Events From Anti-Foreignism to Self-Reliance: The Origins and Evolution of North Korea's Juche Thought, 1955-1965
| From Anti-Foreignism to Self-Reliance: The Origins and Evolution of North Korea's Juche Thought, 1955-1965 |
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Thursday, November 5, 2009
Speaker: James Person, Program Associate, North Korea International Documentation Project, Woodrow Wilson Center North Korea's national ideology of self-reliance, or Juche, is in its simplest form a rejection of Korea's subservient role in the hierarchical Sino-centric system of international relations that prevailed in East Asia through the late 19th Century. North Korean leader Kim Il Sung first introduced Juche in December 1955, at the height of an internal policy dispute over post-war development strategies that nearly subjugated Pyongyang to the Moscow and Beijing-dominated international communist movement. When first introduced, Juche served as an anti-foreign or anti-hegemonic slogan designed to discredit those who sought to mechanically import Soviet and Chinese practices to North Korea. Juche evolved over the course of the next decade through a series of practical responses to domestic and international challenges, and by 1965, Kim Il Sung declared Juche to be the official ideology of the DPRK. Although North Korea has never been truly self-reliant (though the self-portrayal of self-reliance was nearly made a reality with the collapse of Pyongyang's trading partners in the late 1980s and 1990s), it has managed to balance its relations, never becoming overly-dependent or subservient to any other state. Indeed, North Korea's recent "150-day battle" can be interpreted as an attempt to mobilize indigenous human and material resources to avoid becoming overly-dependent on China.
James F. Person is Coordinator of the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholar's North Korea International Documentation Project and Program Associate with the History and Public Policy Program. He is currently completing a PhD in modern Korean history at the George Washington University, where he also teaches a course on North Korean history. His dissertation is on North Korea's relations with China and the Soviet Union and the evolution of Juche Thought from 1953-1966. His recent publications include "'We Need Help from Outside: The North Korean Opposition Movement of 1956" (Cold War International History Project Working Paper No. 52), and "New Evidence on North Korea in 1956" CWIHP Bulletin 16. Experience:
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