North Korea a culture of
warriors By Tatiana
Gabroussenko
" ... Young guerrilla girl
Kumsuni delivers letters to comrades, and one
day is caught by the police. When the policemen
demand the girl disclose information about the
guerillas, she spits into the faces of her
interrogators. As the policemen drag Kumsuni to
her execution, the heroic girl cries out 'Long
Live General Kim Il
Sung!'"
...Pre-teen boy Ri Kwang-ch'un is a
member of a secret anti-Japanese children's
organization. Along with others, he helps the
"Red Guard uncles". However, one day policemen
apprehend the boy. When the "bastards" torture
the young patriot, Ri cuts off his own tongue in
defiance. His last words are "Long Live the
Korean Revolution!"
Even if one
supports patriotic education of the younger
generation, one is still likely to find such
notions of slicing off one's own
tongue, torture or execution
to be much too disturbing and complicated to
present to children. Yet the plots cited above are
from comics published in Kkotpongori
(Flower bud), a North Korean monthly magazine for
kindergarden-aged children. The designated
audience of the publication may be deduced by the
types of logic puzzles included in each issue,
such as: "Look at the pictures of a pig, a tractor
and a bike. Which one moves faster?"
Welcome to the world of North Korean
childhood. In this world, cartoons such as "Pencil
artillery shells", by Cha Kye-ok, call on children
to study well. Unlike in South Korea, where the
same imperative is justified by intellectual fun
and social success of the students, the North
Korean educational paradigm suggests another
lucrative objective: good students are better
prepared for the defence of their country against
invaders.
In the constantly emphasized
potential war, North Korean children are summoned
to prepare for the worst. Verses of their songs
widely employ idioms such as kyolsaongwi
(desperate readiness to die [for the leader, the
country, the party]) orch' ongp' at
'anadulttal, (sons and daughters of guns and
bombs/living guns and bombs). See, for example, a
typical children's poem by Kim Ch'angmu, They
Envy Us, They Are Afraid of Us:
The whole world envies us The
whole world is afraid of us We are the nation
of the sun The nation which shines under the
slogan of juche [self-reliance] We are
the sons and daughters of guns and
bombs.
Kunsanori, or
military games, constitute an essential part of
physical activity of young North Korean children.
Traditionally, the target of such games has been a
dummy of a US soldier, with the archetypal
reference of "American bastard", which North
Korean kindergardeners are taught to shoot or
beat.
Recently, the list of targets
has been expanded. For example, the back cover of
a magazine that informs us about the exploits of
Ri Kwang-ch'un (Kkotbonori, May-June 2012) depicts
a group of North Korean kindergarteners, including
a girl in a pretty yellow dress, pounding dummies
of South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, Defense
Minister Kim Kwan-jin and the Chairman of the
Joint Chiefs of Staff Jeong Sung-Jo with wooden
clubs. The expressive image carries the title "Let
us crush the clique of Lee Myung-bak". This bacchanalia of militarist imagination
in North Korean kindergarteners reflects a general
North Korean passion for arms, which some
observers tend to link with the official
announcement of songun, or "military first"
era. Songun made its nationwide debut in
1996-1998. However, as North Korean history
demonstrates, prioritization of the military in
all aspects of life in the North has factually
existed since the very inception of the "Guerrilla
State". Militarism was an integral part of the
Democratic People's Republic of Korea's founding
mythology.
Warriors versus learned
gentlemen A comparison of North and South
Korean paradigms demonstrates that the major
rupture between two halves of a once homogeneous
culture which has been occurring over the last 60
years lies not in their respective attitudes to
communism. In many aspects, purely communist
messages of North Korean discourse are congruent
with communal values of patriarchal Korea and may
be quite appealing to a regular South Korean.
What in fact differentiates the North
Korean spiritual world from the South Korean one
is it's radical departure from civil traditions of
the Confucian learned gentlemen, which
traditionally despise brute force and military
violence.
North Korean ideology has
significantly redefined Korea's past, present and
future. When depicting traditional Korea, North
Korean media tend to downplay its Confucian legacy
and falsely represent old Korea as an essentially
martial state. According to a popular ideological
myth, obligatory military service allegedly
enjoyed such a high prestige in old Korea that it
was widely considered a kind of initiation process
for young men, without passing of which they were
not allowed to marry.
When describing
present events in both fictional and documentary
reports, North Korean media do so in such a way
that they leave the audience with an impression
that the country is participating in actual combat
operations. "On the spot guidance" by deceased
Leader Kim Jong - il would be portrayed as "the
Leader's inspections of the front line and state
borders".
North Korean journalists place
particular emphasis on the personal inconveniences
and dangers such inspections allegedly pose for
the precious leader. Contemporary North Korean
romantic songs lament over a separation of lovers,
one going to the front line to take part in
non-existant combat. Without being involved in a
war, North Koreans have managed to create a
warriors' culture which nurtures an indomitable
marshal spirit, self-discipline and toughness with
relation to both the world and themselves.
Of course it may be argued that, firstly,
contemporary North Korean militarism justifies the
use of force only on behalf of "good" causes and
secondly that it "barks but not bites", thus
fulfilling merely a morale-increasing function.
However, the army-centrism of the DPRK has given
birth to an educational philosophy that permits
and encourages children to hit and punch, and
moreover suggests that they can be the object of
someone else's punches, and this can be regarded
as a significant social outcome.
A
consistent injection of this idea into generations
cannot pass without consequences. Warriors who are
trained to fight against named enemies, the South
Korean president among them, will search for their
battlefield and are likely eventually to find it.
Meanwhile, South Korean upbringing is
rapidly moving towards the opposite direction. On
the one hand, it largely continues Confucian
traditions of the prevalence of intellectual
development over the body. On the other hand, this
Confucian legacy has been augmented by the
educational trend of contemporary Western
democracies, with their emphasis on pacifism,
tolerance and leniency to human weaknesses.
One of the recent mantras of South Korean
pedagogy is curbing children's aggression and
discouraging violent games and toys. A range of
parental books on the shelves of the largest Seoul
bookshop, Kyobomungo, calls on South Korean
fathers to refrain from any aggression, both
physical and verbal, when dealing with their
children and to inspire their offspring to do the
same at schools and playgrounds.
The
nationwide campaign encourages South Korean
schoolchildren to solve the issue of bullying by
way of complaints to teachers and by calling
particular help-line numbers. In the contemporary
South Korean context, it is actions like these
that constitute standing up for one's self.
It can be fairly stated that a regular
North Korean boy would hardly sympathize with this
course of action. In his juche world,
"standing up for himself" implies mastering his
own body and bravery and physically retaliating
against his aggressor, as a soldier should do. In
the case when the aggressor is overwhelming,
"standing up for one's self" would mean creating a
network of friends and striking back with one's
coterie, similar to a platoon of soldiers.
Political indoctrination can only
partially be blamed for this attitude of North
Korean youngsters; the major reason is
materialist. Harsh reality, where regular
malnutrition, material shortages and social
injustices are the facts of life and where legal
actions are fiction, makes it impossible for North
Koreans to raise their children to be overly
delicate and sentimental. The "People's Paradise"
is not a place where a whiner would survive.
In a prosperous, humane and caring world
of South Korean children, everyday violence is
hidden from the public eye; this is a world with
an increasing number of vegans, animal shelters,
and a thriving pet industry. For a young South
Korean child today, a rabbit, for instance, is
associated with a fluffy toy or a cute domestic
companion. In the harsh reality of North Korean
children, rabbits are domestic animals that are
valued for their skin, meat and fur.
Nation-wide campaigns encourage North
Korean kindergarteners to raise rabbits and
children "to make food and clothes for the brave
uncle soldiers of the Korean People's Army".
Are South Koreans prepared to deal with
their brothers in the North?
As it was
mentioned above, pedagogical philosophy of
contemporary South Koreans largely reflects the
tendencies in contemporary Western world. As a
mother of two Australian children with a large age
gap, I would testify that this world is rapidly
approaching a softer mantra. In Australian
kindergartens today, toy guns are strictly
prohibited; the pool of toys that the children are
encouraged to play with include essentially
peaceful trams, boats and cars, along with prams,
dolls, teddy bears and kitchen utensils (the toys
are not separated by gender). A heavily supervised
football game is often the most violent form of
entertainment permitted.
The growing
sensitivity of Western parents is making it
increasingly difficult to read to our youngsters
once seemingly innocent fairy-tales such as
Little Red Riding Hood. The narratives,
filled with images of irresponsible mothers,
cunning predators and happy endings that imply
slicing open the wolf's belly, seem too disturbing
for the comfortable world of contemporary
childhood. Old tales that are presented to
contemporary Western children are often heavily
edited to exclude any hints of violence, death and
suffering of the characters.
While
humanization of public mores can surely be
regarded as a positive social development, one
thing should not be omitted from consideration.
Most Western countries, such as Australia, owe the
luxury of bringing up their younger generations in
this manner primarily due to the fact that these
countries have no direct enemies and no
conscription system.
In the unlikely case
of an emergency, the kangaroo-loving Australian
civilians, for example, will be able to hide
behind the broad reliable backs of professionals
from the Australian Defence Force who have been
properly taught to not be overly sentimental in
dealing with big bad wolves.
My concern,
however, is whether South Korean society can
afford to bring up it's offspring in a similarly
pacifist and cotton-wool way. After all, Korea is
still technically at war, with all capable men to
be enlisted at the time of conflict. There is no
doubt that logistically and economically the South
Korean military is strong enough to defend itself.
However, wars are won not only with good
equipment, but with appropriate spirit and
psychological preparedness as well.
In
combat with the North Korean army, the South Korea
would face foes who have been taught since
kindergarten not to be too squeamish about
crushing the heads of the enemy with a club and to
be prepared to cut off their own tongues in case
of danger for their comrades.
Tatiana Gabroussenko obtained
her PhD in East Asian Studies at the Australian
National University. Her latest book,Soldiers
on the Cultural Front: Developments in the early
history of North Korean literature and literary
policy, was selected for the Choice magazine
list of Outstanding Academic Titles of 2012.
Gabroussenko is an adjunct lecturer at the
University of New South Wales and is currently
teaching North Korean culture at Korea University,
Seoul.
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