(Ethnic) Nationalism in North Korean Political Ideology and Culture

Abstract

This study examines nationalism in North Korea through an exploration of that country’s political ideology and culture throughout time. It argues that a nationalist consciousness has always existed in North Korean history, but that it has been purposely changed and manipulated in form to deal with at-the-time difficulty and circumstance that the regime was faced with. This study asserts that state ideology was more state-focussed and subtle in nature in the earlier decades, and more ethnie, or ethnic-group oriented, and extreme in latter decades. More concretely, a state-based patriotism is seen to have constructed the nation in the 1950s and 1960s, and an ethnic-based nationalism is seen to have maintained the nation from the mid-1970s onwards. This claim is illustrated in the thesis by various primary material of a propagandistic nature sourced from the time and published in North Korea, and supported by a recreation of the political and social milieu in which these data were domestically consumed. A theoretical base underpinning the argument is provided in opening, and an elaboration into the main themes of the structure of North Korean ethnic nationalism is given in closing.