Expulsion for a Mistranslated Poem: The Diplomatic Aspects of North Korean Cultural Policies

CHAPTER 9

Expulsion for a Mistranslated Poem: The Diplomatic Aspects of North

Korean Cultural Policies

Balázs Szalontai, Mongolia International University

Introduction

In the so-called cultural Cold War, North Korea, offi cially known as the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), constituted a rather spe-cial, 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 détente 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 infl uence to those capitalist and developing coun-tries whose governments showed at least a modicum of readiness for cultural exchange with the Communist countries.1 While North Korean cultural policies were considerably infl uenced by the government’s desire to make a favorable impression on South Korean public opinion, the DPRK authori-ties faced formidable obstacles when they tried to reach the southern audi-ence. This did not mean, however, that the North Koreans were unfamiliar with the fi 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 Pyongyang’s own Communist allies, rather than its South Korean and American enemies.

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146 ● Balázs Szalontai

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 Pyongyang’s initiatives and fulfi ll its requests. For this reason, they often felt it expedi-ent to ensure the compliance of the “fraternal” countries through coaxing, pressure, or even outright deception. In the post−Korean War era, Soviet-DPRK 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, 1945−1950” by Charles Armstrong, is focused on the pre-1953 period, rather than the postwar decades. Moreover, Armstrong’s 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 signifi cant extent. Such secondary objectives sometimes inspired cultural measures whose tone was markedly different from the supposed “general line” of North Korean cultural policies.

“They Infl exibly 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 main-tained over cultural life seems to have been even stricter than the methods practiced in Moscow’s East European satellites. In 1951, a Hungarian corre-spondent named Tibor Méray, 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-sacrifi cing mother, and the evil American . . . The characters are unsophisticated, in most

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Diplomatic Aspects of N. Korean Cultural Policies ● 147

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 “sensi-tive” intellectuals but also by hard-bitten East European Communist diplo-mats, 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 fl exible and cooperative approach. They also prod-ded 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 Hungary’s gradually softening cultural policies and Kim’s 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 infl exibly abandoned the pro-gressive 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” infl u-ence 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 regime’s attitude toward Korean cultural traditions was considerably in fl ux during the two and a half years that preceded Kim Il Sung’s famous “chuch’e 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 tradi-tions; but in the fi 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 1953−1955 cannot be wholly explained by the struggle between Kim Il Sung and his Soviet Korean opponents. Interestingly enough, North Korean economic policies also strongly fl 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 con-trast, 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 industrial-ization—mainly 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 correla-tion 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 govern-ment’s 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 authori-ties 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, fi xed guidelines but also by short-term, tactical con-siderations. From October 1 to December 20—that 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 fi erce debates raged over various aesthetic issues, was probably infl uenced by the simultaneous clashes between Kim Il Sung and his Soviet Korean rivals.10

Surprisingly enough, Kim’s campaign against the “Soviet faction” was not accompanied by an intensifi cation of his personality cult, a further politiciza-tion 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 combina-tion, which demonstrated both his tactical fl exibility and his ability to tone down his own personality cult, may have been at least partly motivated by diplomatic considerations. Despite his fi 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 intensifi cation in 1956, not the least because Kim Il Sung, who considered Nikita Khrushchev’s “secret speech” on Stalin’s crimes a potential threat to his own rule, sought to isolate the North Korean public from “subversive” Soviet infl uences by playing out the card of nationalism. In April 1956, the minister of educa-tion Kim Ch’ang-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 Sung’s 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 profi le. 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 Mikoyan’s 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 coin-cided 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 poli-cies 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 Ch’ollima Movement, a mass campaign patterned upon China’s Great Leap Forward.17 Remarkably, there was once again a conspicuous negative correlation between his economic and cultural poli-cies. In late 1957, and particularly in 1958, An Mak, the newly appointed minister of culture and education, made an effort to pursue a less Korea-centric 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 Korea’s 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 suffi ciently ideological. For instance, they decided to produce an opera about the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggles in a form resembling The Song of Shim Ch’ong, a traditional Korean opera (ch’angguk).19

Cultural nationalism was also stimulated by the leadership’s increasing concern with national unifi cation. In May 1958, Han Sol-ya, North Korea’s 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 P’al-tong, an infl uential South Korean writer, published an article in which he boldly declared that since national unifi cation 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 Sung’s unifi cation policies became particularly clear after the South Korean revolution that toppled Rhee’s dictatorship in 1960. Encouraged by the downfall of his archenemy, Kim did his best to convince South Korean public opinion of his goodwill and fl exibility. Apart from adopting a cooperative stance toward the new Republic of Korea (ROK) authorities, he also rein-forced nationalist propaganda. Anxious to demonstrate that the North was more concerned with cultivating national culture than the South, Radio Pyongyang’s broadcasts hardly included any foreign musical compositions.22

Kim’s 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, Pyongyang’s proclaimed intention to infl uence South Korean public opinion constituted a useful smokescreen that concealed North Korean cultural nationalism’s additional aim of shielding the DPRK from the effects of Soviet de-Stalinization.

When the Sino-Soviet confl ict became public in mid-1960, Kim Il Sung’s fi rst reaction was to isolate the DPRK from “harmful” external infl uences. In October 1960, the KWP leadership passed a resolution that condemned “fl 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 rep-ertoire of North Korean theaters in 1960−61. In November 1960, Kim Il Sung told writers and artists that they should devote greater attention to the present Ch’ollima 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 chuch’e. 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 Kim’s 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 fi 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 pro-posed certain “revisions” in the Korean chapters that exaggerated Kim’s role in the anti-Japanese struggle, the North Koreans fl atly refused to make changes. The joint monograph was never published.27

North Korea’s complex attitude toward the Soviet Union also mani-fested 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 out-burst of de-Stalinization naturally alarmed Kim Il Sung, but at fi rst he tried to avoid an open confrontation with Moscow. During the Soviet-DPRK “month of friendship” (October 15−November 15), North Korean theaters staged various Russian and other foreign operas to express Pyongyang’s readiness to cultivate cultural ties with the “fraternal” countries.28

Kim’s 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 Moscow’s Korean programs. A domestic manifestation of this campaign was an attack on a comedy written by a certain Kim Ch’ang-sok. Since the play made fun of the bureaucratic regulations that hindered, rather than facilitated, industrial production, it was declared a “revisionist” work infl uenced 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 Soviet−North Korean Reconciliation

By the early 1960s, Kim Il Sung’s 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 fi nally persuaded the authorities to remove it.30 Nevertheless, Kim’s cult was still subject to certain fl uctuations. For instance, in late 1965 and in the fi rst half of 1966, the cult seems to have been deliberately curtailed by the top leader-ship. In January 1966, a Hungarian diplomat observed a recent decrease in the number of poems and songs written about Kim Il Sung.31 “His large-scale 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 Kim’s cult may have been related to the renewal of Soviet−North Korean coopera-tion 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 Moscow’s suspicions and demon-strate his capability for change.

Further evidence supporting this explanation is to be found in the cul-tural policies that the KWP leadership pursued in 1965−1966. 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 Pyongyang’s 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 fi lms were ever shown in North Korean cinemas anyway.

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The cultural policies of the mid-1960s also demonstrated the regime’s complex and ambivalent attitude toward Korea’s cultural heritage. For instance, the cadres in charge of cultural policies broadened the repertoire of Radio Pyongyang’s 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 sculp-ture, 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 conspicu-ously 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 confer-ence 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 defen-sive 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 repeat-edly tried to persuade the DPRK not to pursue a policy of economic construc-tion, 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 China’s 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 deterio-ration during the period 1965−1968. Sino-DPRK friction produced a per-ceptible effect on North Korean cultural policies, all the more so because it was interrelated with Mao Zedong’s 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 1966−1967, North Korean cultural measures were considerably infl uenced by the intention of disassociating the DPRK from Chinese poli-cies. 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 offi cials of a North Korean museum told a Hungarian journalist in mid-1966, in Korea’s history, “everybody was ready to sacrifi ce 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 fi ght for the elimination of bourgeois lifestyles from everyday life, from the people’s 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 imita-tions of some mixture of the shallowest kind of 19th-century European salon music and melodrama, in whose musical material, apart from the infl uence 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 pro-nounced 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 defi nite 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 instru-ment. 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 leadership’s 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 fi eld were not necessarily accompanied by simultaneous and analogous steps in others.

Secondly, the regime’s cultural policies were probably infl uenced 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 fi 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 benefi t of the unifi cation talks was a temporary relaxation of North Korean domestic policies. To make a good impression on southern public opinion, in 1971−1972 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 “bour-geois 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 disinter-est in rapid national unifi cation 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-yul’s fulminations against “bourgeois culture,” “bourgeois lifestyles,” and “obsolete, old, backward things,” and the stress he laid on socialist realism.

Thirdly, the regime’s antitraditionalist drive probably gained inspiration from the last phase of China’s Cultural Revolution (1973−1976). The diplo-matic situation appeared favorable for such an infl uence, because in 1973, Sino-DPRK relations were incomparably more cordial than during the period 1966−1968. In 1969−1970, China began to make efforts to achieve reconcili-ation with North Korea, and Pyongyang was quick to respond. Moreover, the KWP leaders soon started to “lean to the Chinese side.” In the fi rst half of 1974, the North Korean press covered China more extensively and sympa-thetically 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 Korea’s 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 KWP’s publishing house had just pub-lished Mao Zedong’s “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 ensemble’s performances took place right after the U.S. presi-dent Richard Nixon visited China during the period February 21−28. 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 diffi cult to recruit a suffi cient 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 Confl ict 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-ch’on’s 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 fulfi ll 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 fi rst sight, the North Korean demands appeared quite incomprehensi-ble. As a Mongolian diplomat acidly told a North Korean offi cial, “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 transla-tion.” The Mongolian foreign ministry pointedly asked the DPRK ambassa-dor 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 proba-bility, 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 satel-lites to make a strong public commitment to the cause of Korean unifi cation, but its requests evoked little more than evasive responses from the Soviet bloc.54 Moreover, in 1975−1976 the North Korean economy underwent a serious crisis, during which Moscow did not give Pyongyang as much eco-nomic support as the latter wanted.55 It seems that the North Koreans used the aforesaid trivial cultural problem as a pretext to express their dissatisfac-tion 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-ch’on’s 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 glorifi ed supreme leader of the DPRK but Soviet infl uence was still strong, gave credit for Korea’s liberation both to Kim’s 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 over-threw 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 Moscow’s crucial contribution to the lib-eration 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 Korea’s 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 fi rst version either. In contrast, the Mongolian translation, based as it was on the fi 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 transla-tion was indeed only a pretext for the confl ict in 1976. Similarly, the real target of Kim Il Sung’s confrontational act was not Mongolia, a quantité négligeable 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 Vietnam’s Kampuchean policy, Pyongyang’s 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, 1978—that is, only two months after Kim Il Sung’s “antidominationism” speech—North Korea’s 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 perfor-mance in one of Pyongyang’s largest theaters, the Soviets were given no less than fourteen basketfuls of fl 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 fi 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 fi lms currently produced in the DPRK, and are in accordance with the DPRK’s 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 Pyongyang’s efforts, not the least because in 1978−1979 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 Sung’s 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 ratifi cation of a peace treaty in August and October, respectively. From Pyongyang’s perspective, Chinese-Japanese reconciliation was a potentially adverse development, because once Beijing managed to normalize its relations with Tokyo, it was no longer inter-ested in supporting the DPRK to an extent that would have alienated Japan. Remarkably, in October, the month in which the Sino-Japanese treaty was ratifi ed, Sino−North Korean relations started to deteriorate, whereas the Soviet-DPRK relationship, as described above, underwent a sudden improvement, at least in certain spheres.66 Since the debate over the Vietnamese-Kampuchean confl ict 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 Korea’s Cultural Offensive

In the mid-1980s, cultural cooperation between Pyongyang and Moscow underwent further intensifi cation. While previously only Kim Il Sung University and Lomonosov University had cooperated with each other, in 1985−1986 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 ques-tion mostly belonged to the category of “politically harmless” juvenile litera-ture. In 1985, North Korean television showed foreign (mostly Soviet) fi lms on a weekly basis, whereas previously only on foreign national holidays had such fi 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 fi 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 signifi cance, brought substantial economic benefi ts 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 Korea’s increasing cultural fl exibility had other dimensions as well. “Recently, the number of revolutionary operas and fi 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 Korea’s social problems, such as food shortages and the diffi culties which young people encountered in starting out on their careers, in a relatively open, colorful, and critical way. Shin’s fi lms, some of which even earned prizes abroad, also sought to draw attention to the issue of national unifi cation.72

It seems that in this period, the KWP leaders, doing their best to per-suade 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 recog-nize 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. Roh’s victory was welcomed not only by the United States and Japan but also by the Chinese leaders.76 Worse still, Pyongyang’s 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 DPRK’s image.77

Unable to catch up with South Korea’s “economic miracle,” the KWP leaders had few cards left to demonstrate that the DPRK, at least in certain fi elds, was still superior over the ROK. One such card was cultural national-ism. North Korean propaganda consistently accused the southern govern-ment of neglecting Korean national culture in favor of American mass culture. As Radio Pyongyang put it in 1985, “the South Korean fl 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 fl ower garden of our national culture.”78 Anxious to show that the DPRK, unlike the ROK, was proud of Korea’s 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 refl ected the regime’s 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 Korea’s infl uence 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 suffi cient 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 unifi cation was the only possible solution. The Chinese participant went so far as to refute Kim Il Sung’s theses on economic development one by one.81 These disagreements mirrored the increasing divergence between North Korea’s unrealizable dip-lomatic 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 fur-ther its diplomatic aims. For instance, in February 2008, the leadership allowed the fi rst-ever American musicians—the New York Philharmonic—to enter the DPRK. Foreign observers were quick to realize that the invitation was motivated by Kim Jong Il’s intention to create a favorable atmosphere for the talks about the dismantling of Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program. To quote Stephen Bosworth, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea, “It’s not because he personally just can’t wait to hear the New York Philharmonic. He did it because I think he’s trying to send a signal.”

All in all, the North Korean leaders, despite their reputation for infl exi-bility and cultural dogmatism, seem to have pursued a relatively sophisti-cated cultural diplomacy throughout the post−Korean 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-à-vis their Communist allies, most notably the Soviet Union. In the multilayered system of party and state organizations through which the regime sought to infl uence 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 Sung’s 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 volte-faces within a two- or three-year period, let alone within a single year (as it happened in 1954−1955, 1956, 1957−1958, 1965−1966, 1972−1974, 1978, 1986−1988, and so on).

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It is somewhat surprising how changeable and inconsistent the leadership’s own cultural guidelines were (at least in the works that were made accessible for foreigners). Beyond the all-important and permanent aim of keeping cul-ture under strict control and a somewhat vague commitment to “realism” (as opposed to “formalism”), there was no constant and fi 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 Sung’s 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 1955−1956, 1965−1966, and 1973−1974).

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, diplo-matic, 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 sug-gests 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 country’s 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 national-ism and the obstacles created by the Sino-Soviet rift, this adaptation usually remained partial and selective. Cooperation with one Communist giant in a particular fi eld was frequently counterbalanced with collaboration with the other colossus in another sphere. In this elaborate game, cultural diplo-macy played an important role. Nevertheless, Kim Il Sung’s 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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Expulsion for a Mistranslated Poem: The Diplomatic Aspects of North Korean Cultural Policies

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