Five quick insights about North Korea

Tidbits from someone who’s been there more than once

With a nod to the summit, here’s a quick read to offer a bit of deeper context. I’ll write a longer piece very soon, for those who are interested in learning more about what North Korea is really like.

First things first, North Korea does not call itself North Korea. The official name of the country in English is the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). There’s also another compelling reason that North Korea doesn’t call itself North Korea, which is that the name North Korea implies there must be another Korea somewhere, a South Korea, for example, which North Korea does not recognize. Maps in North Korea show a unified Korean peninsula with Pyongyang as the capital of the one and only Korea. It’s not that the southern part isn’t there — Seoul is on the maps, too. But the southern part is occupied by the imperialist Americans, and the official interpretation of the situation in the north is that the people in the south are awaiting liberation of the south by North Korea, followed by reunification of the entire peninsula, which would happen immediately if it weren’t for the imperialist occupying forces of the Americans.

Once you a more nuanced understanding of North Korea, things that seem ridiculous or irrational start to make sense. The “comically large envelope” that so many late-night talk-show hostsmade fun of, the one that Kim Jong-Un sent to Donald Trump, actually makes perfect sense if you understand North Korean culture. Here are a few other things about North Korea that many people don’t know or understand, and which the international press often get quite wrong.

It is a crime in North Korea for North Korean citizens to speak with foreigners without proper official clearance, so the question that everyone always wants to ask — namely if North Koreans really believe all the propaganda we read about in the rest of the world — is impossible to answer from the perspective of anyone living in North Korea. North Korea is certainly a place unlike any other place I’ve ever been, but North Koreans are not all that different from other people when you get down to the basics of what makes people who they are. North Korea isn’t Westworld, and the people of North Korea are not automatons who simply imbibe everything without question, thought, or joy.

There are some extraordinarily talented and creative artists in North Korea, for example. Yes, they have to work under the watchful auspices of the state, because in North Korea art is not considered private and so must serve the needs of the (public) state. But anyone with even a basic eye for artistic talent can see even in the official art that decorates a city like Pyongyang that there is tremendous skill at work.

North Koreans also have a sense of humor and love to tell jokes, something I learned about in great detail one evening at a bar in Kaesong (city in the southern part of North Korea) over beers with my two official minders (US citizens cannot be anywhere in public without their minders). I may have the biggest repertoire of North Korean jokes of any foreigner outside of North Korea. And in case you are wondering, no, the jokes are not about the regime — unlike the situation that existed in the Soviet Union, subversive, underground humor is not an open secret in North Korea.

Most people outside of North Korea refer to North Korea as a communist country, so how could it not be? I mean, the communist party rules the country, doesn’t it? Well, no, in fact it doesn’t. The ruling party is in fact the Korean Workers Party. Even more surprising is that references to communism and socialism have been removed from the DPRK constitution, and also, as a reminder, neither of those words show up in the official name of the country either.

So if you are thinking at this moment — wait, what? — here is where I explain why North Korea technically isn’t a communist (or socialist) country and why it doesn’t seem to behave like any other country in the world.

The official ideology of North Korea isn’t communism or socialism, but rather a thing called juche (주체), which is usually translated as “self-reliance.” Understanding the centrality of juche is the key to understanding almost everything about North Korea. In a nutshell, from the perspective of North Korea, juche is the purest and most perfect ideology in the world, an ideology that has not even a single flaw. It is therefore far beyond and vastly superior to the ideologies found in all other countries, including communism and socialism.

The problem, of course, is that North Korea’s perfect and flawless ideology is the envy of the rest of the world, and from the perspective of North Korea, the rest of the world is divided into two camps: (1) those who want to to steal juche, and (2) those who want to destroy juche. America, by the way, is at the top of the list of countries that want to destroy juche, hence, the bitter mistrust toward it.

How important is juche in North Korea? To give but one example, time in North Korea is counted in juche years, which started the year that Kim Il-Sung, the founding father of North Korea, was born, so 1912. The Dictionary of International Law (국제법사전) that I have sitting on my bookshelf was published in Pyongyang, according to the title page, in the year Juche 91, which for most of the rest of the world would be considered 2002. The point here is to understand that in the eyes of North Korea, the world before juche was a sad and corrupt world, and also, that it is North Korea’s solemn duty to protect this perfect ideology of juche at all cost, since without it, the world would lose its one and only chance to achieve perfect harmony and world peace, which only juche can provide.

The official duty of the North Korean military, incidentally, is to “protect juche,” so that may help explain why North Korea seems to pursue a maniacal drive to expand its military and pursue nuclear weapons. If juche is lost or corrupted, then so is the hope of all of humanity, the fate of which lies in North Korea’s capacity to protect juche.

The obsession over the purity of juche as an ideology in North Korea makes even more sense when you understand the importance of purity in other parts of North Korea’s world-view as well. North Korea views itself in strangely racist terms, taking great pride in the “purity” of the North Korean people. The Koreans in the south, of course, have lived among foreigners and some of those in the south, horror of horrors, have intermarried with non-Koreans and had mixed-race children. North Korea sees itself as single-handedly responsible for preserving the purity of the Korean race.

The same holds true for the Korean language. The Korean spoken in North Korea is noticeably different from the Korean spoken in South Korea, and from the North Korean perspective, this is once again because the people in the south intermingled with non-Koreans, and over time this corrupted and tainted the language. North Korea sees itself as a living repository of pure Korean, which it will then have to re-teach to the people of the south, after unification, of course.

People love to make fun of North Korea for its dynastic hypocrisy. How can a communist country that believes everyone is equal have a dynasty? We already know that North Korea does not consider itself a communist country, so there’s no contradiction or hypocrisy in the way North Koreans see it.

On top of that, through much of Korean history, Korea has been a culture ruled by dynasties, so there is a very open suggestion in the narratives that saturate North Korea that this system is far more in accord with Korean tradition and history than the one the imperialistically-brainwashed, American-imitating southerners have with their so-called “multi-party democracy.”

Then there is the fact that the perfect ideology of juche was brought into the world by Kim Il-sung, the founder of the Kim dynasty, who is viewed not just as the embodiment of the juche ideal but also as the protector of the Korean people. You can see the latter clearly represented in central Pyongyang, where a giant bronze sculpture of Kim Il-Sung has him standing right in from of Mt. Paektu (백두산), a site which is very closely associated with the origins of the Korean people.

If you remember that one of the central purposes of North Korea is to safeguard juche, and pair that with North Korea’s seemingly obsessive approach toward purity, then it makes perfect sense that North Korea would be a dynasty, as the purity of juche is associated with the purity of the bloodline of the family that brought juche into the world. Protecting juche and protecting the Kim dynasty are one and the same, at least from the perspective of North Korea.

North Koreans do not experience the presence of the DPRK state all in the same way. Where you live in North Korea makes a huge difference. Pyongyang, for instance, is considered the perfect city, and living there is a privilege, not a happy accident. The obsession with purity and perfection, at least as interpreted by North Korea, can be found here, too, as persons with disabilities are not allowed to live in Pyongyang.

When you read that North Korea now has a pizza parlor or a burger joint, both of which are true, you’ll notice that it is always in Pyongyang. Outer-lying cities, especially in the northeast (such as Hyesan), have far fewer amenities and diversions, and many even lack a stable and consistent power supply. In the countryside things are even bleaker still. Families that fall from political grace are often sent into exile, and the severity of the exile is measured in the distance sent from Pyongyang. To be sent down from Pyongyang into the provinces or the countryside is usually a punishment that will last for generations, and it is seen as a devastating loss of status.

Oh, and if you are wondering if people try to just sneak into or show up in Pyongyang, hoping to go unnoticed, well, that’s pretty much impossible. North Korea has a pass system, meaning you cannot travel around at will. You need an official pass to travel within the country, and traveling without one is a crime.

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