AsianInfo.org
supports
I.C.E.Y. - H.O.P.E. (non-profit
org) (International
Cooperation of Environmental Youth - Helping Our Polluted Earth)
Any advertisement you view helps save the environment!
Thanks!
AsianInfo.org
supports I.C.E.Y. -
H.O.P.E. (non-profit org) (International
Cooperation of Environmental Youth - Helping Our Polluted
Earth) Any advertisement you view helps save the
environment! Thanks!
Religions:
traditionally Buddhist and
Confucianist, some Christian and syncretic
Chondogyo (Religion of the Heavenly Way)
note:autonomous
religious activities now almost nonexistent;
government-sponsored religious groups exist to
provide illusion of religious freedom
North Korean
youths studying the Bible.
Underground
Churches in North Korea
Worship of their
eternal President Kim Il Sung is religion in North
Korea
The Juche Idea (Korean
pronunciation: approximately "joo-cheh")
is the official state ideology of North Korea. It teaches
that "man is the master of everything and decides
everything," and that the Korean people are the
masters of Korea's revolution. Juche is a component of Kimilsungism,
North Korea's political system. The word literally means
"main body" or "subject"; it has also
been translated in North Korean sources as
"independent stand" and the "spirit of
self-reliance".
The first known reference to Juche
was a speech given by Kim Il-sung on December 28, 1955,
titled "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and
Establishing Juche in Ideological Work" in
rejection of the policy of de-Stalinization (bureaucratic
self-reform) in the Soviet Union. In this speech, Kim said
that "Juche means Chosun's revolution" (Chosun
being the traditional name for Korea). Hwang Jang-yeop,
Kim's top adviser on ideology, discovered this speech
later in the 1950s when Kim sought to develop his own
version of Marxism–Leninism.
The Juche Idea itself gradually
emerged as a systematic ideological doctrine under the
political pressures of the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s.
The word "Juche" also began to appear in
untranslated form in English-language North Korean works
from around 1965. Kim Il-sung outlined the three
fundamental principles of Juche in his April 14, 1965,
speech “On Socialist Construction and the South Korean
Revolution in the Democratic People’s Republic of
Korea”:
"independence in
politics" (chaju)
"self-sustenance in the
economy" (charip)
"self-defense in national
defense" (chawi).
Current North Korean leader Kim
Jong-il officially authored the definitive statement on
Juche in a 1982 document titled On the Juche Idea.
He has final authority over the interpretation of the
state ideology and incorporated the Songun (army-first)
policy into it in 1996.
Practical
application
North
Korea
This article is part
of the series: Politics and government of
North Korea
According to Kim Jong-il's On the
Juche Idea, the application of Juche in state policy
entails the following:
The people must have independence
(chajusong) in thought and politics, economic
self-sufficiency, and self-reliance in defense.
Policy must reflect the will and
aspirations of the masses and employ them fully in
revolution and construction.
Methods of revolution and
construction must be suitable to the situation of the
country.
The most important work of
revolution and construction is molding people
ideologically as communists and mobilizing them to
constructive action.
The Juche outlook requires absolute
loyalty to the revolutionary party and leader. In North
Korea, these are the Workers' Party of Korea and Kim
Jong-il, respectively.
In official North Korean histories,
one of the first purported applications of Juche was the
Five-Year Plan of 1956-1961, also known as the Chollima
Movement, which led to the Chongsan-ri Method and the
Taean Work System. The Five-Year Plan involved rapid
economic development of North Korea, with a focus on heavy
industry, to ensure political independence from both the
Soviet Union and the Mao Zedong regime in China. The
Chollima Movement, however, applied the same method of
centralized state planning that began with the Soviet
First Five-Year Plan in 1928. The campaign also coincided
with and was partially based on Mao's First Five-Year Plan
and the . North Korea was apparently able to avoid the
catastrophes of the Great Leap Forward.
Despite its aspirations to
self-sufficiency, North Korea has continually relied on
economic assistance from other countries. Historically,
North Korea received most of its assistance from the USSR
until its collapse in 1991. In the period after the Korean
War, North Korea relied on economic assistance and loans
from "fraternal" countries from 1953–1963 and
also depended considerably on Soviet industrial aid from
1953-1976. Following the fall of the USSR, the North
Korean economy went into a crisis, with consequent
infrastructural failures contributing to the mass famine
of the mid-1990s. After several years of starvation, the
People's Republic of China agreed to be a substitute for
the Soviet Union as a major aid provider, supplying over
US$400 million per year in humanitarian assistance. Since
2007, North Korea also received large supplies of heavy
fuel oil and technical assistance as scheduled in the
six-party talks framework. North Korea was the second
largest recipient of international food aid in 2005, and
continues to suffer chronic food shortages.
Relation
to Marxism, Stalinism, and Maoism
In 1972, Juche replaced
Marxism-Leninism in the revised North Korean constitution
as the official state ideology, this being a response to
the Sino-Soviet split. Juche was nonetheless defined as a
creative application of Marxism-Leninism. Kim Il-sung also
explained that Juche was not original to North Korea and
that in formulating it he only laid stress on a
programmatic orientation that is inherent to all
Marxist-Leninist states.
After the 1991 collapse of the
Soviet Union, North Korea’s greatest economic
benefactor, all reference to Marxism-Leninism was dropped
in the revised 1998 constitution. But Marxist-Leninist
phraseology remains in occasional use, for example,
socialism and communism. The establishment of the Songun
doctrine in the mid-1990s, however, has formally
designated the military, not the proletariat or working
class, as the main revolutionary force in North Korea.
Kim Il-sung's policy statements and
speeches from the 1940s and 1950s confirm that the North
Korean government accepted Joseph Stalin's 1924 theory of socialism
in one country and its model of centralized autarkic
economic development. Kim himself was a great admirer of
Stalin. Following Stalin’s death on March 5, 1953, the
North Korean leader wrote an emotional obituary in his
honor titled "Stalin Is the Inspiration for the
Peoples Struggling for Their Freedom and
Independence" in a special issue of the WPK newspaper
Rodong Sinmun (March 10, 1953), the opening of
which reads:
Stalin has died. The ardent heart
of the great leader of progressive mankind has ceased
to beat. This sad news has spread over Korean
territory like lightning, inflicting a bitter blow to
the hearts of millions of people. Korean People's Army
soldiers, workers, farmers, and students, as well as
all residents of both South and North Korea, have
heard the sad news with profound grief. The very being
of Korea has seemed to bow down, and mothers who had
apparently exhausted their tears in weeping for the
children they had lost in the bombing of the
[American] air bandits sobbed again.
The
origin of the Korean people is not easily explained.
However, since historical records show that Ko
Choson (Old Choson), was the first Korean kingdom,
it can be taken as the original of the Korean
people. The life of Ko Choson's heroic founder
is described in the Tan-gun myth.
The
Tan-gun mtyh describes Tan=gun's birth from Hwan-ung,
who came down from Heaven, and a bear-woman, who
lived on Earth. As is generally true of
mythology, this story is not some ungrounded
fantasy, but is rather a means of explaining
historical fact through the logic of symbols.
Its symbolism is used to describe a historical fact,
namely the political coalition that took place
during Korea's Bronze Age. From ancient times,
the Korean people have retained Tan-gun as the name
of the hero who founded the first political
federation of the Korean people. Tan-gun is
apparently a historical person who lived during a
specific stage of Korea's history, and to the extent
that his memory remains within the national
consciousness, he can be considered the ancestor of
the Korean people.
The
Korean people have, throughout their history,
constantly been threatened by the tremendous
military might of neighboring nations such as China,
Manchuria or Mongolia. In this precarious
position, Koreans have found strength in the sense
of themselves as a unique people who are descended
from Tan-gun. The ancient records that
referred to Tan-gun were lost in the chaos of
frequent wars and invasions. During the Three
Kingdoms period when Koguryo, Paekche and Shila vied
for supremacy, the kingdoms found it difficult to
promote the idea of a united people. Yet in
the aftermath of Shilla's unification of the Three
Kingdoms in 668, Koreans' sense of themselves as a
people was evident as Shilla joined forces with the
former subjects of Koguryo and Paekche to drive away
the Chinese Tang forces.
Classical Korean philosophy began during the Three
Kingdoms period, and with Mahayana thought, bloomed
around the time of Shilla's unification of the Three
Kingdoms. With the introduction of Chinese, all
Three Kingdoms actually studied Confucianism first;
however the outstanding thinkers of the period were
initially Buddhists. In particular, Buddhist culture
was a leading force within the Shilla and Paekche
Kingdoms.
Confucianism
and Buddhism have had a decisive influence on the
minds and thoughts of Koreans for at least 22
centuries. Both of these religious traditions have
profound, religious world-views and intricate
doctrinal systems which form an integrated whole.
Consequently, neither of these systems could be
introduced piecemeal, and the doctrinal content of
Confucianism and Buddhism in Korea therefore did not
change. In particular, the tradition of
Neo-Confucianism (a philosophical movement that
appeared in song China) was strictly maintained and
developed in Korea. For this reason, modern scholars
have often criticized Choson-period Neo-Confucian
thinkers as dogmatic and cliquish. This evaluation
appears valid if a particular thinker is seen in
isolation, but if one considers all the great
Neo-Confucian thinkers who lived during the late-Koryo
and early-Choson periods, one realizes that this was
a group of highly creative intellectuals. Even more
impressive is the series of great thinkers one
encounters when studying the long history of Korean
Buddhist thinkers from the Three Kingdoms to the
Choson period. In the sections below, we will look
at such great thinkers, choosing five from the
Buddhist tradition and five from the Confucian
tradition. Through a brief examination of their
thought, we will try to elucidate more precisely the
uniqueness of the Korean character as it is manifest
within the context of their respective traditions.
Disclaimer:
AsianInfo.org
does not guarantee the complete accuracy of the information provided on
this site or links. Do your own research and get a professional's
opinion before adhering to advice or information contained herein.
Use of the information contained herein provided by AsianInfo.org and
any mistakes contained within are at the individual risk of the user.
(We
do not provide links to, or knowingly promote, any violent or pornographic
sites.)
