Writings
Everything is fine in the DPRK
Asif nothing was happening around the world at the moment the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea (DPRK) is on track to celebrate ‘The Day Of The Sun’ (In Chosŏn’gŭl: 태양절) next April 15th. But with everything going on, you might ask yourself why. The reason why is that the holiday has several important implications in the nation’s history and current political landscape of the Juche fatherland.
The celebration is carried out annually, in honor of the birthday of Kim Il-Sung, the republic’s founder and the “Eternal President of Juche Korea”. Some scholars on Korea studies even go as far as regarding it as the “North Korean Christmas” (Lee, 2001) and the country’s most important day. As such, the celebration spans three days where the government provides its citizens with more food and electricity than usually available and a massive parade in the Kim Il-Sung Square with traditional dances, shows of military force and fireworks.
In this frenzy relies the importance the holiday has on the DPRK’s leadership, since it relies on the heavy cult of personality and propaganda present in the country: From the moment citizens wake up until they go to sleep they are bombarded with propaganda about the Juche (or self-reliance) and Songun (or military-first) ideologies that are designed to make the population work collectively towards achieving the ideal society under the guidance of the Great Leader. Furthermore, the Kim family is elevated to a God-like status and it is thanks to it that they have been able to sustain its ruling power since 1948 even amid widespread food shortages that occur in the country since the 1990s. It is due to this importance that Kim Il-Sung has on Korean people that the celebrations of the holiday were carried out this year as they are every year and they will be celebrated next year with the same conviction. For the DPRK’s leadership the cult of personality is what keeps them in power.
Once we understand all of this, we can arrive at the answer to the question I posed in the beginning of this article: Everything is fine in the DPRK because it has to be; the survival of the Socialist dictatorship is at risk otherwise. Such strange times we live in that “North Korea is a normal place” is, at least on the surface, a correct thing to say.