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CHAPTER 9

Expulsion for a Mistranslated Poem: The Diplomatic Aspects of North Korean Cultural Policies
Balzs Szalontai, Mongolia International University

Introduction In the so-called cultural Cold War, North Korea, ofcially known as the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea (DPRK), constituted a rather special, though not entirely unique, case. Korea, a nation divided into two competing states, was one of the most intensely contested battlegrounds of the Cold War. Since a real inter-Korean dtente remained more or less out of the question until the 1990s, there was little, if any, legalized cultural exchange between Pyongyang and Seoul. As a consequence, the northern leadership could not pursue an effective cultural diplomacy with the South in the same way as the Soviet, Chinese, and East European regimes sought to extend their cultural inuence to those capitalist and developing countries whose governments showed at least a modicum of readiness for cultural exchange with the Communist countries.1 While North Korean cultural policies were considerably inuenced by the governments desire to make a favorable impression on South Korean public opinion, the DPRK authorities faced formidable obstacles when they tried to reach the southern audience. This did not mean, however, that the North Koreans were unfamiliar with the ne art of cultural diplomacy. On the contrary, they used these techniques with remarkable persistence and subtlety, but in a peculiar way. Namely, the most accessible targets of their operations were Pyongyangs own Communist allies, rather than its South Korean and American enemies.

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This unusual situation resulted from the maintenance by North Korean leaders of more extensive cultural contacts with the Soviet Union and other Communist states than with non-Communist societies, yet at the same time they doubted if their putative allies would wholeheartedly support Pyongyangs initiatives and fulll its requests. For this reason, they often felt it expedient to ensure the compliance of the fraternal countries through coaxing, pressure, or even outright deception. In the postKorean War era, SovietDPRK cultural relations repeatedly took the shape of a Cold War within the Cold War. In this chapter, I would like to concentrate on this last topic, for various reasons. Firstly, the use of cultural diplomacy in the relations between Communist states has not yet been as extensively analyzed as the cultural Cold War between the Soviet Union and the Western powers. Secondly, the best existing work on the international dimensions of North Korean cultural policies, The Cultural Cold War in Korea, 19451950 by Charles Armstrong, is focused on the pre-1953 period, rather than the postwar decades. Moreover, Armstrongs article, a detailed and colorful overview of the cultural scene in the two Koreas, concentrates on the institutions, strategic aims, and long-term trends of U.S., Soviet, and Korean cultural policies, rather than tactical changes.2 In contrast, this chapter seeks to demonstrate that tactical objectives, like short-term diplomatic considerations, could also shape North Korean cultural policies to a signicant extent. Such secondary objectives sometimes inspired cultural measures whose tone was markedly different from the supposed general line of North Korean cultural policies. They Inexibly Abandoned the Progressive Traditions of the Past: The Twists and Turns of Cultural and Economic Nationalism The DPRK never underwent any extended period of intellectual thaw. As early as the Stalin era, the political control the North Korean regime maintained over cultural life seems to have been even stricter than the methods practiced in Moscows East European satellites. In 1951, a Hungarian correspondent named Tibor Mray, a playwright by profession, found the wartime North Korean cultural scene quite depressing, even by Stalinist standards:
I have seen many one-act plays, and these are all schematic, without a single exception. The stories are made largely after the same pattern. The characters are also the same in almost every [play]: the heroic soldier, the self-sacricing mother, and the evil American . . . The characters are unsophisticated, in most

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cases exactly alike (even in their physical appearance), and they mostly utter slogans.3

In the post-1953 years, such critical comments, made not only by sensitive intellectuals but also by hard-bitten East European Communist diplomats, became increasingly numerous. Following the death of Stalin, the new Soviet leaders started to replace the repressive and confrontational style of his policies with a more exible and cooperative approach. They also prodded their satellites to introduce a political and economic New Course. Kim Il Sung, however, was highly reluctant to follow suit. Dependent on foreign economic aid, he had to take a step at a time, but as early as the mid-1950s, he was partly able to resist Soviet pressure for changes. The contrast between Hungarys gradually softening cultural policies and Kims insistence on retaining a strict control over intellectual life soon became conspicuous enough to inspire the Hungarian diplomats to write a sharply critical report about the North Korean cultural scene:
One source of the errors is that in 1954, they inexibly abandoned the progressive traditions of the past. They wanted to create their new literature and art without taking advantage of the old experiences In our opinion, the new socialist realism should be rooted in the soil of classical Korean literature, and the writers should study the progressive traditions [of Korean literature] more intensely.4

This temporary abandonment of Korean traditions in favor of foreign Communist models should not be attributed solely to the pernicious inuence of those Soviet Koreans (Soviet citizens of Korean origin who moved to North Korea after liberation) whom Kim Il Sung later accused of having denationalized North Korean cultural life. First of all, in 1954, few, if any, Soviet Korean leaders were directly involved in cultural policy.5 Secondly, the regimes attitude toward Korean cultural traditions was considerably in ux during the two and a half years that preceded Kim Il Sungs famous chuche speech (December 28, 1955). In the second half of 1953, the authorities published a substantial number of classical Korean literary works; in 1954, they pressured artists and writers to favor Soviet models over Korean traditions; but in the rst two months of 1955, they again displayed more tolerance toward those painters who favored the classical Korean style.6 The repeated waxing and waning of tradition-oriented cultural activity during the period 19531955 cannot be wholly explained by the struggle between Kim Il Sung and his Soviet Korean opponents. Interestingly enough, North Korean economic policies also strongly uctuated in these

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years. In the second half of 1953, the leaders of the ruling Korean Workers Party (KWP) proceeded slowly with agricultural collectivization. In contrast, in 1954, they launched a campaign of heavy industrialization, which they considered a cornerstone of economic independence. Their autarkic vision was clearly at variance with the expectations of the Soviets, who tried to persuade mineral-rich North Korea to concentrate on the export of raw materials. Then, in 1955, Kim Il Sung slowed down the pace of industrializationmainly because his ultraleftist economic policies caused a famine that compelled Pyongyang to ask Moscow for emergency aid.7 In sum, from 1953 to 1955, the peak periods of cultural nationalism rarely coincided with that of economic nationalism. This negative correlation became particularly clear in December 1955 when Kim Il Sung harshly criticized the antinational cultural policies attributed to the Soviet Koreans, but at the same time took further measures to slacken the governments industrialization drive. The authorities published several classical Korean dramas. An art exhibition held in December was dominated by landscapes, rather than paintings about the new socialist life. Conspicuously, there was only a single portrait of Kim Il Sung.8 The landscape-centric character of the December exhibition was all the more peculiar because on August 15, barely four months earlier, the authorities had held another art exhibition at which landscapes were entirely absent. This abrupt change revealed that North Korean cultural policies were shaped not only by long-term, xed guidelines but also by short-term, tactical considerations. From October 1 to December 20that is, between the two exhibitions the party-controlled Union of Artists organized a professional and ideological course for painters and sculptors.9 That course, during which erce debates raged over various aesthetic issues, was probably inuenced by the simultaneous clashes between Kim Il Sung and his Soviet Korean rivals.10 Surprisingly enough, Kims campaign against the Soviet faction was not accompanied by an intensication of his personality cult, a further politicization of arts, or a return to a hard-line economic policy (as one might have expected). On the contrary, the dictator combined his repressive measures with a relaxation of pressure on economic and cultural life. This unusual combination, which demonstrated both his tactical exibility and his ability to tone down his own personality cult, may have been at least partly motivated by diplomatic considerations. Despite his rm grip over the party and state machine, Kim could hardly afford to stand up to the Kremlin on two fronts at the same time. When his autarkic economic policies resulted in a famine, his Soviet aid donors forced him to make some concessions to the hard-pressed peasantry.11 After this debacle, Kim probably found it advisable to concentrate on cultural nationalism and temporarily postpone economic nationalism.

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Decadent European Art under Attack: Kim Il Sung and Soviet De-Stalinization North Korean cultural nationalism underwent further intensication in 1956, not the least because Kim Il Sung, who considered Nikita Khrushchevs secret speech on Stalins crimes a potential threat to his own rule, sought to isolate the North Korean public from subversive Soviet inuences by playing out the card of nationalism. In April 1956, the minister of education Kim Chang-man harshly criticized North Korean university professors for paying more attention to the teaching of the culture of foreign countries (read: the Soviet Union) than that of Korean literature and music.12 In August 1956, a group of KWP leaders, disagreeing with Kim Il Sungs personality cult and his hard-line economic policies, made a futile attempt to depose the dictator or compel him to modify his ways. They were quickly expelled from the Central Committee (CC), but in September the Soviet leader Anastas Mikoyan and the Chinese leader Peng Dehuai forced Kim to readmit the purged factionalists to the CC.13 In the next few months, the dictator found it advisable to keep a low prole. Predictably, cultural policy followed suit. At an art exhibition held in November-December 1956, conspicuously few Kim Il Sung paintings and statues were displayed.14 The backlash against Mikoyans intervention came as early as 1957. Throughout the spring, summer, and early fall of that year, North Korean cultural policies overemphasized national traditions to such an extent that foreign music was rarely played, and theaters hardly, if ever, showed foreign plays or operas.15 This Korea-centric cultural policy indicated substantial tension between Pyongyang and Moscow, all the more so because it coincided with the abrupt recalling of most North Korean students from the European Communist countries. On the other hand, in the economic sphere, the KWP leadership unnerved by the political upheavals which had occurred in Eastern Europe in 1956 pursued relatively moderate policies in the same period, and sought to lessen popular discontent by improving living standards.16 In October 1957, however, Kim reached a reconciliation with Moscow, after which he quickly adopted a hard-line economic policy. In 1958, he launched the so-called Chollima Movement, a mass campaign patterned upon Chinas Great Leap Forward.17 Remarkably, there was once again a conspicuous negative correlation between his economic and cultural policies. In late 1957, and particularly in 1958, An Mak, the newly appointed minister of culture and education, made an effort to pursue a less Koreacentric cultural policy, and frequently invited the fraternal diplomats to various cultural programs.18

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In late 1958, the KWP leadership purged An Mak, and in 1959, a renewed emphasis was laid on certain forms of cultural nationalism. Among others, musicians were instructed to concentrate on mastering the skills of playing Koreas traditional musical instruments. At the same time, the cadres in charge of culture saw to it that the content of the new literary and artistic works was sufciently ideological. For instance, they decided to produce an opera about the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggles in a form resembling The Song of Shim Chong, a traditional Korean opera (changguk).19 Cultural nationalism was also stimulated by the leaderships increasing concern with national unication. In May 1958, Han Sol-ya, North Koreas cultural tsar, called upon northern intellectuals to appreciate the efforts of progressive South Korean writers.20 He had good reason to say so. For instance, in December 1957, Kim Pal-tong, an inuential South Korean writer, published an article in which he boldly declared that since national unication by force was unrealizable, the regime of President Syngman Rhee should abandon the empty slogan of March to the North.21 The connection between North Korean cultural nationalism and Kim Il Sungs unication policies became particularly clear after the South Korean revolution that toppled Rhees dictatorship in 1960. Encouraged by the downfall of his archenemy, Kim did his best to convince South Korean public opinion of his goodwill and exibility. Apart from adopting a cooperative stance toward the new Republic of Korea (ROK) authorities, he also reinforced nationalist propaganda. Anxious to demonstrate that the North was more concerned with cultivating national culture than the South, Radio Pyongyangs broadcasts hardly included any foreign musical compositions.22 Kims drive to impress southern public opinion through nationalist propaganda played an ambivalent role in his relationship with the Soviet Union. On the one hand, it created considerable friction, since the DPRK sought to downplay the importance of the economic assistance it had received from the Communist states. When the KWP leaders claimed that they had reconstructed war-torn North Korea mainly through their own efforts, the Soviets rightly felt offended.23 On the other hand, Pyongyangs proclaimed intention to inuence South Korean public opinion constituted a useful smokescreen that concealed North Korean cultural nationalisms additional aim of shielding the DPRK from the effects of Soviet de-Stalinization. When the Sino-Soviet conict became public in mid-1960, Kim Il Sungs rst reaction was to isolate the DPRK from harmful external inuences. In October 1960, the KWP leadership passed a resolution that condemned unkeyism (sadaejuui), and criticized the indiscriminate adoption of foreign experiences. In early 1961, North Korean journals hardly published

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anything about the cultural life of the fraternal countries, nor did theaters stage the works of foreign playwrights.24 Nevertheless, cultural nationalism was kept within certain limits, due to both domestic and diplomatic considerations. For one thing, not only foreign works but also classical Korean dramas were missing from the repertoire of North Korean theaters in 196061. In November 1960, Kim Il Sung told writers and artists that they should devote greater attention to the present Chollima era. Culture should serve the purposes of revolution, the dictator declared.25 Secondly, Kim was not yet ready for an open confrontation with Moscow. Worried by the protests of certain Communist embassies, in March 1961 the KWP CC instructed journalists not to ignore the cultural achievements of the fraternal countries. During that month, the press hardly published any article on chuche. These developments were at least partly related to the visit of a high-ranking Soviet delegation in June, during which the North Koreans made considerable efforts to appear cooperative. They had good reason to do so, because in May, a military coup had taken place in South Korea. Unsure whether the putsch constituted a favorable or unfavorable turn, Kim could not afford to alienate his allies. In the summer of 1961, he visited Moscow, and signed a treaty of mutual assistance with the Soviet Union.26 Nevertheless, the very same copy of Nodong Sinmun that announced Kims coming visit to the Soviet Union also carried an article that harshly criticized the foreword added to the Soviet edition of a North Korean work, The History of Korea. That attack, motivated probably by the desire of demonstrating that the DPRK was not a Soviet stooge, was not the rst incident of this kind. In 1959, the Soviet and North Korean academies of sciences agreed to publish a joint monograph, but when the Soviets proposed certain revisions in the Korean chapters that exaggerated Kims role in the anti-Japanese struggle, the North Koreans atly refused to make changes. The joint monograph was never published.27 North Koreas complex attitude toward the Soviet Union also manifested itself in the cultural policies that the KWP leaders pursued in the immediate aftermath of the twenty-second Soviet party congress (October 1961), at which Khrushchev once again denounced Stalin. This new outburst of de-Stalinization naturally alarmed Kim Il Sung, but at rst he tried to avoid an open confrontation with Moscow. During the Soviet-DPRK month of friendship (October 15November 15), North Korean theaters staged various Russian and other foreign operas to express Pyongyangs readiness to cultivate cultural ties with the fraternal countries.28 Kims cooperativeness did not last long, however. Afraid of the growing contagion of de-Stalinization, in December 1961 he started taking repressive

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measures. Radio Pyongyang ceased to broadcast Moscows Korean programs. A domestic manifestation of this campaign was an attack on a comedy written by a certain Kim Chang-sok. Since the play made fun of the bureaucratic regulations that hindered, rather than facilitated, industrial production, it was declared a revisionist work inuenced by decadent European art. The attack was apparently aimed at intimidating the intelligentsia and preventing the spread of the ideas of de-Stalinization.29 Marilyn Monroe and the Great Leader: The Cultural Aspects of SovietNorth Korean Reconciliation By the early 1960s, Kim Il Sungs cult reached extreme proportions. Even the gate of the Pyongyang zoo was adorned by a big picture of the Great Leader until the sarcastic comments of the Communist diplomats nally persuaded the authorities to remove it.30 Nevertheless, Kims cult was still subject to certain uctuations. For instance, in late 1965 and in the rst half of 1966, the cult seems to have been deliberately curtailed by the top leadership. In January 1966, a Hungarian diplomat observed a recent decrease in the number of poems and songs written about Kim Il Sung.31 His largescale pictures or statues have been removed from several public buildings and clubs, the embassy reported in mid-1966. His appearances in cultural life underwent a conspicuous decline many works depicting him have been removed from the Museum of Fine Arts.32 This temporary decrease of Kims cult may have been related to the renewal of SovietNorth Korean cooperation that followed the replacement of Khrushchev (October 1964) and the visit of Premier Alexei Kosygin in the DPRK (February 1965). After all, in December 1955 and December 1956, Kim Il Sung had also temporarily reduced his own cult in order to alleviate Moscows suspicions and demonstrate his capability for change. Further evidence supporting this explanation is to be found in the cultural policies that the KWP leadership pursued in 19651966. Laying less emphasis on the depiction of the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle than in the early 1960s, North Korean cultural journals started to publish a remarkably high number of articles about foreign writers, artists, directors, and actors, such as The Art of Donatello, Eisenstein, and The Tragedy of Marilyn Monroe.33 In all probability, many of these articles were inspired more by diplomatic than domestic considerations. That is, they were to demonstrate Pyongyangs interest in the outside world and its readiness for cultural cooperation with foreign countries. After all, Marilyn Monroe had died some three years before, and none of her lms were ever shown in North Korean cinemas anyway.

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The cultural policies of the mid-1960s also demonstrated the regimes complex and ambivalent attitude toward Koreas cultural heritage. For instance, the cadres in charge of cultural policies broadened the repertoire of Radio Pyongyangs musical programs so as to include more foreign operas and symphonies, but the newly written revolutionary and patriotic operas were to be based on Korean folk music. In dancing, the cultivation of national traditions proved particularly intense, whereas Korean-style painting on silk and paper was no longer practiced. In painting and sculpture, there was a stronger focus on Kim Il Sung and the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle than in other spheres of culture.34 Political guidelines appeared strikingly changeable, however. In October 1966, the authorities held an art exhibition at which the primary emphasis was laid on economic production and the joys of family life. Paintings about the anti-Japanese resistance, the Korean War, and Kim Il Sung were conspicuously rare.35 This tendency stood in a marked contrast not only with the topics of previous artistic works but also with the contemporaneous trend of North Korean foreign policy. After all, the exhibition coincided with a KWP conference at which the leadership, adopting a highly belligerent attitude toward South Korea, resolved to increase defense expenditures to a staggering extent. Whence this strange discrepancy between the peace-oriented art exhibition and the militant party conference? A possible explanation is that the North Korean leaders, trying to present their military preparations as being of a defensive nature, held the exhibition with a view to convince Moscow that they did not harbor any aggressive intentions. Remarkably, at the time of the conference Kim Il Sung sought to allay the fears of the Soviet-bloc countries by informing (or rather misinforming) the Romanian ambassador as follows: China repeatedly tried to persuade the DPRK not to pursue a policy of economic construction, because, according to the Chinese evaluation, the USA will soon launch a new war in Korea, in which case everything will be destroyed anyway. Kim Il Sung remarked that they had rejected this Chinese conception.36 Folk Music is the Music of Slaves, Serfs, Landlords and Drunkards: North Korea and Chinas Cultural Revolution It was not without reason that Kim tried to ingratiate himself with the Soviets by contrasting his standpoint with that of the Chinese leadership. Partly due to the post-1964 renewal of Soviet-DPRK cooperation, the relationship between North Korea and China underwent a gradual deterioration during the period 19651968. Sino-DPRK friction produced a perceptible effect on North Korean cultural policies, all the more so because it was interrelated with Mao Zedongs Cultural Revolution.

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Now the Chinese are noisily making a Cultural Revolution, North Korean military leader O. Chin-u acidly told an East German delegation. They ought to work instead.37 This remark was but one of the numerous critical comments which the KWP cadres made on the political turmoil in China. In 19661967, North Korean cultural measures were considerably inuenced by the intention of disassociating the DPRK from Chinese policies. For instance, in the summer of 1966, a North Korean newspaper published a series of articles that extensively described how the Chinese emperors had made repeated attempts to subjugate Korea. Highlighting the rich traditions of Korean national resistance against Chinese, Japanese, and American expansionism, the North Korean cadres questioned a central tenet of the Cultural Revolution that claimed that no representative of the exploiting classes could have ever played a positive historical role. As the ofcials of a North Korean museum told a Hungarian journalist in mid1966, in Koreas history, everybody was ready to sacrice his life for national independence, no matter whether he was rich or poor.38 Cultural nationalism reached new heights in 1972 when Kim Il Sung instructed cadres to excavate royal tombs, collect Buddhist cultural objects, and open a new Museum of Ethnography for the treasures of Korean national culture. When a delegation of Hungarian museologists visited the DPRK in April-May 1973, their hosts told them that even a museum of Buddhist art might be established in the future.39 However, there were also sharply divergent tendencies in North Korean cultural policies. In October 1973, Chu Chae-yul, the head of a main department in the ministry of culture, informed a Hungarian diplomat about the guidelines of North Korean cultural policy as follows:
In the works of art, one must depict people who are loyal to the party and the revolution. National cultural traditions are cultivated in accordance with the interests of socialism. In South Korea, American imperialism is spreading bourgeois culture, against whose intrusion a wide-ranging struggle must be launched. [The DPRK authorities] also ght for the elimination of bourgeois lifestyles from everyday life, from the peoples attitude towards life. They reject those attempts which want to restore obsolete, old things. There are some people who want to bring back or retain backward things on the pretext of cultivating national culture [emphasis added]. The objective [of the authorities] is to facilitate the birth of socialist realist works of art.40

If these words were somewhat obscure, the KWP leaders soon made it all too clear what they had in mind. In August-September 1974, a Hungarian cultural delegation visiting the DPRK heard from a Romanian

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cinematic delegation that a deputy minister of culture had made the following statement in the Romanians presence: [We] regard folk music as the music of slaves, serfs, landlords, and drunkards, which is unsuitable for instilling enthusiasm in the workers. The Hungarian delegation, on its part, was greatly impressed by the rich historical collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, but much less so by modern North Korean music:
The operas we saw are actually not operas in the European sense but imitations of some mixture of the shallowest kind of 19th-century European salon music and melodrama, in whose musical material, apart from the inuence of European light music, there is no trace of Korean or East Asian folk music. Its rhythm is that of German and Italian light music: the rhythm of waltz and other fashionable 19th-century dances is common.41

While these antitraditionalist tendencies may have been more pronounced in music than in other spheres of culture, they were extensive enough to catch the attention of other Hungarian visitors as well. In November-December 1975, a Hungarian educational delegation reported the following:
By [speaking about] the struggle against Confucianism, they mean the struggle against old ideas, views, architectural styles, and arts. On the basis of our limited experiences, we feel that the DPRK is potentially in danger of losing its folk art, ancient musical culture, and architectural style When we asked them whether they taught the classics in music education, they answered with a denite no. They explained that they taught only that kind of art which facilitates the construction of socialism, and is capable of serving this purpose Every child must learn to play at least one musical instrument. For instance, piano accordions are very common. We asked whether it was to be considered an instrument of folk music. They replied that it was. However, they started to use this musical instrument only after 1953. We also saw ancient instruments of folk music. All the songs which they played on the latter were works of living composers.42

Whence came these glaring inconsistencies between the leaderships 1972 campaign to cultivate Korean cultural traditions and the aforementioned manifestations of antitraditionalism? One possible reason was that the various spheres of North Korean cultural life, as described earlier, were often treated differently by the KWP leadership. Measures taken in one eld were not necessarily accompanied by simultaneous and analogous steps in others. Secondly, the regimes cultural policies were probably inuenced by the twists and turns of inter-Korean relations. Remarkably, the campaign for

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cultivating national traditions was launched in a period when the DPRK-ROK relationship underwent a brief improvement. For instance, on July 4, 1972, the leaders of the two Koreas issued a joint declaration stressing that a great national unity, as a homogeneous people, shall be sought rst, transcending differences in ideas, ideologies and systems. This emphasis on common national identity probably inspired North Korean efforts to preserve Korean cultural traditions. Another benet of the unication talks was a temporary relaxation of North Korean domestic policies. To make a good impression on southern public opinion, in 19711972 the KWP leaders increased the variety and availability of consumer goods, and raised state expenditures on culture and education. This new approach also implied a certain toleration of bourgeois lifestyles. As a Hungarian report noted in February 1972, Nowadays one can see women wearing fur coats (this was previously regarded as a sign of bourgeois lifestyle). We have heard from Koreans that women are no longer afraid of taking out those beautiful articles of clothing which they kept hidden in chests, and they are no longer criticized for it.43 The North-South dialogue soon came to a deadlock, however. Having consolidated his power by introducing the repressive Yushin constitution, in June 1973, the South Korean president Park Chung Hee expressed his disinterest in rapid national unication by proposing the admittance of both Koreas to the United Nations.44 Under such circumstances, inter-Korean relations became increasingly tense. Differences in ideas, ideologies, and systems were once again considered more important than great national unity. Hence Chu Chae-yuls fulminations against bourgeois culture, bourgeois lifestyles, and obsolete, old, backward things, and the stress he laid on socialist realism. Thirdly, the regimes antitraditionalist drive probably gained inspiration from the last phase of Chinas Cultural Revolution (19731976). The diplomatic situation appeared favorable for such an inuence, because in 1973, Sino-DPRK relations were incomparably more cordial than during the period 19661968. In 19691970, China began to make efforts to achieve reconciliation with North Korea, and Pyongyang was quick to respond. Moreover, the KWP leaders soon started to lean to the Chinese side. In the rst half of 1974, the North Korean press covered China more extensively and sympathetically than the Soviet bloc, and it also published news about the Chinese campaign against Lin Biao and Confucius. That campaign, which sharply condemned both Confucian traditions and European classical music, had much in common with North Koreas antitraditionalist cultural policies.45 In fact, the process of Sino-DPRK reconciliation led to a gradual North Korean reinterpretation of the Cultural Revolution. As early as 1970, during a visit of the Chinese premier Zhou Enlai, the KWP leaders started making positive comments on the Cultural Revolution.46 In 1971, at a

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reception held by the Chinese ambassador, the chief of staff O Chin-u summarized the achievements of the Cultural Revolution as follows: The Chinese people smashed the revisionists attempts to restore capitalism, and reinforced the dictatorship of the proletariat.47 In May 1972, the North Korean press announced that the KWPs publishing house had just published Mao Zedongs Remarks on Art and Literature, a speech that played an important symbolic role at the start of the Cultural Revolution.48 Nevertheless, the cultural policies that the KWP leaders pursued in the early 1970s were also used for reinforcing Soviet-DPRK cooperation. For instance, in early March 1972, a North Korean opera ensemble performed a revolutionary opera in Moscow. Its visit came wholly unexpected for the Soviet side, because it had not been included in the joint annual plan for cultural cooperation. The sudden announcement of the trip indicated that this program was not motivated by cultural considerations alone.49 In fact, the ensembles performances took place right after the U.S. president Richard Nixon visited China during the period February 2128. Although on March 4 Nodong Sinmun, the KWP daily, publicly approved his trip on the grounds that it revealed the bankruptcy of Taiwanese and South Korean diplomacy,50 the KWP leaders seem to have concluded that the improvement of Sino-U.S. relations might isolate not only the ROK but the DPRK as well. But if they intended to offset their pro-Chinese gestures by reinforcing their cultural cooperation with Moscow, their efforts yielded only limited results. Their revolutionary opera patently failed to impress the Soviet audience. The Soviet organizers found it difcult to recruit a sufcient number of spectators, and of those who did attend, many left during the break.51 The Boss Overstates the Issue to Warn Other Countries: Diplomatic Conict over a Mistranslated Poem In North Korea, even a trivial matter of cultural exchange could result in a diplomatic confrontation. This was what happened in 1976 when the North Koreans accused a Mongolian diplomat of having mistranslated and distorted a North Korean poetic work, Cho Ki-chons Paektusan. On April 24, the deputy foreign minister Chong Yong-su summoned the Mongolian ambassador, and rudely demanded that the Mongolian translation of the work be withdrawn from circulation; that a new, correct translation be made; and that appropriate measures be taken (read: a Mongolian apology be made) to wind up the affair. Predictably, the Mongolian government declined to fulll these demands, whereupon on June 4 the North Korean foreign ministry declared the hapless diplomat-cum-translator persona non grata, and promptly expelled him from the DPRK.52

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At rst sight, the North Korean demands appeared quite incomprehensible. As a Mongolian diplomat acidly told a North Korean ofcial, The book was published [in Mongolia] in 1973, and the issue is raised in Pyongyang in 1976. Surely one needed such a long time three years to check the translation. The Mongolian foreign ministry pointedly asked the DPRK ambassador why the North Koreans considered a few lines of a poem more important than the relations between the [two] countries. But an off-the-record remark made by a deputy departmental head of the North Korean foreign ministry revealed that the alleged mistranslation was probably just a pretext. As he put it, The boss overstates the issue to warn other countries.53 That is, the debate was not an exclusively bilateral affair. In all probability, the other countries included the Soviet Union as well, for the Mongolian government was well-known for its loyalty to Moscow. And in 1976, when the translation incident took place, Soviet-DPRK relations were indeed far from harmonious. At that time, Pyongyang tried to persuade the Soviet Union and its satellites to make a strong public commitment to the cause of Korean unication, but its requests evoked little more than evasive responses from the Soviet bloc.54 Moreover, in 19751976 the North Korean economy underwent a serious crisis, during which Moscow did not give Pyongyang as much economic support as the latter wanted.55 It seems that the North Koreans used the aforesaid trivial cultural problem as a pretext to express their dissatisfaction with Soviet policies. Since a direct confrontation with the Kremlin would have been too risky, Kim Il Sung picked on a weaker opponent. And yet it was probably not entirely accidental that the KWP leaders chose Cho Ki-chons Paektusan for this purpose. Namely, this work dealt with a highly sensitive political topic, the liberation of North Korea from Japanese rule. Its original text, written in 1951 when Kim Il Sung was already the gloried supreme leader of the DPRK but Soviet inuence was still strong, gave credit for Koreas liberation both to Kims guerrillas and the Soviet army.56 Actually, Kim played no role whatsoever in the 1945 campaign.57 Nevertheless, North Korean propagandists, striving to enhance his nationalist credentials, started to claim that General Kim Il Sung overthrew Japanese imperialism and liberated the Fatherland as early as 1948.58 Following the post-1960 deterioration of Soviet-DPRK relations, the KWP leaders did their best to hush up Moscows crucial contribution to the liberation of their country. As Bruce Cumings remarked, even in the 1980s both regimes still needle[d] each other about who liberated Korea.59 Under these circumstances, the DPRK authorities republished Paektusan in a heavily edited form that downplayed the Soviet role in Koreas liberation and laid the main emphasis on the (alleged) exploits of Kim Il Sung. Predictably,

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the Soviets did not translate the version that denigrated their wartime efforts, but they were circumspect enough not to republish the rst version either. In contrast, the Mongolian translation, based as it was on the rst edition, was published in 1973, that is, well after the creation of the second version. This gave Pyongyang an opportunity to demand a retranslation.60 Still, the fact that the North Koreans ignored the issue for three years indicates that the translation was indeed only a pretext for the conict in 1976. Similarly, the real target of Kim Il Sungs confrontational act was not Mongolia, a quantit ngligeable in East Asian power politics, but its overlord, the Soviet Union. Fourteen Basketfuls of Flowers: Cultural Cooperation in the Shadow of Diplomatic Confrontation If Soviet-DPRK relations had been tense in 1976, they underwent further deterioration in the following years. In August 1978, Kim Il Sung made a public speech in which he sharply criticized the practice of chibaejuui (dominationism). This word was conspicuously similar to the Chinese term hegemonism, which Beijing used to vilify the Soviet Union, and the similarity was by no means accidental.61 From the spring to the early fall of that year, Pyongyang adopted a demonstratively unfriendly attitude toward the Soviets and their Vietnamese allies. North Korean newspapers frequently republished the anti-Soviet articles of the Chinese press. The DPRK, a close ally of the Pol Pot regime, harshly condemned the Vietnamese invasion of Kampuchea, but made no comment when China attacked Vietnam in retaliation. Since the Soviet Union approved of Vietnams Kampuchean policy, Pyongyangs hostility toward Hanoi led to Soviet-DPRK disagreements as well.62 In the light of these signs of Soviet-DPRK friction, it appears quite surprising that in late 1978, cultural cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow underwent a sudden improvement. On October 26, 1978that is, only two months after Kim Il Sungs antidominationism speech North Koreas minister of culture asked the Soviet ambassador to prolong the stay of a visiting Soviet ensemble by a whole week. The ambassador concluded that the request must have been motivated by political, rather than cultural, considerations. He was soon proven right. The North Koreans treated the ensemble with maximum courtesy. After their performance in one of Pyongyangs largest theaters, the Soviets were given no less than fourteen basketfuls of owers, a gesture that the Soviet ambassador rightly called unprecedented. Another unprecedented event was that in the same month, the episodes of the Soviet series Seven Days in May were shown on North Korean television on a daily basis.63

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These generous measures could not fully allay Soviet suspicions. For instance, most of the Soviet lms shown on North Korean television in December 1978 were movies made in the Stalin era, rather than newer, less dogmatic productions. As the Hungarian diplomats noted, these are acceptable for the local viewers, they are more compatible with the lms currently produced in the DPRK, and are in accordance with the DPRKs policies. [By showing] these movies, they also suggest that in those days, things were all right in the Soviet Union, whereas now there are problems.64 Still, the Kremlin at least partly appreciated Pyongyangs efforts, not the least because in 19781979 the North Koreans adopted a similarly cooperative stance during their commercial negotiations with the Soviet Union. Despite their well-deserved reputation as notorious defaulters, on this occasion they even repaid a part of the credit they had earlier received from Moscow.65 Kim Il Sungs unexpected cooperativeness toward the Soviet Union seems to have been rooted in his increasing distrust of China. In 1978, Sino-Japanese rapprochement culminated in the conclusion and ratication of a peace treaty in August and October, respectively. From Pyongyangs perspective, ChineseJapanese reconciliation was a potentially adverse development, because once Beijing managed to normalize its relations with Tokyo, it was no longer interested in supporting the DPRK to an extent that would have alienated Japan. Remarkably, in October, the month in which the Sino-Japanese treaty was ratied, SinoNorth Korean relations started to deteriorate, whereas the SovietDPRK relationship, as described above, underwent a sudden improvement, at least in certain spheres.66 Since the debate over the Vietnamese-Kampuchean conict prevented any far-reaching diplomatic cooperation between Moscow and Pyongyang, the KWP leaders probably regarded cultural and economic cooperation as a partial substitute of political normalization. They Almost Met the Criteria of Racism: The Seoul Olympiad and North Koreas Cultural Offensive In the mid-1980s, cultural cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow underwent further intensication. While previously only Kim Il Sung University and Lomonosov University had cooperated with each other, in 19851986 several additional North Korean colleges established contacts with Soviet institutes of higher education.67 A higher number of foreign literary works were published in the DPRK than before, though the books in question mostly belonged to the category of politically harmless juvenile literature. In 1985, North Korean television showed foreign (mostly Soviet) lms on a weekly basis, whereas previously only on foreign national holidays had such lms been shown in the DPRK. As the Hungarian embassy reported,

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In the DPRK, there is also a generally increasing interest in the art of the socialist countries . . . They repeatedly emphasized that they want to study [our] music and art of dancing. There is already some sign of a change in this eld, too. The repertoire of the Mansudae Ensemble splendidly combines traditional Korean dances with the more discreet elements of modern disco or jazz.68

The Soviet diplomats were quick to note that these positive tendencies in North Korean cultural and educational policies started after Kim Il Sung visited the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in May-June 1984.69 This visit, an event of great diplomatic signicance, brought substantial economic benets for the DPRK. Among others, the CPSU leaders promised him that the Soviet Union would build a nuclear power plant in the DPRK.70 In February 1985, a Soviet planning delegation visited Pyongyang and reached a preliminary agreement on the construction of nuclear reactors.71 No wonder that in this year, North Korea started to adopt a friendlier attitude toward the Soviet Union. But North Koreas increasing cultural exibility had other dimensions as well. Recently, the number of revolutionary operas and lms has undergone a decrease, a Hungarian diplomat reported in February 1986. The movies produced by Shin Sang Ok (a famous South Korean director whom the North Korean authorities had abducted in 1978) depicted North Koreas social problems, such as food shortages and the difculties which young people encountered in starting out on their careers, in a relatively open, colorful, and critical way. Shins lms, some of which even earned prizes abroad, also sought to draw attention to the issue of national unication.72 It seems that in this period, the KWP leaders, doing their best to persuade the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to let Pyongyang stage some of the events of the 1988 Seoul Olympiad, made great efforts to make a good impression on foreign observers, including South Korean public opinion. From October 1985 to July 1987, four inter-Korean meetings took place in Lausanne under the auspices of the IOC, during which the North Koreans persistently demanded that as many as eight full sports programs be allocated to the DPRK.73 To boost their cause, the northern leaders repeatedly declared their readiness to solve the problems of the Korean Peninsula by peaceful means.74 By 1988, however, Kim Il Sung must have reached the conclusion that his moderate policies had failed to yield the desired diplomatic results. In 1987, both the Soviet Union and China showed increasing readiness to normalize their relations with South Korea. In October, the Soviet ambassador told his Hungarian counterpart that on the long run it is unsustainable not to recognize an existing state structure in any form.75 In December, direct presidential elections were held in the ROK, resulting in the victory of the government

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candidate Roh Tae Woo, whom North Korean propagandists had denounced as a fascist. Rohs victory was welcomed not only by the United States and Japan but also by the Chinese leaders.76 Worse still, Pyongyangs attempts to cohost the Olympics on its own terms ended in a failure, and North Korean complicity in the destruction of a South Korean civilian airplane in November 1987 further tarnished the DPRKs image.77 Unable to catch up with South Koreas economic miracle, the KWP leaders had few cards left to demonstrate that the DPRK, at least in certain elds, was still superior over the ROK. One such card was cultural nationalism. North Korean propaganda consistently accused the southern government of neglecting Korean national culture in favor of American mass culture. As Radio Pyongyang put it in 1985, the South Korean unkeyist traitors . . . opened the gates of the South so that the Yankee pig, covered with dirt, can rush in and run wildly about at will in the beautiful and noble ower garden of our national culture.78 Anxious to show that the DPRK, unlike the ROK, was proud of Koreas rich cultural heritage, in January 1988 the KWP CC called upon its cadres to make efforts to prove the superiority of the Korean nation.79 This focus on cultural nationalism also reected the regimes dissatisfaction with the policies of its putative allies, its stubborn go-it-alone approach, and its feeling of isolation. It was under these circumstances that the North Korean Academy of Social Sciences held an international conference on Korean studies from May 11 to May 13, 1988. The organizers made no secret of their intention to offset South Koreas inuence in international Korean studies. As the Hungarian embassy reported,
It was conspicuous that [the North Koreans] strove to prove the distinctiveness of Korean culture from [the culture of ] the neighboring countries and the region. Then they attempted to prove that Korea had been the cultural cradle of the region, that its neighbors must trace back their culture to this place. Without sufcient historical basis and factual evidence, they traced back the origins of the united Korean nation and state to the era of tribal communities. They laid great emphasis on the homogeneous character of the [Korean] nation, and on the disclamation of the possibility of a historical amalgamation with other peoples. The head of the Soviet delegation underlined that they almost met the criteria of racism in asserting the historical and contemporary superiority of the Korean nation [emphasis in the original].80

Predictably, this attitude found little appreciation among the foreign scholars present. Debates between the hosts and the foreign delegations were particularly frequent in the panel dealing with economics and economic

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history, since the guests disagreed with the idea that the South Korean economy was in a grave crisis for which national unication was the only possible solution. The Chinese participant went so far as to refute Kim Il Sungs theses on economic development one by one.81 These disagreements mirrored the increasing divergence between North Koreas unrealizable diplomatic objectives and the pragmatic goals of the Soviet Union, China, and the East European countries.

Conclusion As recent events showed, North Korea is still using cultural policies to further its diplomatic aims. For instance, in February 2008, the leadership allowed the rst-ever American musiciansthe New York Philharmonicto enter the DPRK. Foreign observers were quick to realize that the invitation was motivated by Kim Jong Ils intention to create a favorable atmosphere for the talks about the dismantling of Pyongyangs nuclear weapons program. To quote Stephen Bosworth, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, Its not because he personally just cant wait to hear the New York Philharmonic. He did it because I think hes trying to send a signal. All in all, the North Korean leaders, despite their reputation for inexibility and cultural dogmatism, seem to have pursued a relatively sophisticated cultural diplomacy throughout the postKorean War decades. Having realized the importance of mobilizing the soft power of culture against their domestic and South Korean opponents, they also utilized it vis--vis their Communist allies, most notably the Soviet Union. In the multilayered system of party and state organizations through which the regime sought to inuence the policies of other countries, cultural institutions constituted a sphere that was as strictly controlled and as arbitrarily managed as the ministries of defense, foreign affairs, and external trade, but whose actions did not necessarily duplicate the measures of any of the latter apparatuses. The frequency of sudden shifts in Kim Il Sungs cultural policies revealed that the cultural sphere lacked any real autonomy. Had North Korean writers and artists enjoyed more freedom to decide what to write and paint, the abrupt changes from traditionalism to antitraditionalism, or from extremism to moderation, would have hardly taken place. While some of these changes may have been partly stimulated by genuine intellectual debates, such debates would not have produced several successive voltefaces within a two- or three-year period, let alone within a single year (as it happened in 19541955, 1956, 19571958, 19651966, 19721974, 1978, 19861988, and so on).

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It is somewhat surprising how changeable and inconsistent the leaderships own cultural guidelines were (at least in the works that were made accessible for foreigners). Beyond the all-important and permanent aim of keeping culture under strict control and a somewhat vague commitment to realism (as opposed to formalism), there was no constant and xed standpoint on the content and national/nonnational style of the works to be produced. Although the overpoliticization of artistic themes proved all too common, it happened more than once that the regime intentionally shifted emphasis from military and revolutionary topics to landscapes and the depiction of everyday life. Even cultural nationalism and Kim Il Sungs personality cult, both of which were supposedly central and inviolable tenets of North Korean cultural policy, could be temporarily downplayed (see, for instance, the events of 19551956, 19651966, and 19731974). These inconsistencies manifested themselves in not only a diachronic but also a synchronic way. Firstly, the cultivation of national cultural traditions was not always equally intense in every sphere of cultural life. Secondly, there were numerous discrepancies between the cultural, economic, diplomatic, and military steps taken by the regime. Hard-line or confrontational measures taken in one sphere often coincided with soft measures in another. In some cases, there were analogous tendencies in two spheres (for instance, economy and culture) but a markedly different trend reigned in a third one (as it happened in December 1955 and the end of 1978). The frequent coincidence of cultural shifts with diplomatic turns suggests that the aforesaid inconsistencies and abrupt volte-faces were at least partly rooted in the effect that the twists and turns of North Korean foreign policy produced on the countrys domestic sphere. After all, the tectonic motions of Sino-Soviet, Soviet-American, and U.S.-Chinese relations were beyond the control of the KWP leaders, who nevertheless sought to retain their independence. They often had to adapt their policies to the changing international circumstances, but, due to both their own stubborn nationalism and the obstacles created by the Sino-Soviet rift, this adaptation usually remained partial and selective. Cooperation with one Communist giant in a particular eld was frequently counterbalanced with collaboration with the other colossus in another sphere. In this elaborate game, cultural diplomacy played an important role. Nevertheless, Kim Il Sungs efforts to achieve rapprochement with a country through cultural cooperation were rarely, if ever, able to neutralize the negative effect caused by his earlier hostile political acts. In the last analysis, the soft power of culture seems to have lost out to the hard power of diplomatic and military interests.

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QUERY FORM

BOOK TITLE: CHAPTER NO:

DC Tuong Chapter 9

Queries and / or remarks

Query No. No Queries. Query / remark Response

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