carrying out the labor and social insurance laws promulgated in June . This legislation addressed many of the demands of the Seoul-based NCLU, including the eight-hour workday, equal pay for men and women, and accident and health insurance.73 O Kiso˘p, the prominent labor organizer based in South Hamgyo˘ng, headed the Bureau of Labor in the North Korean People’s Committee. He told Anna Louise Strong in the summer of  that since social insurance had been put into practice throughout North Korea in January, nearly , workers had received free medical treatment, and many workers spent their holidays in former Japanese summer villas now run by the state.74 O Kiso˘p was one of the most tenacious and dedicated communists who remained in Korea during the colonial period.Along with Hyo˘n Chunhyo˘k, a native of South P’yo˘ng’an Province who was assassinated in September , O was one of the two most prominent “domestic” communist of northern origin. He was also among the staunchest advocates among the northern communists of workers’rights—including,if necessary,the right to resist the communist state itself. O outlined the importance of independent unions in a Nodong Sinmun article on “The State and Trade Unions” in  and explained workers’ rights in great detail in a pamphlet published in September .75 O defended his position against criticism by other members of the KCP Central Committee in late , citing Lenin to support his own view of workers’ rights. O was criticized again at the Second Congress of the Korean Worker’s Party in , ac. Grajdanzev estimates that in the latter part of the colonial period over  million Koreans were wage workers, or an average of one worker in every four families. Grajdanzev, Modern Korea, . . Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo, . . Anna Louise Strong, Inside North Korea: An Eyewitness Report (Montrose, Calif.: Anna Louise Strong, ), . . Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo, . For a complete text of the North Korean labor laws in English, see Intelligence Summary North Korea (ISNK ), no.  (–  June ), –. . Anna Louise Strong,“Industrial Workers in North Korea,” Soviet Russia Today (February ): . Strong interviewed O at one of the vacation centers, on the coast of South Hamgyo˘ng. . RG , SA , /. O Kiso˘p, Cho˘nggijo˘k hyuaga wa puch’ungjo˘k hyuga (Regular vacations and supplementary vacations) (Pyongyang: Choso˘n ch’ulp’ansa, ). Despite its dry title, O’s text is a summary of the development of North Korea’s labor legislation as a whole.

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

cused of “factionalism” and “individual heroism,” in a clear attack against the supporters of the “domestic” communist leader Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng.76 O was finally purged for good in .77 According to North Korean sources and O’s own testimony, O Kiso˘p was born into a poor peasant family in South Hamgyo˘ng Province in .78 He became involved in independence activities shortly after the March First movement in , and in  joined the nationalist exiles in Shanghai.After his return the following year he helped organize youth, labor, and women’s leagues in his home province, and in  he joined the Korean Communist Party. He fled to Shanghai again after taking part in the Wo˘nsan general strike of , and returned to Korea in , moving his operations to southern Korea and organizing tenant disputes in Miryang, South Kyo˘ngsang Province. Altogether O had spent nearly fourteen years in jail by the time Korea was liberated in , and he claimed to have organized seven prisoner strikes even while incarcerated.With the coming of independence, O worked to rebuild the local Communist Party and labor organization in the South Hamgyo˘ng city of Hamhu˘ng. In September  O became second secretary, along with Mu Cho˘ng, of the Korean Communist Party—North Korea Bureau, and in February or March  he joined the Propaganda Bureau of the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee. In September  O became head of the North Korean People’s Committee Bureau of Labor.79 When the American journalist Anna Louise Strong met with O Kiso˘p in the summer of , North Korea’s social insurance laws had been in effect for some six months. O seemed particularly proud of the system of “Workers’ Rest Centers” (Nodongja hyuyangso), modeled on Soviet workers’ sanitariums, which were appropriated from the mountain and seaside summer villas of Japanese colonial officials. In mid- there were eighty-five rest centers with , beds, and , workers were expected to take their vacations there. In May , the . Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok: Choso˘n Minjujuu˘ i Inmin Konghwaguk (Secret Record: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), vol.  (Seoul: Chung’ang Ilbosa, ), . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :, . . United States Central Intelligence Agency, Foreign Broadcast Information Branch, Far Eastern Section, Daily Report,  January , in Nam-buk Han kwan’gye saryojip (Historical Materials on South-North Korean Relations), vol.  (Seoul: National Historical Compilation Committee, ),  –. . Scalapino and Lee suggest that O’s appointment as Labor Bureau Chief was a demotion, brought on by O’s opposition to the creation of a separate party in the North.There is little to suggest this in the internal North Korean materials; O’s appointment as labor leader fit in well with his long experience as a labor organizer, and O put considerable energy into his new position. Scalapino and Lee also contend that O was removed from this position by the end of , but O was introduced as “Minister of Labor” to Anna Louise Strong in the summer of , and North Korean internal documents still listed O Kiso˘p as labor minister in . See Strong, Inside North Korea, – .



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Department of Social Insurance listed the following numbers of rest center residents throughout North Korea according to occupation:80 Workers Technicians Engineers Samuwo˘n Students Farmers Other Total

,  , ,    ,

On December , , the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee had ordered the expropriation of “all hot springs, parks, beaches, etc. that had been owned by the Japanese state, Japanese organizations, Japanese people, and pro-Japanese national traitors.”81 At the end of March, the North Korean People’s Committee made these places into a network of health sanitariums and vacation centers. Heads of these centers were elected on May  and met regularly from June , . Productive workers were rewarded with two weeks’ paid holiday at one of these rest centers. The first rest centers were established in the Hamgyo˘ng region “to attend to the health of the working masses of Korea.”82 But it is clear from the discussions among the rest center directors, headed by O Kiso˘p, that their concern was with much more than the physical health of the workers.The very first point of the directors’ platform in June  was to promote “political and ideological unity” through these centers, followed by sanitary food and rooms, and third the promotion of cultural and physical activity: theaters, music groups, and libraries at each center, and organized hiking, sightseeing, picnics, swimming, and sports festivals.The head of the Hwanghae Provincial Labor Bureau argued that more important than actual work in hygiene was instilling “health consciousness” (ko˘n’gang u˘isik) in workers, but an even greater priority was instilling “national character” (minjokjo˘k kip’ung) through, for example, serving “Korean-style” food.83 Recreation went hand-inhand with “democratic moral education,” and even on vacation workers had to be reminded to “fight reactionaries who oppose the People’s Committee.”84 There were also several criticisms of “independent activity” and “liberalism” on the part of party officials. . RG ,SA ,/.North Korean Department of Social Insurance,Hyuyangsojang hoeu˘ irok (Record of Heads of Workers’ Rest Centers), – , . . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . Ibid., .

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

From the beginning,labor organization and reform in North Korea were very much in the hands of the state.The state ultimately controlled the Labor Federation, and through it the Consumers’ Unions and later the department stores, where workers could buy commodities at controlled prices.85 The state also determined wages and was the final arbiter in labor disputes.86 On the other hand, reforms seem to have brought widespread worker support for the regime, and industrial workers became a kind of privileged class in North Korean society.A survey by U.S. military forces in North Korea during the war estimated that, despite “some disillusionment,” the majority of workers supported the DPRK government in , more than any other social group except students and intellectuals.87 Of all collective categories, the worker (nodongja) was probably the most constructed. Despite the small absolute number of industrial workers, North Korea was supposed to be a proletariat state, or rather a “worker-peasant state”; the workers for whom the state claimed to speak were given an identity and a role in society which they had never possessed in the past. The state, in short, attempted to create in the worker an “imagined community of class,” which in turn represented the whole Korean people.88 Workers’identities as workers were reinforced through songs, posters, slogans, literature, and everyday speech— workers were to address each other as tongmu (“comrade”), regardless of age or status differences—and, because North Korea suffered from a labor shortage rather than a labor surplus as was the case in most industrializing countries, peasants were offered strong material incentives to take industrial jobs in urban centers. In Marxist terms, workers in North Korea were made a class “for itself ” even before they were much of a class “in itself”; subjective consciousness, as so often the case in North Korea, preceded objective circumstances.89 Korean communists tended always to stand Marx on his feet, with “correct thought” leading to political and economic changes rather than the other way around. . ISNK, no.  (–  May ), , and no.  (–  June ), . . George M. McCune, Korea Today (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), . . “Communist Indoctrination,” . . Definitions of this “vanguard class” could be quite broad; one journal included artisans and samuwo˘n as well as workers (nodongja) in the working class (nodong kyegu˘ p). Sin Su˘ngman, “Daily Improving Material and Cultural Life of Workers,” Rodong (Labor) , no.  (March ): . . Such a process of “making” workers also occurred in the USSR, but in North Korea this took place in a much more compressed fashion. For the “making of the Soviet working class,” see Lewis H. Siegelbaum and Ronald Grigor Suny, eds., Making Workers Soviet: Power, Class, and Identity (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ).The development of a working class in an ostensible “workers’ state” is obviously quite different than the emergence of a working class as an oppositional group in an industrializing capitalist society. For the latter, see especially E. P.Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Harmondsworth, ); Ira Katznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg, eds., Working-Class Formations: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ); and Dipesh Chakrabarty, Rethinking Working-Class History: Bengal – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ).



 

The working-class culture that had begun to develop during the colonial period was directed and promoted by the postliberation state. Political education texts interpreted the colonial period as the period of “class awakening” (kyegu˘p kakso˘ng) for Korea’s workers, but this class was still to be fully formed through education and made aware of itself as a class.90 May Day, for example, was promoted as the great international celebration in which all the Korean masses should participate, although after  May Day was downplayed in favor of holidays celebrating the founding of the DPRK and other state events.91 Factories were sites of “cultural circles” that promoted drama, music, movies, and the fine arts; the railway workers’ union had seventy-two such circles by late ,“making a great contribution to the cultural development of North Korea.”92 Books and newspapers extolled “model workers” (mobo˘m ilkkun), many of them women, who—like their counterparts in the USSR—were praised for high productivity, selfless service, and patriotism.93 Beginning with the party ideological journal Ku˘lloja (The Worker) in ,with its cover slogan of “Workers of Korea, unite!” journals depicted muscular workers with the peaked caps, picks, and sledgehammers of Socialist Realism.The working class was now leading the Korean revolution and “raising production for the benefit of the North Korean people’s economy.”94 Women The third major target of reform legislation was women. Legalized equality between the sexes was strongly influenced by Soviet precedent, but the liberation of women was also part of the agenda of the guerrilla base areas in Manchuria, as we have seen in chapter .The North Korean materials suggest that Kim Il Sung and his guerrilla group were more in favor of gender equality than the Yan’an group, who were populist in other areas but rather conservative when it came to gender issues, perhaps in part because of the difference in ages between the leaders of the two groups (Kim Tubong, the Yan’an group leader, was considerably older than Kim Il Sung and had a more genteel scholarly back. RG , SA , /. Ilche t’ongch’i sidae e rodongja wa nongmin u˘n ˘otto˘k’e salassu˘ myo˘ t’ujaeng hayo˘ssu˘ nga (How Did Workers and Peasants Live and Struggle in the Period of Japanese Imperialist Rule?) (Pyongyang: Nodongdang ch’ulp’ansa, ). . RG , SA , /. Democratic Youth League,“Me- De- u˘i u˘iu˘i wa yurae” (Meaning and Origins of May Day),  February . . CIA Daily Report,  December , . . A collection of such exemplary tales may be found in RG , SA , /. North Korean People’s Committee, Propaganda Section, Choguk ko˘nso˘ru˘ l wihan aegukjo˘k rodongja nongmin tu˘ l (Patriotic Workers and Peasants for Constructing a Rich and Powerful Fatherland) (Pyongyang: Nongmin sinmunsa, ). . Ibid., .

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

ground).95 Few could deny that discrimination against women in traditional Korea had been severe, even compared to other East Asian countries, and garnering political support among Korea’s long-oppressed women was quite consistent with the policy of Kim Il Sung and the NKPPC in mobilizing the marginal elements of North Korean society.Women, like poor peasants, were an oppressed majority whose support and participation would radically alter the Korean political landscape. The gender equality law promulgated by the NKPPC and backed by the Soviets was extremely radical by standards of recent Korean history, and on paper at least gave North Korean women more rights than any other women in Asia at the time.The law was passed on July  in order to liberate women, as the propaganda surrounding the law put it, from the “triple subordination” of family, society, and politics.96 The law gave women equal rights to political participation, economic opportunity, the right to education, and freedom of choice in marriage and divorce. It outlawed polygamy and the selling of women as wives and concubines, and nullified all previous Korean and Japanese laws regarding women.97 Popular reception of the gender equality law was mixed, and some members of the Yan’an guerrilla group voiced their concern that this was too radical an attack on the deep-seated patriarchy of Korean society. Based apparently on reports from disgruntled refugees from the North, a U.S. intelligence report concluded that “in general, the effect of this law has been to create a feeling of irresponsibility among the younger women and to engender a considerable amount of bitterness among the men.”98 Women’s issues figured prominently in North Korea’s social reforms as part of the regime’s broader revolutionary goals. Besides the gender equality law itself, other laws addressed women’s rights, including the right to own property under the land reform law and the right to maternity leave and equal pay with men under the labor law.99 The North Korea Women’s League (Puk Choso˘n yo˘so˘ng tongmaeng) was established in November  and worked to effect the new laws regarding women and bring women more actively into political and social life, including local People’s Committee elections. The term for “woman” itself was a political issue in postcolonial Korea. Almost exactly one year after liberation, on August , , the first Korea-wide women’s organization, the Korean Women’s Federation (Choso˘n puin ch’ong tong. For an overview of North Korean policy toward women in the first two years after liberation, see Pak Hyo˘nso˘n, “Woman Policy in the Period of Anti-Imperialist Anti-Feudal Democratic Revolution,” HCI, vol. . . Haebanghu Choso˘n, . . Puk Choso˘n po˘mnyo˘ngjip, –;“North Korea Today,” . . “North Korea Today,” . . See Pak,“Woman Policy.”



 

maeng) was established in Seoul. Communists in the North rejected the term puin, which also means “wife” and has a certain connotation of middle-class domesticity,in favor of the more “progressive”-sounding yo˘so˘ng (“female”).100 The communist image of woman, borrowed from the USSR, was that of a productive member of the labor force freed from enforced domesticity. A newspaper article in early  nicely encapsulated through example the role women were expected to play in the new society: Though more than six months have passed since the emancipation [of women], there are still many women of leisure who are spending their time in vanity. During this time, Ri Posuk and Kim To˘ksun, members of the Car-Lubrication Section of the Pyongyang Railway Factory, have participated in the latest Assault Corps and have accomplished all they have for the establishment of the nation.To the astonishment of all the workers, they have produced  oil cans for oiling the wheels of trains in a day. Under Japanese imperialism, not more than  of these were produced in a day. Stimulated by the record of these two women, the other workers have displayed patriotic enthusiasm.At present, there is the beautiful sight of competition all over the factory.101

Women’s emancipation,promoted as a value in and of itself,also meant—in typically Marxist-Leninist fashion—their entry into the socialist workforce as paid laborers, where they could even be “model workers” and examples for the men.102 Liberation from work was a backward bourgeois notion; liberation to work was genuine emancipation. But if gender equality was a radical introduction, North Korea’s approach to the family was quite conservative.This “profamily” orientation was a consistent element of the North Korean system.The North Korean regime from the beginning was never critical of the family as such, and unlike China, for example, North Korea never engaged in experiments with breaking up the family unit. On the contrary, the political system of the DPRK would build on the structures and metaphors of the nuclear family throughout its existence. In the late s, despite criticism in the South that North Korea’s gender laws were “destroying the family,” legal and political statements in the North spoke out . The same terms were the subject of similar debate in China at the time, where they are pronounced furen and nuxing, respectively. See Tani Barlow,“Theorizing Women: Funu, Guojia, and Jiating (Chinese Women, State, and Family),” Genders, no.  (spring ): – . . United States Army, Far East Command, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), box , item , enclosure no. , translation no. , . . The rate of female participation in the labor force in North Korea has been among the highest in the world, a fact that the DPRK government has seen as a matter of pride. By the mid-s women constituted more than half of the working population in North Korea, and % of all working-age women were employed. Choi Hyang Son,“Women’s Status in the DPRK,” East Asian Review  (March ): .

  



strongly in favor of the family.The old Bolshevik prediction, derived more from Engels than from Marx, that the family—like the state—would “wither away” under socialism, was nowhere on the agenda in North Korea. In the USSR itself, the tension between sexual freedom and protection of the family had been definitively resolved in favor of the family with the Soviet constitution of , which outlawed abortion, discouraged divorce, and emphasized social order and stability.103 In the North Korean revolution there were no outspoken advocates of “free love,” although there was considerable concern about “free marriage.” North Korea was in this respect a conservative society, but in a modern middleclass sense of stressing the nuclear family, rather than the traditional Korean or East Asian notion of extended families and lineages.The latter were, in fact, attacked as “feudal”along with traditional practices of concubinage,arranged marriage, discrimination against widows, and the like. A  text on DPRK law put out by the People’s Committee of Kangwo˘n Province described how “marriage and family are protected under the state” in the DPRK.104 There were two major facets of this protection. First, according to Article  of the Constitution, men and women were guaranteed the right to marry on the basis of free choice and equality, without being subjected to the dictates of outsiders, including their own parents. “Forced” and “fraudulent” marriages were outlawed. At a time when parents arranged a large portion of marriages in Korea without consulting the marriage partners, this was a radical proposition. The second aspect of the family law was more distinctive to Korea. Since late Choso˘n, discrimination against “secondary sons” (so˘ja), or the sons of upperclass men and their mistresses, had been a social issue in Korea. The  explanation of North Korean law pointed out that in the past,“children born out of wedlock to concubines or kisaeng had suffered great discrimination as ‘secondary sons’(so˘ja) or ‘bastards’(sasaenga).”They were not even allowed to call their fathers “abo˘ji” (“father”) and were denied entrance to school.This discrimination had continued unabated during the Japanese colonial period.The DPRK constitution eliminated such “feudal” practices and guaranteed that henceforth such offspring would be treated no differently than “legitimate sons” (cho˘kcha).105 . Wendy Z. Goldman, Women, the State, and Revolution: Soviet Family Policy and Social Life, –  (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ), –. The  Soviet constitution was the model for the DPRK constitution of . . Kim T’aegyo˘ng, Kongminu˘ i kibonjo˘k kwo˘lli mit u˘imu (Basic Rights and Duties of Citizens) (Kangwo˘ndo: Minju Choso˘nsa, ), . . Kim T’aegyo˘ng, Kongminu˘i kibonjo˘k kwo˘lli mit u˘imu, .There are scattered reference to kisaeng, or courtesans, in the North Korean materials, but there seems to have been no publicized effort to convert prostitutes and courtesans into “respectable” women as there was under the communists in China. Pyongyang, as it happens, was famous for its kisaeng houses, and Korea’s first modern school for kisaeng had been set up in Pyongyang under the Japanese in .



 

The limits to women’s emancipation in North Korea were similar to those of other revolutionary regimes, in which gender interests have been subordinated to wider economic and political goals, and promotion of women’s rights and attacks on the family have at times been held back in the name of social solidarity.106 North Korean policy toward women followed the Marxist line that gender inequality was a by-product of capitalism, and therefore the elimination of capitalism would ipso facto eliminate gender inequality. Japanese colonialism was also blamed for perpetuating “feudal” relations between the sexes, as it had between classes. But the North Korean revolution was less assertive of women’s rights than some of the other socialist revolutions, including that of China. Kim Il Sung did not promote any Maoist slogans that “women hold up half the sky”; women were still to be primarily occupied with household work, but “if they are occupied only with housekeeping and excluded from state affairs, they cannot be truly equal with men.”107 In North Korea, the liberation of women was clearly subordinated to, and supportive of, the goals of national construction. Women’s leaders themselves spoke initially of a complementary relationship, in which “real democratic independence cannot come without women’s liberation, and the complete liberation of women is not possible without real democratic independence,”108 but in practice women’s issues were secondary. Korean women were portrayed not only as instrumental in Korean independence, but as part of an international struggle against imperialism and reaction, led by the USSR.109 Many of the publications on women in North Korea at this time were translations of Soviet works.110 While less constrained than in the past, women’s political and economic roles were supplementary to the real work of society, which was to be done by men. North Korea’s political leadership to the present has been overwhelmingly male; probably the most consistently prominent female political figure has been Pak Cho˘ng’ae, first chair of the Women’s League—and the wife of colonial labor activist and postliberation communist leader Kim Yongbo˘m.111 The one female . Maxine Molyneux,“Mobilization Without Emancipation? Women’s Interest, State, and Revolution,” in Transition and Development, ed. Richard Fagen et al. (New York: Monthly Review Press, ), . . Kim Il Sung, “On the Future Tasks of the Women’s Union,” Selected Works, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), . . RG ,SA ,/.PakYo˘ngae,Yo˘so˘ng tokbon (Woman’s Reader) (Seoul:Sinhu˘ng ch’ulp’ansa, ), . . RG ,SA ,/.Central Committee,North Korea Women’s Democratic Alliance,“Appeal to All the Women of Asia, from the Asian International Women’s Congress,” January . . RG , SA , /. Punyo˘ haebangsa (History of Women’s Liberation), . RG , SA , /.Translation of Nina Popova, Women of Socialist States (Pyongyang: Choso˘n yo˘so˘ng ch’ulp’ansa, ). . For the DPRK’s problematic claim to have “completely resolved” the women’s issue, see Jon Halliday, “Women in North Korea: An Interview with the Korean Democratic Women’s Union,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars , no.  (): – .

  



member of the first DPRK cabinet was Ho˘ Cho˘ngsuk, minister for culture and propaganda, a member of the “Yan’an” group, former wife of fellow Yan’an veteran Ch’oe Ch’ang’ik, and daughter of Ho˘ Ho˘n, a leading “domestic” communist.112 The inaugural issue of Choso˘n yo˘so˘ng (Korean Woman) in September  referred to Pak Cho˘ng’ae as chair of the North Korean Central Committee of the Korean Democratic Women’s League (Choso˘n minju yo˘so˘ng ch’ong tongmaeng Puk Choso˘n chungang wiwo˘nhoe), although the Women’s League in the North had little connection to women’s organizations in the South and was already a Leninist “transmission belt” for the ruling party.113 The league’s platform called for supporting Kim Il Sung’s leadership and the North Korean People’s Committee,as well as struggling to uphold democracy,eliminating fascists and national traitors, and working to overthrow feudal customs and superstition. Judging from the literature put out by the Women’s League, women in North Korea had two roles to fulfill: on the one hand, they were to be militant nationalists, defenders of the ancestral land, and active producers in the economy; on the other hand, they were the primary homemakers, the educators of young children, and the main instruments of social and cultural reproduction.The covers of Choso˘n yo˘so˘ng, for example, often combined these two themes. Women were frequently shown holding a young child, usually a boy, with symbols of the Korean state or economic development (flags, factories) surrounding them. A woman’s greatest fulfillment, it seems, was to raise revolutionary sons. Women’s role as mother was never seriously questioned in North Korea. Unlike China, North Korea never tried to break up the family unit. Indeed, the family was portrayed as the basic “cell” (sep’o) of society and maintaining the nuclear family was continuously stressed.114 North Korea generally took a conservative approach to the nuclear family. From  to the mid-s divorce rose sharply in North Korea, but after that divorce was discouraged.115 “Feu. Ho˘ Cho˘ngsuk was appointed minister of justice in , but was purged in . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, : n. She died in . . Choso˘n yo˘so˘ng, no. , September . RG , SA , / has a complete run of the journal through July . . Mun Woong Lee, Rural North Korea, – .While the DPRK state often presented a parental image of itself—through “father” Kim Il Sung and the “mother”Worker’s Party, for example—the state did not in practice substitute for the family except in the case of orphans, many of whom were placed in state-run orphanages and presented as ideal “children of the state” from as early as .As Hongkoo Han has pointed out, Kim Il Sung cultivated support among the orphaned children of anti-Japanese fighters during his Manchurian guerilla days, and these orphans became among his most ardent supporters after liberation. See Hongkoo Han,“Wounded Nationalism: The Minsaengdan Incident and Kim Il Sung in Eastern Manchuria” (Ph.D. diss., University of Washington, ). . In , there were , marriages and , divorces in the DPRK. In , with the population devastated by war, the numbers were , and ,, roughly the same proportion. But by , the ratio of divorces to marriages had plummeted, with , marriages and , divorces



 

dal” family practices, such as land inheritance and extensive kinship ties, were attacked through the  land reform, which abolished inheritance, and the  elimination of the hojok, or family registry. The hojok, which traced families through paternal lines back to their putative place of clan origin, or pon’gwan, was replaced by a citizen registration system that did not record the pon’gwan.116 In short, the nuclear family was seen as the indispensable social unit that would support the state;it was the extended family,especially the lineage networks in the countryside, that was a threat. The attack on lineage continued through the collectivization of the 1950s, but the deeply ingrained attachment to kinship networks,especially the prohibition against marriage within the same surname group and clan (tongso˘ng tongbon) was impossible to eliminate completely.117 Filial piety remained a valued trait in the DPRK, but over time the emphasis on filiality incorporated the image of the mother-son relationship as well as the Confucian father-son relationship. The image of the mother became increasingly prominent in state propaganda as the DPRK evolved, and by the 1980s, when Kim Jong Il became Kim Il Sung’s heir apparent, the two women most often extolled as the ideal of womanhood in North Korea were Kim Il Sung’s mother, Kang Panso˘k, and his first wife—and Kim Jong Il’s mother— Kim Cho˘ngsuk. Both were referred to as the “Mother of Korea” (Choso˘n u˘i ˘omo˘ni) in books and films, especially Kim Cho˘ngsuk, whose “maternal care” of the guerrillas in Manchurian exile—usually involving cooking and sewing clothes—was presented as the paragon of feminine virtue.118 But even in the formative years of the North Korean regime, the literature on women resonated with traditional Korean values of female purity, morality, and above all the role of mothers in transmitting correct social values to their children.The values were certainly different, but North Korean propaganda shared with Korean Confucian traditions the theme of mothers as the main conduits of culture and morality. Indeed, one of the features of DPRK propaganda that sets it off from that of most other single-party regimes is the extent to which maternal imagery is incorporated into the representation of the state itself. The Korean Workers’ Party, for example, has regularly been described as a “mother party” (o˘mo˘ni dang).What child does not love his mother? recorded. Nicholas Eberstadt and Judith Banister, The Population of North Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), . . Mun Woong Lee, Rural North Korea, . . Ibid., . . “Motherly love” was also associated with Kim Il Sung, but was more often associated with Kim Jong Il and the Worker’s Party after the younger Kim’s rise to the position of heir apparent in the early s. Kim Jong Il’s work was said to have brought “the motherly character of the Party” to flower in Choe In Su, Kim Jong Il:The People’s Leader, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), .

  



Youth Hierarchy according to age was one of the most deeply ingrained aspects of Korean society that the North Korean regime attempted to overturn. As U.S. intelligence put it, with some exaggeration,“Deference to age, a concept basic to Korean life, has been rudely ignored.”119 For many young people in the North, liberation meant a chance to participate in public life as they had never been able to in the past. For the new regime, young people, or ch’o˘ngnyo˘n—defined generally as those between their early teens and late twenties—were among the most important agents and objects of social transformation. The DPRK leadership was extremely youthful in comparison to the South, headed by the septuagenarian Syngman Rhee. Kim Il Sung himself was only thirtythree at the time of liberation, and more than half of the representatives at the NKWP’s founding congress were forty or younger.120 Kim, as we have seen in chapter , was awakened early on to the problem of alienating young people as a result of the Sinu˘iju incident. It was due to his suggestion, Kim later claimed, that the Communist Youth League was folded into the more broad-based Democratic Youth League.121 Winning the support of North Korea’s youth was an important part of Kim’s own agenda and was pursued energetically by the NKPPC. Although youthful opposition remained a problem until the Korean War, the Democratic Youth League would prove to be one of the most important instruments of regime policy.Young people were given new roles and identities in the North Korean revolution, and many would play their roles with great enthusiasm. Left-wing youth had played an active part in anticolonial resistance and the communist movement, and in late , leftist youth groups throughout Korea were combined into the General Federation of Korean Youth (Choso˘n ch’o˘ngnyo˘n ch’ong tongmaeng).122 In the North, a Communist Youth League was formed shortly after liberation, but it was folded into a more broad-based North Korean Democratic Youth League (Puk Choso˘n minju ch’o˘ngnyo˘n tongmaeng, DYL) on January , .The DYL was part of the Democratic National United Front and claimed a membership of ,,, making it the largest of all the social organizations and probably the most influential organization in the North after the party itself.123 Kim Il Sung called on the DYL to develop a top-down system of cadre training, engage in mass education, clear . “North Korea Today,” . . Puk Choso˘n nodongdang ch’angnip taehoe, – . . Kim Il Sung,“On the Occasion of Formation of the Democratic Youth League of North Korea,” Selected Works, vol. . . Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nsa, –. . State Department, North Korea, .



 

pro-Japanese and reactionary elements, and develop ideological unity and “iron discipline.”124 Of course, not all young people sided with the political left in postcolonial Korea. Within the first year or two after liberation, sharp ideological divides emerged between youth groups, and violent clashes between right-wing and left-wing youth were common on both sides of the th parallel.The Northwest Youth (So˘buk ch’o˘ngnyo˘n) in South Korea was a group formed of refugees fleeing the revolutionary changes in North Korea and became notorious for its acts of violence against alleged leftists before and during the Korean War.125 In the North, youth formed a core of resistance to the Soviet occupation and the new regime. Many of these young people were students, such as those who led the protest in Sinu˘iju in December  and went on strike in Pyongyang in March .126 Students were a difficult group for the northern regime to mobilize, partly for reasons of class. Students protested against land reform and other regime policies directed against landlords and “capitalists” precisely because many of them were children of landlords or small businessmen and had thus been able to afford an education.Young people with strong religious affiliations, especially Christians but also Buddhists and those Ch’o˘ndogyo believers outside of the regime-sponsored Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party, were also a problem for the regime. One of the main functions of the DYL was to act as a filter to screen out such “reactionaries” from the new education system. After the DYL was formed, it became difficult to enter secondary school or university without being a member, and the DYL took an active hand in organizing education and volunteer work in all schools.127 The DYL worked to exclude politically suspect elements from the previously educated strata and to ensure educational opportunities for those from previously underrepresented worker and poor peasant backgrounds.The DYL itself was an important vehicle of upward social mobility for the young.A sample of thirty township DYL cadres, for example, reveals that only one had graduated from middle school, most had not finished elementary school, and the vast majority were poor peasants.128 The DYL claimed that by the end of , . percent of all North Korean . Kim,“Formation of the Democratic Youth League,” .As we have seen in chapter , the amalgamation of youth groups into the DYL prefigures the merger of the Korean Communist Party—North Korea Bureau and New People’s Party into the Workers’ Party later that year. . For right-wing youth groups in South Korea, see Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , The Roaring of the Cataract, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), –. . ISNK, no.  (– March ), ; Kim Kiso˘k, Puk Choso˘n u˘i hyo˘nsang kwa changnae (North Korea’s Current Situation and Prospects) (Seoul: Choso˘n cho˘nggyo˘ngsa, ), – . . Author’s interview with former North Korean resident, Seoul,  March . . RG , SA , /. Sinbu Township Democratic Youth League, “Cadre Investigation,” .

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

young people eligible to join the organization had done so. Membership varied somewhat by region, with the highest proportion of membership in North Hamgyo˘ng Province (. percent) and the lowest in South P’yo˘ng’an ( percent). Percentages of eligible young people who had joined the DYL showed the following provincial breakdown:129 North Hamgyo˘ng South Hamgyo˘ng North P’yo˘ng’an South P’yo˘ng’an Kangwo˘n Hwanghae

.% .% .% % .% .%

As usual, Hamgyo˘ng was the region most responsive to communist organization, South P’yo˘ng’an the least. Region and religion also overlapped: Christians and Ch’o˘ndogyo believers were concentrated in South P’yo˘ng’an, and in all of North Korea, DYL membership was only  percent for Christian youth ( percent for Christians in Pyongyang),  percent for followers of Ch’o˘ndogyo, and  percent for other religionists. The DYL central leadership in Pyongyang noted that . percent of eligible workers and  percent of young farmers had joined the league, but worried that women made up only  percent of the membership.A concerted effort needed to be made to recruit young women to the DYL.130 The DYL aimed to cultivate a new kind of student, utterly different from the politically complacent bourgeois student of the past.These students would be optimistic,energetic,selfless,morally upright,and above all patriotic and devoted to the North Korean regime.This would take considerable effort on the organization’s part. “Many students,” the DYL Central Committee complained in early ,“are still reading reactionary and corrupt love stories published under Japanese rule,” such as Yi Kwangsu’s novella Love; some were “leading selfindulgent and dissipated lives.” In March  the DYL resolved that Political and ideological indoctrination of students and youth in general must be carried out more vigorously than before. It must be impressed upon them that they are fortunate in being able to enjoy happiness and freedom in North Korea. Love and sacrifice for the Republic, and hatred and hostility toward the enemy, should be emphasized above all.131 . United States Army, Far East Command, Allied Translator and Interpreter Service (ATIS), box , item , “Decisions of the Central Standing Committee of the North Korean Democratic Youth League, January–March ,” . . Ibid., . . Ibid., .



 

Among the major causes of this attitude problem was the pernicious influence of “reactionary religious enthusiasts,” who were dangerous not so much for propagating religion as such, but for “idolizing Western culture and American imperialists” under the cover of religion.132 The solution was to enforce two hours per week of DYL study classes in every school, propagate more vigorously the government line, and “expose reactionary religious propaganda and activities.”133 DYL branches were organized in factories,mines,schools,and villages throughout North Korea and played an active role in People’s Committee elections at all levels. Like other groups, the DYL was a “transmission belt” for the Worker’s Party, but probably a more important and pervasive transmission belt than any other social organization. And like peasants, workers, and women, youth were represented by a state-sponsored organization that defined the identity and role of that group, and which was in turn linked to an international movement for liberation.The DYL promoted International Youth Day on November , and in  sent representatives to the Southeast Asian Youth Congress in Calcutta and the Labor Youth Congress in Warsaw.134 The DYL asserted that, while in the North youth had “achieved democratic liberation,” in the South, young people suffered “worse oppression than under the Japanese.”135 The DYL’s role was to bring the energy and enthusiasm of youth into national construction and unification. The DYL was involved in nearly every aspect of life throughout North Korea, from the major urban centers to the remote villages. Its headquarters in Pyongyang had a staff of some two thousand persons, with an administrative structure that paralleled that of the Workers’ Party.136 DYL cadres assisted in land reform, registered voters for elections, worked on irrigation and construction projects, assisted local police and self-defense units, organized celebrations of official holidays, and “encouraged competition and increased production” for the two-year Economic Plan of –.137 Among its numerous economic activities, collecting the agricultural tax-in-kind seems to have been the most pressing issue facing the DYL at the local level.138 But the DYL’s main priority . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . RG , SA , /. Ch’o˘ngnyo˘n saenghwal (Youth Life), October ,  –. . RG , SA , /. North Korean Democratic Youth League Central Committee,“Decisions of First Central Committee Meeting of North Korean Democratic Youth League,”  September , . . State Department, North Korea, . . ATIS, box , item , . . RG , SA , /. North Korea Democratic Youth League, Hamhu˘ng Broadcasting Bureau, “Directive File,” ; RG , SA , /. North Korea Democratic Youth League, South P’yo˘ng’an Province, So˘ngch’o˘n County Branch, “Diary,” . “How did the agricultural tax-in-kind come about?”and “How long will it last?”were the top two “frequently asked questions”for the So˘ngch’o˘n County DYL.

  



was education and propaganda: the Central Committee declared in  that “political and ideological indoctrination are the most essential mission of our League.”139 Local DYL branches were instructed to lead “study sessions” twice a week in farm villages, factories, mines, and schools. The DYL in Sunch’o˘n County, South P’yo˘ng’an Province, adopted as its slogans “Study, Study, and Study Again! Youth are the Masters of Tomorrow’s Society!” and, more ominously,“We Will Purge all Incorrect Thoughts and Construct the Most Democratic Works!” If the Sunch’o˘n County branch was typical of local DYL organizations, most members had received very little formal education themselves. In  the Sunch’o˘n DYL had  members,  males and  females, with the following backgrounds:140 Education: Elementary Middle school College Age group: Under  - -  or older Family background: Poor peasant Middle peasant Rich peasant Other Religious affiliation: Non-affiliated Affiliated Party affiliation: Worker’s Party Democratic Party Young Friends’ Party No party affiliation

                

Communication in the DYL was both top-down and bottom-up. While cadres at higher levels were trained to educate DYL branches in the counties and townships, residents of the latter were also encouraged to send their writ. ATIS, box , item , . . Sunch’o˘n County DYL,“Diary.” It should be noted that Sunch’o˘n was one of the major centers of Christianity in the North, so that the DYL did not reflect the local population either in terms of religious affiliation or membership in the Korean Democratic Party.



 

ten impressions back up to the county, provincial, and central organizations. For example, on November , , higher-level DYL cadres were sent “down to the countryside” to lecture villagers in T’aesan township in Sunch’o˘n County, South P’yo˘ng’an, for three days. One week later the county DYL collected some dozens of Kamsangmun,or “Impression Letters,”from villagers who had attended the lectures.141 Most of the responses had little to do with the content of the lectures themselves, which covered such topics as the U.S.–Soviet Joint Commission that must have seemed impossibly esoteric to rustic North Korean villagers. Rather, the villagers seemed deeply impressed by the simple fact that an “educated official” would come to “enlighten” them at all, and most expressed a strong desire to gain more education, a prospect long denied them by their social status. One of the T’aesan residents responded, When I came to the lecture, my first impression was that I would never forget that the Comrade Lecturer could not have had a good rest and was going through all this suffering for our sake, to come out and grace us with his teaching.

Some did have a vague idea of what exactly they had been lectured about: What did I learn at this lecture? I learned about the tasks of many countries, the activities of our League, the Soviet–U.S. Joint Commission. . . . I felt I couldn’t know more than this guy [nom]. I came down from the village, heard the comrade talk, and I became a more enlightened youth.

Another complained, No matter how hard we ordinary league members try to learn, we cannot learn because there are no study materials, and therefore the local league organizations cannot develop. The County Committee should send more material to lower-level branches. Please send a lot of educational materials.

And a certain Kim Segyun, in a barely legible scrawl full of spelling and grammar errors, wrote, I went to the classroom wanting to learn a lot. But what I learned was not enough. . . . Above all I hope the lecturer comes back. . . . I have so mush to say but I don no how to rite. I wood lik to get a lot of ejjucashun nex tim.

. RG , SA , /. North Korea Democratic Youth League, South P’yo˘ng’an Province, Sunch’o˘n County Branch,“Impression Letters,”  November .

  



There is no doubt that many young people in North Korea did not actively subscribe to the political line of the DYL; some were indifferent, and others actively opposed both the DYL and the regime it represented.Anticommunism among Korean youth was aided and abetted, but not invented, by the South Korean regime and its American backers. But for poor peasants in their teens and twenties in places like T’aesan township, the DYL was their most immediate locus of contact with the new regime, and offered novel possibilities for education, political responsibility, social advancement, and group identity as young people that, regardless of political program or affiliation with something called the Soviet Union, was clearly attractive to many. The DYL, which included youth ages sixteen to twenty-five, was obviously patterned on the Soviet Komsomol.The North Korean equivalent of the Soviet Young Pioneers, a subsidiary DYL organization for children called Sonyo˘ndan, or Boys’ League, was formed for children ages eleven to fifteen.Already the peculiar emphasis on children in North Korea, where children later were referred to as “the kings of the country” (nara u˘i wangdu˘l ) was becoming apparent.One language journal included a song with the lyrics,“this country’s masters (chuin) are our children.”142 Children were taught that their lot in the new Korea was paradisiacal compared to the suffering of children in the colonial world, indeed everywhere else except the USSR and the new socialist states.143 For that they should look with filial loyalty and love to the state, to Kim Il Sung, and even to “Grandfather Marx” (Markssu˘ harabo˘ji ), who was like their “real [i.e., paternal] grandfather” (ch’in harabo˘ji ).144 The North Korean system did not rate high by any measure of liberal democratic freedoms and created many internal critics and opponents as it emerged after . But in at least one respect, the new regime delivered what it promised: it gave those at the bottom of the social ladder a privileged place in the system and took power away from those who had been privileged in the past.This role reversal would remain in place for the next two generations or more.Writing in the s, the anthropologist Mun Woong Lee observed that Today almost all people in responsible positions, at least at local levels, are from the formerly poor class, who had nothing to lose and everything to gain from social reorganization under communism. . . . Every aspect of the social life of the formerly elite class is now circumscribed overtly or covertly. . . .“Bad” family background is a severe impediment to social advancement.145 . . . .

RG , SA , /. Choso˘n’o˘ yo˘n’gu (Korean Language Studies) , no.  (May ): . Sonyo˘ndan, May , . Yi Hu˘isun,“Grandfather Marx and Children,” Sonyo˘ndan, May , . Lee Mun Woong, Rural North Korea, .



 

Ironically, the truly revolutionary replacement of those at the top by those at the bottom would create a new and equally inflexible social hierarchy in which the children and grandchildren of workers and poor peasants would continue to lord it over the descendants of landlords, collaborators, and capitalists. Probably no other socialist regime has created such an enduring “class system” (or perhaps “caste system”) as did the DPRK. Social hierarchy and stability had been an enduring element of Choso˘n Korea, an aspect of traditional society that distinguished Korea from traditional China. Despite the radical change in the content of hierarchy after the social reforms of the s, social hierarchy itself would be one of the most distinctive and long-lasting elements of North Korea’s “conservative” communism. The DPRK has also been more enthusiastic about mass organization than any other socialist state.146 By , virtually every individual in North Korea was a member of at least one, and in many cases several, social organizations. In this as in other aspects of the new system, the DPRK had not only the Soviet model to serve as a precedent, but the Japanese colonial regime as well, which had mobilized Korean society from top to bottom for supporting the war effort from  to . But, here as elsewhere in the North Korean revolution, the Soviet occupation and Japanese colonial legacies provided a context that was filled with a distinctively Korean communist content.The organization and inclusion of such large numbers of Korea’s underprivileged classes reflected the populist tendencies and nationalistic policies of the NKPPC and the Communist Party under Kim Il Sung’s leadership after early . Kim himself had an active hand in organizing the Democratic Youth League, and his group was the most supportive of gender equality.While promoting the interests of the urban proletariat was not something Kim had much experience in and was left to communists with a background in such work, especially O Kiso˘p,“liberating” poor peasants, women, and youth had been part of Kim’s revolutionary agenda since his Manchurian guerrilla days. But maintaining political control of these social organizations by a disciplined party was also an inherent part of Kim’s agenda. By mid- at the latest, all of the North Korean organizations were subsumed under the leadership of the Korean Workers’ Party. Poor peasants, workers, women, and youth were prescribed their roles as the leading supporters of the new regime. Not all complied, of course, but many did, and the “transmission belts” of mass organizations effectively conveyed central state policies throughout the social space. . Scalapino and Lee have rightly said of the North Korean Workers’ Party that “no modern party, communist or otherwise, had ever placed so much emphasis on the politics of mass mobilization.” Communism in Korea, :.

  

Coalition Politics and the United Front

The Tripartite Alliance The North Korean Provisional People’s Committee and the Korean Communist Party had unleashed powerful social forces through the reforms of the spring and summer . In a pattern that we can by now see as typical of the North Korean revolution, these changes initiated from above became the basis for the creation of a centralized party-state structure built from below, formed through the interconnections between the central party/government apparatuses and local People’s Committees, social organizations, and party cells. But the communists did not act in isolation, and the North Korean political system from  to  was ostensibly a coalition government consisting of the Communist/Workers’ Party and two other “friendly parties” (udang), the Korean Democratic Party (KDP) and the Young Friends’ Party (YFP). North Korea’s coalition politics and the political parties’ incorporation into a populist-nationalist (but communist-dominated) United Front is the subject of this chapter. In July , the three parties and the various socialist organizations were brought together into a “Democratic National United Front,” aimed at drawing the vast majority of the North Korean population into the political process to support social reform, resistance to U.S. “imperialism” in the South, and North-South unity. The United Front reflected in part Soviet policy and resembled multiparty coalitions being formed in Soviet-supported states in Eastern Europe at the time. But the creation of a United Front also reflected the populist policies of Kim Il Sung, Kim Tubong, and other communist leaders shaped by their experiences of revolutionary struggle in China. Although this 



 

United Front was widely inclusive and stressed the themes of national unity, it was ultimately to become dominated by the communists and their agenda. While the communists had the upper hand almost from the beginning, not least because of Soviet support, the other two parties initially did have a certain degree of autonomy, and promoted platforms and mobilized constituencies that differed in important ways from those of the communists.The KDP lost much of that autonomy in early , when their leader Cho Mansik was removed from power and replaced by Kim Il Sung’s partisan comrade Ch’oe Yonggo˘n. But for some time afterward the KDP continued to represent, albeit in a more constrained manner, the voices and interests of what remained of the propertied classes and independent Christian community in the North. On the other hand, the North Korean Young Friends’ Party (YFP), the political arm of the Cho˘ndogyo religion, which had a wide following in northern Korea as described in chapter , maintained both a more common agenda to the communists and a broader rural constituency than the KDP. The YFP did not clash with the communists to the same degree as did the KDP—at least, not at the center in Pyongyang. Elements in both parties engaged in acts of resistance to the state and to the communists in places, but it was the YFP that posed the greater competition among the communists’ coveted basis of support, the rural poor. In some areas the YFP preempted the communists in mobilizing the poor peasantry and blocked the implementation of state policies, especially the extraction of agricultural taxes. Political parties were a relatively new phenomenon in Korea, and while the Communist/Workers’ Party grew extremely rapidly in  and , the only political party with a mass membership preceding liberation was, in fact, the YFP. That the Workers’ Party would dominate the other two parties in numbers and political strength was not obvious in the first few months after liberation, when all three parties began on a relatively equal footing. The North Korean Workers’ Party On August , , the Korean Communist Party—North Korea Bureau led by Kim Il Sung, and the New People’s Party under Yan’an veteran Kim Tubong, merged into the North Korean Workers’ Party (NKWP). At the time of the merger, the party had a membership in the range of ,, roughly the same as the concurrent memberships of the KDP and the YFP.The communists, now united into a single party, immediately embarked on an energetic program of recruitment and organizational growth. In less than two years the NKWP more than doubled its membership, to around ,. Active recruitment among the poor peasantry was a key element of this expansion and was intended to strengthen the party’s hold among the majority of the North Korean population. But the rapid growth of the NKWP, the formation of a “mass party”

     



rather than a classic Leninist vanguard party, created problems of its own. Strict discipline of the party as a whole and by its individual members was constantly stressed in internal party documents, which itself suggests that discipline was a problem; one notebook on the Korean Workers’ Party states that “there are still many remnants of Japanese imperialism, and therefore strict punishment is needed.”1 Collective responsibility was to be taken for individual infractions of party rules.Although “the person’s past history must be thoroughly investigated in order to determine the motive of his misconduct,” a party member could redeem himself through “repentance and enthusiasm for party work.”2 Once discipline was enforced,idleness exterminated,and “noble spirit and high ambition” fostered, the party members would become “good examples for the public.”3 Ideally, a Marxist-Leninist party extends this discipline from the center down to the lowest levels of society,creating a harmoniously functioning social “body.” Through the party’s mediation, as the political theorist Claude Lefort suggests, the state becomes “immanent” in society, the barriers between state and society are dissolved, and the entire society is drawn into a vast network of “cells,” an appropriately organic metaphor.4 This was clearly the goal of the communist party in North Korea, and early on the party is referred to as the “veins” (cho˘ngmaek) of society. But the party attained its hegemonic position and penetrated deeply into society only through a process of building on a popular base, drawing especially on the underprivileged segments of society and interacting with, dominating, and absorbing local organs and People’s Committees. It was not a simple process of imposing a vanguard party on society, but rather one of building a mass party from the bottom as well as from the top, accompanied by difficulties and conflicts. As we have seen in chapter , from early  the KCP in North Korea and its successor, the North Korean Workers’ Party, focused on building a popular constituency among the poor peasantry. Kim Il Sung in particular was critical of building a party with too many “intellectuals” rather than a party of the “working class.” For Kim, the working class included poor peasants as well as the urban proletariat. But, as indicated in the previous chapter, the sorting of individuals into specific class categories was itself part of the revolutionary process instigated by the NKPPC and the Workers’ Party, including the categorization of peasants into poor, middle, and wealthy groups. The North Korean Provisional People’s Committee defined a “poor peasant” ( pinnong) as one who could . United States Army, Far East Command, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), box , item , . . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . Claude Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy,Totalitarianism, ed. John B.Thompson (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, ), – .



 

not produce enough to support himself for one year in case of an emergency; “middle peasant”(chungnong) as one who could do so;and “rich peasant”( punong) as one who exploited the labor of others.5 By this definition, poor peasants constituted . percent of North Korea’s rural population at the time of liberation, middle peasants . percent, and rich peasants . percent.6 Political appeals to those defined as “poor peasants” was calculated to win the support of this vast underprivileged stratum for the growing party and the emerging state. This avoided the problems of appealing specifically to tenants, who might in some cases actually have been better off than peasants who cultivated their own land.7 The NKWP rapidly expanded its base among poor peasants and workers. North Korean reports give the following approximate numbers for party membership between the first and second congresses:8

Workers Poor peasants Total membership

August 1946

March 1948

, (. %) , (. %) ,

, ( %) , ( %) ,

Within two years, then, nearly  percent of North Korea’s population of  million belonged to the ruling party, over half of them poor peasants. Poor peasants and workers combined constituted nearly three-quarters of NKWP membership by the spring of .A mass-based party, rather than an elite vanguard party, would be a defining characteristic of the North Korean political system ever after. In addition to peasants and workers, much of the educated stratum was absorbed into the category of samuwo˘n, or white-collar workers.9 . Kazimura Hideki,“A Study of Agricultural Cooperativization in North Korea,” Chosen Gakuho, nos. / (), . . Ibid., . . Clark Sorensen,“Land Tenure and Class Relations in Colonial Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies, no.  ( –):  – . . Kim Il Sung, “Report to the Second Congress of the Workers’ Party of North Korea on the Work of the Central Committee,”Selected Works,vol. (Pyongyang:Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), . See also Kim Yongbok,“Organization and Activities of the North Korean People’s Committees after Liberation,” Haebang cho˘nhusa u˘i insik (Understanding Pre- and Post-Liberation History), ed. Kim Namsik et al., vol. , North Korea (Seoul: Han’gilsa, ),  (hereafter HCI); and Sim Chiyo˘n, “The Establishment and Line of the North Korean Workers’ Party,” in Puk Han ch’eje u˘i surip kwajo˘ng (The Process of Constructing the North Korean System), ed. Kyo˘ngnam University Far East Institute (Seoul: Kyo˘ngnam University Press, ), . . At the founding congress of the NKWP, Pak Iru defined samuwo˘n as “professors, teachers, and technicians, and comrades with such social backgrounds who work in villages, work places, railways, mines,factories,offices and public organizations.”RG ,SA ,/.Puk Choso˘n Nodongdang ch’angnip taehoe (Founding Congress of the NKWP), , .

     



By the DPRK’s founding in September , most of society had been redefined into one of the three categories of worker, peasant, or samuwo˘n. Unique among communist parties, but perhaps a reflection of Koreans’ deep-seated respect for intellectual activity (despite Kim Il Sung’s criticism of intellectuals as a class), the seal of the Workers’ Party added a writing brush, representing the samuwo˘n, to the familiar hammer and sickle. One of the most widely documented aspects of social mobility in North Korea was the shift from lower to higher so˘ngbun among party members, especially from poor peasant to worker or samuwo˘n.10 The opportunity for upward social mobility was itself an important incentive for joining the party.The inclusive nature of the Workers’ Party was one of the characteristics that distinguished North Korea from other East Asian communist parties; only the ruling parties of Romania and post- Cuba had similar portions of their populations as members. Political discipline at the top combined with social inclusiveness of rank-and-file membership remained a defining feature of North Korean communism for decades to come. NKWP cells were established in villages, work places, and People’s Committees throughout the North.These local branches in turn stressed strict internal discipline, elimination of all “impure elements,” and obedience to the party center.11 The KWP attempted to dominate local People’s Committees and the “fraternal parties,”the KDP andYFP;the social organizations had been largely under KWP control from early on. In the city of Wo˘nsan, for example, records indicate that, by at least , the party coordinated not only the People’s Committee, but was active in “helping and leading” all social organizations. Based on the political line of the central party and Kim Il Sung’s correct leadership, the Wo˘nsan party had removed all “opportunistic and impure elements” and achieved “unification through thought” (sasangjo˘gu˘ro t’ongil ), heightening its authority and confidence.Therefore, “all party members grasp the dignity of the party, consider the party as their own pupils (nundongja), and sincerely feel willing to defend the party to the death.”12 If the party succeeded in linking the society from the top down, it was through the People’s Committees that the political system was consolidated from the bottom up, once again demonstrating the top-down, bottom-up dialectic of political construction in North Korea.This bottom-up process was re. See for example RG , SA , /. Cell Section, Kangwo˘n Provincial Procurator’s Office,“Various Statistics.” Of the eight party officers, seven had been “poor peasant” by birth (ch’ulsin so˘ngbun) but were now classified as “workers.” . See for example RG , SA , /.. “Record of People’s Committee Meetings, Inje County, Kangwo˘n Province.” Report on Inje township party enthusiasts’ meeting,  September , . . RG , SA , /.. Kangwo˘n Provincial Public Procurator’s Office,“Decisions of Wo˘nsan City Party Seventh Committee Meeting,”  August , . See also RG , SA , /. Cell Section, Kangwo˘n Provincial Public Procurator’s Office,“Documents of Reference,”  June .



 

flected in the People’s Committee elections of late  and early . In September , the NKPPC called for People’s Committee elections at all administrative levels. Elections were held at the provincial, city, and county level on November , , and at the township, city ward, and village levels in February and March .A major purpose of these elections was to legitimize the reforms of the NKPPC and make them permanent, as Kim Il Sung himself explained.13 The February  congress on the provincial, city, and county elections established a North Korean People’s Assembly (Puk Choso˘n inminhoe) as the supreme governing body of North Korea. Re-named the Supreme People’s Assembly (Ch’oego inminhoe, SPA), this organ would remain the apex of the North Korean government after the DPRK was formed.We will return to the SPA and the formation of the DPRK state in chapter . The Democratic National United Front The People’s Committee elections of late  and early  were overseen by the North Korean Democratic National United Front (Puk Choso˘n minjujuu˘i minjok t’ongil cho˘nso˘n, DNUF), a coalition of political parties and social organizations established on July , , with Kim Tubong of theYan’an group as chairman.The DNUF was the organizational expression of the broadly inclusive, populist approach to political mobilization that the northern Korean Communist Party under Kim Il Sung had been promoting since the end of . It sought to draw together all the major political, social, and cultural organizations in the North under a single umbrella organization that would represent a common face on major political issues, including social reform, national independence, and unification with the South.True to the rhetoric of Kim Il Sung and other Korean communists,“democratic” meant that the organization had a broad popular base; its top leaders, including Kim Il Sung, Ho˘ Ho˘n, and Kim Tubong, were squarely in the communist camp.The communists, and the Workers’ Party, were the vanguard of this United Front, and the DNUF was an apparatus for both inclusion and control—a means by which the “broad masses” could be brought into a political process under communist leadership. Initially, the DNUF was composed of four political parties: the Communist Party, the New People’s Party (Sinmindang) formed by Yan’an veterans (merged with the KCP into the North Korean Workers’ Party on August ), the Korean Democratic Party (Choso˘n minjudang, KDP—not to be confused with the Hanguk minjudang, also translated as Korean Democratic Party, in South . Kim Il Sung,“Closing Up the Congress of the Provincial, City, and County People’s Committees of North Korea,” Selected Works, vol. , –.The full text of the congress may be found in RG , SA , /. Propaganda Branch, North Korean People’s Committee,“Record of the North Korean Provincial, City and County People’s Committee Congress,”  March .

     



Korea), and the Young Friends’ Party (Ch’o˘ng’udang,YFP) of the Ch’o˘ndogyo religion.The DNUF also included the various social organizations for peasants, workers, women, and youth described in the previous chapter, as well cultural and academic associations.The DNUF claimed to represent “five million organized masses.”14 As early as December , Kim Il Sung had urged the Korean Communist Party—North Korea Bureau to form a “united front with the democratic political parties.”15 After the success of social reform in the spring and the formation of popular social organizations, the time seemed right for a united front that would link these various associations and draw on as wide a base of support as possible in the construction of a “democratic” political regime first in the North, and ultimately over the entire peninsula.The expressed purpose of the DNUF was to build “organic unity and cooperation of all democratic political parties and social organizations,” both to strengthen the foundations of the people’s regime in the North and to aid the democratic forces in the South in their struggle against “neocolonial reactionary forces.”16 The first major act of the DNUF was to conduct the nationwide People’s Committee elections. Local branches of the DNUF were set up in each election area, and candidates from the DNUF were put forward in each district.Voters could either approve the candidate by putting a card with the candidate’s name on it in a white box, or reject the candidate by placing the card in a black box.The DNUF launched an intensive propaganda campaign to prepare North Koreans for the election, stressing that elections were everyone’s “democratic right” and appealing specifically to peasants, workers, women, and youth.17 DNUF cadres set up “election propaganda rooms” (so˘n’go˘ so˘njo˘nsil) at every election site and in schools, factories, and other public spaces in order to explain election procedure and the significance of the election to the masses.18 The elections, the DNUF argued, were necessary to connect local People’s Committees with the central government under a “unified common line” (t’ongiljo˘gin ilban noso˘n), and the construction of a “democratic” government in the North would lead to a unified, independent state with the people in the South, who would follow the example of their northern brethren and throw out Syngman Rhee, Kim Ku, and the “U.S. reactionary faction.”19 The first principle . Democratic National Front, Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo (Yearbook of Korean Liberation) (Seoul: Munu inso˘gwan, ), . . Kim,“Closing Up the Congress,” . . Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo, . . RG , SA , /. North Korean Democratic National United Front, Pyongyang City Committee,“Announcement of Election.” . RG , SA , /. Propaganda Section, North Korean Provisional People’s Committee, So˘n’go˘ so˘njo˘n kwa uriu˘i immu (Election Propaganda and Our Task) (November ), – . . Ibid.,  –.



 

was to eliminate all former colonial government personnel, policemen, and members of pro-Japanese groups, who were allowed neither to vote nor to run for office. Besides these “nonpersons,” all citizens over the age of twenty were allowed to vote, freely and by secret ballot.20 The November elections were declared a great success, with an official (and rather improbable) . percent voter turnout and  percent electoral success for the DNUF candidates.Moreover,the majority of the elected candidates were workers and peasants, and . percent were women, much more representative of Korean social structure than the elections carried out in South Korea. The Workers’ Party elected , members, the KDP , and the YFP . More than half of those elected, , members, were not affiliated with any party.21 However, despite the broad-based participation and the language of organic unity, internal election committee documents reveal a number of problems with the elections, especially at the township and village level.These problems were partly logistical, but they also reveal the political difficulties of creating strong links between the central state and the local population and the limitations of the communists in establishing complete hegemony. Ch’oe Yongdal, chief of the Justice Bureau, announced that despite the success of the provincial, city and county elections, there was still a lack of connection between the central government and the villages.Therefore, township, village, and ward elections were necessary in order to reorganize local People’s Committees, eliminate remaining reactionary elements and establish popular democracy throughout North Korean society. However, there was an economic aspect of these elections lacking in the larger election: the need to extract the agricultural tax-in-kind (hyo˘nmulse) from the villages, which encountered resistance from local peasants, who were sometimes assisted by “reactionary” members of both the KDP and YFP.22 The extractive hand of the state was something Korean peasants had had some practice resisting in the past and created a focus of conflict between the new North Korean state and the peasants it claimed to represent.This conflict will be explored further in the next chapter. The village and ward People’s Committee elections of February  and , , and the township elections of March , were also overseen by the DNUF and closely followed the pattern of the November elections. Organizing the local elections would be the responsibility of the provincial election committees, which had already been formed, and who attempted to learn from November’s . Ibid., . . Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), : –; Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , The Roaring of the Cataract, – (Princeton, NJ.: Princeton University Press, ), . . RG , SA , /. Central Elections Committee, “General Conclusions concerning North Korean Township, Hamlet and Ward People’s Committee Elections,”  (“top secret”), .

     



successes and mistakes.23 The township elections resulted in the following distribution of PC members:24 Social background

Number

Percentage of total

Peasants Workers Samuwo˘n Intellectuals Merchants Entrepreneurs Former landlords Clerics Men: , (.%)

, . , . 3, .  .  .  .  .  . Women: , (.%)

Except for the disproportionate number of samuwo˘n, the social composition of the township PCs reflected well the regime’s efforts to enlist the participation of the poorer classes, especially peasants. The proportion of women was even higher than in the provincial and city PCs, also a result of conscious recruitment on the part of the regime. The February and March elections were approached with the same rapid mobilization and intensive propaganda campaign of the November elections, but seem to have encountered more difficulties.The Central Elections Committee noted that there were still problems of poor planning, vote counting, and insufficient “organic links”(yugijo˘k yo˘n’gyo˘l ) between election committees and election propaganda committees.25 The committee then recounted election problems in the different provinces. In Kangwo˘n Province, for example, “reactionary elements” with links to South Korea blocked the elections and disrupted food distribution. In Hwanghae Province, a number of merchants and entrepreneurs passed themselves off as Peasant League representatives in four counties. The DNUF was also sometimes less than united, and tensions among its constituent parties could rise to the surface. In North Hamgyo˘ng Province, for example, representatives of the KDP and YFP failed to show up, either out of apathy or protest against the dominance of the Workers’ Party.26 On the other hand, there . “General Conclusions,” . Local election reviewers noted that the November elections suffered from poor communication between upper and lower organs, lack of careful screening of candidates, “impulsive” and “irresponsible” actions of local election committees, the continued danger of “reactionary elements,” and other difficulties.  Kim Chunyo˘p et al., eds., Puk Han yo˘n’gu charyojip (Research Materials on North Korea), vol.  (Seoul: Korea University Asiatic Research Center, ), . . “General Conclusions,” . . Ibid.,  –.



 

were “exemplary stories” in each province, such as an old man who explained how wonderful it was to choose his political representatives for the first time in his life and “danced in welcome.”27 In short, these local elections reveal the various shades of participation, accommodation, resistance, opportunism, and apathy that the North Korean state encountered in its attempt to mobilize society. Particularly in the villages, which had experienced considerable local autonomy since liberation and were more difficult for the state to manipulate than larger administrative units, political mobilization was not an easy affair. Nevertheless, the elections seem to have been widely supported by the poor peasants because of their positive response to the land reform. Able to participate in the political process for the first time, peasants were said to have turned out enthusiastically and “celebrated with song and dance” after voting.28 The Workers’ Party and the Peasant League elected the largest numbers of candidates, far surpassing the KDP and YFP.29 Voter turnout was again claimed to be over  percent.

From Rivals to Subordinates:The Korean Democratic Party and the Young Friends’ Party The Communist/Workers’ Party, the Christian-dominated Korean Democratic Party, and the populist Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party were the largest political groups in the North in the years immediately after liberation and were drawn together in the summer of  under the umbrella of the United Front. The groups represented three ideologies that had dominated the anticolonial struggle, and each had its particular view of postliberation society. This threecornered struggle still influenced Kim Il Sung’s political outlook forty-five years later. Reflecting on the North-South Korean negotiations for a Basic Agreement on Inter-Korean Relations in , Kim Il Sung contrasted the current situation with that of postliberation Korea:“Now, unlike after liberation, there is no favoring the Soviet Union or favoring the United States.We must unite together and make a clean slate of the past, without regard to Ch’o˘ndogyo, Christianity, or Marxism.”30 In emphasizing a clean break with the past, it is significant that Kim first rejects the superpower conflict and then immediately refers to ideological differences exemplified by Marxism, Christianity, and the native Korean religion of Ch’o˘ndogyo. If Soviet-American rivalry dominated Korea’s external environment,these three ideologies dominated the internal political cleavages of North Korea in the years after liberation. In the late s, . . . .

Ibid., . Ibid., . Ibid., . Quoted in Hangyo˘re Sinmun,  March , .

     



Christians and Ch’o˘ndogyo believers constituted not only religious communities, but were also closely associated with the two major noncommunist political parties in North Korea. Since the early twentieth century,Ch’o˘ndogyo and Christianity had been important loci of political organization, especially in northern Korea. Followers of the two religions had been involved on both sides of the anti-Japanese struggle, but both Ch’o˘ndogyo and Christianity could lay claim to powerful nationalist credentials.31 Christian nationalists were highly visible in the cities, especially Pyongyang, whereas Ch’o˘ndogyo was a more significant force in the countryside. Examining Red Peasant Union activity in the colonial period, Se Hee Yoo has found that “there was a high correlation between the weak strength of the communists and strong influence of Christianity and quasi-religions, while the communist influence was less correlated with Ch’o˘ndogyo and Buddhism.”32 This difference probably had to do with the fact that communism and Ch’o˘ndogyo had a similar social base among the poor peasantry, while Christianity tended to attract the more well-to-do and educated classes;where the latter were more dominant, Christianity tended to have a greater hold, and vice versa. In the North, where Christianity and Ch’o˘ndogyo were proportionately stronger than in the South, Christians and Ch’o˘ndogyo adherents organized political parties in the first few months after liberation, parties that became both partners and rivals to the communists.33 As in the colonial period, the communists had more political affinity with the Ch’o˘ndogyo activists than with the Christians, the former being more in tune with the social reform goals of the regime, although there was both cooperation and mutual suspicion among all three groups. A relatively tolerant religious environment marked the first year and a half of liberation, and in the beginning communists worked closely with Christians—indeed, some of the more prominent communist leaders themselves, including Kim Il Sung, came from Christian backgrounds.34 Nevertheless, Christians were politically suspect, not so much because of their religious . Of the thirty-three signers of the  Declaration of Independence that launched Korea’s March First movement, all were Christians or Cho˘ndogyo believers, with the exception of two Buddhists. In the first half of the twentieth century, both Christianity and Ch’o˘ndogyo had disproportionately large followings in the northern part of the peninsula. This regional disparity has never been adequately explained, but probably has to do with the receptivity to “new religions” in the historically marginalized north. Although Buddhists in North Korea numbered at least ,, more than either Christians or followers of Ch’o˘ndogyo, Buddhism was not politically organized in the North to the same degree as the other two religions. . Se Hee Yoo, “The Korean Communist Movement and the Peasantry Under Japanese Rule” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, ), . . Many Tonghak leaders had fled north after the  peasant uprising and established a powerful church there, and Korean Protestant Christianity had been centered in the P’yo˘ng’an area since the “Pyongyang Revival” of . See Spencer Palmer, Korea and Christianity:The Problem of Identification with Tradition (Seoul: Royal Asiatic Society, ), . . Yong-ho Ch’oe,“Christian Background in the Early Life of Kim Il-song,” Asian Survey , no.  (October ): – .



 

beliefs, but because of their association with the United States and with anticommunist organizations in the South. Since American Protestant missionaries had been instrumental in propagating Christianity in Korea, and ties between such missionaries and Korean Christians were still quite active in the South, these suspicions were not unwarranted.35 Church properties were confiscated between  and ,and congregations not associated with the progovernment North Korean Christian League came under close surveillance. Although Christianity was tolerated and churches remained open, some Christians expressed their opposition to the new regime’s meddling in religious affairs, including the posting of Communist Party observers in church services, the issuing of permits for religious gatherings, and the pressure to join the North Korean Christian League.36 Beginning in  uncooperative Protestant ministers were arrested and imprisoned, and many Christians moved to the South. Some of the ministers who fled to South Korea, and their followers, became the core of the fiercely anticommunist strand of South Korean Protestantism. Mun So˘nmyo˘ng, founder of the quasi-Christian and equally anticommunist Unification Church, was also among those who came south at that time.37 By , then, the regime’s tolerance for Christianity was on the wane, and Christian activities were increasingly restricted; by , according to some eyewitnesses, churches were being closed down.38 The reason for this clampdown was not so much the persecution of religion as such but the political noncompliance of some Christians, especially as they developed ties to right-wing forces in the South. But class conflict was also an issue.The fact that Christians were disproportionately well-off and conservative made political, social, and religious identifications difficult to distinguish. One Christian resident of Pyongyang . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, : n. . . United States Army, Intelligence (G-) Library, Record Group , Intelligence Summary North Korea, no.  ( March ), –.The Christian League was supported by about one-third of the ministers in North Korea. See Kang Inch’o˘l,“The Roots of Protestants and Catholics Who Fled South: Revolution and Christianity in Post-Liberation North Korea,” Yo˘ksa pip’yo˘ng  (summer ): . . Catholicism, which was more prominent in the South and later became associated with opposition to authoritarian rule in the ROK and populist “minjung theology,” was at the time of liberation seen as more conservative than Protestantism, and the German-based brotherhoods in the North were especially linked to pro-Japanese elements and were strongly attacked by the communists. Author’s interview with former Benedictine monk from Wo˘nsan, July . See also Kang Inch’o˘l,“The Roots of Protestants and Catholics Who Fled South,” . . United States Army, Far East Command, Record Group , box , “Communist Indoctrination of North Korean Civilian Populace,”  November , ; author’s interview with former North Korean resident, Seoul,  July . Although accounts by Christian refugees in South Korea must be treated with caution, there are numerous reports of North Korean atrocities against Christians, whose loyalty to the regime was often questionable, in the early stages of the Korean War. See Chungang Ilbo, Pirok: Choso˘n Minjujuu˘i Inmin Konghwaguk (Secret Record: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), vol.  (Seoul: Chung’ang Ilbosa, ), .

     



complained that the communists recruited “youth from poor families,with nothing,” who had a natural animosity toward educated and relatively affluent Christians.39 Although the atmosphere for Ch’o˘ndogyo was less restrictive initially, largescale arrests of Ch’o˘ndogyo believers took place in , as a result of Ch’o˘ndogyo attempts to stage a “Second March First Movement”demanding a unified North-South government and permission for the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK) to enter North Korea in order to oversee the construction of such a government.40 The Second March First Movement would have thus criticized the Soviets and the communists for denying entry to UNTCOK and was also supported by anticommunist Ch’o˘ndogyo elements in South Korea. Consequently, the North Korea regime launched a harsh preemptive strike on Ch’o˘ndogyo before the demonstration could take place.41 By the spring of , both the KDP and YFP were fully subordinated to the Workers’ Party, and by the time the DPRK was founded in , critics of the regime in both religious groups were either silent or had fled South. The Korean Democratic Party Christianity, especially Protestant Christianity, gained a following in Korea far larger than in China or Japan, in proportion to the population. Much of the modern growth in Korean Christianity is a post-Korean War phenomenon, but has its roots in the Western (especially American) missionary work of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.The center of Protestant Christianity in Korea before  was Pyongyang and the surrounding South P’yo˘ng’an region. Christianity had been stronger in northern than in southern Korea since the turn of the century, especially in the P’yo˘ng’an provinces and Hwanghae Province. At liberation, perhaps –  percent of the population north of the th parallel, or about , persons, were Christians.42 There was roughly the same number of Ch’o˘ndogyo believers, and Buddhists numbered between , and ,. Many of the leading nationalist figures in northern Korea during the colonial period were Protestant Christians. With the exception of the Hamgyo˘ng provinces, Christian nationalists headed all provincial Commit. Author’s interview with former North Korean resident, Seoul,  May . . P’yo Yo˘ngsam,“Ch’o˘ndogyo in North Korea (Part ),” Sin In’gan, no.  (April ): . . James H.Grayson,Korea:A Religious History (Oxford:Clarendon,),. According to South Korean Ch’o˘ndogyo sources, more than , believers were arrested by the North Korean regime in late February  in connection to the abortive Second March First movement planned for the morning of  March . Several were given lengthy prison sentences, and four were sentenced to death. P’yo,“Ch’o˘ndogyo in North Korea (Part ),” . . Kang Inch’o˘l, “Protestants and Catholics Who Fled South,” . About % of the Christians in North Korea were Protestants.

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tees for the Preparation of Korean Independence in North Korea immediately after liberation.43 This does not mean, however, that Christians were a politically homogeneous group or that they all necessary supported Cho Mansik and his KDP. Cho had wide support among the conservative American Presbyterian church members, who comprised about  percent of the Protestants in North Korea and particularly dominated the South P’yo˘ng’an area, but there were other more politically progressive Christian elements as well, including socialists and Quaker pacifists.44 Proregime Christians were organized into a North Korean Christian League (Puk Choso˘n kidokkyo yo˘nmaeng) in , under the leadership of Kang Yanguk, a Presbyterian minister who (not coincidentally) was the cousin of Kim Il Sung’s mother, Kang Panso˘k. About one-third of the Christian congregations in the North joined the North Korean Christian League.45 Cho Mansik was the leading Christian nationalist in the North and could claim a wide following among Protestant Christians in the P’yo˘ng’an region. Cho led the South P’yo˘ng’an Provincial People’s Political Committee immediately after liberation, and under his auspices the Korean Democratic Party (KDP) was established in Pyongyang on November , .The KDP drew its support base from Christians and the propertied classes, categories that in North Korea often overlapped. Protestant Christianity in northwestern Korea (Hwanghae and P’yo˘ng’an) was associated with an emerging middle class, entrepreneurs, landlord elements, and education in missionary schools. Protestant Christians constituted a large portion of the moderate or “cultural” nationalists during the colonial period.46 Cho had been one of cultural nationalism’s most prominent leaders, and the KDP platform, which we will explore in more detail below, reflected the moderate line of these cultural nationalists.47 The KDP emphasized such general goals as national culture, religious education, and “improving the livelihood of the whole people,” but was ambivalent on land reform and reluctant to abolish tenancy.48 This was not a party aimed at, nor likely to win the support of, the rural poor. Local documents reveal that the KDP had its base of . Kim Yongbok,“Organization and Activities of North Korean People’s Committees after Liberation,” HCI, vol. , –. . Kim So˘ngbo,“Democratic Forces in North Korea and the National United Front Movement,” Yo˘ksa pip’yo˘ng, no.  (summer ): . . United States Department of State, North Korea:A Case Study in the Techniques of Takeover (; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ), .There was also a progovernment Buddhist League and Confucianist League, both established in . . See Kenneth Wells, New God, New Nation: Protestants and Self-Reconstruction Nationalism in Korea,  – (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ). . Among Cho’s accomplishments was founding the “Korean Goods Promotion Movement” in the early s. Carter Eckert et al., Korea Old and New:A History (Seoul: Ilchogak, ), . . Kim So˘ngbo,“Democratic Forces,” .

     

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support in the middle and upper peasantry, as well as landlords and the petty bourgeoisie.49 Cho took a gradual approach to reform after liberation, as he had to independence before. As late as October , Cho was against including the immediate resignation of all Japanese collaborators on the KDP platform.50 Cho opposed the “ –” system of dividing the harvest between landlords and tenants, which local Peasant League branches were putting into practice in the fall of , a process we have noted in the previous chapter.51 Cho reportedly felt that the “–” system was too severe for the landlords, and suggested a more moderate “ – ” distribution instead.52 Despite Cho’s opposition, the South P’yo˘ng’an People’s Committee adopted the “ –” system on September , .53 Cho boycotted the People’s Committee for two days in protest. He also spoke out in defense of “capitalists” in the People’s Committee.54 The establishment of the KDP was not merely a protest against the communists.The Soviets and Kim Il Sung himself helped to bring the party into being. As in Eastern Europe, the Soviets in North Korea wanted to encourage noncommunist national parties in Korea to work with the communists in a united front coalition. Cho, with his strong nationalist credentials and wellestablished support among the propertied classes, would be an ideal person to mobilize these elements and would be a boon to Soviet administration in the North—provided he were cooperative with the communists. It seems, in fact, that the Russians had originally intended Kim Il Sung, who was from the same area as Cho Mansik and also from a Christian background, to work with Cho as his communist partner in the KDP.55 A North Korean defector to the South told U.S. military intelligence in early November  that Kim Il Sung had met Cho around October  and proposed that they work together to form a . RG , SA , /. North Korean Democratic Youth League, “Report on Education in Each Church School in Sinbu Township,”  July . See also Pyo˘ng Yo˘ngho,“United Front in PostLiberation North Korea”in Puk Han hyo˘ndaesa (Contemporary History of North Korea),ed. Yonsei University North Korean Contemporary History Research Group (Seoul: Kongdongch’e, ), –. . United States Army Military Government in Korea, Record Group . G- Weekly Summary, no. , enclosure no. , . . O Yo˘ngjin, Hanau˘i chu˘ng’o˘n (An Eyewitness Testimony) (Pusan: Sasang chidowo˘n, ), – ; Minjujuu˘i minjok cho˘nso˘n, Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo (Yearbook of Korean Liberation) (Seoul: Munuin so˘gwan, ),  –. . Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, . Cho was also accused of saying that “the  – system of contributing grain is for the benefit of the Soviet Army and not for the Korean farmers.” Cho˘ngno,  March . Cited in ATIS, box , item , translation no. , . . RG , SA , /. Haebanghu Sanyo˘nganu˘i kungnaeoe chungyo ilji (Chronicle of important domestic and external events for the four years since liberation) (Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, ), . . Weekly Summary, no. , enclosure no. , . . Eric Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea, – (Oxford: Berg, ), ; Lim Un, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea (Tokyo: Jiyu-sha, ), .

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new party. Cho did not agree at this point, and Kim returned to his work with the Korean Communist Party.56 In any case, we can imagine that Kim Il Sung saw greater opportunities for power as a leader of the North Korean communists than as a junior partner to Cho Mansik. Had Kim remained with Cho, North Korean politics may have developed quite differently, and Kim might never have become leader of the DPRK. In late October, presumably after rejecting Kim Il Sung’s proposed alliance, Cho and other noncommunist nationalists began to discuss the creation of a political party as an alternative to the communists, who as we have seen had set up an active party center in Pyongyang in mid-October.57 These discussions resulted in the creation of the Korean Democratic Party on November . The KDP soon established branches down to the township level and made an impressive showing at local People’s Committee elections in November.58 The KDP platform, promulgated at the party’s founding, reflected the cultural nationalists’ long-standing emphases on “national unity,” patriotism, and independence, as well as their rather vague position on social reform. O Yo˘ngjin, a playwright who later moved to the South and who claimed to have been inspired by the “principles of the Shanghai Provisional Government,” allegedly wrote the declaration of the founding of the KDP.59 The KDP spoke of “improving the welfare of the whole nation” but paid special attention to the “unity of all social elites (yuji).”60 The KDP supported freedom of expression and universal suffrage for all except “national traitors.” The party called for the “improvement” of the tenancy system but not its abolition and advocated labor reform while stressing the need for uninhibited industrial production.Universal education and “enhancement of national culture” were important themes in the KDP platform. In short, the KDP advocated the kind of “bourgeois” democratic republic that the Soviets and many of the Korean communists claimed at the time was appropriate for Korea’s current stage of development. Its platform accurately reflected the goals, methods, and ambiguities of the colonial-era cultural nationalists, with their stress on culture, their elitism, their moderation with regard to agrarian and industrial reform, and their gradualist approach to social, economic, and political change. For a brief time the KDP showed considerable promise as an independent, noncommunist political party that would mobilize the moderately conservative social elements, especially urban Christians.The KDP, the communists, and the . Weekly Summary, no. , enclosure no. , . . Ibid., ; Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, . . See Intelligence Summary North Korea, no. ,  and no. , . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :– . . RG , SA , /. Choso˘n minjudang so˘n’o˘n, kangnyong, cho˘ngch’aek, kyuyak (Declaration, Platform, Policies, and Rules of the Korean Democratic Party) (Pyongyang, October ).

     



Soviet authorities began on a cooperative footing. But this moment lasted only about two months before Cho came to clash with the Soviet authorities, and the KDP was forced to change both its leadership and the composition of its membership. As we have alluded to in chapter , Cho’s fall from grace came as a result of the Moscow Decision on trusteeship announced in late December. The Soviets seem to have been somewhat taken aback by Cho’s vehement opposition to the Moscow Decision. General Romanenko worked assiduously to persuade Cho to accept the Moscow Decision, suggesting that he might have a high position in the Korean government if he were to cooperate.61 But Cho refused to agree to trusteeship, and by early January he had been removed from his leadership position in the KDP. The party itself effected a major purge of “reactionary” members soon after and came directly under the control of the regime. In the North as in the South, opposition to trusteeship was a rallying point for the right wing and created an irreversible split between left and right. In the North, the right wing was eclipsed and became bitterly estranged from the regime, and in the South, the trusteeship issue helped bring anticommunist and anti-Soviet elements to the fore.62 Cho clashed openly with the Soviets over trusteeship at an Enlarged Conference of the South P’yo˘ng’an People’s Committee shortly after the Moscow Decision was announced on December , .63 He was placed under house arrest on January , , and confined to a hotel in Pyongyang.64 Arthur C. Bunce, economic advisor to the U.S. Military Government in South Korea, met Cho in October  while on a visit to Pyongyang. Bunce’s host Chancellor Balasanov, political advisor for the Soviet occupation army, told Bunce that Cho was a “reactionary” for not supporting trusteeship.According to Bunce, Cho at the time “appeared to be in good health and reasonably good spirits. It was apparent,however,that he was reluctant to let us go.”65 Cho remained under house arrest until the Korean War.According to Pak Kiryong, a DPRK Foreign Ministry official who fled to the Soviet Union in , Cho was executed as UN troops were advancing on Pyongyang in October .66 By the end of  the KDP was a loyal coalition partner in the DNUF and Cho Mansik had been replaced as party chairman by Kim Il Sung’s Manchurian partisan colleague, Ch’oe Yonggo˘n. The NKWP ordered a major purge of pro. Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, –, – ; Han Chaedo˘k, Kim Ilso˘ngu˘l kobalhanda (I Denounce Kim Il Sung) (Seoul: Naeoe munhwasa, ), . . Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes,  – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), –. . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :– . . Han Chaedo˘k, Kim Ilso˘ngu˘l kobalhanda, –. . National Archives and Record Administration, Record Group , box .“Report of the Visit of Arthur C. Bunce with Chancellor Balasanov in Pyongyang,”  October , . . Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, .

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vincial KDP officials and removed much of the KDP central leadership.67 Ch’oe Yonggo˘n addressed the party at the Sixth Enlarged KDP Central Committee Meeting on Christmas Day  and went over the history, problems, and prospects of his party. Praising the KDP and its , members for their participation in the historic November elections, Ch’oe exhorted party members to eliminate “feudal thinking” in the villages,“petty bourgeois” attitudes in the cities, and the problem of “anti-Soviet, anticommunist elements” entering the KDP. Citing the unfortunate behavior of a provincial KDP chairman, Ch’oe admonished party members for criticizing the Workers’ Party. KDP members must cooperate with the NKWP and avoid factionalism, the “disease given our nation from the Yi dynasty and Japanese imperialism.”68 Ch’oe went on at length denouncing individualism and profiteering.“What is feudal?” Ch’oe asked.“It is working for one’s own benefit rather than the benefit of the nation.There is particularly a lot of this kind of thinking in the villages.”69 In the cities,the problem was profiteering,working for individual profit rather than building national wealth.Such behavior is a great danger to our party and to the national economy, Ch’oe said.Telling capitalists to put self-sacrifice over private profit seemed like a contradiction in terms, but such was the logic of a bourgeois party led by communists. Part of the KDP’s raison d’être, as the NKWP saw it, was to channel bourgeois capital into national construction. Ch’oe made this point explicitly, saying “Our party has the wealthiest members compared to other parties. But these party members are not giving their money for the sake of the party and party finances cannot be solved. . . . Patriotic party members should put the party above self-interest.”70 Secret NKWP investigations of local KDP branches in several South P’yo˘ng’an counties and in the port city of Namp’o criticized the bad “class tendencies” and reactionary attitudes of the KDP. The Namp’o KDP had a membership of ,, of whom only  were women (in contrast to much higher female membership in the NKWP). Among this membership,  were workers,  were peasants,  were samuwo˘n, and , were “others,” which included merchants, teachers, businessmen, and the self-employed.71 The Namp’o KDP’s fourteen cadres included eight samuwo˘n,three merchants,and one dealer in lumber. Many white-collar professionals, including doctors, lawyers, teachers, and journalists, were among the KDP urban cadres. In rural Yangdo˘k County in the . State Department, North Korea, . . RG , SA , /. Headquarters, Korean Democratic Party.“Comrade Ch’oe Yonggo˘n’s Concluding Remarks at the Sixth Enlarged Central Committee Conference,”  December , – . . Ibid., . . Ibid., –. . RG , SA , /. “Cadre Investigation,”  February . The report noted that there were no rich peasants, landlords, capitalists, or students in this group.

     

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eastern part of South P’yo˘ng’an, , of the , KDP members were peasants, but the figures do not say whether they were poor, middle, or rich peasants. The next largest category ( members) was “other,” including merchants and entrepreneurs.The KDP in Anju County, north of Pyongyang, had a membership of ,, of which the largest group was “other” (), followed by independent farmers (), samuwo˘n (), and “free laborers” (). The impression given by these local KDP investigations is that by the beginning of , the KDP was no longer the party of the landlords, most of whom had either fled South, become independent farmers, or joined the ranks of white-collar professionals and businessmen after the land reform. While many of its members had landlord backgrounds, the KDP’s current social base was among the urban professionals, independent farmers, small businessmen, and merchants. It was, by the standards of Korean society at the time, a middle-class party. The NKWP was scathing in its critique of the KDP. In its investigation of the KDP in Sunch’o˘n County, the NKWP reported that the tendencies of the Democratic Party cadres in the county and townships are mostly not good. Therefore, the lower-branch organization tendencies are not good either. . . . Most of the cadres had been pro-Japanese. For the most part, Sunch’o˘n County KDP members are landlords who had had their land confiscated, and village KDP leaders are generally landlords. Furthermore, it is not insignificant that all the Christians in Sunch’o˘n joined the KDP.The task of making the KDP into a progressive democratic party will be a very difficult task (to the extent that we must purge all the evil landlords and Christians from the party).

Despite the fact that the KDP top leadership had been replaced by regime loyalists and the party should by now have become a reliable “transmission belt” for regime policies, NKWP cadres suspected that local KDP branches were dragging their feet at best,if not actively sabotaging the NKWP’s work.72 Christians were particularly a problem.“We must beware of the power of the Christians who joined the KDP,” said the Sunch’o˘n County report. “They always claim to be cooperating [with us], but in fact they are doing nothing.” The Young Friends’ Party In some respects, the Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party was a more natural coalition partner for the Workers’ Party than was the KDP. On the other hand, . The decision paper promulgated by the KDP at its Sixth Enlarged Party Conference emphasized the need to purge the remaining “pro-Japanese reactionary elements” from the party and the everpresent danger of “America-worshipping religionists”engaged in antiparty activities with other domestic reactionaries, especially in the local party branches. RG , SA , /. KDP Sixth Enlarged Central Committee,“Decision Paper,”  December .



 

the YFP was also a more serious rival, having a ready-made organizational structure, a strong base among the poor peasantry, and deeper historical roots than the communists in the Korean countryside.The YFP approach to social issues such as land reform was often quite close to that of the communists, but there were serious differences as well, including the YFP’s views on the peasant rights vis-à-vis the state and, from  until early , the YFP’s views on accommodation with the United States, the UN, and South Korea over unification. Although the YFP did not clash openly with the KWP as much as the more conservative Democratic Party did, and the YFP leadership was not purged and replaced with Kim Il Sung loyalists as Cho Mansik had been, the YFP was also criticized by the communists and forced to hew to the Workers’ Party line by .The pressures on the KDP had been more overt and dramatic, but in the end both “friendly parties” became little more than transmission belts for the communist-dominated central authorities in Pyongyang. Unlike the Workers’ Party and KDP, the YFP was not a “new party.” The Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party was first established in , predating the communist party in Korea by two years. Ch’o˘ndogyo political activity, of course, went back much further, to the Tonghak peasant uprising of , and Ch’o˘ndogyo believers had initiated the March First declaration of Korean independence in .73 Throughout much of the colonial period, Ch’o˘ndogyo organizations were at the forefront of the struggle for independence.The Japanese authorities considered Ch’o˘ndogyo a “quasi-religion” that functioned in reality as a political organization, and Cho˘ndogyo was more carefully supervised than other religious groups.74 Ch’o˘ndogyo was particularly dangerous because of its large following and high visibility in such areas as education and publication.The religion claimed some  million adherents and had founded more than thirty schools by the time Japan annexed Korea in , but the Japanese had forced all Ch’o˘ndogyo-affiliated schools to shut down by .75 In the s, despite a certain degree of mutual suspicion, Ch’o˘ndogyo activists cooperated with socialists in local anti-Japanese demonstrations, including the attack on the Pojo˘n police garrison in , led by Kim Il Sung. Although it was forced to go underground between  and , the YFP was the only large-scale political party in Korea to straddle the divide of liberation. The YFP had been formed at the peak of Ch’o˘ndogyo political and intellec. John Kie-Chang Oh, “Ch’o˘ndogyo and Independence Movements,” in Korea’s Response to Japan: The Colonial Period, –, ed. C. I. Eugene Kim and Doretha E. Mortimore (Kalamazoo, Mich.: Center for Korean Studies,Western Michigan University, ), . Son Pyo˘nghu˘i, religious leader of Ch’o˘ndogyo at the time, was the first to sign the declaration. Of the thirty-three signers of the declaration, fifteen were Ch’o˘ndogyo members, sixteen Christians, and two Buddhists. . Wi Jo Kang, Religion and Politics in Korea under the Japanese Rule (Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen Press, ), . . Ibid., .

     



tual activity in the s. For example, the Ch’o˘ndogyo publication Kaebyo˘k, which published seventy-two issues between  and , was the leading literary journal in Korea at the time.76 Ch’o˘ndogyo was active in organizing peasants, merchants, women, and especially children and youth.“Children’s Day,” an annual holiday still celebrated in the Republic of Korea, originated with Ch’o˘ndogyo.77 After Ch’o˘ndogyo’s supreme leader Son Pyo˘nghu˘i was imprisoned for his role in the March First movement, the new leader Yi Tonhwa formed a youth organization for the study of Ch’o˘ndogyo doctrine (Ch’o˘ndogyo ch’o˘ngnyo˘n kyori kangyo˘nbu), soon renamed the Ch’o˘ndogyo Youth Association (Ch’o˘ndogyo ch’o˘ngnyo˘nhoe), which became in turn the Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party (Ch’o˘ndogyo ch’o˘ng’udang) in September .The YFP was the main political arm of Ch’o˘ndogyo. It had branches throughout Korea, as we have already described in chapter , with a high concentration of membership in the northern part of the peninsula.The YFP was linked to other Ch’o˘ndogyo social organizations focused on children,students,farmers,women,and merchants. The YFP and its affiliated organizations claimed a membership of some thirty thousand in  local branches by the end of .78 Their work was devoted to the creation of an enlightened nation by the enlightenment of individuals through education, social reform, and religious teaching.79 The YFP also promoted physical education and had a nationally renowned baseball team.80 Frequently subject to surveillance and arrest by the colonial authorities, the YFP was dealt a severe blow in , when some two hundred of its leaders were arrested for conspiring to organize a Second March First Movement (something Ch’o˘ndogyo would attempt again,with equally negative consequences,after liberation).The party went underground in . As the final insult, Ch’o˘ndogyo central headquarters in Seoul was converted into a factory for making Japanese army uniforms in .81 The YFP officially emerged from underground in October . On October , the YFP formed a “Provisional National Assembly” in Seoul, with Kim Kijo˘n as head.82 Two liaison offices were set up north of the th parallel, one in Pyongyang and one in Hamhu˘ng, in January . But as the North-South divide solidified and contact between the two sides became more difficult, the . Oh,“Cho˘ndogyo and Independence Movements,” . . RG , SA , /. Ch’o˘ndogyo yaksa (Brief History of Ch’o˘ndogyo) (n.p., n.d.), . . Kang, Religion and Politics, ; Benjamin B.Weems, Reform, Rebellion, and the Heavenly Way (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, ), . . The Ch’o˘ndogyo term kaebyo˘k (“creation”) was used for both the enlightenment of individuals and the reform of society. It also had an eschatological or millenarian connotation, in connection with the Tonghak peasant uprising of . See Ch’o˘ndogyo yaksa, , and RG , SA , /. Ch’o˘ndo kyori daeyo (Outline of Ch’o˘ndogyo Doctrine) (n.p., n.d.), . . Ch’o˘ndogyo yaksa, . . Kang, Religion and Politics, . . P’yo Yo˘ngsam,“Ch’o˘ndogyo in North Korea (Part ),” Sin In’gan, no.  (March ), .



 

northern branches of the YFP took on an increasingly independent identity. On February , —the day the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee was founded—the two YFP liaison offices merged to form the North Korean Ch’o˘ndogyoYoung Friends’ Party. The following year, Ch’o˘ndogyo also formed a separate northern religious organization. In mid-, Ch’o˘ndogyo claimed ,, adherents in North Korea.83 The chairman of the North Korean YFP was Kim Talhyo˘n. Kim was born in  in Kowo˘n County, South Hamgyo˘ng Province, which was also the home county of Kim Pyo˘ngje, head of the South Korean YFP.84 A follower of Ch’o˘ndogyo since , in the s Kim Talhyo˘n was also active in the Proletarian Comrades’ Association (Musanja tongjihoe), one of a number of socialist-oriented groups dedicated to workers’ liberation, and helped to organize strikes in Seoul.85 He joined the education section of the Ch’o˘ndogyo-affiliated Korean Peasant Society (Choso˘n nongminsa) in  and headed a local Ch’o˘ndogyo chapter in . By the mid-s Kim was a leading national figure in the Ch’o˘ndogyo organization. North Korean Ch’o˘ndogyo documents of the late s tended to give a highly political spin to Ch’o˘ndogyo religious doctrine, and the Ch’o˘ndogyo line was generally in sync with the regime’s domestic policies (although it had little to say, good or bad, about the Soviet presence). Ch’o˘ndogyo religious beliefs had always had political implications, going back to the Tonghak rebellion of , and these were often potentially quite radical,especially in the area of social egalitarianism. But the North Korean YFP interpreted Ch’o˘ndogyo tenets in a way that often coincided with communist ideology quite explicitly. The central Ch’o˘ndogyo doctrine of in nae ch’o˘n (“man and heaven are one”), for example, was interpreted in North Korean YFP literature to mean “the complete equality and freedom of all people in political, economic, cultural, and social areas.” The concept of kaebyo˘k or “awakening” applied to the individual consciousness, the society, and the nation. For the individual, kaebyo˘k meant religious enlightenment; for the nation, independence; and for the society, a fundamental change of the social order which would allow all people to reach their full potential. Korea’s “new democracy” would eliminate all “feudal relationships,” remove the vestiges of colonialism, overthrow “reactionary fascism,” and promote the leadership of the unified working masses.86 A Ch’o˘ndogyo pamphlet from June  expounded on the old Tonghak . P’yo,“Ch’o˘ndogyo in North Korea (Part ),” –. . P’yo Yo˘ngsam, “The ‘New March First Movement,’” Puk Han, no.  (April ), – . . For the activities of the Proletarian Comrades’Association, see Kim Chunyo˘p and Kim Ch’angsun, Hanguk Kongsanchuu˘i undongsa (History of the Korean Communist Movement), vol.  (Seoul: Korea University Press, ), . . P’yo,“Ch’o˘ndogyo in North Korea (Part ),” , citing an October  pamphlet entitled “Political Ideology of Ch’o˘ndogyo.”

     



concepts of Poguk anmin (“preserve the nation and bring peace to the people”) and Chisang ch’o˘n’guk (“paradise on earth”).Together, the pamphlet explained, these represented the twin goals of Cho˘ndogyo, based on the fundamental doctrine of “human transformation” (in’gan kaejo). Poguk anmin was the liberation of Korea from Japanese imperialism and the construction of a completely independent state based on the rule of the common people ( paekso˘ng).This new nation would unify politics and economics for the benefit of the people, who would enjoy political, economic, and cultural equality and live a life of complete freedom. Chisang ch’o˘n’guk was not an abstract concept of the afterlife, but a new society realizable in the here and now,“the most enjoyable and egalitarian country” whose social revolution would expand outward until all humanity became a “world republic” (segye konghwaguk) with equality between as well as within all countries. It just so happened that the USSR, Eastern Europe, and North Korea were a little farther ahead on this path, however.87 The North Korean YFP journal Tangji explained that the Ch’o˘ndogyo religion and the YFP were “two sides of one body” or “two aspects of the whole.”88 Ch’o˘ndogyo was described as a “mass revolutionary movement” dedicated to “the creation of the new man, the preservation of the Korean spirit, and the unity of all things”—the latter referring explicitly to the unity of the Korean people.89 Nationalism (minjokchuu˘i) and national independence (minjok chaju) were among the YFP’s central themes.90 The doctrine of Poguk anmin meant the “complete independence of the nation” and a democratic regime with a “democratic life force,” which included such things as guaranteed employment for all citizens.91 The doctrine of chisang ch’o˘nguk meant the creation of a new country with a “moral government” reflecting the “primitive moral government” corresponding to man’s original nature,similar to the notion of “primitive communism” propounded by anarchist thinkers such as Bakunin and Kropotkin.92 The state expresses the will of a unified ethnic nation (hyo˘lchok), and Korea should be an independent, democratic state.93 Capitalist states, the YFP explained, were not “complete democracies” because of the power of capitalists over ordinary people. A truly democratic state is a “worker-peasant state” in which there is “shared production” (kongsan).94 The YFP’s goal was a “Korean . RG , SA , /. Ch’o˘ndogyo ch’egye yoram (Organizational Outline of Ch’o˘ndogyo) (Pyongyang: Kaebyo˘k sinbosa, June ), – . . RG , SA , /. Tangji (Party Journal), n.p., n.d., . See also RG , SA , /. Ch’o˘ndogyo ch’o˘ng’udangnon (On the Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party), n.p., n.d. . Tangji, , . . Ibid., . . Ibid., –. . Ibid., , . . Ibid., . . Ibid., . Kongsan was the first part of the Korean word for “communism” (kongsanchuu˘i).



 

new democracy,” neither proletarian dictatorship nor liberal democracy, but a unified independent Korea without class distinction or discrimination. To what extent the YFP position was developed under pressure to conform to the communists’ political line before  is difficult to determine on the basis of extant documents. But the YFP’s statements in the first three years after liberation are not inconsistent with the position taken by YFP activists during the colonial period.This reflects the fact that the radical social reform,land redistribution, peasant populism, and other elements associated with the communists in North Korea had roots in pre- political movements in Korea that were not the monopoly of the communists alone.The Workers’ Party rivalry with the YFP over support in the countryside may itself have contributed to the populist tendencies of the communists in North Korea, as the two groups competed for the political loyalties of the rural poor. On the other hand, the North Korean YFP line was far too close to that of the communists for the old guard Ch’o˘ndogyo believers in the South, as well as for part of the Ch’o˘ndogyo church in the North.As political divisions emerged among Ch’o˘ndogyo followers, the Workers’ Party at the same time attempted to overwhelm the YFP with superior numbers and mobilizing force. But Ch’o˘ndogyo and the YFP had considerable popular support, organizing power, and resiliency. The land reform, which confiscated property belonging to religious organizations, dealt a sharp financial blow to the Buddhists and Christians, but not to Ch’o˘ndogyo, which had little landed property and was financed through voluntary donations by individual members.95 The YFP reached deeply into the countryside, building on the organizational strength of the Ch’o˘ndogyo “parish” (cho˘p) system. By June  the YFP was organized in all provinces and soon had a presence at the county, village, township, city, and ward levels as well.96 At the second Korean Workers’ Party Congress in March , Kim Il Sung denounced “reactionaries” among the peasants in the YFP.97 Support for the YFP over the communists in the countryside was disturbingly high. The YFP held its Second All-Party Congress in April —after the mass arrest of Ch’o˘ndogyo believers in connection with the Second March First Movement incident.98 The statements of YFP leaders at the congress are, understandably, very circumspect in their criticism of the communists. Despite its problems with the regime, the YFP maintained a steady membership, with a strong base in the peasantry. In  the YFP claimed a membership of nearly ,, of whom  percent were peasants,  percent workers,  percent . P’yo,“Ch’o˘ndogyo in North Korea (Part ),” . . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . See RG , SA , /. North Korean Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party,“Record of Second All-Party Conference,”April .

     



samuwo˘n, and  percent merchants, students, and others. Unlike the KDP, the YFP counted very few rich peasants or landlords among its members. In some rural areas more than  percent of local YFP members were “poor peasant,” which gave the YFP a proportionately higher membership than the Workers’ Party among this group. Unlike the communists, however, the YFP stressed independent farming and small-scale capitalism.99 Their social ideal was one of local self-sufficiency and little state interference in the community. Ch’o˘ndogyo adherents would come to clash directly with the new regime over this issue. By the summer of  tensions between the communists and the YFP had emerged, an issue the YFP leadership addressed in public only obliquely. On August , , a YFP conference was held in Maengsan County in South P’yo˘ng’an Province.The main speaker,YFP Central Committee vice-chairman Pak Yun’gil, referred to the presence of “pro-Japanese elements” remaining in North Korea, even hidden “like snakes” in the YFP itself. Despite the guarantee of religious freedom, some believers were being persecuted and called “reactionaries,”simply for following Ch’o˘ndogyo.Nevertheless,things were improving. Ch’o˘ndogyo had survived colonial oppression, and believers must remain faithful, without giving in to anger or violence.100 Pak was not directly critical of either the regime’s international position or its domestic reforms. However, he asserted that major political decisions must be made by the “whole people,” not a party or a united front. Furthermore, he alluded to corruption within the regime, criticizing some Interior Ministry officials for driving in cars and not protecting the masses (minjung). He also referred to both the government and the People’s Assembly as “provisional,”a term the regime itself had dropped. The YFP could make some claim to being a party of the “masses.” Their social base of support was stronger among the peasantry than that of the communists, although the proportion of women tended to be lower than that of the Workers’ Party. In Maengsan County, the social background of YFP members was as follows:101 Workers Peasants Samuwo˘n Other Total

 ,   , (, men,  women)

. P’yo,“Ch’o˘ndogyo in North Korea (Part ),” . . RG , SA , /. North Korean Worker’s Party (hereafter NKWP), South P’yo˘ng’an Province, Namp’o City Branch,“Record of Activities,”  (“top secret”). Both YFP and KDP members were scrutinized, but the Workers’ Party seems to have paid more attention to the KDP, seeing the latter as more “reactionary.” . NKWP,“Record of Activities,” Record for Maengsan County, South P’yo˘ng’an Province.



 

Most cadres were also of peasant background, and like their counterparts in the NKWP relatively young.The YFP also had a presence in the cities. In Namp’o,  of the  YFP members were workers, followed by samuwo˘n, merchants, artisans, and poor peasants; there were no middle or rich peasants or landlords.102 The typical YFP member was a poor peasant male.Women were few in number, especially in the rural branch parties. In Hwangju County, Hwanghae Province, for example, all  YFP members were male.103 In Sunch’o˘n County, a heavily Christian region northeast of Pyongyang where the KDP had a strong presence, the YFP had , members compared to the KDP’s ,. About  percent of KDP members were female, proportionately less than the Workers’ Party but still better than the YFP.104 In Maengsan County, the Workers’ Party encountered direct resistance from local peasants, and from their Ch’o˘ndogyo supporters, over the agricultural taxin-kind. Workers’ Party records complain of “many incidents” of peasants’ refusal to pay this tax, opposition to the confiscation of crops by the state, and general noncompliance with the local administration.Local Ch’o˘ndogyo groups were thought to be behind much of this activity. Ch’o˘ndogyo, with its strong organizational base in the countryside,spoke for peasant interests against the state in these instances. Workers’ Party critiques of YFP activities also reveal that some local YFP cadres opposed the November  elections and the people’s government, and at least one YFP cadre was arrested for “terrorism.” The NKWP tried to argue that “the class backgrounds of most Young Friends’ Party cadres are bad and their past records are bad,” but their own tally of YFP social backgrounds belies this claim.YFP candidates were defeating the NKWP in local elections, a phenomenon the NKWP was studying “in every area with utmost secrecy.” In the end, the NKWP admitted,“we don’t know their secrets.”105 These “secrets” had to do with a well-established organizational structure in the countryside going back to the s, a large following among the peasantry, and a populist line taken by local YFP groups that might have been more reflective of what peasants actually wanted out of a revolution than the program sponsored by the communist elites—above all, freedom from the extractive hand of the state and from central government control.106 On the other hand, the YFP elite in Pyongyang was fully in line with NKWP policies by . At . NKWP,“Record of Activities,” Records for Namp’o City YFP,  January . . RG , SA , /. North Korean Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party, Hwangju Branch. “Membership List,” . . NKWP,“Record of Activities.” . Ibid. . It is this popular revolt within, and sometimes opposed to, the revolution led by the radical intelligentsia that James Scott once called “revolution in the revolution.” See “Revolution in the Revolution: Peasants and Commissars,” Theory and Society , no.  ( January ): –.

     



the April YFP All-Party Conference, Kim Talhyo˘n spoke out against “reactionary elements” in the YFP, referring to a group of Hwanghae Province YFP members who had secretly organized “terror activities,” and to collusion between the “old faction” of Ch’o˘ndogyo in Seoul and the right-wing Northwest Youth Group.107 While local YFP branches may indeed have collaborated with pro-South Korean elements, the bigger problem for the regime was Ch’o˘ndogyo’s widespread support among the poor peasantry, support which had to be harnessed by the regime and incorporated into the NKWP if the latter were to gain hegemony over this important stratum of the population. Despite instances of local resistance, it is evident that by  the North Korean YFP was a loyal “transmission belt” for the regime’s policies.The last major clash between the North Korean YFP and the Workers’ Party was the  “Second March First movement” incident.After that disaster,YFP leaders would never again make any statement or take any action that would provoke the communists. No one exemplified this subordinated status better than Kim Talhyo˘n, chairman of the North Korean YFP Central Committee. Kim Talhyo˘n did not need to be placed under house arrest like Cho Mansik to recognize the danger of crossing with Kim Il Sung, the Soviets, and the Workers’ Party. His statements followed KWP positions almost to the letter. For example, in a speech given on March , , Kim Talhyo˘n faithfully repeated the Workers’ Party line on the United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), the very issue that had triggered the regime’s crackdown on Ch’o˘ndogyo believers a month before. Kim denounced the “so-called UN Korea Commission” as a tool of U.S. and South Korean reactionaries.The UN, the Unites States, and the Syngman Rhee clique were trying to perpetuate the division of Korea. The duty of all loyal YFP members and Korean patriots, Kim said, was to oppose U.S. imperialism and support the people’s regime.108 The YFP deference to the Workers’ Party was made fully explicit in January , when the YFP voted to “hold the Korean Workers’ Party in the vanguard” and become officially subordinated to the KWP.109 Fifty years later, the YFP was still a junior partner to the Workers’ Party in the North Korean political system, after the Korean Democratic Party had long since disappeared from the scene. At the time of its founding in August ,the NKWP was still a minority party, with a membership no more impressive than those of its rivals,the Korean Democratic Party and the Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party. Its membership was also decidedly nonproletarian, with nearly half of the  delegates to the first party . YFP,“Record of Second All-Party Conference,” . . RG , SA , /. Kim Talhyo˘n wiwo˘njang chungyo pangso˘ng mit yo˘nso˘l (Important Broadcasts and Speeches of Chairman Kim Talhyo˘n) (Pyongyang: Kaebyo˘k sinbosa, ). . P’yo,“Ch’o˘ndogyo in North Korea (Part ),” .



 

congress ( percent) from samuwo˘n backgrounds, more than workers ( percent) and peasants ( percent) combined.110 The chairman of the NKWP was Kim Tubong, and Kim Il Sung was one of two vice-chairman, along with Chu Nyo˘ngha.Within two years the NKWP would be a party of three-quarters of a million members, the majority of them workers and peasants, and would completely dominate all significant political and social organizations in the North.111 And less than three years after the NKWP’s founding, in June , the party merged with (or rather absorbed) the South Korean Workers’ Party to become the Korean Workers’ Party, with Kim Il Sung its undisputed leader. The dominance of the Workers’ Party within the North Korean political structure, both in terms of sheer numbers and in terms of power in the central People’s Committee in Pyongyang, belied the official position of the NKWP as a coalition partner with two other major political parties within the Democratic National United Front. But at the beginning, tripartite cooperation and competition among the NKWP, the Korean Democratic Party, and the Young Friends’ Party were real, and the NKWP had to make considerable efforts to ultimately dominate its coalition partners. In the case of the KDP, the party leadership itself was removed and communists put in their place. In the case of the YFP the personnel change was not so drastic, but the central People’s Committee, under the control of Kim Il Sung from its founding in February , had forced the party to adhere to the NKWP position on all important issues by the spring of . Within the Workers’ Party itself, Kim Il Sung’s initial position as second fiddle to Kim Tubong was more nominal than real even when the NKWP was founded.The rise of Kim’s cult of personality had already begun in , and at the Founding Congress Kim was lavishly praised as “the leader of all the Korea people,” the “hero of the nation,” the “great leader,” and so on.112 The popularization of this cult will be explored further in chapter . In terms of intraparty politics, we can see Kim’s rise as, first, an alliance with the “Soviet-Koreans,” then a coalition with the Yan’an group under Kim Tubong, followed by the neutralization of the leading domestic communists—first O Kiso˘p from North Korea, and then Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng from the South, who had come North in October  and was attempting to direct his South Korean Workers’ Party from Pyongyang.113 But in retrospect it is clear that Kim always represented his own . RG , SA , /. NKWP Central Committee, Puk Choso˘n rodongdang ch’angnip taehoe hoeuirok (Minutes of the Founding Congress of the North Korean Workers’ Party), , . . At the Second NKWP Congress in March , the proportion of workers to samuwo˘n was almost exactly the reverse of : % samuwo˘n and % worker, along with % peasant (a slight increase). See RG , , /. NKWP Central Committee, Puk Choso˘n rodongdang che ich’a cho˘ndang taehoe hoeu˘irok (Minutes of the Second Party Congress of the North Korean Workers’ Party), March . . Founding Congress contains many statements along these lines by the delegates. . Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok, .

     



group,the Manchurian guerrilla veterans.It was these people whom Kim helped secure in key positions before the Korean War, and who were his loyal supporters dominating North Korean politics after the war.And one of Kim’s preeminent strategies, consistent with his guerrilla experience, was the use of a widely inclusive “united front” approach to build political coalitions and gain popular support. This strategy was highly effective in catapulting Kim and the North Korean Communist Party into the vanguard of a widely inclusive but tightly disciplined Workers’ Party, a party that within months of its creation dominated its ostensible coalition partners and was the ultimate authority over a vast range of social organizations.

  

Planning the Economy

Stalinism as Industrialization Although Korea was still largely agricultural in the late s, the latter period of Japanese colonial rule had established the foundations of an industrial economy in northern Korea.The North Korean leaders and their Soviet advisors applied a model of economic planning, largely based on the contemporary experience of the USSR, to build on this industrial base in order to create a modern, industrial, but noncapitalist economy in the North.The North Korean economy in the years immediately following liberation, like many other aspects of revolutionary transformation at the time, combined Japanese colonial legacies and Soviet models and influence to create a new, distinctly Korean communist system with great strengths as well as glaring weaknesses.Over succeeding decades, the North Korean economy would decline from a model of productivity to an unmitigated disaster. But when the planned economy was initiated in , Soviet-style economic planning in North Korea showed considerable promise. Because of colonial industrialization, North Korea was uniquely situated among Asian countries to follow the path of Stalinist industrial development, and the Korean communists were hardly unique in their desire to take this path. In the s, the Soviet-Stalinist model of development was still very attractive to many people in what would be known as the “Third World.” The Soviet experience appeared to be the single successful model of rapid industrialization in a backward agrarian society that was capable of maintaining political independence and freedom from the capitalist world economy. Both China and North Korea, partly through their own initiative and partly through Soviet ad

  



visors, were deeply influenced by the example of economic development in Stalin’s USSR—or rather, they were influenced by an idealized image of this model propagated through Soviet texts in translation.1 Two years after liberation, North Korea embarked on an ambitious project of planned economic growth, concentrating on construction, steel, chemicals, mining, and other heavy industries.The regime remained committed to the Stalinist path of production thereafter. For more than twenty years, a program of heavy industry, limited consumer goods, withdrawal from the capitalist world-economy, and planned production seemed to work well, giving North Korea an impressive rate of economic growth far beyond that of the South.2 By the s, however, such a development path was showing limited returns, and by the s the North Korean economy was in a seemingly intractable state of crisis.The very success of the planned economy in its early years contributed to the difficulty of economic reform in the DPRK in the decades to come. The Stalinist model was one of large-scale,centrally planned,state-dominated economic development. Rudolf Bahro, among others, has pointed out that in Soviet-type economies, the state does not substitute for the working class, but rather for the exploiting class.3 The state then creates the working class, which is politically and economically dependent on the state and its officials.4 Coercion alone is not sufficient to maintain the authority of the state over a long period of time; industrialization, linked to the threat of military aggression from abroad, is a major rationale for the continued dominance of the state over society. As Alexander Gerschenkron has observed, in an agrarian society emerging from “backwardness,” such industrialization offers the hope of a better life, a “promise of happiness and abundance for future generations,” for which people are asked to sacrifice their political freedoms to the state.5 The construction of what Lenin once called “state capitalism” originated in the economic dislocation and isolation of Russia emerging from “War Communism” in the early s.The key task for the leaders of the nascent Soviet Union was how to accumulate capital for national industrialization while maintaining “socialist” dominance of the economy, that is, nonprivate ownership of . For the translation of the Soviet experience into Chinese practice in the early years of the PRC, see Deborah H. Kaple, Dream of a Red Factory:The Legacy of High Stalinism in China (New York: Oxford University Press, ). . See United States Central Intelligence Agency, Korea:The Economic Race between the North and the South (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ). . Rudolf Bahro, The Alternative in Eastern Europe (London:Verso, ), . . Andrew Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism:Work and Authority in Chinese Industry (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), .The conscious creation of a politically compliant working class was an even more urgent goal in places such as China and Korea after World War II, where the actual working class was miniscule but rapid industrialization was a priority. . Alexander Gerschenkron, Economic Backwardness in Historical Perspective (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, ), .



 

Russian female doctor and Korean patient, date and place unknown. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

the means of production. The solution, proposed by Evgenii Preobrazhensky and taken up by Stalin in the Soviet Four-Year Economic Plan of –, was “primitive socialist accumulation.”6 This was the transfer of surplus from the private economy (meaning primarily agriculture) to the state-owned industrial sector. In essence, the peasantry (along with the industrial working class itself ) was to be squeezed for the sake of industrial development. Soon after the  land reform, the NKPPC put “primitive socialist accumulation” into practice, and the exploitation of agriculture for a program of rapid industrialization was embodied in the first one-year economic plan of . Economic development as promoted by the NKPPC was instrumental, a means to the construction of an ideal socialist society. Production was a “spiritual” as well as material process, an attempt to instill a positive attitude toward manual labor and a proper “work ethic.”This ethical and psychological dimension of economic development was in part an idea borrowed from the USSR, but was carried further in North Korea,where the Confucian emphasis on “cor. See Alec Nove, An Economic History of the U.S.S.R. (London: Penguin Books, ), –; Sheila Fitzpatrick, The Russian Revolution: – (New York: Oxford University Press, ), –; and Alexander Erlich, The Soviet Industrialization Debate, – (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ).

  



North Korean factory workers, date and place unknown. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

rect thinking”over material considerations ran deep,and where disdain for manual labor had been one of the cardinal principles of the yangban elite.Therefore North Korean publications frequently emphasized the need to elevate the social status of workers and value manual labor. An early DPRK pamphlet stated that “the living conditions of the broad working masses of workers, peasants, and samuwo˘n have been fundamentally transformed, and the workers of the new system have changed, work becoming a glorious task.”7 This new industrialization was linked in the regime’s propaganda with patriotism, the overcoming of colonial backwardness, and the urgent task of defending the emerging “People’s State” from the threat of South Korean reactionaries and American imperialists. It was an economy expressed in the language of military mobilization, in which workers (meaning, in effect, all citizens) were constantly exhorted to put all their efforts into building the economy for the sake of the national collective good. As in the early years of the Soviet Union and the Peoples’ Republic of China, economic development in North Korea was pursued with the tactics and terminology of war,including “campaigns,”“mobilization,”and “assault movements” . RG , SA , /. Cultural Development Section, Ministry of National Defense, “Social and State Organs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” February , .



 

(tolgyo˘k undong). For a time, this type of forced industrialization works well, at least in terms of overall economic output.As is well known, the lack of capitalist incentives in socialist states has made it difficult for many of these countries to abandon this method of promoting production and moving into a normalized,“postmobilization” stage of development.8 The close association between socialist economics and war goes back to the beginning of Bolshevik economic planning, which itself had been adapted from the economic experience of Germany in World War I.9 But economics as warfare was not simply imposed on North Korea by the Soviets. Korea had in fact been on a wartime economic footing since the late s, when Japan mobilized its Korean colony for war first against China, and then after  against the United States. In effect, North Korea after  continued the wartime mobilization begun under the Japanese in . Even its major external enemy, the United States, remained the same.10 Economic development, in North Korea as in other socialist states, was approached with the methods and language of military struggle and sacrifice. It is perhaps in economic development more than any other area that such states link together the primary disciplinary institutions of society, including the barracks, the factory, and the school.11

Agriculture The first sector of society to be mobilized for economic production and extraction was the peasantry. Immediately after the  land reform, Kim Il Sung exhorted peasants to increase their productivity and transform North Korea “from a region of food shortage to a region of abundance.”12 Implicit in Kim’s call for greater agricultural productivity was the problem of food production. Agricultural output was severely hampered by North Korea’s separation from the grain-producing areas in the South, a shortage of fertilizer, lack of farm tools, the requisition of food supplies by the Red Army, and the confiscation and . Walder, Communist Neo-Traditionalism, . . Stephen Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), . . Jan Gross argues that, viewed in terms of social history, the East European “People’s Democracies” represented the continuation of the mass mobilization begun in World War II. Much the same could be said of North Korea and its continuation of the collective wartime experience of the late colonial era. See Jan Gross,“War as Revolution,” in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe,  – , ed. Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibranski (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, ). . A children’s poem entitled “The Factory, My School” read,“Our, our factory is really good / It is a fun, fun school where we work and learn, learn and work / The elder brothers and sisters of our factory / Systematically transmit to us their skills / In our hearts, each a model worker / Burning with increased output.” Sonyo˘ndan, May , . . Cited in Chong-sik Lee, “Land Reform, Collectivization and the Peasants in North Korea,” China Quarterly, no.  (): .

  



Korean and Soviet students at a New Year’s party in the USSR, Ural Technical Institute,.Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

slaughter of livestock by the Soviet occupation forces in the fall of .13 The first eighteen months after liberation was characterized by a serious food shortage, as both internal documents and intelligence reports repeatedly emphasize. Local documents attest to the acute problem of agricultural production, which was in a “state of anarchy” immediately after liberation, and to the shortage of food.14 Shortly after coming to power, the NKPPC enforced strict food rationing;15 throughout the pre–Korean War years and beyond, food was rationed according to type of work, with particular favoritism toward the military.16 . United States Army, Far East Command. G- Weekly Summary, no.  ( April ): . . RG , SA , /. Haeju People’s Court,“Local Situation and Activities,”  April . . Saegil Sinmun,  March . . RG , SA , /. Supply Section, Pyongyang Special City People’s Committee,“Distribution of Rations,” January  (“secret”). One of my informants told me that during the war when peasants lived on acorns, pine bark, and grass, soldiers reportedly ate rice three times a day and Kim Il



 

The suppression of consumption had its intended effect, allowing the state to extract agricultural products from the countryside for feeding the city-dwellers, the Soviet occupation forces, and industrial workers. Extraction from the agricultural sector took numerous forms, including the  percent tax-in-kind introduced in June , campaigns for “patriotic rice” donations (an unacknowledged continuation, in different guise, of a Japanese colonial practice), and various types of government requisitioning of crops and grains. By , when the NKPPC launched its program of industrialization, “primitive socialist accumulation” was in full swing. Soviet Extraction, Food Distribution, and Rationing The Korean economy at the time of liberation suffered the dislocation and distortions that resulted from years of mobilization for the Japanese war effort and the sudden severing of ties to the rest of the empire. In the fall of  agricultural production was in a chaotic state, under conditions of a massive inflow of migrants from abroad, foreign occupation, political uncertainty, and lack of basic supplies.The  harvest was a poor one, some  percent below the  level.17 The food situation improved in , although flooding in the winter of  – hurt food supplies;not until  was the food situation in the north stabilized.18 Exacerbating the problem of production was the Soviet extraction of food to supply its army of occupation. United States military intelligence in April  estimated that the Soviets were then confiscating –  percent of the rice collected by local People’s Committees, when the PCs themselves were unable to procure enough to feed the local population.19 In the early months of the occupation, the Soviet Army simply demanded food from the local population.“Living off the land” was standard practice for the Red Army in areas it occupied after World War II, and North Korea was no exception.20 The Soviet Union itself suffered from a severe shortage of food at the time; far from the army supplying food to the soldiers in Korea, there Sung was known as “Chuk Changgun” (General Porridge). Author’s interview with former North Korean resident, Seoul,  July . . Weekly Summary, no. , enclosure no. ,“Production and Confiscation of Food,” . . Economic problems in the South, including food shortages, were also acute, and food distribution in the South was more uneven. In , according to the U.S. Military Government’s assessment, overall the North was doing better than the South in terms of food, but the situation was reversed by . See National Security Archive, Freedom of Information Act no. , U.S. Military Government in Korea, Korea (), II-. . Weekly Summary, no. , p. . The same documents admit that, although the food situation in North Korea was bad, the supply of rice “in sections was even considerably better than [in] some parts of the South.” . See United States Army, Record Group , Intelligence Summary North Korea (ISNK ), no.  (– February ), , and ISNK, no.  (– May ), .

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

were reports of the Soviet occupation forces sending food from Korea back to the USSR.21 In Pyongyang, the Red Army worked initially through the South P’yo˘ng’an branch of the Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence, collecting millions of bushels of rice and distributing it to the local population and to Soviet soldiers.22 Warehouses were looted, and two months’ supply of rice was sold to Korean civilians.23 While the Soviets made a gesture of paying for this food through occupation-issued “Red Army notes,” in practice this was extraction pure and simple.24 The U.S. military estimated that Soviet extraction was some  percent higher than the amount of food requisitioned by the Japanese during World War II.25 Food extraction soon became systematized, with the People’s Committees acting as the primary medium for collecting food from the farmers and distributing it to city-dwellers and to the Soviets. Farmers were asked to give a percentage of their crops to the local PC branch at set prices and were also asked for additional “voluntary donations.”26 Besides grain, the Soviets requisitioned livestock and other food supplies, including some  percent of the cattle in South P’yo˘ng’an.27 A “responsibility system” was put into place in early spring , in which each village held meetings to plan the upcoming farm production, under the direction of the county People’s Committee.28 Korean public security officers and Soviet soldiers oversaw the food collection.29 Early reports of riots and attacks on food requisition agents filtered into the American zone, but a combination of ruthless enforcement,concealment of news from the local population, and careful coordination between Soviet and local Korean agents seems to have allowed the food extraction to go relatively smoothly.30 After the spring  land reform,farmers were effectively taxed at about  percent of their crop, of which some  percent went to the Soviets.31 Food not used locally or distributed to other parts of Korea was apparently sent to the Soviet Far East, mostly Vladivostok, but also to Sakhalin Island and the Manchurian port of Dalian.32 Food was thus in short supply throughout the North (as it was also in the . Weekly Summary, no. , ; also U.S.Army Military Government in Korea, G- Periodic Report, no. , . . Weekly Summary, no. , enclosure no. , . . Ibid.; ISNK, no.  (–  November ), . . ISNK, no.  (– February ), . . ISNK, no.  (– November ), . See also Periodic Report, no. , . . ISNK, no.  (–  December ), , citing a North Korean newspaper from November . . Weekly Summary, no. , enclosure no. , . . Ibid., . . ISNK, no.  (– February ), , and ISNK, no.  ( – February ), . . Weekly Summary, no. , enclosure no. , ; Periodic Report, no. , . . Weekly Summary, no. , enclosure no. , . . ISNK, no.  (– July ), ; no.  (– March ), ; and no.  (– May ), .



 

South), particularly in the traditionally poorer Hamgyo˘ng region.33 To address this problem, food rationing was introduced in early . The regime promoted rationing as a fair and efficient means of distributing scarce food supplies.34 Highly systemized on paper, the rationing system was described by American observers as “unsystematic and lean.”35 Initially the North Korean authorities distributed food through a Department of Food Administration (singnyang kwalliguk),based on the colonial-era food distribution system.In the summer of  this agency was replaced by a Food Administration Bureau (yangjo˘ngbu) in the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee and its provincial branches, which oversaw the distribution of food on the basis of “social status and political reliability.”36 Food distribution was strictly controlled, and the Food Administration Bureau administered the North Korean Consumers’ Cooperatives (Puk Choso˘n sobi chohap) where farmers purchased goods, and which were not allowed to purchase food without the bureau’s permission.37 The food rationing system was designed to reward workers on the basis of the difficulty of work and for their productivity.Workers in mines, factory laborers, and others in difficult jobs were given higher rations than white-collar workers; those who overfulfilled their production quotas were rewarded with higher rations as well.38 Allocations differed not only in the amount of food, but also in the quality of food, with higher-grade rations including higher proportions of preferred grains, such as white rice.39 Food distribution was also a highly effective means of social and political control. Only those employed at legally permitted workplaces could receive food rations, and the threat of withholding food was a powerful incentive to avoid criticizing the regime.40 Land Reform and the Agricultural Tax As we have discussed in chapter , the land reform of March-April  effected a revolutionary change in the social and economic life of rural Korea. . See ISNK, no.  (– February ), ; and no.  (– March ), . . See RG , SA , /. Inmin (The People) inaugural issue (November ), . . Weekly Summary, no. , . . ISNK, no.  (– July ), . . Ibid. . RG , SA , /. Inmin, no. , . For local practices of food rationing, see RG , SA , /. Supply Section, Pyongyang Special City People’s Committee, “Distribution of Food Rations,”  July – December , and SA , /. South P’yo˘ng’an Province, Anju County People’s Committee,“Food Rationing,” May . . Patterned on the Soviet system of food distribution, this type of rationing continued throughout this history of the DPRK, at least until the breakdown of the public distribution system in the s. See Helen-Louise Hunter, Kim Il-so˘ng’s North Korea (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, ), which includes descriptions of the food rationing system based on the testimonies of North Korean defectors. . ISNK, no.  (– July ), .

  



Accepting a prize as a model farmer, Kangwo˘n Province, . Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

The NKPPC maximized the propaganda value of the land reform to win peasant support for the regime and for Kim Il Sung personally.41 The nonviolent, land-to-the tiller character of North Korean land reform and the availability of South Korea as a place of refuge for disgruntled farmers made peasant resistance far less of a problem than in the Soviet, Chinese, or Vietnamese experiences. The  percent of North Korea’s farming households who benefited from the reform had every reason to support the new regime, and by most indications they did so. Former tenants and farm laborers received “permanent” rights to their new land and could pass it on to their offspring, although the land could not be bought, sold, or rented.42 Former landlords and traditional village leaders were ousted, apparently with little violence, and the members of the lowest social orders both received land and oversaw its distribution through the village committees. It soon became apparent, however, that land to the tiller was more than a “gift” from the new regime. Land reform had both a political and an economic purpose: winning support for the regime in the countryside and encouraging greater productivity and more systematic extraction from the agricultural . For example, redistributed land was described as a “gift” from Kim Il Sung to the peasants in the  film Nae Kohyang (“My Hometown”), discussed in the next chapter. . United States Department of State, North Korea:A Case Study in the Techniques of Takeover (; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ),  – .



 

economy.43 The state’s penetration into and control over rural society exceeded that of the colonial period and was far greater than in precolonial Korea.The North Korean regime’s effective system of tax collection, in particular, undermined the traditional means of avoiding state extraction practiced by peasants everywhere: underreporting production. By the time the Korean War broke out the peasants’ honeymoon with the new regime had long since passed, although farmers interviewed by UN forces in the fall of  still preferred their status as landowners over the prereform status quo, even if they were critical of the regime’s extractive methods.44 From the time the law was drafted, land reform had been explicitly intended, in part, as a means of extracting surplus value from the agricultural sector for North Korea’s industrialization.45 This surplus value, in the form of both goods and labor, was extracted from the countryside in various ways, including corvée labor on public works projects, conscription for work in mines and factories, and “patriotic rice” donation campaigns.46 The most important of these extractive methods, however, was the “agricultural tax-in-kind” (nongo˘p hyo˘nmulse) introduced on June , .47 The new tax-in-kind replaced all previous taxes in the countryside, as well as the forced requisitions of grains practiced during the colonial period, with a  percent tax on all farm households in the form of the crops produced. In theory, this was far less than the amount demanded of peasants under the Japanese and gave the peasant  percent of his crop to do with as he pleased, including selling it on the open market. In practice, the tax was much more onerous, and the peasants’ freedom to dispose of his products much more restrictive, than the decision made it appear. . A combination of private incentives—peasants now farming their own land—and government campaigns seems to have increased productivity substantially.After a bumper harvest in  followed by a difficult year in , North Korea was self-sufficient in food by , and food production that year exceeded the peak of production in the colonial period for the first time, by some %. See RG , SA , /. DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly, Choso˘n minjujuu˘i inmin konghwaguk ch’oego inmin hoeui chei ch’a hoeui hoeu˘irok (Minutes of the First Session of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly), December , p.  and SA , /. DPRK Ministry of Culture and Propaganda, Haebanghu sanyo˘nganu˘i minju konso˘ru˘l wihan pukbanbu inminduru˘i t’ujaeng (The North Korean People’s Struggle for Democratic Construction in the Four Years since Liberation) (Pyongyang: Ministry of Culture and Propaganda,  August ),  . State Department, North Korea, . . See RG , SA , /. Propaganda Section, Korean Communist Party–Northern Branch. Puk Choso˘n t’oji kaehyoge taehan haesok (ch’ogo) (Explanation of the Land Reform in North Korea [draft]), March . . The “Patriotic Rice Donation Campaign” was launched in the fall of  as part of Kim Il Sung’s “Total Mobilization Campaign for National Construction.” Among the major projects the campaign helped to finance was the construction of Kim Il Sung University. See RG , SA , /. Kim Il Sung, . haebang ijunyo˘n kinyo˘m pogo (Report on the Commemoration of the Second Anniversary of the August  Liberation) (Pyongyang: Rodongdang ch’ulp’ansa, September ), . . See RG , SA , /. Puk Choso˘n seje (North Korean Tax System) (Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, ),  –, for a published version of the tax-in-kind decision.

  



The agricultural tax was trumpeted as a revolutionary measure to increase the rapid expansion of agricultural production, to improve the material and cultural life of the peasantry, and to help develop industry through transferring material resources to the factories and feeding workers and samuwo˘n.48 After its institution the agricultural tax was strictly enforced, and those who failed to pay the tax were put before People’s Courts, to be punished with stiff fines if convicted.49 The local township People’s Committee, along with the police, actually collected the taxes, although it seems that the KWP and various social organizations (especially the Democratic Youth League, as we have seen in chapter ) also played an active hand in educating peasants about the tax and supervising its collection. The agricultural tax was often far greater than the nominal average rate of  percent, because of the way it was assessed. First, the central authorities in Pyongyang set rough guidelines for the year’s economic production targets and the proportion that each region of North Korea would have to contribute to the national economy. These planning targets were then sent down to the local administrative organs, and the township People’s Committee sent an assessor to each farm under its jurisdiction to determine the farms’ anticipated production for the next harvest.The PC assessment was usually an immodestly high one, intended to please the demands of the provincial authorities and the Food Administration Bureau planners in Pyongyang by exceeding the local production quota. Peasants were billed in June for the summer harvest and in August for the fall harvest, and the entire tax-in-kind had to be paid by the end of August and the middle of December, respectively. Furthermore, the tax had to be paid in the best-quality grain, reducing the value of the remaining harvest.50 Thus, the actual amount of tax could be more than  percent of the value of the harvest, leaving little surplus to spend on the free market—which in any case became increasingly dominated by state-run cooperatives. The agricultural tax, control of farmer’s consumption through the Consumers’ Cooperatives, and control of credit through the Farmers’ Bank introduced shortly after the land reform, were not the only means by which the state supervised economic activity in the countryside and extracted surplus value for national construction.The North Korean regime also followed the time-honored custom of conscripting peasant labor, much like the Japanese colonial state and the Choso˘n dynasty before it. Each farm household had to send a family member to work for one or two months on a local public works project, such as building roads or bridges, and all able-bodied adults in both the city and the . Inmin, November , –. . For cases of peasants punished for failing to pay the agricultural tax, see RG , SA , / . P’yo˘ngsangun inmin chaep’ansou˘i chaep’an kirok (Trial Proceedings of the P’yongsan County People’s Court), November . . State Department, North Korea, ; North Korean Tax System, .



 

countryside were required work for a few weeks a year in a nationalized industry or mine.51 Peasants were also actively recruited, and from  actively coerced, for long-term work in the factories in order to address the shortage of industrial labor. According to the State Department’s analysis of North Korea during the war,young unmarried women were particularly encouraged to move to the cities.52 Agricultural Reform and Peasant Livelihood in North Korea:An Assessment Despite the regime’s sometimes heavy-handed exploitation of the countryside and peasants’ grumbling and occasional refusal to pay the agricultural tax, the poor peasantry as a whole was generally better off after land reform.There was little organized resistance to the regime and its policies among the rural poor, although there was some resistance among other sectors of rural society, such as the student protests described in chapter  and the middle-class critics of the regime associated with the Korean Democratic Party, as we saw in chapter . Certainly there was nothing approaching the scale of rural violence that emerged in South Korea in the autumn of , an event the U.S. authorities themselves called “rice riots.”53 On the whole, the standard of material life had improved significantly in North Korea by the time the DPRK was founded in September  and compared favorably with the South. North Korea was also a society in which material goods were more evenly distributed than in South Korea, and in which the state put considerable stock into gaining legitimacy among the rural poor in particular.The government journal Inmin cited statistics in  claiming that cereal consumption per capita had more than doubled in North Korea since liberation. Endemic rural hunger, the regime claimed, was a thing of the past, and the traditional “barley hill”( pori kogae) or summer food shortage had been forever eliminated.54 The regime also put great energies into improving the quantity and quality of rural housing. Within three years after liberation, some , farm houses had been built in North Korea, including  tile-roof houses (an effort not matched in the South until the Park Chung Hee regime of the s).55 One-third of North Korean rural households had electricity by mid-, more than double the amount in .56 . State Department, North Korea, . . Ibid., . . U.S. Military Government, Korea, ii. See also Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korea War, vol. , Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), chapter . . Inmin, November , . . Supreme People’s Assembly, Minutes of the First Session, . . Ibid., . See also SA , /. Puk Choso˘n t’ongsin (North Korea News),August .

  



Perhaps the reform that had the greatest emotional effect on poor, previously illiterate, and uneducated rural North Koreans was the spread of literacy and education to the countryside. Emphasizing rural literacy was a hallmark of revolutionary regimes in the Marxist-Leninist tradition, from the Soviet Union in the s to Nicaragua in the s. But in North Korea, this emphasis was particularly pronounced, a result of the deep-seated Korean reverence for scholarly learning and the more recent history of peasant education by radical reformers, such as the Red Peasant Union leaders in northern Korea mentioned in chapter . In a society where formal education had been such an important marker of social status, the opportunity for education offered by the new regime was one of its most impressive benefits. Between  and  the number of children enrolled in primary school quadrupled.57 Education,once confined to sons of the elite, was opened to the rural poor, both boys and girls. Compulsory education was introduced in September , requiring all children between the ages of seven and fifteen years to attend school for free, with free school supplies to those from especially impoverished backgrounds.58 People’s Committee and Workers’ Party documents frequently allude to the rural education campaign as a highly successful means of winning political support for the new regime among the poor peasantry. Educational expansion was targeted at the countryside:for example,the number of rural students enrolled in high schools doubled between  and , compared to an increase of slightly more than  percent in the cities.59 The top colleges and technical schools, including Kim Il Sung University, recruited the children of workers and peasants, and the majority of college and university students attended on state scholarships.60 The DPRK claimed to have eradicated illiteracy by more than  percent by .61 Thus, although property ownership was restricted and private profits from the land came nowhere close to the level of the official propaganda due to the extractive hand of the state, in many concrete ways the material and cultural life of the rural poor was considerably better than during the colonial period—and better compared to their counterparts in the South.This went a long way toward shoring up the legitimacy of the regime among the peasantry. But beyond the objective improvement in the rural standard of living, the fact of land ownership itself, whatever its limitations, gave a great psychological boost to the for. Supreme People’s Assembly, Minutes of the First Session, . . RG , SA , /. DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly, Choso˘n minjujuu˘i inmin konghwaguk ch’oego inmin hoeu˘i chesach’a hoeu˘i hoeu˘irok (Minutes of the Fourth Session of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly), November , –. . RG , SA , /. North Korean Propaganda Bureau, So˘njo˘nwo˘n such’aek (Handbook for Propagandists), ,  –. . Handbook for Propagandists, ; Supreme People’s Assembly, Minutes of the First Session, . . Supreme People’s Assembly, Minutes of the First Session, .



 

mer tenants and farm laborers, and provided a strong foundation for support of the regime in the countryside.The North Korean Peasant League noted a clear connection between support for land reform and the vast increase in Workers’ Party membership among the poor peasantry in .62 In the ubiquitous propaganda surrounding land reform, the reform was the centerpiece of the new democratic regime and was associated closely with the person of Kim Il Sung. It was under the guidance of Kim Il Sung, leading the NKPPC, that North Korea’s historical land reform was said to have been carried out. The beneficent image of General Kim was linked to the bumper harvest of  and the successful containment of the floods that winter. Kim personalized the regime to the peasants, becoming already in  an almost godlike figure, personally responsible for the forces of nature as well as of politics. In the months following land reform, rallies were held throughout North Korea in which peasants expressed their personal gratitude to Kim Il Sung through songs, speeches, and letters.63 A former tenant farmer in North P’yo˘ng’an praised Kim Il Sung for abolishing the old social distinctions and giving him his “human rights” (inkwo˘n); an old peasant thought his newly gained right to own land was “like a dream.”64 Two years before Kim Il Sung became officially known as the Supreme Leader (suryo˘ng) in , we can see Kim’s “cult of personality” emerging in the North Korea countryside through the propaganda associated with land reform, rural economic development, and education.This ideological construction will be explored further in chapter .

Industry and “The Plan” Industrial production as well as agriculture was in a chaotic state for the first year after liberation.This was partly the result of industrial damage due to Japanese sabotage and Russian stripping, although the relative importance of these two factors was subject to conflicting assessments at the time. Early U.S. intelligence reports stressed the “crippling effects” of Soviet removal of plant and equipment, accusing the Russians of transporting North Korea’s industrial facilities en masse to the Soviet Union as they had in Manchuria.65 On the other hand, United States Reparations Commissioner Edwin W. Pauley found “little if any” evidence of such stripping on a visit to North Korea in mid-.66 . RG , SA , /. North Korean Peasant League, Puk Choso˘n t’oji kaehyo˘gu˘i cho˘nngdangso˘ng (The Legitimacy of the North Korean Land Reform Law), June , . . See RG , SA , /. Haebang ijunyo˘nu˘l majihanu˘n Puk Choso˘n (North Korea on the Second Anniversary of Liberation), August , , and John N. Washburn, “Russia Looks at Northern Korea,” Pacific Affairs , no.  (February ): – . . RG , SA , /. Legitimacy of the Land Reform Law, –. . ISNK, no.  ( – February ), . . George McCune, Korea Today (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), .

  



While the Soviet occupation forces confiscated and consumed large amounts of agricultural products and sent lumber, coal, and precious metals back to the Soviet Union, industrial removals apparently ceased after the first few months of the occupation. In late  and early , the Soviet authorities even announced the return of industrial goods they had “borrowed” from North Korea.67 By early  Soviet policy was one of “encouraging Korean industrial production,” according to U.S. military intelligence.68 One contemporary observer concluded that “every effort of the Soviet command appears to have been to rehabilitate rather than destroy the economy of North Korea.”69 As we have seen in chapter , the North Koreans blamed the Japanese for deliberately destroying North Korea’s industrial capacity before their surrender.70 Whether the result of Japanese sabotage, Soviet stripping, Korean looting, or merely neglect, more than one thousand medium- and large-scale enterprises were incapacitated in . In  North Korean industrial output was only  percent of the  level, and in  had still only reached  percent.71 On its establishment in February , one of the NKPPC’s main priorities was to rebuild the industrial economy.The North Korean industrial economy in the late s was a prime example of how the Korean communists combined Japanese legacies, Soviet models, and their own nationalistic ambitions in a distinctly Korean project. North Korea’s leaders never doubted that industry, and heavy industry in particular, would be central to the economic development of their country. This was partly because of the influence of the contemporary USSR, but Soviet-style industrial planning could not have taken root in North Korea as successfully had it not been for the legacy of colonial economic development. Once again, however, the Korean communists emphasized the moral, cultural, and ideological aspects of economic development at least as much as the material aspects. The North Korean people were exhorted to construct a democratic,“civilized” industry essential for “developing the state economy and improving the people’s material and cultural level.”72 Above all, economic planning would be nationalist, the complete rejection of colonial Korea’s dependency on Japan and, while integrated into the Soviet economy, more a local-level imitation of Stalin’s “socialism in one country” than an economic extension of the USSR.This meant . ISNK, no.  (– April ), enclosure no. , . . United States Army Government in Korea, Record Group , box . Headquarters, rd Engineer Technical Intelligence Team,“Industries in North Korea,”  December , . . McCune, Korea Today, . . Anna Louise Strong,“Industrial Workers in North Korea,” Soviet Russia Today (February ): . . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea, – (Oxford: Berg, ), . On the other hand, the Pauley Commission noted in mid- that industrial production in South Korea had reached only % of its output under the Japanese—the North’s industry was recovering faster, despite its limitations. ISNK, no.  (–  March ), enclosure no. , . . RG , SA , /. Kim Ch’an, Sangsa taech’a taejop’yo soron (Outline of Industrial Balance Sheets) (Pyongyang: Munmyo˘ng sano˘psa, ), .



 

that the North Korean economy would also be nationalistic in the sense of state control of the major means of production and the state’s direction of the economy, in theory at least, for the sake of the collective national good rather than private profit. In August , the NKPPC passed a law on the nationalization of major industries, the last in its series of major social reforms. Overwhelming Japanese control of colonial industry (more than  percent of industrial capacity in Korea had been Japanese-owned) made the transition to state ownership relatively easy: with the Japanese gone, there were few private owners from whom to expropriate. But state ownership marked the end of local People’s Committee control of factories, and of a brief period of workers’ autonomy.73 The Soviet Union and the North Korean Economy During the Japanese colonial period, Koreans comprised the lower echelons of the industrial workforce, while the vast majority of managers and technical experts—more than three-quarters, according to  figures—had been Japanese.74 Immediately after liberation several hundred Japanese technicians were retained to help run the factories in North Korea and were also ordered by the occupation authorities to teach their skills to Koreans.75 By the end of  around five hundred Japanese technicians remained; all but a handful were gone by .76 In  the Soviets and the NKPPC initiated a program of sending Korean students to the USSR for technical training, and Soviet teachers, managers, and engineers were also dispatched to North Korea. Some two thousand Soviet-trained Koreans were running the major North Korean industries by the end of .77 This was still an insufficient number of experts to run North Korea’s industrial economy, a problem for which the regime partially tried to compensate through a highly centralized management system. North Korea’s shortage of technicians and managers was frequently stressed by Kim Il Sung: “send us more experts” was the first request he made of Paek Nam’un when the latter came up from South Korea in , for example, and the first point Kim brought up with Stalin when the two leaders met in Moscow in .78 . ISNK, no.  (– May ), . For example, at one of the larger industrial concerns in northern Korea, the Onoda Cement factory near Pyongyang, workers declared a “self-governing council,” which took control of the factory immediately after the Japanese surrender on  August . On August  the factory was taken over by the Soviet military, and the following year it was appropriated as a nationalized industry by the NKPPC. Soon-won Park, Colonial Industrialization and Labor in Korea: The Onoda Cement Factory (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Asia Center, ), –. . State Department, North Korea, . . Park, Colonial Industrialization, . . State Department, North Korea, ; Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . . State Department, North Korea, . . RG , SA , /. Paek Nam’un, Ssoryo˘n insang (Impressions of the Soviet Union) (Pyongyang: Choso˘n yo˘ksa p’yo˘nch’an wiwo˘nhoe, ), .

  



In addition to technical training and assistance, the Soviets also offered North Korea a substantial amount of economic aid during the occupation period and up to the Korean War. Beginning in  the USSR gave North Korea industrial machinery, plant equipment, raw materials, and fuel for rebuilding its economy.79 The U.S. military estimated the amount of Soviet aid to North Korea to be the following: Table 5.1. Soviet Aid to North Korea, 1946–1950 (millions of rubles) Year Amount

1946 740

1947 148

1948 265

1949 347

1950 684

Source: United States Military, Far East Command. Record Group 332, box 23, G-2 Periodic Report no. 194, p. 8.

These statistics support the conclusion of the Pauley Commission, also confirmed by subsequent research in Soviet archives, that the Soviets were “devoting considerable effort to rejuvenate economic activity in Northern Korea,” especially in the initial reconstruction year of .80 The Pauley Commission and American intelligence also speculated that the Soviets were trying to integrate North Korea into the Soviet Far Eastern economy, replacing northern Korea’s former ties to southern Korea and the Japanese empire with a new dependence on Russia.81 American military analyses suggested that the Soviets were clearly controlling the North Korean economy and might even be trying to make North Korea into a republic of the Soviet Union.82 Although it is unlikely that the Soviets had any such plans for absorbing northern Korea into the USSR, it does seem to be the case that by  North Korea, northeast China, and the Soviet Far East were becoming an increasingly integrated economic unit.83 This integration is most clearly visible in the area of trade. Other than barter trade with South Korea and limited exchange with Japan, North Korea’s foreign trade by  was conducted almost exclusively with the USSR and China. North Korea’s first extensive economic plan included a vast increase in trade with the USSR: . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . . Cited in Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . See also Kathryn Weathersby,“Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, –: New Evidence from the Russian Archives,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper No.  (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, November ),  –. . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . . In the fall of  the U.S. military assessed that it had “destroyed a thoroughly integrated portion of the Soviet Far Eastern Economy” through the destruction of North Korea’s industrial facilities. RG , box .“Industries in North Korea,” . . Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , The Roaring of the Cataract, – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), .



  Table 5.2. North Korean Imports and Exports from the USSR and China (millions of rubles) Imports From the USSR From China TOTAL Exports To the USSR To China TOTAL

1946

1947

% increase

48,811 116,349 165,160

1,111,129 855,333 1,966,462

2,276 735 1,190

1946

1947

% increase

60,627 107,447 170,074

1,111,129 855,333 1,966,462

1,832 781 175

Source: United States Army, Far East Command. Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), Box 4, item 25. NKPC Planning Bureau,“Plan of Economic Development to be Achieved by the North Korean People,” 1947 (“top secret”).

The Soviet Union utilized North Korea as a source of raw materials in exchange for Soviet finished goods, a relationship reminiscent of colonial exchange;84 Soviet sources suggest that Soviet exports to North Korea were equivalent to North Korea’s entire state budget.85 North Korea was without doubt an economic dependency of the USSR by the end of the s. The Soviet economic presence in North Korea was expressed through other means as well. One important instrument was the North Korean branch of the Soviet Ministry of Foreign Trade (Vnyeshtorg), which apparently exerted its influence through Soviet-Korean vice-chairmen in the departments of Industry, Trade, and Agriculture and Forestry.86 Vnyeshtorg was also linked to North Korean branches of the Soviet Ministry of Fisheries, Soviet banks, and the SovietKorean joint-stock companies.87 There were three Soviet-Korean joint stock companies, in which the Soviet government and the NKPC each held a  percent share.These were the Korean-Soviet Transport Company (Cho-Sso haeun chusik hoesa in Korean, or Mortrans in its Russian abbreviation), the Wo˘nsan Oil Refinery Corporation (Wo˘nsan Oil Company), and the Soviet-Korean Air Transport Company.88 Although there is little reference to the Air Transport Company among the captured North Korean documents, RG  and U.S. military intelligence reports . . . . .

Ibid., – . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . ISNK, no.  (–  May ), enclosure no. , . Ibid.,  –. Ibid.,  –. See also Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone,  –.

  



contain a considerable amount of information on Mortrans and the Wo˘nsan Oil Company.89 The latter two joint-stock companies were both established in March .90 Soviet nationals assumed the post of general director in both companies in the beginning, with Korean directors working under them; Koreans were to take over as general directors by .91 With headquarters in Pyongyang and branch offices in Ch’o˘ngjin, Wo˘nsan, Chinnamp’o, Hu˘ngnam, and Najin, Mortrans held a monopoly over all motor freight and transportation within North Korea and over shipping between North Korean ports, Soviet-controlled Port Arthur in Manchuria, and Vladivostok.92 The Wo˘nsan Oil Company, formerly the Korean Oil Company (Chosen kekiyukai), was occupied by ships of the Soviet Pacific Fleet in September  and declared a Soviet “war prize,” with much of its product shipped to Vladivostok.93 Under twenty-seven-year-old General Director Sergei Petrovich Rozanov, the new joint stock company was put under the jurisdiction of the NKPPC in April .94 Rozanov remained as general director;Wo˘nsan Oil’s board of directors included Rozanov and two other Russians, along with three Koreans, and the company employed between eight hundred and a thousand workers.The initial joint-stock agreement gave the USSR “the entire output of this plant for the next three years,”95 but the company ran into trouble almost immediately because, ironically enough, there was not enough oil to run the refinery. The North Koreans had to buy the oil from Sakhalin Oil Trust in the USSR at market prices and sell at the state-controlled price.96 Nationalization of Industry At the time of Korea’s liberation, well over  percent of the industry in the former colony was owned by Japanese interests.97 With the Japanese deposed and their collaborators in disgrace, workers’ committees took control of many of the factories, especially in the North; in many if not most of these cases, the committees were led by communists recently released from prison or who had . See, for example, the records of Korean employees at the Najin branch of Mortrans in RG , SA , /. . ISNK, no.  (–  May ), enclosure no. , . . Ibid.,  –. O Kiso˘p became director of Mortrans in . See RG , SA , /. . ISNK, no.  (– November ), ; RG , SA , /. Mortrans Cadre Records, Najin Branch. . ISNK, no.  (– November ), . . Ibid., . . ISNK, no.  ( – May ), enclosure no. , . . ISNK, no.  (– November ), . . Supreme People’s Assembly, Minutes of the First Session, .



 

been in hiding. Ironically, this exercise in “elementary communism” was cut short by the Soviet occupation forces, who seized control of the factories themselves when they arrived and, as we have seen, dismantled many of the factories and sent equipment, parts, and raw materials back to the USSR. According to U.S. sources, North Korea’s industrial production had come to a standstill by the spring of .98 After the NKPPC was established in February , it soon took charge of North Korea’s industrial plant and promulgated a law on nationalization of major industries on August . More than one thousand industries, over  percent of all industries in the North, became state property.99 By , more than  percent of state revenue came from these nationalized industries.100 Nationalization, in essence, transferred control over industry from Japanese owners and the colonial state to the new “People’s Regime.” Since it did not involve the large-scale appropriation of property from native owners,North Korea’s nationalization did not provoke much resistance.Indeed, the NKPPC made clear that this was part and parcel of creating an “independent national state” and—as in the case of land reform—nationalization was not linked to socialism or communism in the official propaganda. Nationalization, the NKPPC declared, was an important and necessary steps toward creating a “self-reliant national economy”—one of the most enduring goals of the DPRK ever since.101 According to a DPRK ordinance of October , the state was to receive  percent of the profits made by the nationalized industries.102 By the end of , electricity, transportation, railways, and communication had been completely nationalized, and the majority of workers in mining, metals, food, chemicals, and textiles were state employees as well. Private ownership predominated only in the medium- and small-scale industries such as pharmaceuticals, lumber, fishing, and light consumer goods. More than  percent of all workers in North Korea were employed in state-run industries.103 . ISNK, no.  (– July ), . . ISNK, no.  (–  May ), – ; no.  (–  June ), –.The law was officially known as NKPPC Ordinance Number , “Law Regarding Nationalization of Transportation, Communications, Banking, etc., Owned by the Japanese State, Japanese Individuals, Japanese Organizations, and Korean National Traitors in North Korea.” . U.S. Embassy, Seoul, Dispatch No. ,  October .“Economic Conditions In North Korea,” , . According to the  DPRK budget, .% of state revenue would come from national enterprises, and .% from direct taxes. . RG , SA , /. Kim Sangjun. Chungyo sanop kugyuhwa tokbon (Reader in the Nationalization of Major Industries) (Seoul: Sinhu˘ng ch’ulp’ansa, ), ; Supreme People’s Assembly, Minutes, –. . RG , SA , /. Kukka kio˘bu˘i chaejong kyehoek (Financial plan for state-run enterprises) (Pyongyang, ), –. . ISNK, no.  ( September ), –.

  



Economic Planning in a Korean Mode Economic planning was announced by Kim Il Sung with a typical reversal of the Marxist priority of material conditions leading to political and cultural transformation. For orthodox Marxists, the political and cultural superstructure of a society was supposed to develop out of the economic base. Kim argued exactly the opposite: the social reforms of spring and summer , the local PC elections of November, and the resulting People’s Committee government formed in February , as well as the change in popular consciousness that these developments instilled, had established the political, social, and cultural conditions conducive to the construction of a socialist economy.With the superstructure in place, economic planning would now be introduced in order to build North Korea’s economic base.104 The NKPPC established a Department of Economic Planning in December , in the midst of a partial withdrawal of Soviet troops, who handed over most of the factories under their control to the People’s Committee.105 In reality North Korean economic planning had begun in the spring of  when the NKPPC established an economic planning bureau on March , ,106 which outlined a national budget for April–December .107 But full-scale mobilization toward a planned industrial economy began with the announcement of North Korea’s first one-year economic plan in early . The one-year plan for “National Economic Rehabilitation and Development” was adopted on February , —eleven days after the North Korean People’s Committee was inaugurated—at a meeting of provincial, city, and county People’s Committees.108 The plan would be succeeded by another oneyear plan in  and a two-year economic plan for –. Kim Il Sung announced that only under a single state plan “can the economy be restored and developed really fast and the people’s standard of living raised.”The  plan called for a  percent growth in industrial production over the previous year, concentrating on construction, steel, coal, chemicals, power, and transportation, especially railroads.109 As U.S. intelligence reports noted, North Korea’s state . SA , /. Kim Il Sung, Chaju tongnip kukka ko˘nso˘ru˘l wihaho˘ (chungyo pogojip) (For the Construction of an Independent State: Collection of Important Reports) (Pyongyang: NKWP Propaganda Bureau,April ), . . ISNK, no.  (–  July ), , –. . RG , SA , /. Sano˘p (Industry) (October ), . . Weekly Summary, no. , . . SA , /. NKPC Propaganda Bureau, Puk Choso˘n to, si, kun inmin wiwonhoe taehoe hoeuirok (Minutes of the Conference of the North Korean Provincial, City, and County People’s Committees) (Pyongyang,April ), –. . Kim Il Sung,“On the  Plan for the Development of the National Economy,” Selected Works, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), , .



 

economic planning followed the Soviet model, but also had its precursor in the state capitalism of the Japanese Government-General.110 Along with Soviet advisors,the main architects of the  plan were Kim Kwanjin,a lecturer at Keijo Imperial University who came North in September  and became advisor to the Planning Department, and Yi Munhan, who had studied economics in Japan and headed the Department of Industry.111 As previously mentioned, Japanese technical experts were retained as advisors in state-run industries, although most had left by .112 According to DPRK statistics, industrial output in North Korea overall more than tripled between  and , the highest-growth areas being construction, textiles, metallurgy, machines, mining, and coal production.113 Although the textile industry was still largely in private hands in , all other highgrowth areas were with the state-run industries, which showed impressive and continuous gains across the board.114 Steel, machinery, and building materials were the fastest-growing of the state industries in  and .115 North Korean industrial development was greatly enhanced by the North’s abundant electrical energy supplies—in contrast to the South, which suffered chronic electricity shortages well into the s. One graphic representation of North Korea’s political economy was the seal of the DPRK adopted in , which showed a hydroelectric dam embraced by sheaves of wheat, with a red star shining overhead. If Lenin’s definition of socialism was “Soviets plus electricity,” North Korean socialism seemed to be “electricity plus agriculture plus Kim Il Sung.” Results of the Plan In , Kim Il Sung claimed that the  plan had been “splendidly overfulfilled in every way” and had laid the foundations for an “independent national economy.”116 Outside observers were not so sanguine; U.S. intelligence es. United States Armed Forces in Korea,Assistant Chief of Staff, G-, Record Group , box . “North Korea Today,” . . ISNK, no.  (–  July ), . . United States Army, Far East Command, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), box , item . Planning Bureau, North Korean Provisional People’s Committee,“Plan of Economic Development to be Achieved by the North Korea People,”  (“top secret”), . . For details, see RG , SA , /. Cultural Training Bureau, Korean People’s Army. Haebanghu onyo˘nganu˘i konghwaguk pukbanbuu˘i minju ko˘nso˘ru˘i so˘nkkwa (Results of Democratic Construction in the Northern Part of the Republic in the Five Years Since Liberation) (Pyongyang, ). . RG , SA , /. DPRK State Planning Commission, Kyehoek kyo˘ngje (Planned Economy), no.  (May ), . . See RG , SA , /. Sano˘p (Industry), inaugural issue, . . Kim Il Sung, Selected Works, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), .

  



timated that no more than  percent of the planned goals would be met, although reviving most of the Japanese industrial facilities, even at reduced capacity, was in itself an impressive feat.117 Productivity was low, but nevertheless the living standards of most people in North Korea had improved significantly by the end of the s, helped by a strict rationing of food and consumer goods.118 Internal documents attest to the problem of labor shortages, which has continued to distinguish North Korea from other Asian socialist states, as well as poor productivity. A top-secret report from the early months of the first economic plan criticized the widespread shortage of personnel and low output of leading industries, for which “all cadres must engage in self-criticism (chabip’an).”119 But it appears that by , economic plans were indeed being exceeded and met ahead of schedule. Internal North Korean assessments indicate that  production in the end just surpassed the  production targets, and the  output again surpassed the planned targets from . Significantly, industrial output in  had finally reached preliberation levels, and the planned targets for  were to exceed that level by nearly one-third.120 Thus, by the time the Korean War broke out, North Korean economic production had, in aggregate, fully recovered from the economic downturn caused by the end of colonial rule, creating a “democratic national economy” based largely on state-run industries. It was a remarkable achievement, especially in contrast to South Korea, whose industrial output still lagged far behind that of the North in .This contrast did not go unnoticed either by the South Koreans or the Americans.When South Korean political figures visited Pyongyang in April , in a last-ditch attempt to avert the formal establishment of two separate states, they were clearly impressed by the economic recovery they saw around them. As American military intelligence duly noted, the economic situation in the North also had an important domestic political impact: Interviews with returnees from the Pyongyang Conference indicate that even after discounting the staged demonstration and model exhibits,North Korean claims for industrial accomplishments have enough truth in them to help maintain civilian morale.121 . “North Korea Today,” –. . United States Central Intelligence Agency,“Current Capabilities of the North Korean Regime,” ORE  –,  June , . . RG , SA , /. Cadre Section, Local Industry Bureau,“Report Concerning Leading Industries,” November  (“top secret”). . See Supreme People’s Assembly, Minutes of the Second Session, , ,  for official North Korean figures.Also Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, , and Cumings, Origins, vol. , . . Weekly Summary, no. , .



 

Workers in the Workers’ State The creation of workers as a self-conscious social category has been described in chapter . Here a word should be said about the place of workers in the overall economic system of North Korea. On the one hand, improving the social status and material well-being of workers was a clear and consistent goal of the new regime. On the other hand, as in the Soviet Union and other state socialist systems, industrial labor in North Korea was—along with agricultural labor—the source of “primitive socialist accumulation” for the achievement of the state’s economic goals.The regime sought to maximize and channel workers’ output through control of labor markets and labor unions; through the use of various incentives such as wage differentials,“socialist competition”campaigns, and Stakhanovite movements; and through outright coercion. As mentioned earlier, North Korea from the beginning had a shortage of industrial workers, and the  land reform gave peasants even less incentive to leave their farms and go to work in factories.Recruiting an industrial labor force was one of the priorities of the  economic plan. In March  the NKPC assigned O Kiso˘p as labor minister to set up “Labor Agencies” (nodong sogaeso) for recruiting workers in cities across North Korea.122 Apparently North Korea had not solved its labor problem by the time war broke out, and throughout the late s the regime sought to draw surplus agricultural labor into the factories through a combination of propaganda, material incentives, and forced recruitment.123 Workers may have had a privileged position in the new order but they did not have an independent voice; as we have seen in chapter , Labor Minister O Kiso˘p was severely chastised and ultimately purged for suggesting that workers should have the right to organize independently and to criticize the state.The only legally permitted labor organization was the North Korea Federation of Trade Unions (Puk Choso˘n chigo˘p tongmaeng, NKFTU), which included both blue-collar workers and samuwo˘n, and like other “social organizations” was thoroughly subordinated to the policies of the NKPC.124 The NKFTU’s role was to implement the NKPC labor law and other state decisions on labor, not to make independent decisions on labor policy. Several instruments of worker participation and input into the management process were introduced in the factory workshop.One was the “production consultation council” (saengsan hyo˘bu˘ihoe), which brought together managers and . RG , SA , /. Haebanghu sanyo˘nganu˘i kungnaeoe chungyo ilgi (Record of Important Domestic and External Events in the Four Years Since Liberation) (Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, ), . . State Department, North Korea, . . See RG , SA , /. Puk Choso˘n rodong chigo˘p ch’ongdongmaeng kyuyak ch’oan (Draft Regulations of the North Korean General Federation of Trade Unions).

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

representatives of the trade unions to study means of improving workplace efficiency and morale.125 The purpose of the council was not to criticize industrial practices, much less criticize the planning directives from the state, but to “redistribute manpower, introduce speedup methods, and devise short cuts to ease the manpower shortages.”126 Workers and managers were also brought together in regular “employees’ conferences” (cho˘ngo˘pwo˘n hoeu˘i), which were intended to educate workers in the national plan and the role of themselves and their workplace in that plan, and to achieve “enthusiastic and systematic results through the workers’ creative discussion.”127 In industry as in the political process,“participation” meant a top-down system of inculcating the masses with an appreciation of, and enthusiastic support for, decisions made from above. One means of increasing labor productivity was through wage incentives. From the beginning, North Korea adopted a differential wage system, and unlike China, the DPRK did not at any time attempt to equalize wages.The Korean communists also never went as far as some of their Chinese counterparts in enforcing social egalitarianism. As we discussed in chapter , Korean communism has always paid close attention to social distinction, even while preaching equality. The DPRK even established two different words for “comrade,” one to be addressed to an equal (tongmu) and one for a superior (tongji, equivalent to the Chinese tongzhi ). Kim Il Sung and other top leaders were always referred to in the North Korean mass media as tongji, never tongmu. In , Kim Il Sung asserted that a “proper wage system” was essential for the economy, saying that “there must be a marked difference between payments to skilled and unskilled workers, for easy and hard work, and a relentless struggle must be waged against wage leveling.”128 That same year the Department of Labor published an extremely detailed “Wage Table for Workers” (Rodongja imgu˘mp’yo), listing  occupations of all types, from ginseng cultivators to truck drivers. Each occupation was categorized into one of eight grades of skilled or unskilled labor, with monthly wages ranging from  to , won.129 In addition to wage differentiation by employment, a contract wage system (togu˘pje) was adopted in May , which sought to reward individual workers who produced more output that could be quantified,130 and workers in certain key in. See RG , SA , /. DPRK Propaganda Bureau, Sano˘p pumun kyo˘ngje mit chingmaeng yo˘lso˘ngja taehoe muhonjip (Collection of Materials from the Conference of the Enthusiasts from Industry, Economy, and Trade Unions) (Pyongyang, November ), . . ISNK, no.  (– September ), . . Conference of Enthusiasts, . . Kim Il Sung,“Changed Circumstances and Conditions Demand a New Work Attitude,” Selected Works, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), . . RG , SA , /. DPRK Department of Labor, Rodongja imgu˘mp’yo (Wage Table for Workers), DPRK Internal Decision no. ,  December . . See RG , SA , /.. Cheich’a chungyo sano˘p kigwan togu˘pje silsi ko˘myo˘l pogoso: Hu˘ngnam inmin kongjang wae  kae chikjang (Report on the Second Inspection of the Implementation of the Con-



 

dustries such as mining, chemicals, ironworks, and railroads were progressively rewarded for exceeding their production quotas.131 Highly productive workers were also rewarded in increased rice rations and monetary prizes. Far from a paradise of equals, the North Korean labor force constituted a hierarchical system of rewards according to work and ability. Modeled on Soviet “shock work,” there were frequent campaigns for rapid increases in production and for competition between individual workers, between factories, and between regions.This began even before the inauguration of the First One-Year Plan. As early as January , a Ch’o˘ngju miner name Kim Hoeil inaugurated a “coal mining assault movement” (ch’aet’an to˘lgyo˘k undong), for which Kim Il Sung responded with a warm letter of praise. Railway workers in Pyongyang proclaimed the period from January until the end of March  as an “assault period” (to˘lgyo˘k chugan).132 Similar types of “socialist competition campaigns” were carried out in agriculture.133 Special events occasioned new production increase campaigns. These included annual commemorations such as March First, May Day, and Liberation Day (August ), as well as the anniversaries of the inauguration of the Labor Law, the Gender Equality Law, and the like. Production increase campaigns were declared to denounce the May  election in South Korea, to commemorate the establishment of the DPRK, for the launching of new economic plans, at the end of the calendar year.134 Socialist competition campaigns involved thousands of worksites and hundreds of thousands of workers every year between  and .And as a result, production sometimes fluctuated wildly and the production process was disjointed and uneven, a problem acknowledged by the regime’s economic planners.135 “Stakhanovism,” the encouragement of workers to overfulfill their production quotas, named after the legendary Soviet worker Stakhanov, was part of the industrial landscape of North Korea by .136 “Model workers”were extolled in the mass media, government journals, and the literature of the social organitract Wage System at Important Industrial Organizations: Hu˘ngnam People’s Factory and  other Workplaces),August , . . RG , SA , /. Sano˘p (Industry)  (October ), . . RG , SA , /. Record of Important Events, – . . “Socialist competition,” developed during the s in the Soviet Union as a way to increase worker output, was also widespread in China at the time.According to one estimate, % of Chinese industrial workers were involved in socialist competition campaigns by . Kaple, Dream of a Red Factory, . . Weekly Summary, no. , . . RG , SA , /. Sano˘p (Industry) ( June ), . . For an overview of the Stakhanovite phenomenon in the USSR, see Lewis H. Siegelbaum, Stakhanovism and the Politics of Productivity in the USSR, – (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, ).

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

zations.137 Factories posted lists of model workers and their achievements, and particularly outstanding workers received rewards from Kim Il Sung personally on special occasions such as May Day.138 The Stakhanovite movement in the Soviet Union was widely publicized and praised in North Korea, as it was in China at the time.139 The DPRK State Planning Commission journal Kyehoek kyo˘ngje (Planned economy), for example, discussed Stakhanovism at length in its inaugural issue of May , in an article entitled “On the Leninist-Stalinist Socialist Production Competition” and encouraged all North Korean workers to be “Stakhanovites.”140 Material incentives as well as moral and patriotic exhortation motivated North Korea’s Stakhanovism. For example, the DPRK cabinet introduced a “championship flag” campaign in December , in which factories that most overfulfilled the economic plan would be given a flag to hoist, along with special prize money. The best workers were also to be awarded in cash bonuses and rice, as well as medals and awards, at the end of each year.141 Finally, workers were kept in line through a system of surveillance and coercion, something we will discuss further in chapter . Undercover agents of the Ministry of Internal Affairs were posted in major factories and mines to weed out “reactionaries” and layabouts who did not contribute their share to the production process. If propaganda, education, and material incentives were not sufficient, worker participation and enthusiasm could also be ensured by the threat of ostracism and arrest.142

Nation and Economy Less than two years after the end of Japanese colonial rule, North Korea embarked on a path of Stalinist industrialization, for which it was uniquely suited among East Asian socialist regimes.The relatively high degree of industrialization in northern Korea under the Japanese, albeit skewed toward the benefit of the metropole, gave the North a solid foundation for such a developmental path. The fact of Japanese ownership made nationalization less difficult than it would . See for example RG , SA , /. Puk Choso˘n t’ongsin (North Korea News), no.  ( July ), , which refers to more than seven hundred such workers. . See Sano˘p (Industry) , no.  ( June ): . . Kaple, Dream of a Red Factory, . . RG , SA , /. Kyehoek kyo˘ngje, no.  (May ): –. . Sano˘p , no.  ( January ): , citing DPRK Cabinet Decision No. , “On Socialist Competition.” . For the use of security agents in Anju coal mine, see RG , SA , /. Chisimun gu˘p pogosoch’o˘l (File of Directives and Reports), .



 

have been, if private enterprise had been in the hands of a large and entrenched Korean capitalist class. North Korea’s planned economy was both patterned after, and tightly integrated with, the economy of the USSR, then in a period of “high Stalinism” under the Fourth Five-Year Plan (–). After several months of naked extraction, the Soviet occupation authorities put their energies into rehabilitating and building up North Korea’s industrial economy, beginning in early . Soviet advisors, and to a much lesser extent Japanese advisors, were instrumental in establishing North Korea’s planned economy. But Kim Il Sung and other Korean communist leaders also played an active role in planning and managing the economy, and Kim’s public pronouncements certainly made it appear that he personally was in charge. The goal of economic planning was always expressed in nationalist terms,and only rarely was “fraternal cooperation”with other socialist economies mentioned, usually in connection with the USSR.The word often associated with the political and economic character of the early DPRK in the North Korean literature was chaju, “independence.”After the mid-s this word would be supplemented,and then supplanted,by juche,or self-reliance.Judging by Kim Il Sung’s actions in later years, and even his statements at the time, North Korea’s economy was considerably less independent in the late s than he would have liked. Kim’s subsequent commitment to self-reliance appears to have derived, to a great extent, from the positive example of Stalin’s “socialism in one country” and the negative example of Korea’s colonial dependence on Japan. North Korea’s economic dependence on the USSR before the Korean War gave the Soviet Union political leverage in the North, but in purely economic terms,trade and assistance was in North Korea’s favor.The Soviets,in other words, gave more than they got.143 Even so, North Korean leaders were openly critical of the North’s dependent position: in September , for example, Kim Il Sung called for “rectifying” North Korea’s dependence on Soviet machine imports.144 The North’s oft-repeated goal was an “independent national economy”— which meant, in practice, a local emulation of Stalinist development, not an outlying economic dependency of the USSR. The logic of Stalinist industrialization was at its base “primitive accumulation” for the sake of state-defined national economic goals.After North Korean peasants gained the rights to their own land through the spring  land reform, new methods of economic extraction, most importantly the agricultural tax-in-kind,were soon introduced to the rural economy by the regime. A much . U.S. Embassy, Seoul.“Economic Conditions in North Korea,” . . U.S. Embassy, Seoul.“Economic Conditions in North Korea,” . See also RG , SA , / . Haebanghu sanyo˘nganu˘i minju ko˘nso˘ru˘l wihan pukbanbu inmindu˘i t’ujaeng (The North Korean People’s Struggle for Democratic Construction in the Four Years since Liberation) (Pyongyang: Ministry of Culture and Propaganda,  August ), .

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

more efficient taxation system, the nationalization of industry, and the control of wages and consumption, allowed the new state to accumulate resources for industrialization much more effectively than its colonial and precolonial predecessors.And in North Korea, even more than in other state socialist regimes, industrialization was inseparable from ideology. The new ideology of production was supposed to make manual labor “glorious,” to raise the status of workers in the eyes of the rest of society, and to create a new work ethic—through moral exhortation, material incentives, and if necessary force and punishment—for more productive and efficient labor. Marxism-Leninism, mixed with patriotism and anti-imperialism, was the “Protestant Ethic” of North Korean industrialization. But, as so often the case in North Korean communism, ideas came first. “Correct” thinking made successful economic production possible, not the other way around. What was the effect of the new “People’s Economy” on the material lives of the people? Everyday life in the DPRK by  or  was Spartan. Most people had enough to eat,145 education and adequate housing were widely available, and food and basic necessities were obtainable by most citizens through rationing. But consumer goods were limited, money was in short supply, and party members received special privileges in terms of food rations and consumer items. It is probably fair to say that, on the whole, the standard of life in North Korea was similar to that of South Korea, with goods more evenly distributed but supplies more limited. North Korea was also Spartan in another sense, a highly regulated society in which everyday life was constantly regimented as though for war. Industrialization was approached with the language and tactics of warfare, and North Korea’s planned economy allowed the state both to accumulate resources for rapid industrialization, and if necessary to channel those resources into actual warfare with great speed and efficiency. . Kim Il Sung declared in September  that food shortages in North Korea existed no longer, despite the summer drought that year. North Korea’s grain production in  was estimated by U.S. analysts to be just under  million tons, compared to the average yield in northern Korea during –  of . million tons. North Korean estimates were somewhat higher, slightly exceeding peak production under the Japanese. U.S. Embassy, Seoul.“Economic Conditions in North Korea,” .

  

Constructing Culture

Intellectuals and “Correct”Thought Culture, propaganda, and education have tended to be blurred, if not fused into a single entity, in revolutionary Marxist-Leninist states. North Korea is no exception, and indeed the emphasis on ideology and propaganda is even more striking in the formative years of the DPRK than in many other socialist regimes.The tremendous resources put into education, propaganda, and culture ( percent of the first People’s Committee budget was devoted to education, for example, an impressive amount for a country as poor as North Korea at the time)1 arose from several mutually reinforcing factors. First, the Soviets in the North paid much closer attention to cultivating artists and intellectuals, and gave more material support for cultural and educational development, than the Americans in the South.2 Second, this Soviet emphasis on ideology and education found fertile ground in Korean society. Korea—even more than other countries with Confucian cultural traditions, such as China and Vietnam—had for centuries been a society in which formal education and the leading role of intellectuals had been among the paramount virtues. But education in North Korea was supposed to erase the boundaries between intellectuals and the work. See United States Army, Far East Command, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), box , item . Planning Bureau, North Korean Provisional People’s Committee,“Plan of Economic Development to be Achieved by the North Korea People,”  (“top secret”). . This was true in other places occupied by the U.S. and USSR after World War II, especially Germany, where Soviet “cultural officers” did far more to encourage local artists and intellectuals than did their American counterparts, at least in the early stages of the occupation. See Wolfgang Schivelbusch, In a Cold Crater: Cultural and Intellectual Life in Berlin, –, trans. Kelly Barry (Berkeley: University of California Press, ).



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

ing masses through the political conversion of the former and the intellectual uplifting of the latter. DPRK propaganda would later express this idea in an awkward but ubiquitous phrase,“intellectualize the working classes and working class-ize the intellectuals.” Third, as in other revolutionary East Asian states, only more so, North Korean communism placed great value on “correct” thinking leading to political and material transformation—turning Marx on his head, as we have seen in previous chapters. East Asian communism in general and North Korea in particular tended to emphasize the transformation of individual consciousness—through propaganda, education, and individual “conversion” of the recalcitrant—over material incentives or coercion.This tendency to value mind over material conditions, human will over objective circumstances, was further reinforced by a more recent history of harsh ideological control efforts on the part of the Japanese colonial state, under which communism had been persecuted as a “thought crime.” Many of the Korean communists were survivors of Japanese prisons where attempts at ideological conversion (tenko), involving both physical and psychological torture, had been a regular practice. It was not enough for communists under the Japanese to give up their subversive activities and conform to colonial law;they had to publicly renounce their previous political faith and embrace the Way of the Emperor.3 The North Korean communists took a similar approach to political faith but inverted the ideological content. Finally, cultural and educational activities in North Korea were boosted by an influx of intellectuals on the political left who had long been oppressed by the Japanese colonial state, and in the first few years after liberation became increasingly alienated from the U.S. Military Government and the dominance of right-wing forces in South Korea. Alone among social groups in Korea, more intellectuals moved from South to North than in the other direction. The absolute number of Korean educators and artists was greater in the South, due to the higher overall population and the existence of the historical Korean capital in the American zone, but the voluntary migration of intellectuals between the two zones was much more of a flow from South to North than the other way around. Many, though by no means all, of these intellectuals who went to or remained in North Korea sympathized with the left-leaning political orientation of the new regime in Pyongyang, but there was a considerable degree of artistic freedom in North Korea until the spring of , when the new central People’s Committee began to set strict guidelines on the political content of artistic work The central role of ideology and culture in North Korea, which became in. Colonial prisons as a political “school” for Korean communists will be discussed in the next chapter.



 

creasingly important over the history of the DPRK, was partly the result of factors that North Korea shared with other socialist states. First, there is a general tendency for socialist states to rely heavily on “normative,” or what the anthropologist Katherine Verdery calls “symbolic-ideological,” means of social control, as opposed to remunerative or coercive methods.4 This occurs because, Verdery argues, such states are actually weak, despite their self-representation as immensely powerful. Remunerative strategies (higher pay) are more difficult to achieve in a socialist economy than in a capitalist one; coercive methods can only go so far before they create hostile reactions. In order to get things done, the state must rely on moral exhortation to mobilize the masses, including calls for patriotism and sacrifice for the nation. In North Korea, the emphasis on ideology would become greater as the DPRK evolved, growing in an inverse relationship to the strength of the economy—as economic incentives became less viable, ideological incentives increasingly took the lead.5 As in other socialist states, intellectuals in North Korea were both necessary and dangerous. They were necessary because the political leadership derived much of its authority from a monopoly of truth, especially the understanding of what actions and sacrifices were necessary in the present in order to achieve the goal of communism in the future.These truth-claims had to be interpreted and articulated by educators, propagandists, and other intellectuals. Such cultural producers occupied what Verdery calls the “space of legitimation” necessary to maintain the regime.6 But intellectuals were also dangerous because their access to knowledge could lead to criticism and questioning of the political authorities themselves, as eventually occurred in Eastern Europe. In some cases, intellectuals as a group could be attacked (as in China during the Cultural Revolution) or even liquidated (as in Pol Pot’s Cambodia). Ideally, however, intellectuals would be subordinated to the demands of the regime and absorbed as productive members of the society. Also, in North Korea as in other socialist states, the cultural realm, and education in particular, was an important arena for upward social mobility.This is especially true in the early years of such regimes, such as the Soviet Union in the s and s,7 but was all the greater in a country like Korea, with its deeply rooted tradition of respect for formal education and reliance on education for achieving high social status. But formal education in Choso˘n Korea had . Katherine Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu’s Romania (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), – . . Charles K.Armstrong,“A Socialism of Our Style: North Korean Ideology in a Post-Communist Era,” in North Korean Foreign Relations in the Post–Cold War Era, ed. Samuel S. Kim (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, ). . Verdery, National Ideology Under Socialism, . . Sheila Fitzpatrick, Education and Social Mobility in the Soviet Union, – (Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, ).

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

been limited to the male children of yangban elites, a segment of society even more limited and rigidly bounded than the gentry class in traditional China. In North Korea, by contrast, workers and peasants would not only be allowed an education, but were given preferential access to education. As never before in the past, education was a means for social advancement available to the lower strata of Korean society, many of whose members could now even enter that most honored of professions: becoming a teacher. The new education system not only utilized intellectuals but created intellectuals in unprecedented numbers. Of course, the political content of public education in North Korea was controlled and monitored by the central authorities in Pyongyang, and political criteria for advancement in fields such as education were often as important as professional credentials, if not more so. Intellectuals were thus expected to take a leading role in the construction of socialist Korea, but within political limits increasingly circumscribed by the evolving central authority and Workers’ Party as they came to exert control over events from late  and early .This chapter traces some of the ways in which art and politics were fused together in the formative years of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, focusing on the education system, literature, and cinema.8 The DPRK, brought to power with the aid of the Soviet Union, absorbed some of the best minds of Korea into the project of creating a new outpost of socialist civilization. Ultimately, the North Korean system eclipsed Soviet domination with a strident nationalism and, after giving intellectuals a central role in building the new society, strictly disciplined the intellectuals for furthering the purposes of the state.The result was a cultural formation that acknowledged the Soviet Union as both a cultural leader and model, but at the same time emphasized a revitalized and “modernized” native culture that sought to reject all traces of Japanese colonialism and create a new, independent, socialist Korean culture. If Soviet policies in the ethnic republics of the USSR had been “nationalist in form, socialist in content,” cultural formation in North Korea was in some respects the opposite: socialist in form, nationalist in content.

The Soviet Occupation and the Production of Culture The Soviet occupation authorities in North Korea, as in Eastern Europe, paid a great deal of attention to cultural institutions as vehicles for mobilizing the masses and for demonstrating the superiority of Soviet socialism.American cultural officers often envied the resources and skill their Soviet counterparts put . Elsewhere I have discussed the evolution of historical scholarship in the DPRK. Charles K.Armstrong,“The Nationalization of History in North Korea,” unpublished manuscript.



 

into winning the “hearts and minds” of the local people.9 The Soviet approach to culture fit well with the ideas of many Korean writers and artists who had been on the left during the colonial period, although, unlike in postwar Eastern Europe,there were no major North Korean intellectuals who had spent long periods of time in the USSR before . In North Korea, as in the Soviet Union itself, cultural education was a mirror image of economic organization, both pursued on a grand scale.10 Culture was a physical, material thing to be consciously constructed, as the title of one North Korean journal, Munhwa ko˘nso˘l (Cultural Construction), made clear. Culture was approached exactly like industry, with great stress on productive output and bureaucratic control. As the U.S. State Department study of the DPRK observed in , Movie and theater attendance, the number of lecture meetings, the distribution of newspapers and books, and even estimated radio audiences were set forth in advance in the economic plans as production quotas that the responsible officials and organizations were required to meet.11

Cultural production in North Korea, like in the USSR, was “supply-driven” rather than “demand-driven.” The socialist realist novel—then at its peak of dominance in Soviet literature—was produced according to standard formulae with extensive bureaucratic input, making it more or less the literary equivalent of a tractor (a not-uncommon character in the novels themselves). While cultural “production” in socialist states was often expressed through mechanical metaphors of engineers and construction—Stalin famously called writers “engineers of the human soul,” an unacknowledged borrowing from Plato—the other common metaphor for cultural activity was the metaphor of war and military mobilization. Writers, artists, and “propagandists” formed a “cultural front” in Stalin’s Soviet Union, and this term (Munhwa cho˘nso˘n in Korean) was adopted for the name of a leading literary magazine in postliberation North Korea. Pro-Soviet intellectuals in North Korea welcomed the Red Army on its arrival.According to “Lim Un,” the pseudonym for a Soviet-North Korean who later went into exile in the USSR, several of the prominent left-wing literary activists, including Cho Kibu, Cho˘n Tonghyo˘k, and Im Hwa, “set up a ‘Soviet Army Press Company’ in front of the Pyongyang railway station and published a Korean-language paper” in September , signaling the beginning of So. Norman M. Naimark, The Russians in Germany:A History of the Soviet Zone of Occupation, –  (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, ), . . Rudolf Bahro, The Alternative in Eastern Europe (London:Verso, ), . . United States Department of State, North Korea:A Case Study in the Techniques of Takeover (; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ), .

 



viet-Korean cultural production.12 The Choso˘n sinbo, renamed the Soviet sinbo, was the responsibility of an ethnic Korean Red Army officer named Mikhail Kang.13 In the Soviet Civil Administration (SCA), occupation policies regarding education and culture, along with justice, health, and the press, were under the jurisdiction of Colonel A. M. Ignatiev, deputy chief of the SCA. Major General A.A. Romanenko, the SCA chief, oversaw communications, finance, transportation, agriculture, and industry.14 The top Korean in the SCA cultural department was Kim P’a, a second-generation Korean from the USSR.15 But cultural production was not monopolized by the Russians and the “Soviet-Koreans” who came with them. Many of the writers, artists, and cultural workers in North Korea were originally from the South, and were aligned politically with the Southern Workers’ Party and the “domestic” Communists led by Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng.16 Others,such as the Korean Workers’Party propaganda chief Kim Ch’angman, were veterans of the Chinese Communist revolutionary base in Yan’an; their inclinations were more populist and nationalist than pro-Soviet and internationalist.The leading intellectual figures in the first DPRK cabinet of  were Vice-Premier for Culture Hong Myo˘nghu˘i, one of Korea’s most widely respected novelists, and Minister of Education Paek Nam’un, a prominent historian who had taught at Yonhu˘i College (later Yonsei University) in Seoul. Both Hong and Paek were from the South. Kim Il Sung and his comrades from the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle in Manchuria were the least educated of the communist “factions” and the least involved in cultural affairs.This is rather ironic in light of the fact that, before long, virtually every book, film, or work of art in the DPRK would refer to Kim Il Sung, his guerrilla colleagues, or his family.The development of Kim’s “cult of personality,” which begins as early as , was the work not of the Manchurian veterans themselves,but of intellectuals and hagiographers such as the Pyongyang journalist Han Chaedo˘k and the novelist Han So˘rya. The Soviet cultural presence in North Korea was manifold and included the Soviet Information Bureau, the international book agency Mezhdunarodnaya kniga, which distributed Soviet books and journals in Korean translation, the Soviet news agency TASS, and Sovexportfilm, a branch of the Ministry of the Cinema Industry.17 Soviet theater, dance, music, film, literature, and art were . Lim Un, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea (Tokyo: Jiyu-sha, ), . . Andrei Lankov, Soryo˘n u˘i charyoro pon Puk Han hyo˘ndae cho˘ngch’isa (North Korean Contemporary Political History in Soviet Sources), trans. Kim Kwangnyo˘n (Seoul: Oru˘m, ), – . . Eric Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea – (Oxford: Berg, ), . . Kim Su˘nghwan, Haebang konggan u˘i hyo˘nsilchui munhak yo˘n’gu (Realist Literature in the Space of Liberation) (Seoul: Ilchisa, ), . . A purge in the s eliminated many of the “Southern” writers. See Kim Chaeyong,“The Purge of Southern Workers’ Party Writers in North Korea,” Yo˘ksa pip’yo˘ng, no.  (winter ): – . . United States Armed Forces in Korea, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-, Record Group , box , “North Korea Today” (), .



 

widely promoted in North Korea. After the DPRK and the USSR signed an agreement on cultural exchange in early , North Korean dance troupes, literature, and arts were also brought to the Soviet Union. Between  and  some seventy Russian and Soviet literary works were translated into Korean, along with hundreds of technical works, histories, scientific texts, and journals.18 Russian was made the main second language of North Korea.The Russian language became compulsory in senior middle school in  and lower middle school in . English was discontinued and replaced by Russian for entrance to Kim Il Sung University in .19 Although in theory North Korea was part of a broad cultural exchange among all “fraternal socialist” countries, in practice the only other socialist regime with a cultural presence in North Korea was the People’s Republic of China after ,through its New China News Agency. There was also an informal cultural exchange between China and North Korea through the returning Yan’an communist group whose members began entering North Korea in late , as well as the ethnic Korean minority who moved back and forth relatively freely between Northeast China and North Korea. Works of Mao Zedong and other prominent Chinese communists were translated into Korean and circulated in the North, and the literary journal of ethnic Koreans in China, Yo˘nbyo˘n munhwa, was also available in the DPRK.20 But the Chinese cultural presence was quite minor compared to the dominance of the USSR. The main channel for cultural exchange between the USSR and North Korea was the Korean-Soviet Culture Society (Cho-Sso munhwa hyo˘phoe), a branch of the Soviet All-Union Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries (VOKS), established in North Korea in November . Its flagship journal was Cho-Sso munhwa (Korean-Soviet Culture).Cho-Sso munhwa hyo˘phoe claimed a membership of . million in late , making it one of the largest social organizations in North Korea, with branches throughout the country, down to village and street-level pan.21 A sister organization was established in Moscow, and in  the name of the organization was changed to Chosso ch’inso˘n hyo˘phoe (Korean-Soviet Friendship Society).22 Rather like the United States Information Service (USIS) in Seoul, Cho-Sso munhwa hyo˘phoe was designed to promote cultural exchange and propagate positive images of . Lankov, Puk Han hyo˘ndae cho˘ngch’isa, . . State Department, North Korea, . . RG , SA , /. Yo˘nbyo˘n Munhwa (inaugural issue, ). In fact the journal pays equal, if not more, attention to DPRK affairs than to the PRC and almost reads like a North Korean cultural journal. . State Department, North Korea, –. . Kim Su˘nghwan, Haebang konggan, .

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

the occupying country. Cho-Sso munhwa ran articles praising Soviet socialism and Soviet culture, as well as translations of Soviet works.23 But the bulk of ChoSso munhwa was devoted to Korean writers and articles on North Korean political affairs, with Soviet-related articles relegated to the back sections. One early issue, for example, begins with a lead article by Kim Il Sung addressing Korean scientists, writers, and artists, followed by an article by the Yan’an communist veteran Ch’oe Ch’ang’ik on the “historical development of democracy” (minjujuu˘i u˘i sajo˘k palcho˘n).24 This was quite unlike the USIS journal Amerik’a, which was entirely about the United States and consisted mostly of articles translated from English. Soviet cultural policies in North Korea, as the U.S. Military Government in the South grudgingly acknowledged, gave much more space and encouragement to Korean cultural expression—so long as it was not critical of Soviet occupation policies—than similar U.S. occupation organs.25 In the inaugural issue of the North Korean Arts Federation journal Munhwa cho˘nso˘n (Cultural Front), which clearly took its title from Soviet terminology, the Japanese-educated writer An Mak exhorted Korean writers and artists to “reconstruct [Korea’s] ,-year-old national arts and culture,” and “concentrate on building new national self-consciousness (chagak) and self-confidence (chasin).” Korean nationalism in socialist form is An’s main theme throughout his essay. An Mak acknowledged both the example of Soviet writers and artists in the October Revolution and the struggle against Hitler, as well as China’s “democratic writers and artists” who “fought a long struggle of national liberation against the Japanese imperialist invaders.” The latter experience, An implied, was more applicable to the current Korean struggle than was the Soviet experience.26 As if this were not enough to make Soviet occupation authorities suspicious of Koreans’ loyalty the Soviet cause, there was Han So˘rya’s short story “The Hat” (Moja) and its veiled criticism of Red Army behavior in North Korea, which led to the occupation administration confiscating the journal, as we discussed in chapter . Despite the Cultural Front’s pro-Soviet form, its Korean nationalist content was not as flattering to the Soviets as the occupation authorities would have liked. . Cho-Sso munhwa was not the only journal in North Korea publishing Soviet literary works alongside Korean, although it was probably the most widely distributed. The Pyongyang Academy’s literary journal Sae sam ch’olli (“New Three-Thousand Li,” i.e., New Korea), which bore on its cover the Russian title Novaya Koreya (New Korea) was quite similar in format to Cho-Sso munhwa. See RG , SA , /. Novaya Koreya/Sae sam ch’olli, no.  (February-March ). . RG , SA , /. Cho-Sso munhwa, no.  ( July ):  –. . I explore this further in Charles K. Armstrong,“The Cultural Cold War in Korea,” unpublished manuscript. . RG , SA , /.An Mak,“Basic Mission of Korean Literature and Arts,” Munhwa cho˘nso˘n, no.  ( July ): .



 

The Education System North Korea’s approach to popular education demonstrated the new regime’s emphasis on establishing a totalizing, unifying ideology that would instill the masses with the “correct” thinking necessary for socialist construction. Korea’s Confucian heritage with its emphasis on the transformative potential of education, Leninist methods of propaganda and agitation adopted from the USSR, and the Japanese colonial precedent of “policing” thought made it all but inevitable that a highly politicized mass education would play a central role in the North Korea revolution. Like other aspects of the North Korea revolution, this was initiated from the top—the central authorities in Pyongyang—but was intended to incorporate and politically mobilize the entire society down to the remotest village. In the language of the central People’s Committee and the DPRK, culture (munhwa), ideology (riron), propaganda (so˘njo˘n) and education (kyoyuk) were drawn together into a single project. For example, the DPRK Propaganda and Agitation Department’s flagship journal So˘njo˘nja (The Propagandist), launched in October , spoke of the “profound task” for all North Korea’s “cultural propaganda workers” (munhwa so˘njo˘n ilkkun)—using the same term that was applied to farmers or factory laborers (ilkkun)—in building an independent state, supporting Korean unification, and raising the cultural level of the popular masses. DPRK vice premier Hong Myo˘nghu˘i, who had been a renowned novelist during the colonial period, said that So˘njo˘nja itself was “part of the struggle to save the country” (kuguk t’ujaeng) from U.S. imperialism and the traitorous Syngman Rhee clique, a “weapon” for all government workers and propagandists.27 The main instrument of ideological production was to be a new system of popular education, directed by the state. Educators and cultural workers were “propagandists” whose mission was to “purge vestiges of Japanese imperialist slave education and establish a new system of democratic education.”28 An extensive school system was established within a year after liberation, expanded further in the  economic plan and the  –  two-year economic plan.29 Schooling was to begin with five years of compulsory primary school (inmin hakkyo, or “People’s Schools”), followed by a three-year lower middle school, and then a three-year higher middle school. Graduates of the higher middle schools could attend technical college or university, including Kim Il Sung University established in October , and higher education was to be funded by . RG , SA , /. So˘njo˘nja (The Propagandist), inaugural issue (October ),  –. . RG , SA , /.. So˘njo˘nja such’aek (Propagandists’ Handbook), February , . . State Department, North Korea, .

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

May Day, : students of the School for Bereaved Families of Revolutionaries, founded in  for children of anti-Japanese guerrilla fighters, Pyongyang, May , . Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

state scholarships.30 Two aspects of the new education system seem to have been particularly popular. One was that, in contrast to the elitist education of colonial and precolonial times, schools were open to members of all classes, giving preference to children of workers and peasants. Second, the regime made a concerted effort to attack illiteracy, promoting the use of phonetic hangu˘l instead of Chinese characters and setting up courses to teach reading in villages, factories, and the military.31 The regime claimed to have brought literacy to more than  million farmers by .32 . “North Korea Today,” .The first postsecondary institution established in North Korea after liberation was Pyongyang College, opened in January  with Kim Il Sung as honorary president and his fellow Manchurian guerrilla veteran Kim Ch’aek as president. An entering class of some six hundred students from across North Korea came to study politics, international affairs, and “Korean problems.” United States Armed Forces in Korea, Allied Translator and Interpreter Service (ATIS), box , item , enclosure no. , translation no. , . . Wilbur Schramm and John W. Riley Jr., “Communication in the Sovietized State, As Demonstrated in Korea,” American Sociological Review , no.  (December ): . . State Department, North Korea, .



 

Education was a “product” which, like heavy industrial goods, was to be produced at rapid rates to meet lofty goals set by the central authorities. Hundreds of new teachers,some with very little formal education themselves,were quickly put into the education system, and curricula throughout the country were planned in great detail by the Ministry of Education.33 Schools, like factories (and the two were often brought together, in the form of factory schools for laborers) were key symbols and vehicles of North Korea’s race to modernity. North Korea published dizzying statistics on educational expansion.The first two-year economic plan of  – called for the attainment of , elementary schools, , middle schools,  high schools,  technical schools and  colleges.34 The regime’s goal was “that a junior middle school will be built in every farm village by the end of .”35 The North Hamgyo˘ng People’s Committee in  boasted that in that province,“education and cultural activities are developing by leaps and bounds,” with an increase of  percent in schools and  percent in students since liberation.36 In the February  issue of the journal Ku˘lloja, vice minister of education Nam Il contrasted education under the current regime to the Japanese colonial period.Whereas under the Japanese there were , Korean students in , elementary and higher schools, by early  there were ,, students in , schools, along with more than a million students studying through correspondence, adult education, and in factories. Furthermore, the class composition of students had shifted dramatically. Before liberation none of the students in Pyongyang higher schools were children of workers and peasants; now . percent were from among the working class, poor and middle peasantry, and white-collar workers (samuwo˘n).37 Not only students, but teachers as well, benefited from a kind of “affirmative action program” that favored individuals from lower-class backgrounds. Becoming a teacher, long a revered profession in Confucian Korea, was itself one of the surest means of upward social mobility. Teachers, like every other professional or member of a social organization in North Korea, were carefully cate. A national plan for  that recorded the background of every high school instructor in North Korea may be found in RG , SA , /. Ministry of Education, General Education Bureau. “Monthly Activity Planning and Information Report, ” (secret). Needless to say, much of the plan, and many of the teachers, were lost after the outbreak of the Korean War. . RG , SA , /. Kyehoek kyo˘ngje (Planned Economy), no.  (May ): . . State Department, North Korea, . . RG , SA , /. North Hamgyo˘ng Provincial People’s Committee, “Record of Activities,”  November , . . Cited in Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), :– .The North Korean regime early on showed a strong penchant for such precise statistics; as we have seen in chapter , recording of class background and registration of individuals in social organizations of all kinds, including schools, were pursued with great vigor and enthusiasm.

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gorized according to “origin” (ch’ulsin) and “status” (so˘ngbun). At the middle and high school levels few teachers had received much in the way of advanced education—some had themselves only graduated from elementary school—but most had been to “political school” (cho˘ngch’i hakkyo), of which more will be said below. A comprehensive list of middle- and high-school teachers from North Hamgyo˘ng Province in  reveals the following figures on ch’ulsin: Poor peasant Middle peasant Rich peasant Samuwo˘n Workers Petty bourgeois Other Total

       

Thus, more than half the teachers in the province were of “poor peasant” background, and all but  of the  were of either poor peasant or middle peasant background. But all, being teachers, were now samuwo˘n by definition. All of them were also members of the Workers’ Party, although this was not necessarily the case in other parts of North Korea.38 “Correct” class background, political education,and party membership gave opportunities for social advancement to many of the new members of North Korea’s teaching profession that would have been inconceivable under previous regimes. Political indoctrination was, of course, an important and integral part of the education system. Local People’s Committees attempted to exert close political control of schools through screening of teachers and administrators, and the DemocraticYouth League (DYL) was organized extensively through the schools. The mission of the DYL was to lead the “thought struggle” against “reactionary religious enthusiasts” and other unsavory student elements.39 This control was not established immediately, and as we have seen in chapter , for the first two years after liberation, schools in Pyongyang, Sinu˘iju, Hamhu˘ng, and other cities were important sites of protest against the regime.40 In addition to regular schools, a network of political schools for adults was established shortly after the Soviet entry. Initially offering courses of three weeks . Statistics for the Pyongyang area from  show a significant minority of teachers affiliated with the Choso˘n Democratic Party or “nonaffiliated,” reflecting the political orientation of the region. See RG , SA , .. District Education Division,“Roster of Teachers,” . . United States Army, Far East Command,Allied Translator and Interpreter Service (ATIS), box , item . North Korean Democratic Youth League,“Decisions of Central Standing Committee,” JanuaryMarch , , . . United States Army, Far East Command. G- Weekly Summary, no.  (April ): .

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to one month in duration, in March  the curriculum was lengthened to three months and in some areas to as long as six months. Political schools were established in each county and in many townships. In South Hamgyo˘ng Province, for example, there were fifty to seventy-five such schools by March , averaging  – students each, closely supervised by the local People’s Committee and Communist Party. Political schools taught short courses on Marxism-Leninism, Soviet politics, Korean history, economics, and political organization.41 Graduation from such schools was considered an asset for entering the teaching profession and helped to solidify the political screening of educators.42 Night schools were also set up for those unable to attend regular day schools; in South Hamgyo˘ng there were , night schools with , students by early .43 The purpose of education was both to create a technically competent workforce for national reconstruction and to instill “revolutionary consciousness” among the masses.The centrality of education in creating the new society resembled revolutionary China in many respects, but as in other areas the USSR was by far the most important external influence on North Korean education, both as a model and as a source of advice. Some thirty Soviet advisors were assigned to the new teachers’ training colleges by .44 In –  a group of more than eighty ethnic Koreans arrived from the USSR, most of them having been trained as schoolteachers.45 The introduction of Russian as the second language in schools and the translation of Soviet texts in literary and technical areas have already been mentioned. Soviet technical advisors were instrumental in assisting economic development in North Korea, especially after the DPRK was established in . In  North Korea and the USSR set up a program of sending  Korean students a year to the Soviet Union for three- to fiveyear programs of study, and by the end of  more than  North Korean students were in the USSR.46 These included students of science and technology as well as the social sciences, among them many children of North Korea’s political elite. For example, the son of Ch’oe Ch’angik, a leader of the Yan’an communist group, was studying law in Sverdlosk in ; Ch’oe’s grandson was studying agriculture in Tashkent; and Kim Tubong’s two sons were studying in . ATIS, box , item .“Draft of Curricula for Provincial Party Schools of the North Korean Workers’ Party,” . . See for example RG , SA , /. North P’yo˘ng’an Teacher’s Training School,“Personal Histories,” . . Weekly Summary, no. , . . Key P. Yang and Chong-boh Chee, “North Korean Education System:  to Present,” China Quarterly, no.  (): . . Lim, Founding of a Dynasty, . . State Department, North Korea, .

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Moscow.47 A young man who was not from an elite communist family but who was a precociously brilliant student of philosophy was Hwang Changyo˘p, who won a scholarship to study in Moscow in  and would later become the leading architect of North Korea’s juche (“self-reliance”) philosophy.48 The influence of “Soviet-Koreans” on North Korean higher education should not, however, be exaggerated. To be sure, several professors at Kim Il Sung University had studied in the USSR or were “Soviet-Koreans” who had spent many years there, including Kim Su˘nghwa, vice president of the university and also head of the Central Party School in Pyongyang.49 But the bulk of instructors had not been trained in the Soviet Union. Of the forty-four professors initially employed in the liberal arts division of Kim Il Sung University in late , only three had studied in the USSR.Three others had studied in China, and one of the three had also studied in Germany. Seventeen had been educated in Japan, including five at Tokyo Imperial University. The remaining twenty-one had been educated in Korea alone.50 North Korean education was not simply an imitation of the USSR, even if the Soviets supplied material support, textbooks, and scholarships to Koreans in the North. In  there were far fewer Korean educators, especially at the college and university level, trained in the Soviet Union than in the United States, and higher education in the American zone was if anything closer to the American model than North Korean education was to the Soviet model.51 Nevertheless, the USSR was the most important model and inspiration for education in North Korea.52 No one expressed this more clearly than Paek Nam’un, who became minister of education in the first DPRK cabinet. Paek visited the Soviet Union with a DPRK cabinet delegation to sign the KoreaSoviet Agreement on Economic and Cultural Cooperation in March . In a book written to commemorate the first anniversary of the agreement, Paek . RG , SA , /. Letter from Ch’oe Tongguk to his father, Ch’oe Ch’angik. RG , SA , /. Letter from Ch’oe Wo˘no to his grandfather, Ch’oe Ch’ang-ik. . See Hwang Chang-yo˘p, Nanun yoksaui chillirul poatta (I Have Seen the Truth of History) (Seoul: Hanul Press, ). Hwang is best known in the West for his dramatic defection to South Korea via China and the Philippines in . . See RG , SA , /.“Personal Histories of Instructors at Kim Il Sung University, College of Liberal Arts,” . . The Dean of the College of Liberal Arts, Pak Kukch’ae, was one of the Tokyo Imperial University graduates. . From the fall of , the U.S. Military Government in Korea worked with Korean educators, many U.S.–trained, to reconstruct the South Korean education system very much along American lines, especially at the university level. See United States Army Center of Military History, File  – . BA, Office of the Chief of Military History, History of the Occupation of Korea (), part , chapter ,“Education in South Korea under United States Occupation,  –.” . For translations of Soviet articles on education, see for example RG , SA , /. Inmin kyoyuk (People’s Education), no.  (): –.

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recounted his visit to the USSR with lavish praise for Soviet socialism in general and Soviet education in particular. Koreans, Paek said, must study the “new type of Soviet man,” and pay particular attention to Soviet science, the “world leader.”53

Literature The DPRK, the People’s Republic of China, and the socialist states of Eastern Europe were constructed at the height of “Zhdanovism” in the USSR, when Soviet cultural production was commanded by Stalin’s culture czar Andrei Zhdanov. Zhdanov insisted that culture be firmly subordinated to political controls and that the arts follow a formal model of “socialist realism.” “High art”—literature, painting, music, theater, and so on—was one small part of a broad program of ideological activism and indoctrination of the masses.54 In North Korea, highly pedantic and political literature was widely disseminated to workers, farmers, soldiers, and other ordinary citizens. Much of this was directly taken from Soviet models: a collection of “Workers’ Literature” contains classic socialist-realist short stories by Korean writers and poems with titles like “Production Diary” and “Raise the Liberation Tower” (to the Red Army);55 a reference book on “Mass Culture Activities” published by the CulturalAgitation Bureau of the Ministry of National Defense in March , gives instructions on how to organize mass singing, mass dancing, and mass theater.56 All of this was to be tightly controlled and monopolized by the Pyongyang regime after the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee was formed in early . But for the first few years after liberation, more self-consciously “artistic” literature and the writers who produced it were not immediately subject to political control, and writing at least obliquely critical of the regime continued into the Korean War period. By the late s, however, many of leading writers of the colonial period had been purged, and by the late s “juche literature,” stressing nationalist themes and glorifying the person and activities of Kim Il Sung, had become the reigning orthodoxy.57 Many of the left-wing artists and writers active during the colonial period . RG , SA , /. Paek Nam’un, Ssoryo˘n insang (Impressions of the Soviet Union) (Pyongyang: Choso˘n yo˘ksa p’yo˘nch’an wiwo˘nhoe, ), – . . Verdery, National Ideology under Socialism, . . RG , SA , /. Rodongja munyejip (Collection of Worker’s Literature), North Korean Federation of Trade Unions, . . RG , SA , /. Kunjung munhwa sao˘p ch’amgo˘ chaeryo (Reference Materials for Mass Culture Activities) (Cultural Agitation Bureau, Ministry of National Defense, March ). . Kim Chaeyong, Puk Han munhagu˘i yo˘ksajo˘k ihae (Historical Understanding of North Korean Literature) (Seoul: Munhak kwa chiso˘ngsa, ), –.

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chose to join the northern system after liberation. Many more intellectuals decided to go North than to go South, and this movement continued throughout the late s, as the U.S. military government’s repression of the Communist Party and intellectuals associated with it grew. By one estimate over one hundred writers, or approximately one-third of the writers in South Korea, had gone North by the early s.58 Many of the writers who went North were from the former Korean Proletariat Literary Alliance (Choso˘n p’u˘roret’aria munhak tongmaeng), which presented itself as the heir to KAPF (Korea Artista Proletaria Federatio, Esperanto for “Korean Proletarian Artist Federation”), the left-wing literary association at the forefront of “proletarian literature” from  until its demise in .59 Pyongyang soon replaced Seoul as the center of left-wing literary activity.As early as September  writers and artists living in the Soviet zone had organized a Pyongyang Arts and Literature Society (P’yo˘ngyang yesul munhwa hyo˘phoe), whose members held a range of political views, from left to right, and generally supported the conservative nationalist leader Cho Mansik.60 The local Communist Party formed a rival South P’yo˘ng’an Area Proletarian Arts League (P’yo˘ngnam chio˘k p’u˘roret’aria yesul tongmaeng), which promoted mass culture as well as literary activity—song festivals, Soviet film screenings, and so on.61 But while the Soviet-aligned Koreans came to dominate the area of mass culture, literature was largely the domain of the “domestic” communists and the returnees from Yan’an in China.The latter group included the novelists Kim Saryang and Kim Ch’angman, and the former included Yi Kiyo˘ng and Han So˘rya, two KAPF veterans who were part of the first wave of writers who went North after liberation.62 Originally from northern Korea (Kangwo˘n Province and the city of Hamhu˘ng in South Hamgyo˘ng Province, respectively),Yi Kiyo˘ng and Han So˘nrya crossed back over the th parallel after breaking with the writers in Seoul on ideolog. Marshall Pihl,“Contemporary Literature in a Divided Land,” in Korea Briefing, , ed. Donald N. Clark (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, ), . . Kim Chaeyong,“North Korean Writers’‘Anti-Factional Struggle’:KAPF and Anti-Japanese Revolutionary Literature,” Yo˘ ksa pip’yo˘ng, no.  (spring ): . . Hyo˘n Su, Cho˘kch’i yungnyo˘n Puk Han mundan (The North Korean Literary World: Six Years of Red Rule) (Seoul: n.p., ), – . . Hyo˘n Su, Cho˘kch’i yungnyon, . Hyo˘n complained that the leftist literary organization tried to overwhelm the conservatives with sheer numbers, recruiting indiscriminately among unsavory social elements, including cabaret girls, prostitutes, and illiterates “who couldn’t read the ‘mun’ in ‘munhak’ [‘literature’].” . Kwo˘n Yo˘ngmin, ed., Wo˘lbuk munin yo˘n’gu (Studies of Writers Who Went North) (Seoul: Munhak sasangsa, ), . Kwo˘n cites three waves of “going North”: late  (Yi Kiyo˘ng, Han So˘rya, and others); – (Im Hwa,Yi T’aejun, Kim Namch’o˘n); and during the Korean War (Kim Kirim, Cho˘ng Chiyo˘ng, Pak T’aewo˘n, So˘l Cho˘ngsik).There was also a smaller movement the other direction, which included disillusioned leftists such as Han Chaedo˘k.

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ical grounds. Literature in the South had become too “bourgeois” for these two proletarian writers, following the merger of the Headquarters for the Construction of Korean Literature (Choso˘n munhak ko˘nso˘l ponbu) and the Korean Proletariat Literary Alliance into the Korean Writers’Alliance (Choso˘n munhakka tongmaeng) in late .63 Yi and Han, along with Pyongyang-based writers such as Nam Kungmu and Han Chaedo˘k, formed the center of a more explicitly left-wing literary group oriented toward the communist political forces in the North. Han So˘rya, who was to become the chief engineer of Kim Il Sung’s “cult of personality,” came to dominate North Korean arts and letters from the late s until his fall from favor in the s, and was one of the few colonial-era writers to survive the purge of intellectuals in the years immediately following the Korean War. In March  writers and artists in the North formed a North Korean Literature and Arts Federation (Puk Choso˘n munhwa yesul ch’ong tongmaeng) to promote art that would “mobilize the masses for nation-building.” The most urgent task for artists, the federation asserted, was to eliminate bourgeois, feudal, and colonial thought and participate in the creation of a material base for building socialism. Quoting Stalin, the federation’s Twenty-point Platform called for the creation of a Soviet-inspired socialist realism that combined class consciousness with nationalism—“socialist national culture.”64 “High art”and “popular art” would all be brought together in the current stage of socialist nation-building, and branch offices of the Arts Federation were to be set up in every province, city, county, district, and village.65 The limits of artistic freedom in the North became apparent in December ˘ nghyang incident.” The publication of the lyrical anthology  with the “U ˘ Unghyang by the Wo˘nsan Literary Association was greeted with strong rebuke from the North Korean Literature and Arts Federation, whose leaders criticized the U˘nghyang writers for their apolitical realism and the lack of progressive democratic ideas in their work.66 In January  the North Korean Literature and ˘ nghyang,” Arts Association published its “Decision on the Poetry Collection U chastising the writers and demanding they all make self-criticisms. From then on, there would be no more “pure literature” in North Korea. Literature and the arts entered a new phase in early , with the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) taking an active hand in censoring and directing artistic production.In March ,the KWP Central Committee announced in its “Es. Im Chinyo˘ng, “North Korean Literature in the Post-Liberation Period of Democratic Construction,” in Haebang cho˘nhusa u˘i insik (Understanding Pre- and Post-Liberation History), ed. Kim Namsik et al., vol. , North Korea (Seoul: Han’gilsa, ), . . Yu Chaech’o˘n,“Sahoe—munhwa—toguwha u˘i munjejom,” Puk Han sasimnyo˘n (Forty Years of North Korea) (Seoul: Ulji munhwasa, ), . . Yu Chaech’o˘n,“Sahoe—munhwa—toguwha ui munjejom,” . . Kim Chaeyong,“The Purge of Southern Workers’ Party Writers in North Korea,” .

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tablishment of Democratic National Culture in North Korea”that literature and the arts “must educate the people in socialism and serve the nation and people.”67 The foundation for a socialist society had been laid with the success of land reform, labor reform, and other democratic reforms of the spring and summer of . Nevertheless, the people’s consciousness had not changed in step with the changes in objective circumstances.Therefore, a “cultural revolution,” an “all-round thought movement for nation-building” (ko˘n’guk sasang ch’ongdongwo˘n undong), was the next urgent task.What this meant, in practice, was that all literature had to promote party policy.68 The pressure to politicize art continued throughout the pre-Korean War period. At the end of , Kim Il Sung chastised writers and artists for seeking “merely to entertain,” for their “frivolous” activity, and for their lack of revolutionary spirit. He called on them to “be warriors who educate the people and defend the Republic,” and most importantly to portray the “heroic struggle” of the working people.69 Socialist realism, with a high dose of patriotic content, was the order of the day and would remain so throughout the history of the DPRK. Kim repeated many of the same themes at the height of the Korean War, in a speech drafted by Yan’an returnee Kim Ch’angman and perhaps consciously modeled on Mao’s  “Talk on Arts and Literature” at Yan’an.70 Kim Chaeyong has called the North Korean approach to literature after  “revolutionary romanticism.”71 I would add that there is also an important element of revolutionary nationalism in North Korean literature that was not dominant until the s but was nonetheless present from the late s. It is true that references to socialist internationalism and deference to the USSR remained as themes in North Korean literature until the late s.The so-called “friendship story,”in which Soviet soldiers,technicians,doctors,and nurses were shown displaying paternal, even maternal, care for Koreans, remained a visible genre of North Korean fiction until the early s.72 But even before the Korean War, Marxism-Leninism and the cult of Stalin existed side-by-side with romantic nationalism and the cult of Kim Il Sung, even if the latter became embodied in juche literature only in the late s.This is equally true of other North Korean art forms, including cinema. . Kwo˘n Yo˘ngmin,“Literature and Art in North Korea:Theory and Policy,” Korea Journal , no.  (summer ): . . Kim Chaeyong, Puk Han munhagu˘i yo˘ksajo˘k ihae, . . Kim Il Sung,“Some Tasks Before Writers and Artists at the Present Time,” Selected Works, vol. , (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), . . Kim Il Sung,“Talk With Writers and Artists,”  June , Selected Works, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), – . . Kim Chaeyong, Puk Han munhagu˘i yo˘ksajo˘k ihae, . . Brian Myers,“Mother Russia: Soviet Characters in North Korean Fiction,” Korean Studies, no.  (): – .

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Cinema Cinema had been one of the most important instruments of state propaganda since the Bolshevik revolution, particularly in single-party revolutionary regimes.73 Lenin, Stalin, Mussolini, and Hitler had all admired and exploited cinema’s political potential. Because of its broad popular appeal and the emotional power of its imagery, its ability to reach even a largely illiterate audience, and the expense that made films easier for the state than for individual artists to produce and disseminate, cinema was a far more important means of political education and mass acculturation than was literature. Lenin himself had said that “for us, cinema is the most important of all the arts,”74 and Stalin later amplified this point, saying,“The cinema is the greatest means of mass agitation.The task is to take it into our own hands.”75 The USSR was quick to assist North Korea in developing its own film industry. According to Hyo˘n Su, a member of North Korea’s literary circle who later defected to the South, a People’s Film Society (Inmin yo˘nghwa sahoe) was established in December  to show Soviet films.The People’s Film Society was closely linked to the Cho-Sso munwha hyo˘phoe. In December  it was renamed the North Korean Theater and Film Committee (Puk Choso˘n Kugyo˘ng wiwo˘nhoe), under the direction of Chu Ingyu.76 The DPRK journal Yo˘nghwa yesul (Film Arts) records that the National Film Production Center (Kungnip yo˘nghwa ch’waryo˘ngso, also under director Chu Ingyu) was established in February  with the guidance of Premier Kim Il Sung and the help of the USSR, and began to produce Korean-made films.77 In other words, the North Korean state began to oversee film production at the same time that it began to assert its control over literary production, in early . American military intelligence claimed that as late as  the Soviets required that  percent of all films shown had to be Soviet-made,78 but by  North Korea itself had a budding cinema industry, and new DPRK productions were shown along with Soviet, Chinese, and East European films. Films screened in movie theaters would have reached only a small urban au. Of course democracies could make good use of film for propaganda purposes as well, notably the United States in World War II—reaching a pinnacle of sorts in Frank Capra’s Know Your Enemy film series for U.S. army personnel. . Cited in Geoffrey Nowell Smith, ed., The Oxford History of World Cinema (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), . . Cited in Richard Taylor, Film Propaganda: Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany (London: I. B.Tauris, ), . . Hyo˘n Su, Cho˘kchi yungnyo˘n, . . RG , SA , /. Yo˘nghwa yesul (Film Arts) no. , February . Kim Uso˘ng,“Unification and Independence of the Fatherland and the Mission of Film Artists,” . . Bruce Cumings,The Origins of the Korean War, vol.,The Roaring of the Cataract – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ),  n.

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dience. In order to bring cinema to the masses, “Mobile Film Groups” (idong yo˘ngsaban) were sent throughout the countryside.As in the colonial period and in South Korea, films shown outdoors in villages were projected onto the sides of buildings and on sheets hung between poles. In the late s films were still a novelty in Korea, and peasants gathered around film screenings with great excitement and anticipation. Kim Tong’un of the Peasant League Central Committee reported in  that mobile film groups had been sent to every provincial branch of the Peasant League and regularly had been showing Soviet films as well as more recent Korean productions.The peasants everywhere welcomed these films with great praise, Kim reported, and “because the peasants’ hearts are pure and innocent [tansunhago sobakhagi ttaemune] they are more impressed and can get more education from movies that can urbanites.”79 As an example, a certain Farmer Kim Suhwan saw several Soviet films in his village and was deeply moved by the sight of large, abundant Soviet farms and happy Soviet farmers. Farmer Kim was reported to have remarked,“Soviet farmers are always smiling and singing while cultivating their crops. I think that’s great.We can learn a lot from this.”80 In a  issue of Yo˘nghwa yesul, Kim Uso˘ng, vice chairman of the Ministry of Culture and Propaganda, wrote at length about the political importance of film in North Korea.81 While much of his statement on the nature of cinema reiterates the standard Stalinist approach to film, the content of Kim’s piece— beginning with the title,“Unification and Independence of the Fatherland and the Mission of Film Artists”—stresses nationalist themes above all. All films,Kim says, have a political content, implicitly or explicitly, and Hollywood movies merely express the interests of American monopoly capitalists. American films also glorify violence and crime, corrupting our impressionable youth. Furthermore, anticommunist forces in Hollywood oppressed American progressive filmmakers, while such filmmakers were honored and revered in the USSR, even receiving Lenin and Stalin prizes. Like the other arts, cinema in the Soviet Union was the “pinnacle” of creative achievement, and Soviet cinema was raising the level of cinematic art throughout the USSR and the “People’s Democracies” of Eastern Europe. Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, and militarist Japan had all made cinema an instrument of state oppression; the mission of cinema in Korea was not to free cinema from the state, but make it an instrument of positive state policy under the “revolutionary guidance” of the Soviet cinematic model. . RG , SA , /. Yo˘nghwa yesul (special issue on Nae Kohyang, ), . Presumably Soviet films, like American films in South Korea at the time, were shown with narrative accompaniment in Korean performed by a pyo˘nsa, the live narrator adapted from the Japanese benshi during the colonial period. . Yo˘nnghwa yesul special issue, . . Kim Uso˘ng,“Unification and Independence,” –.

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 

Since liberation in August  South Korean “national traitors” (minjok pallanja) and “Japan-lovers” (Ch’in Il p’a) had directly taken over the Japanese colonial state film industry in Seoul. In the North, by contrast, Japanese influence and models had been rejected and cinema had become a state product “under the guidance of our nation’s heroic leader Premier Kim Il Sung.”82 But the ultimate goal of cinema was to inspire the masses with patriotic fervor.The Soviet form was intended to make manifest a nationalist spirit.83 In – North Korea produced a series of documentary newsreels glorifying the achievements of the new regime and denigrating the South Korean “puppets” and their American backers. One film, Eternal Friendship (Yo˘ngwo˘nhan ch’inso˘n), praised the USSR, but most dealt with the construction of the North Korean political system and economy: People’s Committees (Inmin wiwo˘nhoe), Democratic National Construction (Minju ko˘n’guk), Bright Success (Pitnanu˘n su˘ngni), and Sup’ung Dam, among others.84 Shortly after the establishment of the DPRK in , to much fanfare and promotion, North Korea produced its first feature film, Nae Kohyang (My hometown). One might expect a film made in North Korea during the Soviet occupation, at a time when Soviet cinema was the object of so much lavish praise, to be a faithful imitation of a Soviet film, focused on class struggle and saturated with fulsome gratitude for the Red Army’s liberation of Korea from Japanese colonial rule. But the USSR is not even mentioned in Nae Kohyang, and class struggle is far less important than the national struggle against Japanese oppression. Even the form of the film seems less influenced by Soviet techniques, such as the use of montage and quick cuts, than the techniques of Japanese film from the colonial period and the conventions of Korean melodrama. Its message of revolutionary transformation is less impressive than its emotional evocation of the Korean landscape, village life, and the pure, uncorrupted spirit of the peasants, especially women. Nae kohyang expresses a sentimental attachment to the innocence and simplicity (sobakham) of the Korean peasantry, a kind of socialist pastoralism,alongside the socialist realism adopted from the USSR.Such themes had become common in North Korean literature of the s and s and were even more pronounced in cinema.85 The object of liberation and revolutionary transformation in Nae kohyang is the whole Korean nation, not a class as such, and the agent of liberation is the Manchurian anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle led by General Kim Il Sung, not the Soviet Red Army. This collapse of class struggle into anticolonial national . Ibid., . . Ibid., . . Yo˘nghwa yesul, no.  (February ): – . . Brian Myers, Han So˘nrya and North Korean Literature:The Failure of Socialist Realism in the DPRK (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ).

 



struggle, and the embodiment of that struggle in the person of Kim Il Sung in his role as an anti-Japanese resistance leader, thus anticipates by some two decades the central themes of the “juche cinema” of the late s and after, such as the DPRK self-proclaimed “masterpiece” Sea of Blood (P’ibada), which also concerns the Manchuria guerrilla movement.86 The nationalist content of Nae kohyang suffuses the film from beginning to end. It opens with a panoramic model of Paektusan and moves on to shots of pristine forests,spring fields,running streams,and finally to the streets and houses of a village in South Hamgyo˘ng Province, the home town of the title.We are back in the dark days of Japanese colonial rule, circa .The colonial occupiers and their upper-class Korean collaborators, the latter represented by “landlord Ch’oe”and his family,oppress the local villagers. The protagonist,Kwanp’il, is the son of a tenant farmer on the Ch’oe’s estate who has been killed by the Japanese. Kwanp’il’s selfless and incorruptible mother, who must beg for work from landlord Ch’oe,raises him and his younger brother Kwansik in dire poverty. Kwanp’il has also secretly been educated by a nationalist teacher, Kim Hakjun, and after a scuffle with the landlord’s son he is imprisoned, where he meets Kim Hakjun and other captured nationalists. Eventually Kwanp’il escapes from prison with Kim Hakjun, after killing a Japanese guard with his bare hands.With the Japanese police in hot pursuit, the two attempt to flee to the Manchurian border regions where—they have been told—the legendary General Kim Il Sung and his partisans are holding out. Just as they reach the guerrilla base camp, the police find them and a gunfight ensues. Like Indians in an old Western, the police are picked off by the guerrillas, but in the meleé Kim Hakjun is shot and dies in Kwanp’il’s arms. Kwanp’il, now angrier than ever at the Japs (waenom), is taken in by the guerrillas, who train him in insurgency tactics.After two years in the mountains Kwanp’il returns to Korea to agitate urban workers and spread word of the “Korean Revolutionary Army” (Choso˘n hyo˘ngmyo˘nggun), preparing in Manchuria to liberate the fatherland. But Kwanp’il’s thoughts are always on his hometown, his fellow villagers groaning under the yoke of Japanese oppression, and his long-suffering mother. On August , , gunfire and explosions suddenly rock the landscape to the north of Kwanp’il’s hometown. As the intertitles tell us,“Patriotic General Kim Il Sung overthrows Japanese imperialism and liberates the Fatherland” (the Russians are nowhere in sight). Justice is set aright, and the people of the village take their violent revenge on the Japanese and their collaborators. But even after liberation, Kwanp’il does not return to his village, going instead to . Kim Kyung Hyun,“The Fractured Cinema of North Korea:The Discourse of the Nation in Sea of Blood,” in In Pursuit of Contemporary East Asian Culture, ed. Xiaobing Tang and Stephen Snyder (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, ).



 

Pyongyang where he joins the new regime and becomes a cadre in the Korean Worker’s Party, even meeting Kim Il Sung himself, who is shown in brief documentary clips being introduced to the Korean people on October , . Finally, dressed smartly in a cadre’s suit, Kwanp’il returns to his hometown as a government official.There he is greeted by a crowd of welcoming villagers and is emotionally reunited with his ecstatic mother and his village sweetheart, a girl named Oktan. The last words of the film praise the “gift” of land that Kim Il Sung has given to the peasants of Korea. Oktan: Oh—General Kim Il Sung has given the land to our peasants. Kwanp’il: Yes. From now on, the land belongs to the peasants forever.

Panning shots of happy peasant faces, fields bursting with flowers and crops, the eternal Korean landscape. Swelling music. Fade out. In November  the United States Air Force commissioned a psychological study of refugees from North Korea and South Koreans who had lived through the ninety-day communist occupation of the South.The study concluded that the communist “monopoly of information” had been “at least  percent effective.”87 Nevertheless, there were “cracks” in this monolithic information control. People secretly listened to radio broadcasts from the South, and rumors from the outside spread through well-established networks of friends, relatives, and neighbors. Even if active resistance was minimal, there were those who quietly refused to believe the propaganda. Of course, no system of ideological control can ever be complete, and “totalitarianism” has never been as total as either the critics or supporters of communist regimes have claimed. Outward compliance could mask inner doubt and even “everyday acts of resistance,” as the experience of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union have shown. The everwidening gap between the glowing propaganda of the state and the dull reality of everyday life in the Soviet system had led to widespread cynicism long before the collapse of the communist states themselves. After five years of a highly compressed revolutionary experience in society, economy, politics, and culture, enthusiasm for the North Korean system had already begun to wane.According to interviews with North Korean residents during the UN occupation, mainly in the areas of Wo˘nsan and Hu˘ngnam, support for the communists had fallen most sharply among the peasants, who had originally been the greatest beneficiaries of the reforms.Although the U.S. military’s . Schramm and Riley,“Communication in the Sovietized State,” .The authors drew on the Air Force surveys for a longer study published as The Reds Take a City (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, ).

 



ability to quantify ideological indoctrination must be regarded with some skepticism, interviews with North Korean residents to determine their attitudes toward the UN Forces suggested varying degrees of disillusionment with the DPRK regime according to social group. Measuring from a high point of support for the regime around the time of the spring-summer  reforms, the following “disillusionment statistics” emerge:88 Group Factory and Common Laborers Farmers Students

Degree of Support for Regime : % : % : % : % : ? : %

Among industrial workers, support for the communist program had lessened but was still substantial. But support was highest among intellectuals and students, both in North Korea itself and in the areas of South Korea that had been occupied by the Korean People’s Army.89 George Orwell once said that in communism, as in Catholicism, “only the educated are completely orthodox.”90 It was the educated who truly believed, and it was the goal of the North Korean system to create more “correctly” educated people, and thus more believers. But what the educated, and others, believed in was not a pro-Soviet internationalism so much as a nationalist and inclusive Korean government in the North.91 Cultural production in North Korea was more than slavish imitation of the USSR.The message of nationalism and the emphasis on national liberation and independence in North Korean mass culture and propaganda were far more visible and strident than in any Soviet “satellite” of the time. Certainly many involved in the cultural area did not see a contradiction between Soviet-North Korean “friendship” and autonomous Korean cultural identity. Soviet influence and Korean nationalism were not necessarily incompatible. Outside observers spoke of a “cultural renaissance” in North Korea promoting native folk danc. National Archives Record Group , box . Headquarters, st Counter-Intelligence Corps Detachment, st Marine Division, Fleet Marine Force. “Communist Indoctrination of North Korean Civilian Populace,”  November , – .The U.S. military was optimistic that the majority of students who opposed the UN intervention “can be swayed by deeds” and come to understand that “only by joining their new government [i.e., the U.S.–UN–ROK occupation] can they realize the Korea they all hope for.” . Within days of “liberating” South Korea, the Korean People’s Army was able to rebuild the education system in the occupied areas with “politically acceptable” local teachers. See for example RG , SA , /, list of schools in South Cho˘lla Province,  July . . Cited in Kotkin, Magnetic Mountain,  n. . . This comes out repeatedly in the U.S. military studies of the North.The U.S. Marine Corps study, for example, concludes that “intense nationalism and enthusiasm of the people at eventually being permitted to participate in their own government were two of the principal factors contributing to the great degree of initial success achieved by this program.” RG , box . “Communist Indoctrination,” .



 

ing, music, literature, and drama.92 The distinctiveness of Korean culture, long suppressed under the colonial fiction of Japanese-Korean unity, underwent an explosive revival. The Soviet authorities not only allowed this revival to take place, but encouraged it.This was, again, a source of concern and grudging admiration to the American occupation forces in the South. In  a confidential U.S. military intelligence report concluded that the cultural policy of the Soviet occupation had created considerable good will by placing special emphasis on native Korea culture. Drawing on their vast fund of experience in working with minority groups in the USSR, the Soviet advisors on cultural affairs have encouraged the study of native folk dancing, literature, and music. . . .This attention given to the national culture will continue to pay large propaganda dividends to the People’s Committee.93

In other words, North Korean culture was, according to this analysis, “nationalist in form, socialist in content,” merely a mask for Soviet domination. But subsequent developments in the DPRK after the Korean War suggest that the relationship between nationalism and Soviet-style socialism in North Korea was the reverse, even in the late s. Or at least, the development of nationalist expression between  and  allowed the DPRK to assert its autonomy and distinctiveness from the Soviet Union after the war. By the late s this distinctiveness took the shape of juche socialism or what the DPRK calls “socialism of our style” (urisik sahoejuu˘i).This helped the DPRK to remain viable after the Mongolian People’s Republic, the one genuine Soviet satellite in Asia, lost its legitimacy after the collapse of communist states in Eastern Europe.Whatever its shortcomings, cultural formation in North Korea has shown a remarkable ability to survive. . John N. Washburn, “Russia Looks at Northern Korea,” Pacific Affairs , no.  (February ): . . “North Korea Today,” .

  

A Regime of Surveillance

Social Control in the Colonial Era Along with the emergence of a centralized state in early  came a system of domestic law, policing, and surveillance that was remarkably thorough and effective compared to its counterparts in many other postcolonial countries, including South Korea. This system of social regulation was both linked to, and necessary for, the construction of the political and economic systems outlined in our previous chapters. Effective law and order were an integral part of North Korea’s rush to modernity in the late s. In the first weeks after liberation, Japanese law was abandoned and a situation approaching anarchy prevailed in parts of Korea. But this legal vacuum was soon filled with local Korean ad-hoc organizations enforcing law and order, followed by the rule by ordinance of the occupying Red Army. After the Soviet Civil Administration was established in October , the Soviets helped first to reestablish colonial legal and juridical norms (with their Japanese overseers eliminated, of course), and then to assist their Korean allies in constructing a legal, judicial, and policing system along Soviet lines. Like so much else in North Korea in the late s, the system of law and social regulation combined Japanese colonial precedents and strong Soviet influences with elements distinct to the local Korean environment. The North Korean regime of surveillance involved both literal policing, which was more extensive even than during the highly regulated colonial period, as well as various types of “civilian” spying, social control, and enforced self-criticism.This system struck American observers as deeply anathematic to individual liberties, even suffocating in its suppression of individual rights for state-defined collective ends. American military intelligence in  reported 



 

that the North Korean security apparatus “combined the traditions of the Japanese thought control police with the ruthless efficiency of the Soviet Ministry of Internal Affairs.”1 This claim was somewhat exaggerated on both counts— North Korean internal security was neither as ruthless or as efficient as the U.S. military made it out to be—but it did point to the crucial combination of Japanese colonial legacies and Soviet influences that gave North Korea its unique character. If the Soviet influence on the North Korean surveillance regime appeared self-evident, the Japanese colonial elements lay somewhat under the surface; communist authorities made much of their elimination of the colonial bureaucracy, in contrast to South Korea, where even some of the most notorious collaborators, including highly visible members of the colonial security apparatus, were retained under the U.S. occupation and beyond.2 But the North Korean legal-governmental system built on the colonial legacy in a more complex way than did the South.The new regime attempted to radically change the composition and public perception of the security apparatus, but not its social role and authority. Social surveillance in the DPRK can be seen as an intensification of the evolution of social “policing” in its broad sense, as well as in the narrower sense of the term; modern forms of social policing were, in the case of Japan and its colonies, often the domain of the actual police, rather than other social agents as in the modern West.3 The regime also encouraged local self-policing and the self-regulation of individuals. A new culture of confession, autobiography, and narrativization of individual lives was widely propagated. It was uniformly striking to outsiders how quickly and pervasively this surveillance system emerged.4 As in other areas of the North Korean revolution that we have previously encountered, including economic planning and cultural production, Japanese and Soviet elements mixed together in the North Korean legal-governmental system. North Korean law, for example, combined features of both Japanese colonial law and Soviet law with certain elements reflecting a particularly Korean revolutionary experience. In general, the role of the state in policing and surveillance remained much the same as in the colonial period, including the actual colonial infrastructure—courts, police substations, and so on—which were . United States Army Forces in Korea, Assistant Chief of Staff, G-, Record Group , box . “North Korea Today,” –. . See Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes,  – (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ). . Colin Gordon,“Government Rationality:An Introduction,” in The Foucault Effect: Studies in Governmentality, ed. Graham Burchell et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), . . U.S. Military Government advisor Arthur C. Bunce, traveling to Pyongyang in , found an atmosphere of “pervasive fear and terror” in the North that was quite different from the optimism and energy he had encountered there only a year earlier. United States Army Government in Korea, Record Group , box .“Public Opinion Trends in North Korea,” .

  



utilized by the new regime.The North Korean case seems to suggest that a new state, perhaps especially a revolutionary one, needs to occupy the social space of the previous regime, to penetrate society to at least the same degree and fill any potentially threatening gaps of power. Therefore, the security structure of the colonial state was ostensibly removed but what took its place was remarkably similar.The DPRK advocated a sharp break with the past, but ultimately continued the penetration of the state into society, the regulation of everyday life, or what Michel Foucault called the “governmentalization of the state,”5 that was part of Korea’s experience of modernity. For Korea, this process of governmentalization was highly accelerated compared to the West,and the evolution from public punishment to prison to “thought control”as the primary means of social discipline in (North) Korea took decades rather than centuries. In late Choso˘n, as in China, Japan, and medieval Europe, law and punishment were used as displays of monarchical power, and punishment was physical, public, and often highly dramatic.6 This began to change at the end of the nineteenth century, starting with the Court Organization Law (Chaep’anso kuso˘ngbo˘p) of , part of the –  Kabo political reform movement, which contemporary Korean scholars mark as the beginning of modern law in Korea.7 In a matter of decades Korea moved from “torture as a weapon of the sovereign” to “prison and normalizing surveillance as the embodiment of modern disciplinary power,” a process that took several centuries in Europe.8 Whereas once punishment had been literally inscribed on the body, through beatings with bamboo sticks, the systematic use of incarceration gradually substituted for corporal punishment from the late nineteenth century onward. Political and judicial innovations based on Western, especially continental European, models entered Korea both directly from the West and indirectly through Japan. The British traveler Isabella Bird Bishop, visiting Seoul in , remarked favorably on this development, particularly in terms of prison reform.9 While “much remains to be done,” Bishop noted, “the great Seoul prison contrasts most favorably with the prisons of China and other unreformed Oriental countries.”10 What Bishop observed was precisely the move toward individualized, . Michel Foucault,“Governmentality,” in Foucault Effect, . . An overview of the Choso˘n legal system may be found in William Shaw, Legal Norms in a Confucian State (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). . Chulwoo Lee,“Modernity, Legality, and Power in Korea under Japanese Colonial Rule,” in Colonial Modernity in Korea, ed. Michael Robinson and Gi-wook Shin (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, ), . . Hubert L. Dreyfus and Paul Rabinow, Michel Foucault: Beyond Structuralism and Hermeneutics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ), . . Isabella Bird Bishop, Korea and Her Neighbors (; Seoul:Yonsei University Press, ), – . . Ibid.



 

incarcereal forms of punishment that Foucault traces for Europe: nominal abolishment of torture, rational classification of prisoners, well-lit cells for easy observation, elimination of the “spectacle” of punishment (no “severed heads and headless trunks” on display, Bishop happily noted). Colonization by Japan greatly accelerated the process of legal modernization in Korea, albeit through the imposition of Japan’s own legal system. After annexation in , the Japanese colonial authorities brought their police and justice system almost intact from the home country, where in a colonial environment its efficiencies were often less evident than its idiosyncrasies and abuses. As in Japan, the police in colonial Korea had much wider social duties than in most contemporary Western countries.They functioned not merely to enforce the law and restrain criminals, but more broadly the police were portrayed as the “moral guide and arbiter of society,” the overseer of “correct” thought and behavior, and the enforcers of state policy in a wide variety of areas.11 However,the police system Japan created in Korea was much more authoritarian than in the home islands. And whether the police themselves were Japanese or Korean, there is little doubt that they were among the most hated representatives of the colonial state by the majority of ordinary Koreans.The unpopular mission of the police in colonial Korea was not helped by their wide discretionary power, which could result in frequent abuses. Police had, for example, the right to pass “summary judgment” on those arrested, which usually meant flogging. To be arrested meant almost certain punishment, even if one was ultimately found innocent.12 By the time of the Japanese surrender in , the police had become probably the most despised symbol of colonial oppression. The colonial government insisted that “lack of order and discipline” was the basis of Korea’s backwardness, and the duty of Korea’s Japanese masters was to enforce such discipline, if necessary through the selective retention of “customary” Korean practices of punishment.13 This created a peculiar contradiction in the colonial “rationalization” of Korea’s legal-governmental system. On the one hand, a modern legal code was introduced after annexation to replace the  Korean criminal code; on the other hand, the crudest form of “traditional” punishment, flogging, actually increased during the colonial period. Flogging had been abolished in Japan itself as early as , but continued to be practiced in Korea until . Between  and , the percentage of convicted criminals flogged more than doubled, from  percent to  percent.14 Japanese officials and legal scholars justified the use of corporal punishment by the . Elise Tipton, The Japanese Police State:The Tokko in Interwar Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, ), . . Andrew J. Grajdanzev, Modern Korea (New York: John Day, ), . . Chul-woo Lee,“Modernity, Legality, and Power,” . . Ibid., .

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backwardness of the colonial subjects—daily life for most Koreans was little better than prison anyway, perhaps worse, so how could imprisonment be an effective punishment? Flogging itself, however, was made more “scientific” through careful regulation and the presence of doctors to ensure that the flogger did not inflict serious injury or death.15 The initial period of Japanese rule was one of direct military control, and the gendarmerie was the main instrument of law enforcement.After the introduction of civilian rule in , the gendarmerie was replaced by a civil police force.16 As in Japan, a centralized hierarchy and a wide distribution characterized the police force in colonial Korea. The Japanese goal in Korea was “one substation for every township” (myo˘n),17 which they in fact exceeded: while there were , myo˘n in Korea, by  the Japanese boasted of employing over , police distributed among  police stations and , substations.18 This was four times the number of police in Korea in the s, proportionately higher than in many regions of Japan, and comparable to the number of police in the most advanced nations of Europe.19 Unlike many other colonies, Korea had a high proportion of “natives” in its police force— percent of the total between  and , leveling off at  percent from , far higher than in colonial Taiwan.20 Moreover, the colonial authorities linked the police forces to traditional self-policing institutions, such as the baojia system of mutual aid among families in China and the authority of village elders in Korea.21 This, along with their sheer numbers, allowed the police to penetrate more deeply into society and enforce state policy more thoroughly than had ever been the case in Choso˘n times. The “rational,paternalistic” efforts of the police as agents of the state more often than not caused considerable resentment among ordinary Koreans. For example, the police enforced land surveys, nearly always in favor of landlords; in the s and s they conscripted people into the Japanese war effort; and, from the late s, they enforced the changing of names from Korean to Japanese. Japan’s Peace Preservation Law, extended to the colonies after , punished acts that were antikokutai (the Japanese “national essence,” embodied in the emperor), and from . Ibid., . . Ching-chih Chen,“Police and Community Control Systems in the Empire,”in The Japanese Colonial Empire,  –, ed. Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), . . Chen,“Police and Community Control Systems,” . . Japan-Manchukuo Yearbook  (Tokyo: n.p., n.d.), . . Chul-woo Lee,“Modernity, Legality, and Power,” . . Chen,“Police and Community Control Systems,”  –.This did not mean that Japanese and Korean police were equal: nearly three-quarters of police officers were Japanese, and Koreans were given the harshest and most unpopular duties. See Grajdanzev, Modern Korea, , . . Chen,“Police and Community Control Systems,” .



 

 “active belief ” in the kokutai was enforced. Local police, like their Japanese counterparts, introduced “thought reform” at all levels and formed anticommunist associations to dissuade Koreans from any wayward ideological tendencies.22 Like their counterparts in Vietnam, Korean communists were often “graduates” of colonial prisons, and their political and ideological strictness derived partly from their experiences as victims of colonial oppression.23 Prison served as a kind of training ground for communists who emerged from underground after liberation, among them individuals—such as Labor Minister O Kiso˘p— who took positions of responsibility in the new communist government in the North. The characteristic North Korean emphasis on ideological uniformity stems in part from the experience of communists who had been pressured to “convert” (tenko) and denounce their previous anticolonial affiliations after their arrest.24 Many communists, and noncommunist nationalists, did in fact convert; those who did not remained a small and deeply suspicious group. A handwritten memoir of a communist organizer during the colonial period, written some time after liberation and before the Korean War, illustrates the atmosphere of suspicion and determination such an experience engendered. Undated and unsigned, the memoir is interesting not only for what it reflects of the colonial period, but also as an example the importance of autobiography for the new regime, in which almost everyone seems to have been at some point asked to write a “life story” to the satisfaction of the state and its various branch organizations.25 The author, who may have been O Kiso˘p himself, was from the Hamgyo˘ng region in the Northeast and spent the better part of two decades in colonial prisons. From  to  he was incarcerated in Hamhu˘ng Prison, South Hamgyo˘ng Province, where some  – local Peasant Union and Communist Party members were detained. In  he was transferred to So˘daemun Prison in Seoul, then brought briefly back to Hamhu˘ng in , and finally back to So˘daemun in November . He describes tensions not only with anticommunists and turncoats, but also with the Japanese Communist Party, which directed Korean communists to surrender to the colonial police in order to agitate in prison. . Ibid.,  –. . David G. Marr discusses Vietnamese communists and the influence of their colonial prison experiences in Vietnamese Anticolonialism, – (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). In both cases, prison was also a “school” in the sense that political prisoners would be exposed to revolutionary literature and even hold group study sessions there. . Techniques of “converting” socialists and communists were quite notorious in Japan of the s and s; examples of this are recounted in Nym Wales and Kim San, Song of Ariran:A Korean Communist in the Chinese Revolution (New York: John Day, ). . RG , SA , /.“Account of Prison Activities in the Japanese Colonial Period.”

  



Once in prison, the communists constantly struggled with the “converts” (cho˘nhyangja) who had been turned fiercely anticommunist.26 Those who resisted conversion put their energies into evangelizing the inmates: We exposed [the turncoats’] reactionary pro-Fascist thought tendencies, and for the sake of defending proletarian internationalism and the Soviet Union, dedicated ourselves to the thought education of all the detainees.

The most important task was educating inmates in communist thought through discussion, debate, lectures, and even, at one point, the distribution of an underground newspaper.“Many comrades were made” in prison, the author notes. In June , however, there was a painful setback when a “mass conversion” decimated the ranks of communists. Some, hopefully, were “false converts” who had signed the tenko document “in order to save their lives and return to activity after release.” Others were “complete dogs,” to be treated with the utmost contempt.

Law and (Dis)order The months immediately after the Japanese surrender were a time of “lawless paradise” (mubo˘p nagwo˘n), as one Korean observer put it,27 or of “judicial anarchy,” in the words U.S. intelligence.28 One of the first acts of local self-governing groups was to abrogate all existing Japanese laws and create their own laws and methods of enforcement.But the maintenance of “law and order”took precedence over the fervor for sweeping away colonial vestiges, and in November , the newly formed Justice Bureau decreed that, with certain exceptions, “the laws and regulations which were abrogated  August  will continue in effect until new laws are published.”29 Japanese colonial law remained in effect until a new law code was promulgated in the spring of . The result was to a great extent a modified Japanese legal code combined with a Soviet-style judicial system, along with elements reflecting the nationalistic and mass-based policies of the emerging North Korean leadership under Kim Il Sung. In short, the legal system, like much else in postliberation North Korea, uniquely combined an East Asian revolutionary model and an East Euro. Cho˘nhyang was the Korean pronunciation of the Japanese term tenko (“conversion”). . Han Chaedo˘k, Kim Ilso˘ngu˘l kobalhanda (I Denounce Kim Il Sung) (Seoul: Naeoe munhwasa, ), . . United States Army, Intelligence (G-) Library, Record Group , Intelligence Summary North Korea (ISNK ), no.  (–  August ), .  Ibid.



 

pean Sovietization model with the legacy of the Japanese colonial experience and the anticolonial guerrilla struggle in China and Manchuria. In the first few months after liberation the regime coalescing in Pyongyang attempted to link itself to, and bring under its control, local experiments in setting up laws, courts, and policing systems that involved “popular participation” (minjungu˘i ch’amka) and a “democratic legal consciousness”(minjujuu˘ijok po˘bu˘isik).30 The primary target of this reform was not so much the legal system itself but the way it was enforced; law had often been little more than a tool of the colonial authorities, so that among the first legal reforms taken by local People’s Committees and the equivalent was the use of the vernacular language in law and the elimination of colonial-era legal personnel.31 Removal of all colonial civil servants was an expressed goal of the North Korea regime and a popular policy on the ground, and members of the legal profession were particularly notable targets.As one contemporary record put it,“since most current judges, police, and lawyers are pro-Japanese national traitors and oppose national construction, a non-Japanese judiciary has been constructed.”32 However, such a sweeping purge of colonial personnel was more problematic than these revolutionary pronouncements let on. Finding legal specialists who were untainted by collaboration was nearly impossible. North Korean sources warn that “the situation should be recognized in all fields, but especially in the judicial field, that much danger exists due to penetration by the reactionary and pro-Japanese elements.Therefore, more than in any other field, we should a establish a strict liquidation policy concerning the reactionary elements in the judicial field.”33 The Justice Bureau further declared,“We must immediately abolish all unfair laws of Japanese imperialism and enact new laws,”34 and initiated a training program to educate “progressive and democratic” personnel from among workers and peasants. However, in the first national election of judges in December , over three-quarters were samuwo˘n, . Fujii Arata,“The Formation of Legal System and Government Organs in North Korea,” in Kaiho to Kakumei: Chosen Minshushugi Jinmin Kyowakoku no Seiritsukatei (Liberation and Revolution:The Organizing Process of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), ed. Sakurai Hiroshi (Tokyo: Institute of Developing Economies, ), . . In the colonial period most procurators and judges were Japanese and Japanese was the language of the courts, which of course put Koreans at a great disadvantage. See Grajdanzev, Modern Korea, – . For a brief overview of the Japanese legal system in colonial Korea, see Dai-kwon Choi,“Development of Law and Legal Institutions in Korea,” in Traditional Korean Legal Attitudes, ed. Bong Duck Chun et al. (Berkeley: Center for Korean Studies, Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California), – . . Minjujuu˘i minjok cho˘nso˘n,Choso˘n haebang nyo˘nbo (Yearbook of Korean Liberation) (Seoul:Minu inso˘gwan, ), . . United States, Far East Command,Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), box , item . Pamphlet on the reorganization of the North Korean judicial system,  January , . . ATIS, box , item .“Reorganization of Judicial System,” .

  



or professional, background, who by definition must have been trained under the Japanese.35 The new regime clearly saw the taint of Japanese legal training as a major obstacle to introducing a “revolutionary” legal system to North Korea. Judges, prosecutors, and legal scholars, all trained under Japanese rule, were “mentally poisoned”; on the other hand, “progressive, democratic people” lacked legal training. Beginning December , , the Justice Bureau gave two-week legal training courses to selected individuals. Qualifications for judges, prosecutors, lawyers, and notaries public stressed politics, class, and gender above expertise. Firstly, one should not be a Japanese and a reactionary element of pro-Japanese [sic]; secondly, one should be faithful to the democratic principles. By studying all problems, men whom people want should be selected. Especially, offer opportunities so that the laborers, farmers, and general working people may participate. Also, such opportunities should be initiated and opened to women.36

Not only were political and class affiliation more important than technical expertise, the technical nature of Japanese legal education was precisely the problem: “The stressing of legal techniques of the past is wrong, absurd and . . . hinders the rehabilitation program.”37 Judges and prosecutors were told, You should learn to cast aside the formal legal sense of Japanese imperialism [and] lead the inexperienced police members in a friendly way to aid and advance them.

As for the police, the Justice Bureau reiterated the “extremely inharmonious” relationship between the police and the judiciary under colonial rule, a rift the new system was in danger of reproducing. Police were advised, You are the ones who directly contact the people in the front ranks. Before you show your arrogance in power and rights, first, learn to attain true legal knowledge with a humble attitude and to overcome your weak points. By doing so, you can become the people’s true representative of the police organization.38

The hostile relationship between the police and the people that characterized the colonial period was a problem the new regime strenuously tried to avoid. . Fujii,“Formation of Legal System,” . In  .% of judges were samuwo˘n, and workers and peasants combined made up only .%.These ratios were reversed by , which created problems of its own in the number of untrained judges who were barely literate, much less knowledgeable of the legal profession. . ATIS, box , item .“Reorganization of Judicial System,” . . Ibid., . . Ibid., .



 

Provincial courts and procurator’s offices were established in the fall of , starting with South Pyo˘ng’an Province, and from mid-December bureau officials were sent to the counties (kun) to organize and direct local courthouses at the county level. Despite such screening, Ch’oe Yongdal later admitted that as head of the Justice Bureau he had inadvertently allowed many “pro-Japanese elements” to sneak into the judiciary.39 The centralization of the legal and policing apparatuses took several months. A Justice Bureau was first announced on November , , at the FiveProvince Administration Meeting in Pyongyang.40 At the end of the meeting, the Five Province Administration set up ten government bureaus, each with a Korean department head and a Soviet advisor.41 Manchurian guerrilla veteran Ch’oeYonggo˘n was named head of the Security Bureau (poanguk),and the “Soviet-Korean” Cho Songp’a headed the Justice Bureau, later replaced by Ch’oe Yongdal. Ch’oe Yongdal explained the development of the North Korean legal system in the journal Inmin (The People) in November .42 On February , , the Bureau of Investigation, the Police Inspectorate, and the Legal Affairs Bureau were incorporated into a single Bureau of Justice. Although provincial judiciaries had arisen beforehand, they were now under the direction of a centralized legal and administrative system, headed by the Supreme Court and the Procuracy.There was a special court for the railroads. In the ninety-eight local organizations, legal structures were being established to replace Japanese imperial law ( Japanese law was still being used “selectively”).Tremendous effort and hardship had been required,“but we resolved all these difficulties with the skills of the democracy-loving people and the Soviet Red Army’s unsparing assistance.”Above all, there was a need to re-educate lawyers, eliminate “individualistic tendencies,” and emphasize public duty and organization.When all this was accomplished, a democratic legal system that served the benefit of the people would be in place. . RG  SA , /. Puk Choso˘n Nodongdang che ich’a cho˘ndang taehoe hoeu˘irok (Minutes of the Second Congress of the North Korean Worker’s Party), –. Dae-Sook Suh interprets Kim Il Sung’s criticism of Ch’oe as part of a “factional struggle” (Ch’oe was a “domestic communist”), but given the nature of the colonial legal system it seems very likely that any Korean trained in the legal profession would have been tainted by association with Japanese rule. See Suh, Kim Il Sung:The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, ), – . . Propaganda Section, Democratic National United Front, Haebang sanyo˘nganu˘i kungnaewae chungyo ilgi (Record of Important Domestic and International Events in the Four Years Since Liberation) (Seoul: Minju Choso˘nsa, ), . . Kim Yongbok,“Organization and Activities of North Korean People’s Committees After Liberation,” in Haebang cho˘nhusa u˘i insik (Understanding Pre- and Post-Liberation History), ed. Kim Namsik et al., vol , North Korea (Seoul: Han’gilsa, ), . . Ch’oe Yongdal, “For the Establishment of a Legal Structure,” Inmin , no.  (November ): –.

  



In late , Kim Tubong headed a thirty-one-member committee to draft a provisional constitution, which was completed the following February.43 According to a Western scholar who has examined the newly opened Soviet archives, “voluminous documentation” attests to the Soviet role in drafting North Korea’s constitution and early laws.44 Indeed, the  DPRK constitution did draw heavily from the  Stalin constitution, but a close reading of the two shows that the former was not merely a slavish copy of the latter.45 In particular, the first section on “Basic Principles” (which has no equivalent in the Soviet text) gives a very different nuance to the North Korean document, incorporating a broad-based, populist rhetoric rather than Soviet-style references to class struggle. Unlike the USSR, the DPRK does not refer to itself as a “state of workers and peasants” but says instead that “authority is in the people” (inmin). Moreover, its postcolonial concerns are obvious: a major goal is eliminating “remnants of the Japanese state,” and two of the ten basic principles refer to land reform. The DPRK’s legal system was more than the transplantation of Soviet law on to Korean soil. But the manner in which such a system could establish itself in North Korean society depended not just on its construction at the center, but equally on how this law and legal apparatus were applied at the local level.

People’s Justice Following the general pattern in postliberation North Korea, the legal system began with considerable autonomy on the part of local People’s Committees and gradually became centralized by early .What developed was a dual structure based largely on the Soviet model, with a court system descending from the Justice Bureau through the Supreme Court, provincial courts, and city and county People’s Courts (inmin chaep’anso), and a Procuracy (ko˘mch’also) extending from the procurator general (ko˘mch’alsojang) to the provincial and . Kim Tubong discusses the drafting of the constitution in RG , SA , /. Choso˘n imsi ho˘nbo˘p chunbi e kwanhan pogo (Report on the Preparation of a Korean Provisional Constitution) (Pyongyang: Propaganda Bureau, Pyongyang Special City People’s Committee, ). . Kathryn Weathersby,“Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, –: New Evidence from the Russian Archives,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. , Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, November , . Secondhand reports have long claimed that Soviet advisors drew up North Korea’s laws; see Lim Un, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea (Tokyo: Jiyu-sha, ), , and Eric Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone: Stalin’s Policy in Korea, – (Oxford: Berg, ), . . For one of the earliest published versions of the constitution, see the DPRK Justice Ministry’s Sabo˘p sibo (Legal Times), no.  (): –. The Stalin constitution is translated and reproduced in William E. Butler, The Soviet Legal System: Selected Contemporary Legislation and Documents (New York: Oceana, ), –.



 

local procurator’s offices.46 The Procuracy, responsible for the prosecution of crimes, preliminary investigation, and the supervision of other legal institutions, seems to have originally derived from the Japanese legal system.47 A decentralized Procuracy accountable to local People’s Committees become centralized along Soviet lines in February .48 A report on judicial reform from January  stated that while all provincial courts and procurator’s offices had been established, setting up the judicial system at the county (kun) level was incomplete “due to lack of funds, personnel, transportation, communications, etc.” On the whole, courthouses built by the Japanese were being used and Japanese laws enforced “for the time being.”49 Beginning in mid-December , the Justice Bureau sent officials to “organize and direct” in the districts.There were endemic problems of organization, lack of coordination between the center and regions and between public safety and judicial organs, and numerous instances of judicial personnel neglecting their duties.A few local leaders had been removed, including the chief of the Hwanghae Provincial Justice Department who had “issued serious antidemocratic regulations.” Above all the procurators, whose sweeping duties included not only supervising local legal proceedings but also overseeing public security organs, public safety, and prisons, were neglecting their duties and abusing their positions.50 Until the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee was established in early , central control was weak, local autonomy considerable, and ideological unity elusive. An April  report to the Justice Bureau from the Kangwo˘n Provincial Procurator’s Office gives an illustration of the process of instituting state centralization over the local judiciary. Immediately after liberation, local People’s Courts sprang up to enforce what at times was a rough justice. In the village of Ch’o˘rwo˘n, ten Japanese and one Korean “national traitor” were put before a public tribunal and condemned to death. In this case, the Soviet military directly intervened, freeing the Japanese and putting the Korean in prison.51 Similar examples of local justice occurred elsewhere in the province, mostly without the Soviet army to play a restraining role. A formal legal apparatus gradually took shape over the following months. In October, the Kangwo˘n Provincial People’s Committee established a People’s . ISNK, no.  (–  August ), . . For the procurator’s role in Japan, see Richard H. Mitchell, Thought Control in Prewar Japan (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, ). . Sung Yoon Cho,“The Judicial System of North Korea,” Asian Survey , no.  (December ): . . ATIS, box , item , . . Ibid., – . . RG , SA , /. Kangwo˘n Provincial Procurator’s Office,“Legal Activities in Kangwo˘n Province,”  April .

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Procurator’s Bureau, reorganized as the Procurator’s Office (ko˘mch’also) in November.A number of local procurator’s offices were organized in December. In January, the political center finally made itself felt by sending an officer from the Justice Bureau to be the provincial procurator.52 The Procuracy and the courts were merged into a single organization, and procurator’s offices were set up in most of the remaining counties. Even so, a stable system of law and order, much less totalitarian control, had not yet been realized. Relations between the legal and security organs were “relatively unified” but incomplete; the “thought tendencies” (sasang u˘i tonghyang) of the people had “improved,” but reactionary elements still instigated terrorist acts, opposition to land reform, and anticommunist agitation. Nevertheless, land reform had been widely supported by the peasants, the most notorious collaborators had been dealt with, and the children of reactionaries were coming around. The report gives the strong impression that, despite its considerable powers, the Procuracy—and by extension the Communist Party and the state— was still tentatively trying out to see what worked, trying to enforce a political order and a legal system that could be supported and engaged in by the bulk of the local population. The primary arena in which the local population encountered the legal system was the People’s Courts, located in major cities and county seats.The terminology and function of the People’s Courts was based on the Soviet model, although the trilevel system of People’s Courts—Provincial Courts—Supreme Court also paralleled the Japanese system of local courts—court of appeals— high court, and indeed the same colonial courthouses were often used. Judges were elected by the local community, as were the “people’s assessors” (an office with parallels in both the Soviet and Japanese systems) who assisted them. Court records for the city of Haeju and outlying counties give a sense of how these People’s Courts evolved and functioned.53 The first response to liberation in the Haeju area was, as elsewhere, the spontaneous organization of a group to maintain local order. In Chaemil County, after August  “in every area of the county pro-Japanese were smashed, while those who had committed violence against the workers were driven out by bands of armed students.”A county Committee to Maintain Political Security (ch’ian yujihoe) was formed as the “ruling force” in the area, which “gradually came under the control of the Provincial Public Security Bureau” from late September. . The appointment of the local procurator by the central government seems to have been intended not only to increase the control of the state, but also to ensure a more dispassionate procurator without a stake in local disputes—not unlike the ideal of the Confucian magistrate.With the judicial reorganization of February , city and county procurators were appointed by the provincial procurator, who was in turn appointed by the chief procurator, who was appointed by the Supreme People’s Assembly. The process of top-down centralization was complete. See ISNK, no.  ( – August ), . . RG , SA , /. Haeju People’s Court, “Local Situation and Activities,”  April .

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 

Local justice was enforced with little direction from Pyongyang for the remainder of . On January , , at the “request” of the local People’s Committee chairman, organizers from the Justice Bureau were dispatched to Chaemil to set up a People’s Court and Procurator’s Office. Relations between the legal and security organs were said to be good, and a “cooperative attitude” (hyo˘mnyo˘ngjo˘k t’aedo) existed between them. Despite problems with pro-Japanese elements and “terrorist groups,” opponents of land reform and other reactionaries had been dealt with in a “legal and democratic” fashion. By , the next available record of Haeju People’s Court, the legal system seemed well-entrenched and functioning.54 Legal procedure was strictly adhered to, and the constitution and specific laws from the  legal code were regularly invoked in judgments. A record of court judgments listed  cases covering a wide range of crimes, from forging money and dealing opium to theft, confiscating state-owned grain, tax evasion, and two mysterious cases of “feudal practices.” By far the most frequently cited crime, however ( cases) was “assisting (people) across the border” (wo˘lgyo˘ng annae), that is, to South Korea. Does this indicate a flood of discontents “fleeing communism?” In part, yes; Haeju’s location near the th parallel made it a logical place for people to attempt escaping from North Korea, and the  record also showed a large number of people (mostly big landlords, entrepreneurs, and “pro-Japanese elements”) having fled to the South or preparing to flee. But those (mostly poor peasants) who helped others to flee were apparently willing enough to stay themselves, and moreover were able to benefit from the increasingly solid division between the two halves of Korea.The “guides” were not only paid a handsome sum to help others across the parallel, but also profited from a brisk trade in smuggled goods.The severe punishments, usually ten to sixteen years in prison, indicate the seriousness of the problem.

Crime, Police, and Surveillance During the colonial period, the police force had been a frequently brutal instrument of state power. Immediately after liberation, the Japanese police and the Korean officers who had worked for them were targets of criticism, removal from power, and sometimes violent attack.55 Nevertheless, the organs of public . RG , SA , /. Haeju People’s Court,“Record of Cases,” . . Punishment of colonial police officers was a sure way for the new regime to draw public support, especially in contrast to South Korea, where many prominent colonial officials remained in power. For example, the first trial held in the Ch’ongjin People’s Court after liberation was of a police officer who had abused his position in ; the local newspaper reported that “thousands crowded eagerly at the entrance to the court” for the trial. Saegil Sinmun,  March .

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

security were built on the existing colonial police structure, with the old leaders eliminated; U.S. military intelligence reports note that although the colonial “police force was disarmed and higher-ranking officials jailed, the old organization itself was not disbanded.”56 Not surprisingly, the North Korean security structure was built on the foundations of the Japanese, and in some areas the Japanese police themselves remained in power briefly after liberation. Perhaps giving too much credit to the Soviet occupation forces, U.S. military intelligence at the time noted that “the Japanese police maintained order generally until the arrival of the Soviet forces,” after which the Red Army “established contact with Korean Communists and from this original contact a wide variety of local, communist-dominated, police or security detachments evolved.”57 Within a few months after liberation, Koreans who had been officers during the colonial period were barred from reentering the police force, and the North Korean authorities worked to rebuild a new police force composed of people without a collaborationist background, many of them members of the ruling party and often poor farmers from the local community. A township (myo˘n) police chief, recruited in , proudly told his American interviewers during the Korean War that “I won the respect of the people in my township.” The U.S. military concluded that “crucial to the Soviet objective, his most vigorous belief was in the complete reorientation of the police from its Japanese tradition.”58 In fact, the actual extent of Soviet responsibility for the creation of local police organizations was quite limited. According to Soviet sources, when the Red Army arrived in Ung’gi on the coast of North Hamgyo˘ng Province on August , , a “people’s police” formed of local worker-activists was created; a similar process took place down the coast in Najin.59 When the Soviets occupied Wo˘nsan on August , they ordered the local people’s police armed with Japanese weapons.60 But these were groups already organized by local Koreans, not Soviet creations; throughout most of North Korea, local People’s Committee or its equivalent formed security organizations on an ad hoc basis. These groups began to expand and consolidate with the arrival of communist and nationalist exile leaders and guerrilla fighters. After a few weeks, the two major security organizations were the Min’gyo˘ngdae (People’s Guards) established in the Hamgyo˘ng Provinces and Kangwo˘n Province, and the Cho˘g’u˘idae (Red Guards) dominating South P’yo˘ng’an.A Peace Preservation Corps, or . ISNK, no.  (–  November ), . . ISNK, no.  ( – June ), . . United States Department of State, North Korea: A Case Study in the Techniques of Takeover (; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ), . . Van Ree, Socialism in One Zone, . . Ibid., .



 

Ch’iandae, was set up to coordinate local militias, but apparently was not very effective.61 In mid-November, Ch’oe Yonggo˘n chaired a series of conferences for unifying the various local police forces.The resultant Security Bureau (poanguk) and the corresponding provincial security bureaus (poanbu), functioned “primarily [to adapt] the former Japanese police system to the demands of a new Korea.”62 In February  the Security Bureau was reorganized under the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee, and a centralized, coordinated police system emerged in the spring of . In February  the Security Bureau became the Bureau of Internal Affairs (Naemuguk) under the direction of Pak Iru, a member of the Yan’an group, and when the DPRK was established in September  this organization became the Ministry of Internal Affairs (Naemuso˘ng).63 An early textbook on “Social and State Organs of the DPRK” states that “the security apparatus (poan kigwan) is also created by the people,” in contrast to police in capitalist countries and the oppressive Japanese colonialists, while “in the South, the ‘National Defense Forces’ and police kill patriotic comrades.”64 As described by Ch’oe Yongdal, the duties of policemen included not just apprehending criminals, but also carrying out government policies such as land reform, the labor and gender equality laws, and nationalization of industries.65 In effect, the police were given broad social duties strikingly similar to those of prewar Japan, not to mention colonial Korea. Precisely because of these broad duties and the problem of policing under the Japanese, the Public Security bureau expressed great concern for the composition and popular image of the security forces. Heads of the provincial security organs first met in December ; at their second meeting in July , they claimed that “we have overcome factionalism, regionalism, and egocentrism and united under General Kim Il Sung’s thought.”66 Among their list of priorities, the first was defending Korea, and the second was acting under the guidance of the Soviet Army. The security forces were also required to propagate government policy and lecture students and “ordinary masses” on the affairs of the day. . ISNK, no.  (–  June ), . . Ibid. Reflecting its recurrent bias toward an assumption of Soviet domination in North Korea, the same report claims that “Soviet-Koreans” were in firm control of the security forces (p.), despite the fact that Ch’oe Yonggo˘n was a close associate of Kim Il Sung and fellow Manchurian guerilla fighter, not a member of the Soviet group, and other Manchurian veterans were strategically placed in key security positions. See Suh, Kim Il Sung, –. . Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), :. . RG , SA , /. Cultural Development Section, Ministry of National Defense,“Social and State Organs of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” February . . Ch’oe Yongdal,“Establishment of a Legal Structure,” . . RG , SA , /.“Minutes of Meeting of Security Bureau, July – , .”

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

The political and educational roles of the police included the duty to “eliminate historical feudal thoughts and instill democratic thoughts.” According to this report “feudal practices” were still a problem in the summer of , and landlords were not relinquishing their land three months after the official conclusion of land reform. Police were told in particular to beware of reactionary students, landlords, and religionists infiltrating from the South. Each provincial security apparatus had its own special duties; for example, North P’yo˘ng’an had a special mission to keep out Kuomintang elements crossing the border from China, and South P’yo˘ng’an had a disproportionate problem with “religious reactionaries.” This was to be a new kind of police force, one “from within the people” (inminsok eso˘ ). As Pak Iru, chairman of the North Korean People’s Committee Bureau of Internal Affairs, put it,“You must come from amidst the people and must have ceaseless comradely love [tongjiae] for the masses [minjung].”67 The Security Bureau specifically encouraged the recruitment of women, as well as farmers and workers, for police and security personnel.68 The North Korean police force was deliberately designed to contrast with the police of colonial times, arrogant and distant from “the masses”; it was to be composed as much as possible of members of the four oppressed groups: poor farmers, laborers, women, and young people. The relationship between the Democratic Youth League and the security forces was particularly close, and the DYL was also closely associated with the construction of the Korean People’s Army and, after , with military recruitment.69 The Ministry of Internal Affairs was by far the largest of the government departments in the DPRK,70 building on the Bureau of Public Safety, which itself had been a vast organization with branches in every county.71 Refugees from the North complained of inexperience, “arrogance,” and abuse by local policemen, but the general impression is that they were an improvement over the colonial period.For their part,the North Korean authorities announced that they would “punish severely” any policemen who abused their positions. A Hwanghae Province newspaper reported that “every morning police officers recite ‘Ten Commandments’ which they composed themselves, setting up the . RG , SA , /.. Pak Iru, “Letter to th Parallel Security Personnel and Democratic Youth League Self-Defense Forces,”  November . . RG , SA , /..“Minutes of First Meeting of Heads of Investigation Section of Provincial Security Bureaus,  July , p. . . See RG , SA , /. Choso˘n inmin kundae nae minch’ong sao˘pkyujo˘ng (Regulations on DYL Activities in the Korean People’s Army) (Pyongyang: Ministry of National Defense, Cultural Training Bureau, June ). . RG , SA , /. North Korean People’s Committee,“Personnel and Duties of Provincial (Pyongyang Special City), City, and County People’s Committees” (“top secret”), . . See ISNK, no.  (–  June ), .



 

principle of being good servants to the people.”The commandments included a disciplined social life, improvement through self-reflection, and a “sacrificing spirit.”72 Unlike police in the colonial period or in South Korea, North Korean police were expressly forbidden from using torture to extract confessions and apparently most abided by this rule, according to reports from the North at the time.73 But as in colonial times, arrest was ipso facto a demonstration of guilt, and police interrogation was expected to result in a confession of guilt from the detainee; the methods used to wring confession, however, were more psychological than physical, which was intended to distinguish the police practices of the new regime from the regular and notorious use of torture by colonial policemen. Dae-Sook Suh estimates that in North Korea as a whole, there were in addition to some twelve thousand regular policemen, a large number of “political thought police,” and around five thousand secret police, the latter modeled on the Stalin-era NKVD.74 Combined with the border patrols, constabulary, and other security forces, the total number of security personnel was comparable to that of the colonial period, if not greater. Communist party recruits and members of the Democratic Youth League were used to supplement the security forces; U.S. intelligence estimated a hundred secret police in the city of Hamhu˘ng, whose duties included the detection of any gatherings of over four of five persons.75 One defector gave the surveillance apparatus a biblical flourish by claiming that “wherever there were more than two people gathered, there was sure to be a spy.”76 Whatever their actual numbers, spies and informants were ubiquitous. Like Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon, the “gaze” of the state was, it seems, inescapable. In actual practice, the state was not as all-seeing as it appeared, and the sheer number of informants itself helped to make spying a clumsy and ill-coordinated venture. Ch’o˘rwo˘n County in Kangwo˘n Province offers a case in point. By , there were nineteen inspectors and nearly two hundred “intelligence agents” (cho˘ngbowo˘n) in the county, mostly poor peasants with a smattering of workers, middle peasants, and samuwo˘n.77 Much of the spying seems purely gratuitous.Thick files of “suspicious persons” circulated in the inspection offices, including people released from prison for petty crimes, opium addicts, people who had helped others cross the border, and large numbers of party members . Chayu Hwanghae,  February . . State Department, North Korea, . . Suh, Kim Il Sung, . . ISNK, no.  (– March ), . . Wilbur Schramm and John W. Riley Jr. “Communication in the Sovietized State, As Demonstrated in Korea,” American Sociological Review , no.  (December ): . . RG , SA , /.“Intelligence Agents, Ch’o˘rwo˘n County, .”

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

who were for one reason or another politically suspect.78 Yet for all the spying, almost nowhere does one find a person actually apprehended for any “socially dangerous activity” (sahoejo˘k wiho˘mso˘ng); perhaps, in fact, the creation of a “regime of surveillance” was a purpose in itself. Certainly the legacy of the colonial “thought police” and the influence of Soviet secret police methods, along with the very real presence of anticommunist spies from the South, gave the new regime rich soil in which to nourish a society of mutual suspicion and surveillance. Crimes were broadly divided into two types, economic and political. Until about  the majority of criminals in the DPRK were convicted of political crimes, especially those related to aiding the anticommunist elements from South Korea before, during, and in the years immediately following the Korean War.79 As postwar North Korean society reconsolidated and the immediate threat of southern infiltrators receded, crimes of an economic nature became more prominent. Political crimes in turn were divided into five categories: reactionary activity, treason, arson and assassination, leaflets and agitation, and proJapanese activity.80 As in the early Soviet Union, prisons in North Korea were called “educational institutions,” and their ostensible purpose was not so much to punish prisoners, as to reeducate them to become productive members of society.81 Prisoners were divided into two broad types:those convicted of lesser economic and political crimes who were “working prisoners,” assigned to labor camps and work in mines, prison factories, and the like; and those convicted of more serious crimes and who were repeat offenders or otherwise incorrigible.The latter prisoners did not work, and were often held in solitary confinement.They received half the rations of the working prisoners, faced intense “reeducation” programs, and according to reports of North Korean refugees “were left to die if indoctrination failed.”82 From , the center of local surveillance, the primary “cells” that were to link together the political body to the center and enable the state to observe the populace and disseminate its policies, was the Ministry of Internal Affairs and its branches in the provincial, city, and county People’s Committees. At all levels, Internal Affairs was the largest government department; in the counties, for example, the Internal Affairs Office (naemuso) included ten sections covering . RG , SA , /. Several files of “Suspicious Persons” and “Party Members Under Surveillance,” Ch’o˘rwo˘n County, –. . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. . State Department, North Korea, . . Ibid., . . Ibid.



 

culture, information, public safety, and other areas. Of the Ch’o˘rwo˘n County People’s Committee’s  members,  were in Internal Affairs.83 For all “suspicious persons,” careful maps were drawn showing their residences in relation to the Internal Affairs Office, a common practice during the colonial period. Rather than power extending downward from an imposing political leadership, the attempt was to create a system of control that extended outward from the center of the basic local political units.The “governmentalization” of society had reached a new level of thoroughness and effectiveness in Korea. Local surveillance relied on small groups of three to ten informants, usually members of the Democratic Youth League or Worker’s Party, who reported to the Internal Affairs Office once or twice a month.84 In the early stages of the Korean War, interviews with North Korean residents by the U.S.–UN occupation forces concluded that the surveillance regime had been “quite effective” at eliminating any serious opposition to the new regime. [O]rganized resistance was non-existent, and unorganized attempts at resistance were immediately quashed by the omniscient informant network. And—a final measure of the effectiveness of the police—the people accepted the impossibility of resistance.85

There was also a very low crime rate in the North, except in the case of political crimes. As the division between North and South solidified and tensions mounted across the th parallel after the creation of the two new Korean states, fear of Southern infiltrators grew, and internal security and surveillance tightened even more.

Internalizing Security After the creation of the Democratic People’s Republic in , the North Korean documents show an increasing concern with external dangers to the nation and social discipline appears increasingly militarized. Although references to “reactionary elements” and “national traitors” within North Korea diminishes, criticism of reaction and national betrayal is increasingly focused on South Korea and talk of “defending the Fatherland” (choguk powi ) escalates. At the same time,there is a move away from the negative elimination of “bad elements” . RG , SA , /.“Personnel and Duties of People’s Committees.” . State Department, North Korea, .The State Department study suggests the informants reported to the police once a month, but local records such as the Ch’o˘rwo˘n surveillance files show reports to the Internal Ministry office every two weeks. . State Department, North Korea, .

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

to the positive creation of “thought unity” within the party and local People’s Committees and the spiritual and physical training of individuals, all linked in turn to the defense of and integration into the state that represents the “national subject,” the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.There is, in short, an unbroken continuum from the internal discipline of the individual to the external defense of the nation. Local counties and villages were linked to the national security/military complex through the Self-Defense Units (chawidae), supervised by the Procurator’s Office, which was in turn part of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Selfpolicing institutions were a common feature of traditional Korean villages, but it was the Japanese colonial authorities who first linked these organizations effectively to the centralized police forces and the state.86 The North Korean state also drew on this system of local self-defense, but the social hierarchy was reversed: rather than being headed by the village elders, held in respect due to their age and perhaps a modicum of Confucian education, the local Self-Defense Units were run by local peasants who were generally both poor and young. In the village of Tongmyo˘n in South P’yo˘ng’an, for example, most of the twenty Self-Defense Unit members employed in the local police substation were in their early thirties, all were poor peasants, and two were women.87 The responsibilities of the Self-Defense Units were broad, including the dissemination of state policy (including foreign policy), protection against “infiltration of reactionary elements,” and security from fire and theft.88 At the first meeting of the Tongmyo˘n Self-Defense Unit in October , the members promised to “work for the benefit and productivity of the local people,” to “expose and smash reactionaries and puppets and their helpers,” and above all to “overcome all difficulties and discipline (hullyo˘nhada)” themselves “for obedience to the demands of the state.”89 Disciplining the Mind In the North Korean surveillance regime, social discipline was ideally not something to be imposed by outside regulation and coercion. Discipline was to be internalized through self-examination and reform at the individual level, and “thought struggle”leading to “thought unification”at the collective level.North . Likewise, the Japanese in Taiwan made effective use of the traditional Chinese baojia neighborhood family system of local security. See Chen,“Police and Community Control Systems,” . . RG , SA , /. “Personal History of Each Village Guard,”Tongmyo˘n Police Sub-Station,  (“top secret”). . RG , SA , /. Poster on responsibility and mission of Self-Defense Units, belonging to Cell Section, Kangwo˘n Provincial Public Procurator’s Office,  November . . RG , SA , /.“Record of the First Meeting of the Self-Defense Unit,”Tongmyo˘n Police Sub-Station,  October .



 

May Day, : physical education teams on parade, Pyongyang, May , . Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

Korean communism shared with its counterparts in China and Vietnam, as well as (with a different ideological content) prewar militarist Japan, a strong emphasis on drawing the wayward individual into political conformity through reeducation and reform rather than physical coercion and punishment.The most dramatic example of this was the public ritual of “self-criticism” (cha-a pip’an or chagi pip’an). Originally a Soviet technique, self-criticism was used to a much greater degree by the North Koreans and Chinese, and became well-known in the West during the Korean War as part of communist “brainwashing.”90 It may be that in cultures deeply influenced by neo-Confucian notions of the innate goodness and spiritual malleability of human beings, all deviants are in theory capable of being reformed through self-reflection and reeducation.91 Self-criticism was the public expression of this reform, through which the genuinely repentant indi. RG  contains a “handbook” on self-criticism, a translation of a  Soviet document, which states that “self-criticism [chagi pip’an] is a method of promoting revolutionary consciousness of party members, cadres, and ordinary working-class.” RG , SA , /. Propaganda Section, Chinnamp’o Korean Communist Party Committee, May . Party members also circulated translations of Chinese articles on “Thought Guidance” by Mao, Liu Shaoqi, Zhu De, and others, indicating the mix of both Soviet and Chinese influences in postliberation North Korea. See RG , SA , /. . Prewar Japanese tenko (conversion) of “thought criminals” used techniques quite similar to later North Korean and Chinese “reeducation.” See Mitchell, Thought Control, – .As mentioned earlier, many Korean communists had themselves been objects of tenko campaigns during the colonial period.

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

vidual could be reintegrated into the community. Its quasi-religious nature has often been noted, although the public nature of self-criticism is much more like evangelical Protestant “testimony” than Catholic confession.92 What the Korean communists called “thought unity” (sasang t’ongil ), or what the American observers in their characteristic fashion called “totally conditioned public opinion,”93 was a theme the state and every social organization in North Korea constantly stressed.This stress on ideological conformity derived not only from Soviet influences, but also was clearly resonant with the relentless “thought policing” of the late colonial period, albeit with a very different political content.The North Korean regime put enormous resources into propaganda, as we have seen in the previous chapter, both to encourage support for the regime as well as to uproot subversive ideas that might aid the Americans and the South Korea agents who were suspected behind every corner.Thought had to be free of all reactionary taint and politically pure.The undisciplined mind was a thing to be feared. Disciplining the Body One final object of discipline stressed in the North Korean literature was the human body.Immediately following the creation of the DPRK,there was a considerable emphasis on hygiene, sports, and physical purity.The individual had a duty to perfect his physical condition in order to strengthen the society and better serve the state. In particular, there was an emphasis on large, coordinated group sporting events, the precursors of the “mass games” that would in later years be a hallmark of North Korean entertainment for visiting foreign delegations. In North Korea of the s, images abounded of parades of young athletes carrying flags, group calisthenics, and public drills celebrating holidays and events of all kinds. This too had a resonance not only with the Soviet Union and other communist societies, but also prewar Japan and, further afield, the mass-mobilizing states of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. The extent to which society was portrayed as an organic unit to which the individual contributed his entire physical and spiritual being,in which “all hearts beat as one” (to use a later North Korean phrase), was probably closest to Imperial Japan.But,as John Dower has pointed out,the Japanese government chose to portray such a rigid image of national unity precisely because many feared that the masses did not share in the virtues the state espoused.94 The state seemed . For a brief description of self-criticism in North Korea, see Schramm and Riley,“Communication in the Sovietized State,” . . State Department, North Korea, . . John W. Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War (New York: Pantheon, ), . For an interpretation of North Korea as a “corporatist” organic state, see Bruce Cumings,“Corporatism in North Korea,” Journal of Korean Studies  (): – .

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 

to be attempting to create a sense of unity and political cohesion in part through the active involvement of the individual in public, physical displays of bodily conformity. These would not be the “docile bodies” that Foucault refers to,95 but “active bodies” moving in choreographed unity, sports reflecting the indivisible purpose of the nation in all areas of politics, economics, and culture. The well-trained individual body was a synecdoche of, and a prerequisite for, a well-functioning body politic. Both had to be disciplined, strong, and determined. The inaugural issue of Inmin ch’eyuk (People’s Physical Education) in February  proclaimed that physical training “will help realize complete national unification and democratic development.”96 Physical education was the “firm foundation” of the people’s economic development and the defense of the fatherland. Although there were already more than , members of , athletic groups in the North, there was still a need to “permeate physical education more broadly among the people,” to replace the antiquated Japanese physical education system, and to educate all people in the workplace, farm, and school to become good comrades. Everywhere the nation was supposed to walk in step, both literally and figuratively. . Foucault, Discipline and Punish, trans.Alan Sheridan (New York: Vintage, ),  –. . RG , SA , /. Inmin Ch’eyuk , no.  (February ): .

  

The People’s State

Party, State, and Society The creation of a separate state in North Korea could be seen on the horizon from as early as the spring of  and was all but officially declared by . The failure of U.S.–Soviet negotiations on Korea, the development of separate power centers in Seoul and Pyongyang, and the solidification of the th parallel as the dividing line between two very different political and social systems made the peaceful establishment of a unified government increasingly unlikely. Two rounds of U.S.–Soviet talks on implementation of the December  Moscow Agreement ended in deadlock. Finally, on October , , the Soviet delegation abandoned the talks with the Americans in Seoul.The U.S.– Soviet Joint Commission was now defunct, and the United States handed over the “Korea Question” to the United Nations. The latter established a United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK) in November , whose mandate was to oversee nationwide elections. Barred from entering the North by the Soviets and the North Korean People’s Committee, UNTCOK was left with observing elections in the South alone. South Korean elections were held in May , and in August Syngman Rhee became the first president of the new Republic of Korea in Seoul. Meanwhile, the North Korean People’s Committee initiated a furious propaganda campaign to discredit Rhee, the Americans, the South Korean elections,and UNTCOK.South Korean political leaders were invited to Pyongyang to discuss ways to avert “a crisis of national division” and work out a peaceful unification between what was already in effect two separate governments. Most of the prominent political figures based in the South, including the rightist Kim 

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Ku and the moderate Kim Kyusik, attended the event. Rhee, not surprisingly, was noticeably absent.The meeting between North and South Korean leaders began on April , , at Moranbong Theater in Pyongyang. Some  representatives of forty-six political parties were in attendance.1 Kim Il Sung, in his opening address, declared that the purpose of the meeting was “crushing the villainous plot of the traitors Rhee Syngman and Kim Sung Su,” who were nothing but lackeys of the Americans. “It has been proved clearly,” Kim said, “that American imperialism is making our country one of the U.S. colonies. . . . If we don’t crush the plots that divide our fatherland, we will be in perpetual slavery to American imperialism.”2 The meeting ended on April  with a declaration of unity against American designs to divide the country and a call to boycott the UN-supervised elections.3 But such talk of unity and defiance did little to obstruct the election process already under way in the South. On August , , the third anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial rule, the first Republic of Korea government was born in Seoul.Three weeks later, on September , the Democratic People’s Republic was announced in Pyongyang. North Korean authorities attacked the South Korean elections as illegitimate and claimed that underground elections had been held in the South as well as open elections in the North for seats in the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) in Pyongyang, headed by Kim Tubong.The SPA declared the founding of a new Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (Choso˘n minjujuu˘i inmin konghwaguk) under Premier Kim Il Sung.4 In fact, as we have seen, the centralization of the party and the state in North Korea had been completed well before September , and even the term “Democratic People’s Republic” had been in circulation on internal Workers’ Party and People’s Committee documents since mid-. Most of the political, economic, and social institutions of the new state were fully in place by the spring of .The one remaining major state institution to be created was a national army, and that too was in place months before the DPRK itself was officially established. The North Korean leadership was clearly aware by the end of  that conflict with the emerging regime in the South was a serious prospect in the near future. To defend against that contingency, the central People’s Committee in late  began to draw various defense and security forces into a full-scale mil. For a North Korean account of this meeting, see Kim Il Sung, “New Year’s Message,” Kug’an t’ongsin, no.  ( January ): . . Hoover Institution, Stanford University, Radio Pyongyang transcription, folder no. ,  April . . Radio Pyongyang,  April . . RG , SA , /. Choso˘n ch’oego inminhoeu˘i cheil ch’a hoeu˘i chungyo munho˘njip (Important Documents on the First Congress of the Supreme People’s Assembly of Korea) (Seoul: Inmin ch’ulp’ansa, ), –.

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“The children of North Korea are so free, children singing and dancing at a democratic school.” Pyongyang, . Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

itary force, a Korean People’s Army (KPA) that was officially born in February .The KPA, like the DPRK itself, was formed as a reaction to events in the South and the perception of U.S. and South Korean aggressive intentions against North Korea.The army and the irregular military forces—the pro-North Korean guerrillas in the South—were also intended to “extend the revolution” to the South in the event of a collapse of the South Korean regime or the outbreak of war. Even before the KPA was inaugurated, North Korea had become a highly militarized society, as we have seen in earlier chapters. In a pattern that should by now be quite familiar, this militarization combined the key elements that contributed to the North Korean system as a whole: the militarization of North Korean society was built on the Japanese colonial legacy of wartime mobilization, led by veterans of the guerrilla wars in Manchuria and China, and equipped and advised by the Soviet Union. Between the formation of the DPRK in September  and the outbreak of the Korean War in June , the party, state, and military apparatuses in North Korea underwent a rapid process of consolidation and strengthening. The interconnection among these institutions represented the culmination of the “total system” whose creation had been in process since the central People’s Committee was formed in early . North Korea was, if not “totalitarian,” certainly “mono-organizational” in the political scientist T. H. Rigby’s sense of a unified party-state system allow-

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ing for only one legitimate channel of political expression and attempting to monopolize economic, cultural, and other aspects of ordinary life.5 The partystate-military triumvirate, inspired by the USSR but with distinctly Korean characteristics, was fully in place by  and would dominate the North Korea system for decades to come. From North Korean Workers’ Party to Korean Workers’ Party At the end of June , the North Korean Workers’ Party (NKWP) merged with the South Korean Workers’ Party (SKWP) to form a single unified Korean Workers’ Party across the North and the South. On June , at the Joint Plenary Meeting of the Central Committees of the two parties in which the merger was effected, Kim Il Sung declared that the KWP was “a single party with a single leadership” and cautioned against any future “factional and sectarian activities.”6 The following day, the new Korean Workers’ Party held its first Central Committee plenary meeting to elect the party leadership.7 Kim Il Sung was elected chairman; the former SKWP leader Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng was elected first vice chairman, and “Soviet-Korean” Ho˘ Kai was elected second vice chairman. Ho˘ was also elected first secretary, and southerners Yi Su˘ngyo˘p and Kim Samyong were named second and third secretaries, respectively.8 The charter and regulations of the NKWP remained unchanged in the newly merged party. In effect, the SKWP had been absorbed into its northern counterpart. The second KWP Central Committee Plenary Meeting took place in midDecember, .9 Kim Il Sung delivered a report on the recently completed Cominform meeting in Budapest, Ho˘ Kai spoke on the party’s work in carrying out the two-year DPRK economic plan, and Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng reported “On the Strengthening of Party Members’ Ideological, Political, and Cultural Works and the Tasks of the Party Organizations.”10 The newly unified party was to devote its energies to national construction, political and ideological unification, and solidarity with the socialist bloc. Pak in particular emphasized that a strengthened DPRK would be the basis for the future unification of the fa. T. H. Rigby,“Politics in the Mono-Organizational Society,” in Authoritarian Politics in Communist Europe: Uniformity and Diversity in One-Party States, ed. Andrew C. Janos (Berkeley: University of California Press, ). . Kim Il Sung, Selected Works, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Language Publishing House, ), . . Robert Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, Communism in Korea (Berkeley: University of California Press, ), :. . Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung:The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, ), . . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. . RG , SA , /. Rodongdang chung’ang wiwonhoe cho˘nggi munho˘njip (Collected Documents from the Meetings of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party) (Pyongyang: Rodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, ), – ,  –.

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Local self-defense forces, Kangwo˘n Province, . Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

therland as a completely independent state, based on friendship with the USSR and fierce struggle against the United States and its lackeys in the South.11 The unified KWP was an extension of what the Workers’ Party had been in North Korea, what Kim Il Sung had pushed the Communist Party to be since the Sinu˘iju debacle of December : a politically disciplined, socially inclusive party under the firm control of a tightly knit party elite, led by Kim himself. From the People’s Committee to the Democratic People’s Republic North Korean sources explained the creation of the DPRK in September  as a reaction to events in the South; as Kim Il Sung put it,“traitors, in collusion with the U.S. imperialists, finally established a separate, puppet government and are demanding that the U.S. troops remain in south Korea on a long-term basis.”12 According to this logic, once a “puppet state” had been es. KWP CC Documents, –. . Kim Il Sung, “The Political Programme of the Government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” Selected Works, vol.  (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), .

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tablished in the South, a truly sovereign democratic state had to be established in the North, which would eventually unify North and South under its auspices. In fact, however, North Korean references to the “Democratic People’s Republic of Korea” appeared well before the South Korean elections.13 Symbols of the new state, including the state seal and a new national anthem, were publicly propagated before the state itself was made official. In July , for example, Kim Tubong announced that a new national flag would replace the t’aegu˘kki, which had been the Korean flag since the s and is still the flag of the ROK. Kim Tubong criticized the t’aeguk or u˘myang (yin-yang) and trigrams of the t’aegu˘kki as “feudal” and foreign, imported symbols from China that reflected traditional Korea’s despised sadaejuu˘i or subservient mentality toward China.The new ingonggi (“People’s Republic flag”), on the other hand, with its socialist red star and red, blue, and white stripes, was reflective of the new, progressive, democratic Korea.14 The DPRK adopted its name from the defunct People’s Republic of Korea formed in Seoul immediately after liberation. But partly to distance itself from the “bourgeois” Korean People’s Republic, partly out of solidarity with the new “people’s democracies” in Eastern Europe, the North Korean regime added the word “democratic” to its title.The DPRK claimed to represent a socially inclusive united front. As we have seen earlier, North Korean society was carefully defined as consisting of a number of specific groups, usually listed as workers, peasants, and samuwo˘n. This trinity, adding the stratum of intellectuals and bureaucrats to the standard Leninist worker-peasant alliance, appeared in the  Soviet Constitution15 and was a motif for other East Asian revolutionary states as well, including Vietnam.16 Very early on, however, the language of class division was subordinated to the language of national unity, and class struggle was collapsed into national struggle. Writing in the party theoretical journal Inmin, Kim Wo˘nbong explained shortly after the DPRK was founded that the North Korean state was a “genuine people’s regime” because the central government “represents the will of the whole Korean people, and is constructing a completely unified sovereign . See, for example, RG , SA , /. Kim Il Sung,“The Road to Establishing the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea,” November . . RG , SA , /. Kim Tubong, Sin kukkiu˘i chejo˘ng kwa t’aegu˘kki palcho˘nge daehayo˘ (For the Establishment of the New National Flag and the Elimination of the T’aegu˘kki) (Pyongyang: Rodong sinmunsa, ). Kim also criticized the t’aegukki as “unscientific.” Radio Pyongyang,  April . . The  Soviet Constitution presented peasants and workers as the two “nonantagonistic classes” and intellectuals as a “stratum.” Sheila Fitzpatrick,“New Perspectives on Stalinism,” Russian Review  (): . . See Christine Pelzer White, “The Vietnamese Revolutionary Alliance,” in Peasant Rebellion and Communist Revolution in Asia, ed. John Lewis (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ), – .

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independent state of our fatherland.”17 This was closer to the populist-organicist notion of “the people” found in Maoism than the class analysis of Marx or Lenin.18 There were “people” and “nonpeople”: the former where the genuine community, living within North Korea, and the latter were outside, traitors in the South and imperialists. As Kim Wo˘nbong put it, the DPRK “has expelled all pro-Japanese and national traitors and is a pan-national unified government established by the representatives of the patriotic people, including workers, peasants, samuwo˘n, intellectuals, and petty bourgeoisie.”19 Writing in the same issue of Inmin, Yun Sep’yo˘ng argued that the DPRK was democratic because its Supreme People’s Assembly was truly representative of the social composition of North Korea, in contrast to the pseudodemocracy of landlords, big capitalists, and reactionaries in the South. Unlike Eastern Europe, however, in which class struggle was the central concern, Korea was a semifeudal, postcolonial society, and the most important task for the new state was preserving Korea’s sovereign independence through a united front that could trace its lineage directly back to the anticolonial struggle—in particular the Fatherland Restoration Society (Choguk kwangbokhoe), allegedly organized by Kim Il Sung in Manchuria in .As we will see in more detail below, by the time the DPRK was founded Kim’s Manchurian experience had taken on the aura of myth.20 According to these analyses, the DPRK represented the oppressed, subordinate strata of Korean society—workers and peasants above all—who in turn represented the whole Korean people; all became one class/people/nation.This was a unified, organically connected society juxtaposed against external enemies and their collaborators.The state served as the representative of the Korean nation in its resistance against U.S. imperialist domination. Such a view of the world had less in common with Marx or Lenin than with Sin Ch’aeho, the pioneering Korean historian of the turn of the twentieth century, who wrote of human history as a record of the struggle between “I” (a) and “non-I” (pi-a), between one nation (minjok) and another.21 It was Hegelianism and Social Darwinism more than Marxism or Leninism. The struggle between nations, not classes, was the motor of history. Few phrases could be farther removed from Marx’s declaration that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,”22 yet more reflective of North Korea’s consistent ideological . Kim Wo˘nbong,“The Political Platform of the DPRK Is a Platform of the United Struggle of the Korean People,” Inmin , no.  (October ): . . See Maurice Meisner,Marxism,Maoism,and Utopianism (Madison:University of Wisconsin Press, ). . Kim Won-bong,“Political Platform of the DPRK,” . . Yun Sep’yo˘ng,“The Popular Character of the DPRK,” Inmin , no.  (October ): – . . See Sin Ch’aeho, Choso˘n sanggosa [Ancient history in Korea], ed.Yi Man-yo˘l (Seoul: Inmul yo˘n’guso, ), vol. . . Robert C.Tucker, ed., The Marx-Engels Reader, d ed. (New York:W.W. Norton, ), .

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outlook going back to the beginnings of the regime than the statement “Human history is a history of struggle of the people for Chajusong [autonomy].”23 The Leader and the Masses: Origins and Dissemination of the “Kim Cult” What would later be called juche or “self-reliance” (after the s) or “Kim Il Sung-ism” (from the s onward) was thus a species of nationalism, one that emerged out of a resistance to Japanese colonialism and transferred that enmity to what was represented as American imperialist designs on the Korean peninsula.At the center of this was the person and image of Kim Il Sung, who within three years of his return to Korea in September  was the object of a nearly ubiquitous “cult of personality” that included songs, poems, films, and even a university dedicated to General Kim.The cult of the suryo˘ng (Supreme Leader)24 was clearly influenced by the corresponding cults of Stalin and Mao, and at a more subliminal level reflected elements of the Japanese emperor cult and Christianity. But the Kim cult would go well beyond Stalinism and Maoism in its pervasiveness, longevity, and extension beyond the individual to the family of the Great Leader himself. This family cult had already begun before the Korean War, and Kim’s immediate family became a kind of substitute and symbol for the family of the Korean nation. In the use of family metaphors and symbols, North Korean nationalism has been typical of postcolonial nations, if more literal than most. For a postcolonial people, as Homi Bhabha remarks,“The nation fills the void left in the uprooting of communities and kin, and turns that loss into the language of metaphor.”25 These metaphors of “community and kin” were central to the North Korean representation of the nation.As in all effective nationalisms, North Korea extended outward the concept of agnatic kinship, routinizing family metaphors until they no longer seemed metaphorical and took on a concrete literalness. Over time these symbols would evolve into the “fatherly leader,” the “mother party,” and the son as the legitimate heir to the Great Leader. However, in the case of North Korea this postcolonial nationalism was played out within the context of a socialist party-state. Nationalism and state socialism were mutually reinforcing, creating an ideology of extreme centralization.As the political philosopher Claude Lefort observes, what distinguishes the political ideology of “actually existing socialism” is this emphasis on the political center, . Kim Han Gil, Modern History of Korea (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, ), . . Although the term suryo˘ng was used occasionally for Kim as early as , it did not become his standard title until the late s. In the late s suryo˘ng was still used most commonly to refer to Stalin in his capacity as supreme leader of the communist world. . Homi K. Bhabha, “Introduction: Narrating the Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha (London: Routledge, ), .

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which “is not the resurrection of an old political system which is grafted on to industrial society, but rather the attempt to close the social space in on itself from the imaginary center of the institution.”26 The Leader becomes the personification of the center by means of which society is woven together into a seamless whole. “One heart, united” (ilsim tangyo˘l ) was to become the organic metaphor of North Korean indivisibility. The Kim cult combined images of Confucian familism with Stalinism, elements of Japanese emperor worship, and overtones of Christianity. Confucian familism, and particularly the virtue of filial piety (hyo), was perhaps the most distinctly Korean element of this “cult.” Kim’s revolutionary family background was frequently stressed in the propaganda literature, focusing especially on his father, who was a member of an anti-Japanese nationalist organization when Kim was a child. Thus, Kim Il Sung was a filial son (hyoja), perhaps the most revered virtue in Confucian Korea, carrying on his father’s legacy. Of course, the precedent of Stalinism played a role in this cult formation, and the term suryo˘ng itself seems to have been used as a translation of Stalin’s title vozhd’ (“chief”). But suryo˘ng had a deep resonance in Korean history, going back to the tribal chieftains of Koguryo˘, and was a term of great respect for political leaders in postliberation Korea, including Yo˘ Unhyo˘ng and Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng in the South (before Pak became a subordinate of Kim’s).The use of suryo˘ng for Kim Il Sung began shortly before the DPRK was founded, and it became his main title after the mid-s.27 As for the Japanese cult of the emperor, the frequent use of the image of the sun as a metaphor for Kim Il Sung, especially as the “sun of the nation” (minjogu˘i t’aeyang), seems a deliberate reversal of the sun-image of the Japanese emperor, in whose direction Koreans had been forced to bow as colonial subjects. The benevolent, fatherly, but awesomely powerful image of the sun-god was North Korea’s answer to the foreign god of the Japanese—our sun (uriu˘i t’aeyang), as the novelist Han So˘rya described Kim in the first recorded use of this appellation, in .28 Finally, Christian imagery appears in the early hagiography of writers like Han Chaedo˘k, who wrote in  that Kim’s emergence as a leader was marked by a brilliant star, his return to Korea was equated with the coming of the sun, and he shed his “precious blood” for the sake of na. Claude Lefort, The Political Forms of Modern Society: Bureaucracy, Democracy,Totalitarianism, ed. John B.Thompson (Cambridge, U.K.: Polity Press, ), . . The writer Han Chaedo˘k was apparently the first to use the term suryo˘ng for Kim Il Sung, around the time of the Soviet troop withdrawal in . Han Chaedo˘k, Kim Ilso˘ng changgun kaeso˘n’gi (Record of the Triumphant Return of General Kim Il Sung) (Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, ), . . See RG , SA , /. Han So˘rya et al., Uri u˘i t’aeyang (Our Sun) (Pyongyang, ). The parallels between the Kim cult and prewar Japanese emperor-worship are analyzed in detail in Suzuki Masayuki, Kita Chosen: Shakaishugi to dento no kyomei (North Korea: Resonance of Socialism and Tradition) (Tokyo:Tokyo University Press, ).

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tional salvation.29 To what degree Kim’s own Christian background contributed to his personality cult can only be speculated. Korean Christianity is both a contributing element and useful comparison to the cult of Kim Il Sung. Like Christianity, Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism in Korea was indigenized, blended with folk belief, and thereby made more comprehensible to the popular masses.30 Also as in Christianity, ideological purists condemned this popularization.31 Kim also embodied and symbolized political power in a highly personalized, quasi-supernatural manner reminiscent of the bundle of Korean folk beliefs often referred to as “shamanism.” For example, as we have noted in chapter , Kim was attributed with an almost magical power over nature in North Korean publications, which credited him with personal responsibility for the bumper harvest of  and control of the winter floods of  –. Furthermore, it was not by accident that this popularization was propagated by and centered on Kim Il Sung, a man who understood Christianity at least as well as he understood Marxism-Leninism.32 What he understood most of all, however, was of the psychology of Koreans, especially northern peasants. Both evangelical Protestant Christianity and “Kim Il Sung-ism” took root in the same area of northern Korea. Both derived their unique strength and peculiar nature from the way in which they appropriated and subverted the language of popular belief. In the symbol and “cult” of Kim Il Sung, a popular nationalism of multiple practices became a single, elite narrative of the minjok, and national subjectivities were reduced to one class, one party, and finally one man. If the nationalist project in modern Korea has been an attempt to re-create a center of national identity and politics, a center that is “connected with the way the world is built,”33 in North Korea, Kim Il Sung became that symbolic center. He became father, village chieftain, and priest, embodying and monopolizing previous sym. Han Chaedo˘k, Kim Ilso˘ng changgun, . . For the incorporation of folk religious symbols and practices in Korean Christianity, see Youngsook Kim Harvey,“The Korean Shaman and the Deaconess: Sisters in Different Guises,” in Religion and Ritual in Korean Society,ed.Laurel Kendall and Griffin Dix (Berkeley:University of California Press,), . . Lim Un, from an orthodox Marxist-Leninist perspective, condemned the cult of Kim Il Sung as no different from the “faith of blind believers toward God in religion.”This may be true, but that is precisely how such a cult always works, whether in Stalin’s Soviet Union, Mao’s China, or Kim’s Korea. Lim Un, The Founding of a Dynasty in North Korea (Tokyo: Jiyu-sha, ), . . As a young man,Kim Il Sung attended a Christian school and was once a Sunday-school teacher. There is not much evidence that Kim was better versed in Marxism than he was in the Bible. See Yongho Ch’oe, “Christian Background in the Early Life of Kim Il-song,” Asian Survey , no.  (October ):  – . . Clifford Geertz,“Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power,” in Local Knowledge:Further Essays on Interpretive Anthropology,ed.Clifford Geertz (NewYork:Basic Books,), .

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bols of Korean authority in North Korea’s peculiar variant of the “cult of personality.” None of the twentieth century’s prominent cults of personality were simply impositions on an unwilling populace; all were effective only because they interacted with, and built on, preexisting values and beliefs.The Stalin cult, as recent social history on the USSR has shown, was “widely accepted and deeply believed by millions of Soviet people of all classes, ages, and occupations, especially in the cities.”34 Much the same could be said of Hitler, and later Mao Zedong. The major difference between the Kim cult in North Korea and the similar cults of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao is that the North Korean cult did not arise as a phenomenon separate from, or in opposition to, the bureaucratic authority of the ruling party.35 In that sense the Kim cult, at least after the Korean War, has been more routinized and outwardly benevolent, not a temporary reaction to crisis, and thus not genuinely “charismatic” in the Weberian definition of the term.36 On the other hand, the maintenance of this cult has been justified partly by North Korea’s ongoing siege mentality, as a defensive focus of unity against the constant threat of imperialist subversion, for nearly half a century. In maintaining the cult of Kim Il Sung at such a level of intensity for so long, without lapsing into the disruptive terror of Stalinism or the anarchy of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, North Korea has achieved something quite remarkable: a stable state of permanent crisis, an institutionalized, continuous emergency. The family, as the most widespread and immediate symbol of human relationships, serves as a metaphor for national belonging throughout the world. In the nationalisms of East Asia, however, the Confucian notion of filial piety has played a particularly significant role. Filial piety, if transposed from the literal family to the national unit, could speak an instantly recognizable language of loyalty and identification. But with the possible exception of Japan and its imperial family, North Korea has been unique in East Asia in literalizing the filial piety of nationalism in the family of the leader, in effect making Kim Il Sung the universal patriarch. One consequence of abolishing the hojok or family registry in  was that, in addition to eliminating the patrilinear landholding system and clannishness that were the stated goals of the regime, Kim Il Sung’s family became the only legitimate focus of a kind of nationalized chesa, or ancestor worship. . Stephen F. Cohen, Rethinking the Soviet Experience: Politics and History since  (Oxford: Oxford University Press, ), . For Hitlerism, see Ian Kershaw, The “Hitler Myth”: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, ). . Jeremy Paltiel,“The Cult of Personality: Some Comparative Reflections on Political Culture in Leninist Regimes,” Studies in Comparative Communism , no.  (spring ): . . See Max Weber, On Charisma and Institution Building, ed. S. N. Eisenstadt (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, ).



 

One can see this especially in the least sophisticated, most populist forms of North Korean propaganda, such as that intended for the common soldier.A soldier’s textbook on politics from the Korean War began with a description of Kim Il Sung’s “revolutionary lineage” (hyo˘ngmyo˘ngjo˘k kagye). Kim’s father, Kim Hyo˘ngjik, was presented as a model revolutionary, who participated in the March First movement; his uncle and two younger brothers were also anti-Japanese activists (Kim’s mother was only referred to as “Mrs. Kang, the daughter of a poor peasant”).Thus, Kim was uniquely suited for leadership due to his impeccable family credentials:“the family of Kim Il Sung was entirely a patriotic anti-Japanese revolutionary family,” and Kim Il Sung became a great leader “because of his family environment.”37 It is only a short step from this to the logic of Kim Il Sung’s eldest son Kim Jong Il being the legitimate successor to national leadership in the s. When Kim returned to North Korea after liberation he made a public showing of visiting his hometown and tearfully reuniting with his grandmother— his parents now long deceased—demonstrating his unbroken filial piety. Unlike Mao, who often recounted his early rebellion against his reactionary father, Kim always presented himself as a filial son, who implicitly demands filial loyalty in return from his own subjects. There has never been any justification in Kim’s statements or in North Korean official ideology for resistance to party or state authority, or for that matter to the authority of one’s parents or teachers, which would have allowed a space for something like China’s Cultural Revolution. Loyalty to one’s parents, to the state, and to Kim Il Sung are presented as interlinked and mutually reinforcing. The cult of Kim Il Sung is, however, much more than Neo-Confucian patriarchy dressed in Stalinist garb. In fact, much of the actual language of the cult is not primarily paternal, but maternal; it does not spring solely from the Confucian heritage of the elite, but strikes a deeper psychological and cultural chord in mother-child relations and possibly in shamanism, the woman-dominated religion of the lower classes. As we have seen in chapter , the image of woman as mother recurs frequently in North Korea propaganda, and images of suffering, self-sacrificing mothers pervade North Korean literature and drama.38 Kim Il Sung has been associated with maternal care, referred to from the s as ˘obo˘i, a term meaning both mother and father, and only gradually identified exclusively as abo˘ji, or “father.” The image of woman as mother sacrificing herself for the greater social good was hardly novel in post- Korea and had deep roots in the East Asian tra. RG , SA , /. Cho˘ngch’i kyobon (Political Textbook), n.p., n.d., –. . See Brian Myers,“Mother Russia: Soviet Characters in North Korean Fiction,” Korean Studies, no.  (): –.

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dition of the “virtuous woman.”39 But whereas in traditional Confucian societies, and in conservative East Asian countries such as Singapore and South Korea, individual women are presented as models of “virtue” while the state is represented in purely masculine terms,40 North Korea seems unique in its use of maternal metaphors for the state and the party, almost all of whose leading members are male. Indeed, the North Korean party-state has often relied on the image of the mother-son bond, rather than the image of the father, for its metaphorical power. This seems to fit very well into a cultural environment that, unlike the modern West, does not associate the mother-son relationship with neurotic attachment. The classic Freudian notion of the Oedipus complex, the male child’s erotic desire for the mother that must be overcome and replaced with identification with the father, has rarely fit comfortably with East Asian culture. In the early s, the Japanese psychoanalyst Kosawa Heisaku criticized “Westernization” in Japan for repressing “the primary fusion of son and mother in Japanese character”; his solution was “a return to the pre-Oedipal state which precedes ‘the alienation from the oneness of subject and object.’”41 For Kosawa, nationalism meant a submersion of individual into collective identity, homologous to the oneness of mother and son. North Koreans need not have read Kosawa’s theories to recognize the power of maternal metaphors in nationalist discourse. By identifying the party, the state, and the leader with the mother rather than only the father, the North Korean state could cultivate greater emotional attachment and exploit the psychic submission to the mother that had long been a mirror of, and support for, Confucian patriarchy.42 Closely linked to the cult of Kim Il Sung, and emerging simultaneously, was the idea of Manchuria as the mythical space of anti-Japanese nationalist struggle and the Korean revolution.The Manchurian guerrilla experience was, perhaps deliberately, quite analogous to Yan’an in Chinese communist folklore, a space where everything that later came to define North Korean society and politics was gestated in exile before coming to birth in Korea proper after libera. For the Chinese case, see, for example, Rey Chow, Woman and Chinese Modernity:The Politics of Reading between West and East (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, ),  –. . Of course, the nation is often metaphorized as a female body, but the state—the political apparatus of coercion and control—is usually expressed as masculine. For contemporary Singapore’s rereading of “Confucianism” as the basis of national identity and instrument of state power, see Geraldine Heng and Janadas Devan, “State Fatherhood: The Politics of Nationalism, Sexuality, and Race in Singapore,” in Nationalisms and Sexualities, ed.Andrew Parker et al. (New York: Routledge, ). . Peter N. Dale, The Myth of Japanese Uniqueness (New York: St. Martin’s, ), . Later the Japanese government forced Kosawa to alter his theories to align with an exclusively male-oriented militarism. . Chow explores male masochism and idealization of the mother in Chinese literature in Woman and Chinese Modernity, –.



 

tion.43 As early as the summer of , North Korea’s social and political reforms were linked to the ten-point platform of the Fatherland Restoration Society allegedly drawn up by Kim Il Sung in .44 Kim’s Manchurian experience was presented as an epic tale of national loss, struggle, and ultimate redemption, a metaphor for Korea’s colonization and restoration as well as the actual center of the national liberation movement. A “Song of General Kim Il Sung” published in July  spoke of “the snowy winds of Manchuria / the long, long nights of the forest / Who is the timeless partisan, the peerless patriot / the beneficent liberator of the working masses / Great Sun of democratic new Korea?”45 It was in Manchuria, according to this myth, that Kim changed the Chinese characters for Il Sung from “one star” to “becoming the sun,” from the red star shining in the night sky of exile to the dawning sun of national liberation. Texts from the first two years after liberation regularly referred to Kim’s allies in Manchuria as well as anti-Japanese resistance fighters in Yan’an an elsewhere; by the time a full-blown hagiography of Kim began to emerge in , his record eclipsed all other partisans, and he came to personify the anti-Japanese resistance. Han Chaedo˘k’s  biography, for example, says that “from the time of the anti-Japanese liberation struggle General Kim Il Sung was our nation’s greatest patriotic hero and the sun of our people’s hope.” Kim’s name was known “over rivers and mountains,” he annihilated enemy forces hundreds of times larger than his own, and “the Japanese imperialists hated General Kim Il Sung the most among thirty million Koreans.” Indeed, his was not only a heroic struggle for the Korean people, but a “dazzling” example of national liberation struggle for all the small nations of the world.46 The Korean nation as the subject of history, Kim Il Sung as the embodiment of national subjectivity, and the Manchurian guerrilla struggle as the mythical site of revolutionary genesis thus emerged in the first three years after liberation and have been the basis of state mythology in North Korea ever since.Of course, . The experiences of Korean communists in Yan’an itself was rarely emphasized, despite the prominence of many Yan’an veterans in North Korean politics.This is no doubt because of Kim’s own background in Manchuria, and also because Yan’an was too closely associated with the Chinese, whereas Manchuria was an ambiguous space that could be appropriated by Koreans. For the discourse of Yan’an in the Chinese revolution, see David E. Apter, “Yanan and the Narrative Reconstruction of Reality,” Daedalus , no.  (spring ): –. . RG , SA , /. Panil t’usa yo˘nso˘ljip (Collection of Speeches by Anti-Japanese Fighters) (Pyongyang: Pariro haebang ilchunyo˘n kinyo˘m chungang chipjun wiwo˘nhoe, ), .There are no references to Kim writing this platform other than post- North Korean sources; although it is possible that he did write it, it is also quite possibly a fabrication. . RG , SA , /. Munhwa cho˘nso˘n (Cultural Front) , no.  ( July ): .The “Song of General Kim Il Sung” re-appeared at the memorial for the Great Leader’s death in . See Choso˘n chung’ang nyo˘ngam (Korean Central Yearbook) (Pyongyang, ). . Han Chaedo˘k, Kim Ilso˘ng changgun, – .

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Kim and his close associates who came to dominate North Korean politics were profoundly shaped by their experiences in Manchuria, as is noted in chapter . But, conversely, after the North Korean state was founded, this exile experience was reinscribed in history as the sole, heroic origin of everything that state represented. Moreover, this experience was presented as a purely Korean affair, and the internationalism that had made that struggle possible for Koreans was gradually erased. After , little or no mention was made of Kim’s membership in the Chinese Communist Party during the Manchurian guerrilla struggle.47

The Revolution By the summer of , after four years of political consolidation, social reform, economic rehabilitation, and ideological construction, the North Korean regime, according to its own internal self-assessment, appeared stable and confident. The revolution in the North was declared a success, North Korea was firmly on the “socialist road,” and the DPRK’s first two-year economic plan was launched with much fanfare. The major remaining task, a growing theme in DPRK propaganda, was to extend this revolution to the rest of the peninsula. References to internal dissent noticeably diminished, and propaganda focused increasingly on U.S. imperialism and its “running dogs,” the Syngman Rhee regime, who were said to be perpetuating national division and provoking armed clashes on the th parallel.48 In this context the DPRK revived the concept of the “democratic base”(minju kiji), which was defined in  as follows: In a country undergoing revolution, one area succeeds in revolution before another, establishing a revolutionary regime and accomplishing democratic reforms, and is a base for carrying out the revolutionary process through the whole country. The northern half of the Republic is such a base for anti-imperialist, anti-feudal democratic revolution in the whole country.49 . Some Korean War texts, such as the political handbook mentioned above, do refer to Kim’s membership in the CCP and Sino-Korean solidarity in Manchuria. It is likely that this text was written after the Chinese entrance into the Korean War and was intended to encourage Sino-Korean camaraderie. See Cho˘ngch’i kyobon, ,  –. . Ambassador Shtykov notified Stalin of the alarming increase in South Korean border violations in the spring and early summer of , warning him that the Republic of Korea was preparing for an all-out war against the North. In response, Stalin criticized the ambassador for not doing more to maintain peace on the th parallel.At that point Stalin’s overriding concern seems to have been to avoid getting the USSR dragged into a clash with the Americans, who still had their troops in South Korea. Evgueni Bajanov,“Assessing the Politics of the Korean War, – ,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. – (winter /): . . Cited in Kim Sungyu, “North Korea’s Initial Unification Policy:The Democratic Base Line,” in Puk Han ch’eje u˘i surip kwajo˘ng (The Process of Constructing the North Korean System), ed. Kyo˘ngnam University Far East Institute (Seoul: Kyo˘ngnam University Press, ), .

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 

Kim Il Sung appeared convinced that the time had come to “extend the revolution”from the North Korean base to the rest of the country by military means, that is, to attack the South. In March , Kim visited Stalin in Moscow and told him that “we believe that the situation makes it necessary and possible to liberate the whole country through military means.”50 Stalin demurred, arguing that the KPA was still too weak and it would be preferable to wait for a provocation from the South, overtaking South Korea in a counterattack rather than North Korea launching hostilities on its own. At the same time that it prepared for war, North Korea accelerated its “peace offensive” toward the South, calling for all “democratic”—that is, anti-Syngman Rhee—forces to join with the North in unifying the Korean Peninsula. On June , , exactly one year before the outbreak of the Korean War, the Democratic Front for the Unification of the Fatherland (choguk t’ongil minju cho˘nso˘n, DFUF) was founded to replace the Democratic National United Front. Its expressed purpose was to unify the Korean Peninsula under a single government, eliminate the Syngman Rhee “clique,” and remove the Americans.51 There is so far no documentation from within the DPRK that reveals the North Korean leadership’s internal discussions about creating the DFUF, but Soviet Ambassador Shtykov reported to Moscow that Kim Il Sung and Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng had proposed to Shtykov the creation of such a front on May .52 As Kim and Pak envisioned it, the DFUF would rally all “patriotic parties and social organizations” to support the withdrawal of the U.S. troops and UNTCOK, new general elections in the North and South, and a committee of North and South Korean political and social leaders that would discuss a plan for peaceful unification and supervise elections for a new national legislature to be held in September . Kim and Pak proposed that the DFUF demand several preconditions which, they argued, would ensure that the elections would be free and would also give an advantage to the left, including the legalization of all left-wing political parties in the South and the immediate release of all political prisoners. Under these conditions, Kim and Pak believed, a free political environment would give the left  percent of the votes in the North and  – percent of the votes in the South.Thus, the North and its allies would come to power throughout the peninsula through democratic means.And even if Rhee and the Americans opposed the plan, as seemed likely, they would lose politically by appearing to ob. Cited in Bajanov,“Politics of the Korean War,” . . The DFUF was formed at the conclusion of a five-day conference at Moranbong Theatre in Pyongyang and included many prominent southerners, including its chairman, Ho˘ Ho˘n. Chung’ang Ilbo, Pirok: Choso˘n Minjujuu˘i Inmin Konghwaguk (Secret Record: The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea), vol.  (Seoul: Chung’ang ilbosa, ), . . Center for Korean Research, Columbia University, Soviet documents relating to the Korean War, translated by Alexandre Mansourov, ciphered telegram, Shtykov to Vyshinksy,  June .

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struct “peaceful unification.” Overall, Shtykov reported, the DFUF’s unification proposal was “reasonable and tactically advantageous.” The DFUF was headed by the prominent southern leftist Ho˘ Ho˘n, chairman of the Supreme People’s Assembly. At the founding congress of the DFUF, Ho˘ Ho˘n said that since the December  Moscow Conference two directions had been opened for Korea: the Soviet road of reviving a completely independent, sovereign Korean state, and the American road of recolonization. “The North Korean people,” Ho˘ declared,“have strengthened the material and political base for national unification and sovereign independence.”53 Unification would necessarily be an extension of the northern system to the South, but neither Ho˘ nor anyone else speaking at the congress advocated reunification by military means. Unification was to be the result of a popular uprising in the South, inspired by the example of North Korea’s successful revolution. While the DFUF supported revolution in the South, its support was more moral than material, as southern guerrillas found to their great disappointment.54 Much like its Japanese colonial predecessor, but with a very different political content, North Korea spoke the language of sacrifice for the pure community, represented exclusively by the state. From  onward North Korean texts displayed a single-minded concentration on the theme of national independence. In a May  pamphlet on economic work methods, Kim Il Sung was quoted as exhorting Koreans to eliminate “Japanese imperialist vestiges” in their attitudes and take a “statist position” (kukkajo˘k ipjang).55 “In this way,” the text concluded, “we can carry out all the sacred duties (sinso˘nghan u˘imu) of citizens, and construct a wealthy, strong, democratic and completely sovereign independent state.”56

The Korean People’s Army The bulwark for defending this sovereign independence was a “People’s Army” (inmingun), a term used in internal North Korean documents as early as March , although not publicly announced until .57 According to American intelligence sources, the North Korean regime began military re. RG , SA , /. Ho˘ Ho˘n,“Domestic and Foreign Affairs and Our Mission,”  June , . . See Kim Namsik, Namnodang yo˘n’gu (A Study of the Southern Worker’s Party) (Seoul:Tolbegae, ). . RG , SA , /. Agitprop Department, Worker’s Party Central Headquarters. Sae hwan’gyo˘ng kwa sae cho˘go˘n eso u˘i saeroun sao˘p pangsik (New Work Methods for a New Environment and New Conditions) (Pyongyang: Rodongdang ch’ulp’ansa, May ), . . Ibid., . . United States Army, Record Group . Intelligence Summary North Korea (ISNK ), no.  (– August ), .

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cruitment in late , gradually forming a centralized army out of a variety of defense and security forces.The core of these forces consisted of men with previous military experience, meaning primarily former members of the Japanese army and police, veterans of the Chinese civil war from Manchuria and Yan’an, and current policemen transferred to military units.58 The military forces were dominated by Kim Il Sung’s close comrades-in-arms from Manchuria, including Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, Kim Ch’aek, Kim Il, and Kang Ko˘n.The military leadership was the most conspicuous place in which the DPRK showed its true colors—not a Soviet satellite, but what Wada Haruki has called a “guerrilla band state” (yugekitai kokka).59 The Korean People’s Army grew directly out of the public security organizations developed after liberation.60 Its origins went back to the Security Cadre Training Centers established in September ,part of the Department of Public Security in the North Korean Provisional People’s Committee.The KPA was officially inaugurated on February , . At the founding ceremony of the KPA, Kim Il Sung declared that “a state without its own military cannot be a fully independent state”61 and “true peace and freedom are guaranteed only when we are strong and enjoy absolute [military] superiority.”62 The KPA would be the “foundation” (t’odae) of the DPRK and the “rampart” (so˘ngbyo˘k) of the Korean people. He contrasted the Soviet Army, which had liberated Korea and allowed Koreans to build an independent state for two years, with the American imperialists, who were “working to divide and recolonize our nation.”63 Meanwhile Ho˘ Cho˘ngsuk,the minister for culture and propaganda (and daughter of Ho˘ Ho˘n, chairman of the DFUF), spoke of a two-pronged struggle, a “struggle for national construction” in the North and an “armed war of resistance for national salvation” in the South, both of which required a “firmly standing People’s Army, police force, and defense forces.”64 A strong military was the basis of Korea’s independence. . ISNK, no.  (–  March ), .This source gives the figure of  million men as the goal of North Korea’s military buildup, although it estimates a force of only , by March . For a critique of this estimate as grossly exaggerated, see Cumings, Origins, vol. , . . Wada Haruki, Kin Nichisei to Manshu konichi senso (Kim Il Sung and the Anti-Japanese War in Manchuria) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, ), . . ISNK, no.  (– August ); Cumings, Origins, vol. , –; Suh, Kim Il Sung, –. . RG , SA , /. NKWP Propaganda Bureau, Choso˘n inmingun (The Korean People’s Army) (Pyongyang, February ), . . Ibid.,  –. . Ibid., . Later versions of this speech excised all references to the Soviet Union. See Kim Il Sung,“On the Occasion of the Founding of the Korean People’s Army,” Selected Works, vol. , – . . RG , SA , /. Ho˘ Cho˘ngsuk,“National Defense is the Korean People’s Greatest Mission and Glory,” Choguk powiru˘l wihayo˘ (For the Defense of the Fatherland) , no.  ( January ): .

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The Soviet Union and the KPA Although Kim emphasized that the Manchurian guerrilla struggle was the foundation of the North Korean military, and his Manchurian cronies were strategically placed in the KPA, the emergence of the army also owed a great to deal to Soviet advice and training.65 Soviet advisors worked with the North Korean security forces from the beginning of the occupation and supplied arms to the Koreans and trained them in their use.66 After the withdrawal of the Soviet troops from North Korea at the end of , Soviet advisors remained with North Korean forces at least to the battalion level67 and possibly as far down as the company level.68 The first military training school in North Korea was the Pyongyang Academy (P’yo˘ngyang hagwo˘n), which opened in February  with Soviet-educated Koreans as instructors.69 Students received military training and political instruction for a period of four months. Between  and  several thousand Koreans who were sent to the Soviet Union for various kinds of education and training, including military training.70 KPA staff officers secretly began training in Moscow from April .71 In contrast to the South Korean army, led by men who had been trained in the Japanese army, all Korean officers who had served in the Japanese military were purged from the North Korean army by June .72 Soviet weapons were transferred to the North Koreans as early as December , when the first wave of Red Army occupation soldiers left Korea.73 More Soviet arms and equipment were brought in over the winter of  and the spring of .74 There was a second transfer of arms and equipment in July ,75 another delivery in August.76 Tanks, aircraft, and other heavy equipment began to flow into North Korea in mid- and continued until the outbreak of the Korean War.77 Most of this was World War II-vintage surplus, not state-

.

. . . .

Weekly Summary, no. , . ISNK, no.  (–  July ), enclosure no. , . Ibid., . ISNK, no.  (– February ), ; Weekly Summary, no. , ; no. , ; and no. ,

. . . . . . . . .

ISNK, no.  (–  June ), enclosure no. , ; ISNK, no.  (–  May ), . Scalapino and Lee, Communism in Korea, :. Weekly Summary, no. , . Ibid., no. , . ISNK, no.  (–  June ), enclosure no. , . See ibid., no. , , ; and no. , . Ibid., no. , ; Weekly Summary, no. , . Weekly Summary, no. , . Ibid., no. , pt. , ; no. , ; no. , ; no. , ; no. , .



 

of-the art equipment.While Soviet equipment was crucial for arming the KPA, it was hardly at the cutting edge of military technology. China and the KPA If the Soviet gave indispensable training and equipment to the KPA, the connection to the Chinese communist army and the Korean veterans of the Chinese revolution represented a more intimate, more personal, and less material, Chinese influence in the North Korean military. After Soviet forces left North Korea, battle-hardened troops from the Chinese revolution took the lead in the KPA.As early as February , U.S. military intelligence estimated that at least  percent of the officers in the North Korean security forces were former members of the Korean Volunteer Army (Choso˘n u˘iyonggun, KVA) from the China front.78 By the time the war broke out, more than half of the KPA were veterans of the civil war in China.79 A substantial minority of KPA officers were China veterans, and more than two-thirds of the cultural cadres in the KPA were former KVA soldiers.80 As U.S. military intelligence noted, these experienced troops made the KPA a much more effective fighting force than it otherwise would have been.81 Perhaps as many as , North Korean troops were sent back to Northeast China in – to assist the Chinese communists in their civil war;82 when the Chinese intervened to defend North Korea against the Americans in late , it was partly out of reciprocity for this assistance.83 Military Recruitment In January  U.S. military intelligence noted a marked acceleration in military training and conscription in North Korea.84 By June an extensive network of military control linked the center to local communities and villages throughout the North. The bottom-up structure of the People’s Committees was the medium of military recruitment. Lists of eligible men were forwarded from the township (myo˘n) PC to the county and provincial PCs and the Ministry of Na. ISNK, no.  (– February ), . . Cumings, Origins, vol. , . . RG , SA , /. KPA Cultural Cadre Bureau, Munhwa kanbu so˘ngwo˘n t’onggyep’yo (Statistical Table of Cultural Cadre Members),  December  (“top secret”). . ISNK, no.  (– June ), ; no.  (– October ), . . United States Department of State, Foreign Relations of the United States, , vol.  (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ), part , . . See Cumings, Origins, vol. , , – . . Pang Sun-ju, “Notes on North Korean Captured Documents,” Asea Munhwa, no.  (October ): .

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

tional Defense, which in turn gave the county level a quota of men to recruit. Apparently little coercion was needed to facilitate this process.85 The target for recruitment was men between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, for which the Workers’ Party and Youth League were encouraged to submit their own members, although it seems that men up to age fifty were investigated for their physical and mental fitness, presumably to fill the reserves.86 A top-secret document on military mobilization reveals that the regime targeted specific strata of society that were thought to be politically reliable: recruitment was to concentrate on workers and poor peasants, as long as they were mentally and physically competent and had no family in the South.Township organizers were told to ensure that at least  percent of their recruits came from the “worker” category.87 The process was not without its difficulties. Internal documents expressed concern about “public doubt and apprehension”regarding military recruitment, as well as falsification and inefficiency.88 Nevertheless, the ability of the state to mobilize society for military action, down to the smallest local level, far exceeded anything accomplished earlier in Korean history or in the South.Village and household self-defense forces supplemented the regular military and played an active role in the early stages of the Korean War.89 The Fatherland Defense Association, organized in July , encouraged citizens to support the military and published a journal with articles and pictures depicting the lives of KPA soldiers.The process of “mass mobilization” had been underway in North Korea since the summer of . A military term to begin with, mass mobilization was a technique for involving all—young and old, male and female—in the project of social and political development and reconstruction, of which military mobilization itself was the last and logical extension. Everyday life was increasingly militarized.

The Road to War The existence of two states on a peninsula that leaders of both sides insisted should be a single political unit presented a volatile and dangerous situation. . ISNK, no.  (–  March ), . . RG , SA , /. Military Registration Section, Ministry of National Defense.“General Documents,”  (“military secret”). . RG , SA , /. So˘hu˘ng County People’s Committee,“Documents Concerning Raising a People’s Army,”  (“top secret”).These were orders transmitted from the Ministry of National Defense. . RG , SA ,  /. Military Registration Section,“General Documents.” . See RG , SA , /.“Organization of Home Defense Units,” September  (“absolutely secret”).



 

Cover of the illustrated magazine Hwalsal (The Arrow), January : America reviving Japanese militarism. Courtesy of the National Archives and Records Administration.

South Korean President Syngman Rhee’s frequent call for a “march north” to liberate North Korea from the communists is well known, and in —the year U.S. forces were withdrawn from South Korea—the DPRK claimed some , cases of ROK military aggression across the th parallel.90 It is conceivable that either side could have started a war; but in the event, by June  the North was better prepared for war, had the backing of its patron state, and ultimately made the decision to attack its rival in the South.91 . RG , SA , /. DPRK Ministry of Internal Affairs documents, May-August . . For explanations of the Soviet-North Korean-Chinese planning and cooperation that led to the North Korean invasion, based on Soviet documents made available after the collapse of the USSR, see

 ’ 



By early , Kim Il Sung’s persistent lobbying of the Soviets to support a military action against the South was starting to pay off. Ambassador Shtykov relayed to Stalin that on January , at a lunch hosted by the DPRK Foreign Ministry to send off Yi Chuyong as the new ambassador to China, Kim said to Soviet counselors Ignatiev and Pelishenko that “now that China was finishing its liberation it was the turn of the liberation of the Korean people in the South.” Kim said he could not sleep at night thinking “how to solve the question of unification of the entire country.” Kim then pulled Shtykov aside and asked him to arrange a meeting with Stalin, so that Kim could explain that the Korean People’s Army was now in a position for victory over the South. Kim also wanted to meet with Mao Zedong, who would have helpful advice on the matter after his own visit to Moscow.92 On January ,  Stalin telegrammed Ambassador Shtykov in Pyongyang and told Shtykov to tell Kim Il Sung “that I am ready to help him in this matter” of attacking South Korea. On hearing the news from Shtykov, Kim responded with “great satisfaction.”93 However, Stalin warned that the “action should be organized in such a way that there won’t be too much risk involved.” Further,Soviet assistance would come at a price:specifically, a minimum of twenty-five thousand tons of lead to the USSR annually.94 Kim agreed to make arrangements for the lead shipment immediately.95 A newly emboldened Kim Il Sung told a conference of small-unit army commanders in March that “[i]n , we defended North Korea only; however, in , we will begin the heroic struggle to merge the separated Korea and will achieve a glorious, complete independence.”96 Kim and Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng visited Moscow and met with Stalin in early April.Assured of Soviet support and material assistance in their endeavor against the South, Kim and Pak returned to Pyongyang on April , and on May  left for Beijing.97 Mao had initially opposed the DPRK plan to conquer South Korea, but was assured by Moscow Sergei Goncharov, John N. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ), and Alexandre Y. Mansourov, “Communist War Coalition Formation and the Origins of the Korean War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, ).The People’s Republic of China has also released a limited number of documents on the Korean War. See especially Chen Jian, China’s Road to the Korean War:The Making of the Sino-American Confrontation (New York: Columbia University Press, ), and Zhang Shu Guang, Mao’s Military Romanticism: China and the Korean War, – (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, ). . Center for Korean Research, Shtykov telegram to Vyshinsky,  January . . Kathryn Weathersby,“New Russian Documents on the Korean War,” Cold War International History Project Bulletin, nos. – (winter /): . . Center for Korean Research, Stalin telegram to Shtykov,  January . . Center for Korean Research, Shtykov telegram to Vishinsky,  January . . U.S. Army Korean Military Advisory Group (KMAG) Liaison Office Report,  May . Reproduced in Pang,“North Korean Captured Documents,” . . Center for Korean Research, Ignatiev telegram to Vyshinsky,  April ; Shtykov telegram to Vyshinsky,  May .



 

that the plan was feasible and agreed to support North Korea if necessary. Meanwhile, Kim requested the return of Korean soldiers currently in China and new weapons from the USSR. Soviet military advisors began to work with the North Koreans to devise an attack plan. Without high-level internal DPRK records relating to the leadership’s decision to invade, which are precisely the type of materials not present in the captured Korean War documents, we can only glean Kim’s motives from the records of North Korea’s allies, primarily the Soviet Union.The very fact that such documentation is missing, however, suggests that the war plans were not circulated widely and remained the purview of a tight circle of the top leadership. The front-line commanders seem not to have been informed of the invasion plans until the very last moment. Cultural officers in the KPA taught that the war had been “touched off ” by the South, with the provocation and prodding of the United States.98 In his talks with the Soviets and the Chinese, Kim Il Sung stressed the illegitimacy of the South Korean regime, the strength of the revolutionary forces in the North to conquer the South, and the important opportunity an invasion would bring in driving American imperialism off the peninsula. In short, Kim was motivated by his own nationalist vision, which defined the DPRK as the only true representative of Korean national independence, backed by the “fraternal” USSR and PRC, and saw the ROK in the South as an illegitimate client state of the United States. In Kim’s assessment, the ROK was vulnerable at the moment, but might be more formidable in the future, and thus needed to be defeated now before Rhee carried out his threat of invading the North. While the Soviet materials confirm that the military action of June  was a preplanned invasion, it is also clear that the Soviet side saw this not so much as an opportunity for political and territorial aggrandizement, but as a preemptive strike that could unify Korea at relatively low cost—that is, quickly and before the United States could intervene—and that the window of opportunity would soon close.The summer of  had already brought Korea to the brink of civil war, and Ambassador Shtykov seemed convinced that the South would initiate a war by July .Therefore, the North and the Soviets would have to prepare for a “decisive counterattack” to prevent a southern conquest of North Korea. As we have seen, Shtykov assisted with the creation of the DFUF to slow down southern aggression, cultivate alliances with anti-Rhee forces in the South, and make the Americans appear opposed to North-South unification.99 For Stalin, Korea itself was not so great a prize, but the main danger to Soviet interests, a consistent point of concern in the Soviet foreign policy discussions since the end of World War II, was the possibility of a revived and . See, for example, KPA lecture notes in RG , SA , /. . Mansourov,“Communist War Coalition Formation,” .

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

remilitarized Japan, allied with South Korea and backed by the United States. The Russians had seen Korea as a legitimate part of their security zone since the time of the Czars; a hostile state on the Korean Peninsula, run by an army and bureaucracy with close ties to Japan, allied with Chiang Kai-shek’s Chinese nationalists, and all three working for the benefit of an increasingly aggressive United States, had to be prevented.100 Furthermore, just as Soviet interests were being blocked by the United States in Europe, with the formation of NATO and the growing success of the Americans’ Marshall Plan in reviving Western European economies, a Soviet-backed northern conquest of South Korea could expand the zone of communist control on mainland Asia and might even trigger revolution in Japan itself.101 But all of this had to be done while the balance of forces was in the North’s favor, before the ROK army surpassed the northern army in strength once again, before Western Europe and Japan got back on their feet and were lost irrevocably to the American camp, while there was still some support for the North in South Korea (even if the southern guerrilla movement had been largely wiped out by the spring of ), and while the American military remained off the shores of Korea. In short, for Kim Il Sung and the North Korean leadership, an invasion represented the opportunity to complete the final stage of the revolution, extending it across the peninsula, while the advantage was still on their side. For the Soviets, the unification of Korea on North Korean terms was an opportunity to establish once and for all their zone of security on the Korean Peninsula and keep American and Japanese aggression off of mainland Asia. It was a calculated risk for both parties, a calculation that turned out in the end to be terribly wrong. Sometime before June , , Soviet military advisors in North Korea, led by Lt. General Vashilev, completed their “Preemptive Strike Operational Plan” for an attack on the South.102 Kim Il Sung suggested to Stalin that the attack come before the rainy season began in July, and Stalin agreed to late June for an invasion date.The last shipment of weapons and equipment from the USSR arrived in early June. The North, with its Soviet arms, battle-hardened soldiers recently returned from China, and an army of some , men, had overwhelming force superiority against the South. Both Kim and Stalin were confident that an attack would be swift and decisive. On the early morning of June , the Korean People’s Army attacked across the th parallel. The North Korean revolution moved South. . Kim Il Sung and Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng told G. N.Tunkin, Soviet minister to North Korea, in September  that they were more concerned about the Americans sending in Japanese and Nationalist Chinese forces to defend South Korea than a direct American intervention. See Wada Haruki,“The Korean War, Stalin’s Policy, and Japan,” Social Science Japan Journal , no.  (April ): . . Mansourov,“Communist War Coalition Formation,” . . Kathryn Weathersby, “Soviet Aims in Korea and the Origins of the Korean War, –: New Evidence from Russian Archives,” Cold War International History Project Working Paper No.  (Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, November ), .

Conclusion

If the Soviet occupation of North Korea provided the context for a Stalinist revolution in a highly compressed time frame, this revolutionary process was even more intensively concentrated during the three-month North Korean occupation of South Korea. In North Korea, as in Soviet-occupied Eastern Europe after World War II, a Soviet model of politics, economy, and social organization, which had developed over several decades in the USSR, was transplanted with “all its basic properties intact.”1 The “liberation” of South Korea by the Korean People’s Army involved the resurrection of the People’s Committees, the creation of local branches of the Korean Workers’ Party and its attendant social organizations, implementation of land reform and the DPRK legal system, and the propagation of North Korean cultural and economic policies. All of this was rapidly swept aside when the U.S.–led United Nations and Republic of Korea forces reconquered the South beginning in September and swept up the peninsula. By the end of October the U.S.–UN-ROK forces had driven the KPA back past the th parallel, occupied  percent of the territory of North Korea and attempted to implement the southern system in the North. But the revolution that the KPA brought to South Korea, and the counterrevolution that the South tried to impose on the North, is properly the subject of another study.2 . Wlodzimierz Brus,“Stalinism and the ‘People’s Democracies,’” in Stalinism: Essays in Historical Interpretation, ed. Robert C.Tucker (New York: Norton, ) . . The captured North Korean documents contain a substantial amount of material on the North Korean occupation of the South from late June to September . See for example RG , SA , /. Kyo˘nggi Province Interior Ministry, Haebang chigu inmindu˘l e taehan haeso˘l so˘njo˘n chegang (Propaganda and Explanation for People in Liberated Areas),  July . Bruce Cumings discusses the KPA occu-







In North Korea itself, the years between the end of Japanese colonial rule in August  and the outbreak of the Korean War in June  was a time of political, social, economic, and cultural upheaval and transformation that was nothing short of revolutionary. The indigenous aspects of this revolutionary process have long been obscured by the Soviet occupation and by a Cold War perspective in the West that has viewed all regimes formed under Soviet auspices as pure creations of the USSR. But, as we have shown, the North Korean revolution was not simply the offspring of the Soviet occupation authorities. The political order that emerged in North Korea in the postliberation period combined Soviet input and influence with the legacy of Japanese colonial rule, a native Korean revolutionary tradition that reemerged in the immediate aftermath of the Japanese surrender, and the participation of Koreans who were much closer to the Chinese communist movement than to the Soviet Union. Above all, the North Korean state, the Workers’ Party, and the Korean People’s Army came increasingly to be dominated by individuals with a background in the anticolonial guerrilla struggle in Manchuria. The most important of these figures was of course Kim Il Sung, who emerged as the leader of the northern Communist Party in early  and as head of the de facto central government of North Korea, the Provisional People’s Committee, in early . By the s, the former Manchurian partisans were at the apex of the power system in the DPRK, and those who had been aligned with the Southern Workers’ Party, the Soviets, and the Chinese in Yan’an had almost all been purged, executed, sent into exile, or otherwise eliminated from positions of power.3 But, as we have seen, the DPRK showed the imprint of the Manchurian partisans from the very beginning.As early as  North Korea was well on its way to being a “guerilla-band state.” Thus, the creation of the DPRK represented to a significant extent the “Koreanization” of Soviet communism, not the “Sovietization” of North Korea. “Good” communists from the Soviet perspective, staunch Leninists like Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng and O Kiso˘p, spoke often and enthusiastically of the close fraternal ties between the USSR and North Korea. But these were not the men who dominated the North Korean system. Kim Il Sung, Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, and other former Manchurian partisans had always been poor internationalists as far as the Soviets were concerned, but saw themselves as good nationalists. If anything, Kim Il Sung’s internationalism was aligned with the Chinese, and more often pation of South Korea in The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , The Roaring of the Cataract, ‒ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ), chapter . For the U.S.–UN–ROK occupation of the North, see Callum MacDonald,“‘So Terrible a Liberation’:The UN Occupation of North Korea,” Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars , no.  (April–June ):  –. . See Andrei Lankov,“Kim Il Sung’s Campaign against the Soviet Faction in late  and the Birth of Chuch’e,” Korean Studies, no.  (): – .

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than not the DPRK would appear to “lean toward” China in the Sino-Soviet dispute of the s to the s. Since his teenage years as a guerilla fighter in Manchuria, Kim’s priority was Korean independence, and except for a brief period in the Soviet Far Eastern army he had never been particularly close to the Soviets. Even before the Soviets left, Kim complained openly of North Korea’s economic dependence on the USSR. North Korea, as the Soviets learned after the Korean War, would never be a pliant and dependable satellite like that other divided and Soviet-occupied state,the German Democratic Republic.Although they never effected a Titolike break with Moscow, Kim and other DPRK veterans of the anti-Japanese guerrilla wars had backgrounds more like those of the partisans who came to power in Yugoslavia than the “Muscovites,” long-term residents of the USSR with strong CPSU connections who dominated postwar East Germany and Poland.The DPRK would develop into a nationalist regime much more resilient than the brittle, Soviet-dominated states of Eastern Europe that quickly collapsed when the USSR withdrew its support. The North Korean party-state was made in the image of guerrilla war, with a tightly knit core bound by personal connections to the leader and a social inclusiveness that depended particularly on the support of the poorest segment of peasant society. Broad-based socially but highly disciplined politically, the Korean Workers’ Party was quite different from the equivalent parties of Eastern Europe. In , for example,  percent of the KWP members were from the peasant class, compared to  percent of the party members in Poland and  percent in Yugoslavia, whereas workers were only  percent of the party members in North Korea, compared to  percent in Yugoslavia and  percent in Poland.4 The KWP, despite its name, was a peasants’ party, not a workers’ party. In its social composition the KWP was much more like the Vietnamese Workers’ Party than the Polish Workers’ Party. And this is what helped to give the North Korean system its strength: by offering millions of dirt-poor and illiterate farmers land, educational opportunities, and a stake in the political system, the KWP established a bedrock of popular support that enabled the party to withstand changes at the higher levels. In , for example, some fifty thousand KWP members were purged, in a process that struck American observers as “relatively painless” compared to later such purges in Eastern Europe.5 Eliminating the “vestiges” of Japanese colonialism was one of the most frequently expressed goals of the new regime. But the legacy of Japanese colonial rule in North Korea was ambiguous. On the one hand, the DPRK was certainly much more successful than South Korea at removing former members of the colonial bureaucracy, police, and military and barring them from resuming their . United States Department of State, North Korea: A Case Study in the Techniques of Takeover (; Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, ), . . Ibid., .





positions of authority. But the DPRK was shaped by the colonial experience in other,often less tangible ways than the retention of colonial functionaries.Colonial economic policy of the s and early s had laid the groundwork for industrialization in northern Korea, enabling the North Korean People’s Committee to launch a Stalinist program of planned economic development as early as . Popular mobilization, including military mobilization, under the new regime can be seen as the continuity of social mobilization under the Japanese, albeit with a very different political content and leadership. Except for a brief respite between  and , the North Korean people had been mobilized for war continuously since Japanese colonial war mobilization in . Thus the North Korean revolution, even more than its East European counterparts, was intimately connected to the collective experience of war, a society on a continuous war footing.6 And even in its overt rejection of Japanese colonial legacies, the DPRK sometimes reflected Japanese colonialism in a kind of mirror-image reversion. Thus the ideology of the new North Korean state, especially the “cult” of Kim Il Sung as the “Sun of the Nation,” was not only a local replication of Stalinism but also resonated with the Japanese emperor-cult, utilizing some of the same key imagery. Both Stalinism and Japanese colonial militarism were systems of total mobilization. It is not surprising then that the North Korean revolution, inspired by the former and supplanting the latter, would also aim for the total transformation of politics, social relationships, economy, culture, and everyday life. Although the actual power of the party-state to control all aspects of everyday life was far from complete in the late s, the totalizing ambitions of the new regime pervaded the areas of social organization, regulation, surveillance, and propaganda by the time of the Korean War. Alternative ideologies, especially Christianity with its association with the “bourgeois” classes and the Americans, were deeply suspect. In the end, North Korean communism would not only be quite distinctive from its Soviet model, it would in some respects turn Marxism-Leninism upside-down.The typical North Korean emphasis on ideology over material circumstances, for example, was a complete reversal of Marxist orthodoxy. The “cult” of the Supreme Leader, though partly inspired by Stalin, developed a unique vocabulary of familial images in North Korea and became far more stable and long-lasting than its counterparts in the USSR and China.The organicist imagery of DPRK ideology displaced the language of class struggle with the language of national unity and independence. The rigid social hierarchies . For an argument about the continuity between wartime mobilization and postwar revolution in the East European “People’s Democracies,” see Jan Gross, “War as Revolution,” in The Establishment of Communist Regimes in Eastern Europe, ‒, ed. Norman Naimark and Leonid Gibianski (Boulder, Colo.:Westview Press, ), .





that became apparent in the DPRK after the Korean War belied the egalitarian ethos of socialism but were quite understandable in the context of a deep-seated pattern of social distinction and stable hierarchy that had long distinguished Korea from its East Asian neighbors. As we have suggested in the introduction, the total transformation of Korean society in the North between  and  had a distant echo in the Confucian transformation of Korea in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. But the communist transformation of Korean society was far more ambitious, rapid, and in its own terms successful than any such experiment previously attempted in Korean history. Ultimately the Choso˘n transformation had failed to overturn the social hierarchy of Koryo˘, whereas the communist revolution in North Korea succeeded.7 Those identified as the most oppressed groups of the pre- society—including poor peasants, workers, women, and young people—were given new roles, material and political benefits, and higher social status in the new regime. Those identified as the oppressors—landlords, wealthy farmers,collaborators with the Japanese colonial regime—were stripped of their property and status, and many chose to leave for the relative sanctuary of the South.The revolution overturned social hierarchy virtually overnight, but what remained constant in succeeding decades was the fact of hierarchy itself. In its peculiar way, North Korea was an ascriptive society, with ancestry and family background determining social status much as it had in traditional Korea, only now poor peasant background was an asset, wealth and association with the colonial regime and South Korea a detriment. North Korea became the most “conservative” of communist societies, in the sense of its resistance to social change, much as Choso˘n had been conservative in its Confucian ideology and social order. The Soviet presence and the division of Korea into zones of occupation supplied the indispensable context for this revolution.Although it is conceivable— perhaps even likely—that a communist movement would have seized power in postcolonial Korea even without the Soviet occupation, as it did in China and Vietnam in the same period, a communist revolution would have been much bloodier and more difficult without the Soviet Army to stand behind it and the existence of South Korea as a haven for those opposed to the communists. But a communist government that was merely a dependency of the USSR would have been a brittle regime unlikely to survive the turbulent changes beyond its . As John Duncan has pointed out in his pioneering work on the Koryo˘-Choso˘n transition, the early Choso˘n attempt to remold Korea according to classical Chinese ideals did not succeed, due to the powerful interests of the Korean social elites who resisted such change. See John Duncan, The Origins of the Choso˘n Dynasty (Seattle: University of Washington Press, ) and idem, “ The Korean Adoption of Neo-Confucianism:The Social Context,” in Confucianism and the Family, ed.Walter H. Slote and George A. De Vos (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, ), .





borders in the years to come, including the loss of support from the USSR and the Soviet collapse. From the very beginning, despite the ubiquitous praise for the USSR, there was a powerful core of nationalism and populism in North Korea’s version of communism. Partly this was due to the influence of Mao and the Chinese revolution, which was in every way closer to the Korean experience—geographically, temporally, culturally—than was the Soviet revolution. Maoism was already an important element of Kim Il Sung’s political thinking in the s and would exert considerable influence on North Korea’s self-reliant ideology of juche as the latter evolved in the s and s.8 But much of this came out of the experience and worldview of the Korean communists themselves, including above all the Manchurian guerrilla group associated with Kim Il Sung who became the core of the DPRK leadership.The DPRK may have been, to a great extent, Stalinist in form, but it was clearly nationalist in content. If the goal of the founders of the DPRK was to create a faithful copy of the Soviet Union on Korean soil, they clearly failed. But if their goal was the creation of a communist Korean state that would establish deep and lasting roots, that would be distinctly and idiosyncratically “Korean” and thus be able to survive a horrendously destructive war, decades of confrontation with South Korea and the United States, a prolonged economic crisis, famine, and the collapse of nearly all other communist states—including the USSR itself—then the guerrillas, cadres, peasants, and intellectuals who brought the DPRK into being in the shadow of the Soviet occupation surely succeeded. For better and often for worse, the North Korean revolution would endure. . Yi Chongso˘k,“Juche Ideology and Mao Zedong Thought,” in Puk Han Yo˘ngu [A Study of North Korea] (Seoul:Taeryuk yo˘nguso, ).

   

A Note on Sources

Even compared to other Marxist-Leninist states, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea has been unusually closed to research. Fortunately, a unique glimpse into the early history of the DPRK exists in the form a voluminous collection of documents captured by the U.S.Army during the Korean War and currently housed in the U.S. National Archives. Most of the primary materials used for this book are from this collection.The United States is probably unique both for its systematic collection of documents from enemy countries and its willingness to open these documents to researchers; the captured North Korean document collection may be the most important source of materials for DPRK history outside North Korea itself and is certainly the most accessible. Other National Archives collections I examined during my research for this book included U.S. military weekly intelligence summaries on North Korea, U.S. Military Government “G-” intelligence reports from Seoul, Central Intelligence Agency studies, and English translations of North Korean documents.1 But the “Records Seized by U.S. Military Forces in Korea,” part of “Record Group , National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, –“ (cited throughout as “RG ”) offers a virtually limitless source for research on the early history of the DPRK. Consisting of more than ,, pages of documents, RG  is obviously too vast for any single scholar to read through in a lifetime, and is comparable to the Smolensk Archive from the Soviet . United States Army, Far East Command, RG , Intelligence Summary North Korea (Army Staff )  –; United States Army Military Government in Korea, RG , G- (intelligence) weekly reports; U.S.Army Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), –.





 

Union—although RG  is in fact much larger—for the glimpse it gives into a society for which access to internal sources is extremely difficult.2 The history of RG  itself is an interesting reflection of America’s Cold War involvement in East Asia.3 Although all of the materials are “enemy” documents, the documents captured in the early part of the war are from the North Korean occupation of South Korea, as far south as the Kyo˘ngsang provinces. Thereafter, the bulk of the documents were captured in the late  UN advance into the North, mostly from the southern part of the DPRK—Hwanghae, South P’yo˘ng’an, and Kangwo˘n provinces—although there are documents from all provinces, including North Hamgyo˘ng on the Russian border, and some materials were captured as late as . Most of the documents are in Korean, with surprisingly few Russian-language materials and scattered items in Japanese and Chinese.4 On capture, documents were shipped to Far East Command headquarters in Tokyo for interpretation and classification. As the U.S. Army had few Korean readers, titles and content descriptions were often first translated into Japanese, presumably by Korean translators, who sometimes wrote the Japanese title directly on the document. From there, American officers wrote ten English-language shipping lists with the title, place of capture, and brief description of each of the nearly seven thousand items, before the documents were sent on to the Federal Records Center in Alexandria,Virginia.These “shipping advices” constitute a comprehensive and generally accurate index to the captured document collection. Most of the documents from RG  were declassified in the late seventies, yet few scholars have examined them extensively. Bruce Cumings, who helped to get RG  declassified, was the first to incorporate the captured North Ko. Merle Fainsod, Smolensk under Soviet Rule (New York:Vintage Books, ).The Smolensk materials were also “captured enemy documents,” in a dual sense—captured by Nazi Germany in  and recaptured by American forces in Germany in . For many years the Smolensk Archive was one of the few extensive internal sources from the USSR accessible to Western scholars and was subject to a wide variety of interpretations,from Fainsod’s “totalitarian”approach to J. Arch Getty’s “revisionist”reading in Origins of the Great Purges:The Soviet Communist Party Reconsidered,  ‒ (Cambridge U.K.: Cambridge University Press, ). . Much of the following relies on an unpublished article by Thomas Hosuck Kang, formerly of the Library of Congress, entitled “North Korean Captured Records at the Washington National Records Center, Suitland, Maryland.” In , RG , along with other military records, was moved from Suitland to Archives II, a branch of the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. Jack Saunders also refers to RG  in “Lost in the Labyrinth: Records in the National Archives Relation to Korea, –,” in Child of Conf lict:The Korean-American Relationship,  ‒, ed. Bruce Cumings (Seattle: University of Washington Press, ). . Kang speculates that the DPRK deliberately restricted propagation of the Russian language to reduce Soviet influence (“North Korean Captured Records,” ). However, on one of my research visits to College Park, an archivist showed me the vast collection of Russian-language materials captured in North Korea during the Korean War, not included in RG , that has recently been declassified.

   



rean materials into research on Korea, in his work on the origins of the Korean War.5 Wada Haruki and Dae-Sook Suh have also used RG  extensively in their work.6 Not surprisingly, the greatest interest in the North Korean documents has been found among scholars from South Korea, who began to do research in RG  in the late s.7 Most of these scholars have been concerned with the formation of the North Korean state and the origins of the Korean War, and most have been political scientists. A large portion of RG  was photocopied, sent to South Korea, and published in the series Puk Han yo˘n’gu saryojip (Collection of historical materials for North Korean research) by the government-sponsored National History Compilation Committee. The information offered by RG  on North Korean politics between  and  is considerable, but to comb the archive for insights into the mind of Kim Il Sung or to find the “smoking gun” that reveals who “started” the Korean War is to miss the true richness of this collection. RG  is by far the largest, perhaps the only, extensive source for research on social history, intellectual history, local-level politics, cultural production, and everyday life in the early years of the DPRK. It offers one of the best glimpses anywhere into the process of “building socialism” from the ground up. RG  contains, for example, six boxes of almost daily Korean Workers’ Party records from Inje County in Kangwo˘n Province from  –; an entire monograph could be written on “socialism in one county” based on this material alone.8 There are published speeches by Kim Il Sung and minutes of Supreme People’s Assembly meetings, but there are also soldiers’ diaries, photograph albums, employment records, minutes of local Democratic Youth League meetings, women’s magazines, books of poetry, sheet music, trial proceedings, lists of people under surveillance and their alleged crimes, and a host of other items left behind in the flight from invading UN forces. Like other archives, the material in RG  is often fragmentary, diffuse, and unsystematic, but out of these fragments we can begin to get a glimpse of North Korea as a real society composed of real people going through a period of tremendous change. Ideally,a fully rounded picture of North Korea between  and  would incorporate both research in locally produced contemporary Korean sources, as well as in Russian-language documents that have become available since the . Especially The Origins of the Korean War, vol. , The Roaring of the Cataract, ‒ (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, ). . Wada Haruki, Chosen senso (The Korean War) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, ); Dae-Sook Suh, Kim Il Sung:The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, ). . These include Hak Soon Paik, “North Korean State Formation, –,” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, ); Ryu Kilchae, “North Korean State Formation and the Role of the People’s Committees, –” (Ph.D. diss., Korea University, ); and Park Myo˘ngnim, Hanguk cho˘njaengu˘i palpal kwa kiwo˘n (The Outbreak and Origins of the Korean War),  vols. (Seoul: Nanam, ). . RG , SA , /– .



 

collapse of the Soviet Union.A number of scholars have recently produced important studies of North Korea based on research in the Soviet archives.9 So far, no studies have fully exploited both sets of archives.This current book, as the reader will be aware, makes no direct use of Soviet documents and relies primarily on RG  and U.S. military intelligence reports. This shortcoming is partly due to my insufficient Russian-language skills at the time I conducted the original research. I have since tried to remedy this insufficiency, and in a future study I hope to reexamine North Korea in light of Soviet and East European sources. But the Korean-language sources are more than sufficient for the kind of close examination of North Korean politics and society in the formative years of the DPRK that this book has attempted.The bulk of Cold War history-writing after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in an understandable rush of excitement to discover the revelations of central state and party documents long denied Western researchers, has focused on the “big picture” of high politics, intrigue among top leaders, and relations among Great Powers.10 This book, in contrast, focuses on the “small picture” of local politics, social transformation, and the effect of these momentous changes on the lives of ordinary people, whose voices are too often neglected both by historians and by the authorities who claim to represent them.

. Most of these studies are yet unpublished Ph.D. dissertations. In English, see Alexandre Mansourov, “Communist War Coalition Formation and the Origins of the Korean War” (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University, ); in Russian, see Kvan So Ki (Ki Kwangso˘), “Formation of the Political System in North Korea and the Soviet Role (–)” (Ph.D. diss., Far Eastern Institute, Russian Academy of Sciences, ), and Khun Su Zhon (Cho˘n Hyo˘nsu), “Socioeconomic Transformation in Postliberation North Korea,  –” (Ph.D. diss., Moscow State University, ); and in Korean, see Kim So˘ngbo, “Puk Hanu˘i t’oji kaehyo˘k kwa nongo˘p hyo˘ptonghwa” (Land Reform and Agricultural Collectivization in North Korea) (Ph.D. diss.,Yonsei University, ). . See especially Sergei Goncharov, John N. Lewis, and Xue Litai, Uncertain Partners: Stalin, Mao, and the Korean War (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, ). A pioneering collaborative effort in post–Cold War historiography, Uncertain Partners fills many gaps in our knowledge of Sino-Soviet relations surrounding the Korean War but utilizes not a single Korean source and virtually erases the presence of Koreans from their own civil war.

   

Statements of General Chistiakov on the Soviet Occupation of North Korea, Fall 

I. Order of Ivan Chistiakov, Commanding General of the Soviet Army of Occupation in North Korea, the th Army. . The Red Army has defeated the Japanese Army in Manchuria and North Korea.The Japanese Army, which has surrendered unconditionally, has been destroyed. North Korea, which has been invaded by Japanese colonists for fifty years or more, has been liberated. The Red Army has come into North Korea to destroy plunderers. The Red Army has no ideas for establishing the Soviet system in Korea or obtaining Korean territory. The private and public properties of the people in North Korea are under the protection of the Soviet Army authorities. . Orders are as follows: a. We will permit the organization of anti-Japanese parties which will absolutely eradicate the residues of the Japanese aggressive policy in North Korea and which will struggle for democratic ideals in the activities of the people. b. The right of organizing uncontrolled labor unions, social-supported organizations, and cultural enlightenment associations for the workingmen of North Korea will be given. c. Worship will not be prohibited at cathedrals and other churches. d. Anti-Japanese political parties pointed in Article  and  and democratic corporations must register their by-laws and general plans with the local People’s Committee and the Soviet Army Headquarters, at the same time submitting a list of members in the main organization. 



 

e. All armed corps in North Korea must be dissolved and all weapons must be turned in.We will permit the organization of a Peace Maintenance Unit with members regulated by the coordination of the Soviet Army Headquarters and Temporary Provincial People’s Committee for the purpose of maintaining order. . The people of North Korea must continue with their peaceful work. By carrying out the orders of the Soviet Military Administration and cooperating with the Military Forces of the USSR in maintaining law and order, the continuance of businesses, commerce, and other daily enterprises will be guaranteed.

II. Summary of the Instructions of Commanding General Chistiakov at the Meeting of the Five Provinces ( November ) To you Koreans. For thirty-six years, the Japanese Imperialists plundered Korean financial resources, limited the freedom of speech, effaced racial independence and national existence, pillaged your language, and in addition dragged you into the war. But now you have been liberated from slavery under the Japanese oppression. The time for the Korean people to plan their own living has arrived.The Red Army has absolutely no intention to plunder, but rather to restore the independence of Korea. All private properties are under the reliable protection of the Red Army, so there is no cause for fear. We are not going to compel our principles of government on this land.Though we are establishing a democratic form of government here, you have the right to express your own point of view. Every organization must guarantee the freedom or religion. Leaders must settle rapidly all matters concerning mining enterprises. Make a detailed examination of all mining machineries, also of raw materials, and make preparation to train mining technicians as soon as possible. Immediate steps must be taken to convert production of war machineries to production of machineries used in peacetime. All factories must be kept operating. All problems concerning food supply and raw materials must be settled.The Japanese took away most of the food raised by the farmers and made them miserably poor. In short, this meeting was held to solve the necessary problems for independence and then: . Agricultural production and curtailments must be discussed. . Problems arising in business must be solved. . Financial problems must be solved. Concentrate all individual capital in banks, guarantee monetary payment and capital circulation. . There is no central or local administrative organization. You are working

       



temporarily.You must elect directors of villages, county, and city committees. For discussion, this bill must be divided into four sections. a. Agriculture and commerce b. Industry c. Administration This meeting must be held again. Source: United States Army, Far East Command, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), box , item , translation , – .

Selected Bibliography

A M

United States National Archive and Record Administration.Record Group , National Archives Collection of Foreign Records Seized, –, Records Seized by U.S. Military Forces in Korea, Shipping Advices –. Shipping Advice  Box , item . Cho-sso munhwa (Korean-Soviet Culture), various issues, –. Box , item . Choso˘n yo˘so˘ng (Korean Woman), various issues, –. Box , item . Ch’oe Hakjo, Nongmin chohap chojingnon (On Organizing Peasant Unions). Seoul: Sahoe kwahak sango˘p kanhaenghoe, . Box , item . North Korean People’s Committee, Propaganda Section, Choguk ko˘nso˘ru˘l wihan aegukjo˘k rodongja nongmindu˘l (Patriotic Workers and Peasants for Constructing a Rich and Powerful Fatherland). Pyongyang: Nongmin sinmunsa, . Box , item . Choso˘n inmingun (The Korean People’s Army), February . Box , item . Han Chaedo˘k, Kim Ilso˘ng changgun kaeso˘n’gi (Record of the Triumphant Return of General Kim Il Sung). Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, . Box , item . Provincial, City, and County People’s Committee Materials,April . Box , item . Paek Nam’un, Ssoryo˘n insang (Impressions of the Soviet Union). Pyongyang: Choso˘n yo˘ksa p’yo˘nch’an wiwo˘nhoe, . Box , item . Ssoryo˘nu˘n kajang widaehan kukka ida (The Soviet Union is the Greatest State). Pyongyang: Nodongdang ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Kim Yegang, Inminu˘i nara: Ssoryo˘n (People’s Country: The Soviet Union). Cho-Sso munhwa hyo˘phoe, . Box , item . Documents of Sonyo˘ndan (Boys’ League), March . Box , item . Hwanghae Province, Sohu˘ng County People’s Committee,“Documents Regarding Recruitment of Korean People’s Army,” , . Box , item . Explanation of Agricultural Tax, .





 

Box , items .–.. Minutes of Second Meeting of Chiefs of Security Bureaus, July –, . Kim Il Sung Instructions to Interior Ministry and Information Bureau, November . Pak Iru, Letter to Democratic Youth League Self-defense Units,  November . Box , item . First Conference of Chiefs of Penitentiaries in North Korea, . Box , item . Kim Il Sung,“Twenty-Point Platform,” March , . Box , item . Applications for Membership, Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party, December , . Box , item . Materials Relating to Various Local People’s Committees, February . Box , item . Korean Democratic Party Platform, October . Box , item . Democratic Youth League Central Committee, “List of Decisions and Directives,” . Box , item .“Memoir of Prison Activity under Japanese Imperialism,” n.p., n.d. Box ,item .Minutes of the Sixth Meeting of the Choso˘n Democratic Party Central Committee, December , . Box , item . Korean Communist Party, Message of the North Korean Bureau, February , .

Shipping Advice  Box , item . Ministry of Education, Elementary Education Bureau, Wo˘nbyo˘l sao˘p kyehoekso mit pogoso˘ch’o˘l (Plan and Report of Activities) (secret), . Box , item . Register of High School Teachers in North Korea, . Box , items –.Autobiographical Essays, n.d. Box , item . Hamnam Nodong sinmun (South Hamgyo˘ng Workers’ Daily), . Box , item . So˘njo˘nja (The Propagandist), inaugural issue (October ). Box , item .World Federation of Trade Unions Visit to Korea, June . Box , item . Democratic Youth League, Sinbu Township, So˘nch’o˘n County, South P’yo˘ng’an Province, Record of Activities, June -September . Box , item . Files on Korean People’s Army and Interior Ministry, –. Box , item . North Korean Department of Social Insurance, Hyuyang sojang hoeu˘irok (Record of Meetings of Heads of Workers’ Rest Centers), – .

Shipping Advice  Box , item . Haebanghu Sanyo˘nganu˘i kungnaeoe chungyo ilji (Chronicle of Important Domestic and External Events for the Four Years since Liberation). Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, .

Shipping Advice  Box , item . Haebanghu sanyo˘n (Four Years after Liberation). Pyongyang, . Box , item . Hakkyoron (On Schools). Pyongyang: Nodong sinmunsa, . Box , item . Minutes of Conference of Enthusiasts of the Political Parties and Social Organizations under the Democratic National United Front, June , . Box , item . Minjujuu˘i todo˘k kwa munhwa (Democratic Morals and Culture), . Box , item . Sin Yo˘ngjun and Park Yo˘ngch’o˘l, Kukje cho˘ngse iyagi (Talk on the International Situation). N.p.: Kungnip inmin ch’ulp’ansa, .

 



Box , item . Han Chaedo˘k, Choso˘n e isso˘so˘u˘i Ssoryo˘n kwa Miguk (The Soviet Union and the United States in Korea). Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘n ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Chigo˘p tongmaeng undong charyojip (Reference Materials on the Trade Federation Movement). North Korean Federation of Trade Unions, . Box , item . Rodongja munyejip (Cultural Material for Workers). Pyongyang: Puk Choso˘n chio˘p ch’ongdongmaeng kunjungmunhwabu, . Box , item .Yo˘nghwa yesul (Film Arts) () Box , item . Munmyo˘ng sano˘p kwa chibang sano˘p (Enlightened Industry and Local Industry), no. , . Box , item . Ch’o˘ngnyo˘n saengwhal (Youth Life), November . Box , item . Punyo˘ haebangsa (History of Women’s Liberation). Ch’o˘rhaksa, . Box , item . Liu Shaoqi, Kukjejuu˘i wa minjokchuu˘i e daehayo˘ (On Internationalism and Nationalism). Minju hwagyo ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Mao Zedong, Sinminjujuu˘i ron (On New Democracy). Pyongyang: Sinminsa, . Box , item . Kim Talhyo˘n (Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party), Anti-U.S. Propaganda, April . Box , item . Minutes of Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party Second Party Congress, June . Box , item . Kim Uch’o˘l, Nae u˘i choguk (My Fatherland). Pyongyang: Munhwa cho˘nso˘nsa, . Box , item . Minjujuu˘i sibi kang (Twelve Lectures on Democracy), . Box , item . People’s Committee Propaganda Materials,August . Box , item . North Korean Worker’s Party Central Committee, Propaganda Bureau,“Materials for Lecturers.” Box , item .Weekly Reports of Life in North Korea. Box , item . Kugyuhwa wa kugyuhwa u˘i so˘nggwa (Nationalization and the Achievements of Nationalization). Pyongyang: Nodongdang ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Puk Choso˘n minjujuu˘i ko˘nso˘l wa inmin kwo˘llyo˘k (North Korea’s Democratic Construction and the People’s Power),August . Box , item . Kwahakjo˘k kongsanchuu˘i u˘i ch’anggo˘nja: K’al Markssi u˘i saenghwal wa hakso˘l (The Founder of Scientific Communism: Karl Marx’s Life and Doctrine). Pyongyang: Nodong ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Minjok munhwaron (On National Culture), n.p., n.d. Box , item . Haebanghu onyo˘n (Five Years after Liberation). Pyongyang, . Box , item . Munwha yesul (Culture and Arts), various issues. Box , item . Munhwa cho˘nso˘n (Cultural Front), no.  ( July ). Box , item . Munhak (Literature), various issues.

Shipping Advice  Box , item . Choguk powi wihayo˘ (For the Defense of the Fatherland). Inaugural issue, October . Box , item . Hwalsal (Arrow), various issues, – . Box , item . Nongmin tokbon (Peasants’ Reader),  February . Box , item . Solder’s notebook,“The Combat of the Great General Kim Il Sung’s Partisan Unit,” June . Box , item . Kim Il Sung, Minju Choso˘n charip tongnibu˘i kil (chungyo nonmunjip) (The Independent Path of Democratic Korea [Collection of Essays]), March .



 

Box , item . Private Diary of Ch’oe Hyo˘n’ok, Korean People’s Army Pilot. Box , item . Kim Il Sung, Chaju tongnip kukka ko˘nso˘l wihayo˘ (For the Construction of an Independent State),April . Box , item . Kim Tubong, Sin kukki kyo˘lcho˘ng kwa t’aegu˘kki u˘i palchi edaehayo˘ (On the Decision for the New National Flag and the Abolishment of the T’aegu˘kki). Pyongyang: Nodong sinmunsa, . Box , item . Collection of Important Documents on Provincial, City, and County People’s Committees, /. Box , item . Ch’o˘ngnyo˘ndu˘l ege chusin Kim Ilso˘ng changgun u˘i yo˘nso˘l (General Kim Il Sung’s Speeches to Young People). North Korean Democratic Youth League Central Committee, . Box , item . Choso˘n ch’oego inminhoeu˘i cheil ch’a hoeu˘i chungyo munho˘njip (Important Documents on the First Congress of the Supreme People’s Assembly of Korea). Seoul: Inmin ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Inmin kundae wa ch’o˘ngnyo˘n (People’s Army and Youth). Democratic Youth League,April . Box , item . Ssoryo˘n ch’o˘ngnyo˘n undongu˘i kyo˘ngho˘m kyohun (Lessons of the Soviet Youth Movement). Democratic Youth League, . Box , item . Platform and Rules of the Democratic Youth League, June . Box , item . Democratic Youth League, Materials for Study, June . Box , item . Kim Il Sung Addresses Youth, n.p., n.d. Box , item . T’ae Songju, Minjujuu˘i todo˘k kyoyangu˘i chamunje (Problems of Democratic Moral Education). Pyongyang: Inmin kyoyuksa, . Box , item . Inmin kyo˘ngje kyehoege kwanhan pogojip (Collection of Reports on People’s Democratic Economic Planning), – . Box , item . Sahoejuu˘i wa kongsanchuu˘i (Socialism and Communism). Pyongyang: Nodong ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Cho-Sso Munhwa hyo˘phoe, Cho-Sso ch’inso˘n kwa Sobet’e munhwa: kangyo˘n charyojip (Korean-Soviet Friendship and Soviet Culture: Reference Material for Lectures), n.p., n.d. Box , items , , . Outline of Work of Provincial People’s Committees, September . Box , item . Kim Il Sung Speech to Forestry and Fishery Technicians, . Box , item . North Korean Provisional People’s Committee Propaganda Bureau, Haebang toen Puk Choso˘n u˘i minju ko˘nso˘l (Democratic Construction of Liberated North Korea), October . Box , item . Choso˘n imsi inmin cho˘ngbu u˘i ch’angso˘re kwanhayo˘, kit’a (On the Establishment of the Korean Provisional People’s Committee, others). Pyongyang: Inmin ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Announcement, Platform, and Rules of the Democratic National United Front, February , . Box , item . So˘njo˘nja (The Propagandist), no. . Box , item . Democratic Youth League, Diaries, January . Box , item . Korean People’s Army Soldier’s Diary. Box , item . Propaganda Poster, Korean War. Box , item . Zhang Yuxin, Mo T’aektong u˘i insaengkwan (Mao Zedong’s View of Life), trans. Yi Sagyu, n.p., n.d. Box , item . Ho˘ Min,“On the Democratic Education System being Implemented in the DPRK,” .

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

Box , item . North Hamgyo˘ng Provincial People’s Committee, “Record of Activities,” November , . Box  item . Ministry of Education, various publications. Box , item . Rodongja (The Worker), January-February . Box , item . Roster of Membership, Choso˘n Democratic Party and Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party. Box , item . Kang So˘kju (Korean People’s Army), Notes on Political Education. Box , item . Ryo˘ksa kirog’e kwanhan kyosi ) (Directives on Recording History), . Box , item . Democratic Youth League, Korean People’s Army Branch, Minutes of Meeting of Representatives, May , . Box  , items –. Documents Relating to Sinjindang (New Progressive Party). Box , item . Draft of Rules of the North Korean Federation of Trade Unions, . Box , items .–.Autobiographical Essays, . Box , item . Cho-Sso munhwa hyo˘phoe, Hamhu˘ng City branch, Haebang u˘i Choso˘n: Ssoryo˘n sinmun ronso˘ljip (Liberated Korea: Collection of Editorials from the Soviet Press),August .

Shipping Advice  Box , item . O Kiso˘p, Cho˘nggijo˘k hyuaga wa puch’ungjo˘ k hyuga (Regular Vacations and Supplementary Vacations). Pyongyang: Choso˘n ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Democratic Youth League, Hamhu˘ng City Committee, “Record of Activities,” June . Box , item . Kunjung munhwa sao˘p ch’amgo chaeryo (Materials on Mass Cultural Activities). Department of National Defense, Cultural Training Division, March . Box , item . Outline of Ch’o˘ndogyo Doctrine. Box , item . Materials on Ch’o˘ndogyo Religious Doctrine. Box , item .Thesis on Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party. Box , item . Documents Relating to Entrance to Kim Il Sung University, . Box , item . Yo˘ksa chemunje (Historical Issues), no.  (). Box , item . Tangji (Platform of Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party). Box , item . Tang ko˘nso˘l (Party Construction),April . Box , item . Documents on Korean People’s Army Soldiers from China. Box ,item .Directives of Korean People’s Army Unit  from China,May-August . Box , . Propaganda Section, North Korean Provisional People’s Committee, So˘n’go˘ so˘njo˘n kwa uriu˘i immu (Propaganda of Election and our Duty) (November ). Box , item , Kim Il Sung, Minjok taedong tan’gyo˘l e taehayo˘ (On the Great Unity of the Nation). N.p., March .

Shipping Advice  Box , item . Kim Il Sung Chonghap Taehak munhakbu kyowo˘n iryo˘kso˘ (Personal Histories of Educators at Kim Il Sung University, College of Liberal Arts), .

Shipping Advice  Box , item . Han So˘rya et al., Uriu˘i t’aeyang (Our Sun). N.p.,August . Box , item . Cho Myo˘nghu˘i, Naktong kang (Naktong River). Pyongyang, . ˘ lji Mundo˘k, Stalin, and Lenin. Box , item . Biographies of Kim Il Sung,Yi Sunsin, U



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Box , item . Choso˘n munhak (Korean Literature), inaugural issue, . Box , item . Kim Talhyo˘n, Ch’o˘ndogyo ch’egye yoram (Outline of the Ch’o˘ndogyo System), . Box , item . Kunsa chisik (Military Knowledge), no.  (February ). Box , item . Yo˘ksa chemunje (Historical Issues), various issues,  –. Box , item . Paek Kwangji, Sutjjanu˘n ku˘rim ida: inmin kyo˘ngje iyagi (Numbers are Pictures: Stories of the People’s Economy). Pyongyang: Kungmin inmin ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item . Rules Relating to Democratic Youth League in Korean People’s Army, . Box , item . Minutes of Meetings of Inspector Section Chiefs of People’s Committees, July  and December . Box , item . Ministry of Education, Cadre Department, Hakkyo insa kwangye (Materials Relating to School Personnel),  (secret). Box , item . Surveillance Materials on Korean Democratic Party and Ch’o˘ndogyo Young Friends’ Party, February . Box , item . North Korean Worker’s Party Platform,  August .

Shipping Advice  Box , item . Kangwo˘n Province, Munch’o˘n County (People’s) Committee,“Examples on Dealing with Employee-Employer Relationships.” Box , item . Kim T’aegyo˘ng, Choso˘n Minjujuu˘i Inmin Konghwaguk kongminu˘i kibonjo˘k kwo˘lli wa u˘imu (Fundamental Rights and Duties of the Citizens of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea). Pyongyang: Minju Choso˘nsa, . Box , item . Brief Biography of Kim Il Sung,April . Box , item . Records of Kangwo˘n Province People’s Committee, September . Box , item . North Korean Educators’ and Cultural Workers’ League, Central Committee,“Directives on Organization of Cultural Activities,” July . Box , item . Kim Il Sung, Chogugu˘i t’ong’il kwa tongnip kwa minjuhwa ru˘l wihayo˘ (On the Unification, Independence, and Democratization of the Fatherland),August . Box , item . Inmin kyoyuk (People’s Education), no.  (). Box , item . Ho˘ Ho˘n, Kungnaewae cho˘ngse wa uriu˘i immu (Domestic and External Situation and Our Duty), June , . Box , item . Proceedings of Fourth Meeting of North Korean Peasants’ League,  April . Box , item . Kim Ch’angman, Modu˘n ko˘su˘n choguk ko˘nso˘re (Everything for Fatherland Construction). Pyongyang: Rodong ch’ulp’ansa, . Box , item .. So˘njo˘nja such’aek (Propagandists’ Handbook), February .

Other Unpublished Documents Center for Korean Research, Columbia University. Soviet documents relating to the Korean War declassified from the Russian Presidential Archives, Archives of the CPSU Central Committee, USSR Ministry of Foreign Affairs, General Staff of the USSR Armed Forces, and USSR Ministry of Defense. Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University. Radio Pyongyang, . Folder no. . United States Armed Forces in Korea. Record Group , forty-four boxes, XXIV Corps Historical File,  –.

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

United States Army, Far East Command, Allied Translator and Interpreter Section (ATIS), Korean documents, –. United States Army, Far East Command, Record Group , box ,“Communist Indoctrination of North Korean Civilian Populace,” . United States Army Military Government in Korea, Record Group , G- (intelligence) weekly reports, –. United States Army, Record Group , Intelligence Summary North Korea (Army Staff ). Intelligence (G-) library.“P.” File. –. United States Central Intelligence Agency, “Current Capabilities of the North Korean Regime,” ORE  – , June , .

P D C Kim Chunyo˘p et al., eds. Puk Han yo˘n’gu charyojip (Research Materials on North Korea), vol. . Seoul: Korea University Asiatic Research Center, . Kim Namsik,Yi Cho˘ngsik, and Han Honggu, comp. Hanguk hyo˘ndaesa charyo ch’ongso˘,  –  (Collection of Materials on Contemporary Korean History).  vols. Seoul:Tolbegae, . Nam-buk Han kwan’gye saryojip (Historical Materials on South-North Korean Relations).  vols. Seoul: National Historical Compilation Committee, . Puk Han kyo˘ngje t’onggye charyojip (Collection of Materials on North Korean Economic Statistics), –. Ch’unch’o˘n: Hallim University Asian Culture Research Center, .

F Nae Kohyang (My Hometown), director Kim Su˘nggu. Produced by Kang Hongsik, National Film Production Center (DPRK), . National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group , Motion Picture Film Section, Series MID. Item . North Korea and From North Korea. Item . Report from North Korea. Items  and . Everlasting Good Will. Item . Korean Newsreel #. Item . th Parallel. Item . Korea Newsreel #.

Index

Agricultural tax-in-kind, –, , , ,  –,  An Mak,  China, People’s Republic of, , –, , , , , , , , , , – Chinese Communist Party, , –, –, , , , ,  Cho Mansik, , , , – , , –, ,  Ch’oe Ch’ang’ik, , , ,  Ch’oe Yongdal, , ,  Ch’oe Yonggo˘n, , , – , , , , , ,  Ch’o˘ndogyo, ,  –, , , , , , – , , – Choso˘n dynasty, , , , , , , , , , ,  Christianity,  –, , –, –, , –,  Cinema, , , – Comintern,  Committee for the Preparation of Korean Independence,  – , , , ,  Confucianism, , – , , , , , , ,  –,  Consumers’ Cooperatives, , ,  Cult of personality, , , , –, – Democratic Front for the Unification of the Fatherland, –,  Democratic National United Front, , , , –, 

Democratic Youth League, , –, , , –, , ,  DPRK. See Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of Economic planning,  –, – Education, , , , –, –, ,  Filial piety, , ,  – Five-Province Conference, – , , –  Foreign trade, – Gender equality, – ,  Hamgyo˘ng Provinces, ,  –, , – , , , , – , , , , –, , , ,  Han Chaedo˘k, , , , ,  Han So˘rya, – , , , –,  Ho˘ Cho˘ngsuk, ,  Ho˘ Ho˘n, , , – Hong Myo˘nghy˘i, , ,  Hwanghae Province, , , , , , ,  Hyo˘n Chunhyo˘k, , ,  Ideology, , – , , , , –, , , ,  –,  Industry, , ,  – , , ,  –, , – , – Intellectuals, –, 





Index

Japanese colonialism, , , , – , , , , , , –, , , , , – ,  –, –,  Joint-stock companies, – Juche, , ,  –, , , ,  Kangwo˘n Province, –, , , , , , , ,  KAPF,  Kim Ch’aek, , ,  Kim Ch’angman, , ,  Kim Il Sung, –, , –, – , , , – ,  –, –, –, , , , , – ,  –,  –, –, –, –, , , , , , , , –, –, , , , , – ,  –, , , , –, – , –, , ,  Kim Il Sung University, , , , ,  Kim Talhyo˘n, ,  Kim Tubong, , –, , , , –, , , , , ,  Kim Yongbo˘m, ,  Korea, Democratic People’s Republic of, , , , , , , , , , ,  –, –, , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , –, ,  –, , , –, ,  Korea, Republic of, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , ,  –, , –, –,  – Korean communist movement, , , , –  Korean Communist Party, , , – , , , , , , , , , ,  Korean Communist Party—North Korea Bureau,  –, , , , –,  Korean Democratic Party, – , , – , –, –, , –, –,  Korean Peasant Society (Choso˘n nongminsa),  – Korean People’s Army, , , , –,  –,  – Korean Socialist Party (Hanin Sahoedang),  Korean Volunteer Army, ,  Korean War, , , , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , , , , , , , , , –, ,  Korean Workers’ Party, , , , , , – ,  –, , , –, 

Korean-Soviet Culture Society (Cho-Sso munhwa hyo˘phoe), ,  Labor reform,  – ,  Land reform, , , , ,  – , , – Literature, –, –, ,  Manchukuo, , –, ,  Manchuria, , –, , – , , , , , ,  Manchurian guerillas, , , – , – , , , , , , , , –, , , , –, , –,  Mao Zedong, ,  –, , , , ,  Marxism-Leninism, –, ,  – , , , , , , , , ,  National Council of Labor Unions,  National Federation of Peasant Unions, –  Nationalism, , – ,  – , , , , – , –, , ,  Nationalization of major industries, , , – ,  New People’s Party (Sinmindang), , , ,  North Korean Arts Federation, ,  North Korean Christian League, ,  North Korean Federation of Trade Unions, ,  North Korean Literature and Arts Federation,  North Korean Peasant League, , , – ,  –, ,  North Korean People’s Committee, , – , , , , ,  –, , –,  North Korean Provisional People’s Committee, , ,  –, , , , , , , , , , , , –, , , , –, , , ,  North Korean Women’s League,  North Korean Workers’ Party, , , , ,  –,  –,  –, , , , , , , , , , – Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, , , – ,  –  O Kiso˘p, , ,  –, , – , , , , ,  Paek Nam’un, , , ,  Pak Cho˘ng’ae, ,  – Pak Ho˘nyo˘ng, , , , , , , , , , , 

Index Park Chung Hee,  “Patriotic Rice” campaigns,  Pauley Commission, , –,  People’s Committees, , , – , , – , , , , , , –, , –, , , , , –, –, , , – People’s Courts, , , , , – “Primitive socialist accumulation,” , ,  P’yo˘ng’an Provinces, –,  –, , , , – , , –, –, –, , , , , ,  Record Group (RG) , , , – Red Army. See Soviet Army Red Peasant Union Movement, –, –, , , ,  Revolution, –, , , , , – , , , , –, , –, ,  Rhee, Syngman, , , , , –, – , ,  ROK. See Korea, Republic of Self-criticism, , , – Shtykov,Terentii, , , –, – Sino-Korean border region, , , , ,  Siny˘iju, , ,  Siny˘iju Incident, – , , ,  Social mobility,  Socialist Realism, , , ,  South Korean Workers’ Party, , , , ,  South P’yo˘ng’an Provincial People’s Political Committee, , ,  Soviet Army, , , , –, –, , , , –, , , , , , –, –, , – Soviet Civil Administration, , – , , , , 



Soviet Union, – , – , –, , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,  –,  –, –, ,  –, –, –, , , , , , , –, –,  aid to North Korea, ,  occupation of North Korea,  – , , ,  – , , , , –, , –, , , – See also Soviet Army; Soviet Civil Administration; Soviet-Koreans Soviet-Koreans, ,  –, –, , , ,  Stalin, Joseph, , , – , , , , , , , , –, , , , , –  Stalinism, , , –, , –, , ,  State socialism, – Supreme Leader (suryo˘ng), , –,  Supreme People’s Assembly, , , , ,  Tonghak,  Tonghak Rebellion, , , , – ˘ nghyang Incident,  U United Nations Temporary Commission on Korea (UNTCOK), , , ,  USSR. See Soviet Union Village committees,  Workers’ Rest Centers, , –  Yan’an Faction, , – , , , –, , , , , ,  Young Friends’ Party, , , , , , , , ,  –

Studies of the East Asian Institute

S T Korea Between Empires: Nationalism and Colonialism in East Asia,  –, by Andre Schmid. New York: Columbia University Press, . Turned Away at the Gate?: The Politics of Postwar Japanese Consumerism, by Patricia Maclachlan. New York: Columbia University Press . Nanking : Memory and Healing, edited by Fei Fei Li, David Liu, and Robert Sabella. Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, . The Reluctant Dragon: Crisis Cycles in Chinese Foreign Economic Policy, by Lawrence Christopher Reardon. Seattle: University of Washington Press, . China’s Retreat from Equality: Income Distribution and Economic Transition, edited by Carl Riskin, Zhao Renwei, Li Shi.Armonk, N.Y.: M. E. Sharpe, . Abortion before Birth Control:The Politics of Reproduction in Postwar Japan, by Tiana Norgren. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, . Japan’s Imperial Diplomacy: Consuls,Treaty Ports, and War with China, –, by Barbara Brooks. Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, . Japan’s Budget Politics: Balancing Domestic and International Interests, by Takaaki Suzuki. Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner Publishers, . Cadres and Corruption: The Organizational Involution of the Chinese Communist Party, by Xiaobo Lu. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, . Japan’s Total Alignment despite Antagonism: The United States, Japan, and Korea, by Victor Cha. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, . Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer, by Simon Partner. Berkeley: University of California Press, . Nation, Governance, and Modernity: Canton,  –, by Michael T. W. Tsin. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, .

Civilization and Monsters: Spirits of Modernity in Meiji Japan, by Gerald Figal. Raleigh, N.C.: Duke University Press, . The Logic of Japanese Politics: Leaders, Institutions, and the Limits of Change, by Gerald L. Curtis. New York: Columbia University Press, . Trans-Pacific Racisms and the U.S. Occupation of Japan, by Yukiko Koshiro. New York: Columbia University Press, . Bicycle Citizens: The Political World of the Japanese Housewife, by Robin LeBlanc. Berkeley: University of California Press, . Contesting Citizenship in Urban China: Peasant Migrants, the State and Logic of the Market, by Dorothy Solinger. Berkeley: University of California Press, . Empire: Manchuria and the Culture of Wartime Imperialism, by Louise Young. Berkeley: University of California Press, . Landownership under Colonial Rule: Korea’s Japanese Experience,  –, by Edwin H. Gragert. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, . Race to the Swift: State and Finance in Korean Industrialization, by Jung-en Woo. New York: Columbia University Press, . Kim Il Sung:The North Korean Leader, by Dae-Sook Suh. New York: Columbia University Press, . The Foreign Policy of the Republic of Korea, edited by Youngnok Koo and Sungjoo Han. New York: Columbia University Press, . The U.S.–South Korean Alliance: Evolving Patterns of Security Relations, edited by Gerald L. Curtis and Sung-joo Han. Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, . The Origins of the Korean War: Liberation and the Emergence of Separate Regimes, –, by Bruce Cumings. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, .