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North
Korea a culture of warriors
By Tatiana Gabroussenko
Asia Times, 2012. 12. 22
" ... 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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