위기감과 자부심 사이 : 북한 ‘민족문화’ 개념의 분화와 변화

Abstract

This paper’s goal is to understand North Korea’s present-day nationalism in part by showing how North Korea regarded the “nation”(minjok) and “culture” through the changes in its concept of “national culture”(minjok munhwa). North Korean nationalism grew stronger amid international variables such as competition with South Korea, a sense of crisis and opposition towards the US, differentiation from arising China post-Cold War, and Third World solidarity. Although early on North Korea strongly viewed the “nation” and nationalism negatively and aimed for an anti-chauvinist “national culture,” it later broke with the Stalinist concept of “nation” emphasizing economic community, transitioning to a concept of “nation” which valued blood ties and culture and emphasizing this concretely with the expression “national culture.” This latter concept was divided into “national cultural heritages”(minjok munhwa yusan) and “national cultural arts”(minjok munhwa yesul) since the founding of the North Korean regime. That is, national cultural heritages of the past were to be well preserved and passed on to create national cultural arts, and exceptional national cultural arts were to become great national cultural heritages in the future. The political struggles in the late 1950s and 1960s also constituted a battle of concepts surrounding “national culture,” where in various revolutionary traditions were renounced and Kim Il-Sung’s anti-Japanese resistance experience privileged over the others. With Kim’s sole leadership over North Korea fully established in 1967, national nihilism and reactionarism were strongly criticized during the theorization of “national culture” until the 1970s. The holding of many international events in Pyeongyang during the 1970s and 1980s was the result of North Korea’s self-awareness and pride in taking a leading role in Third World solidarity. Domestic and foreign crises and the country’s solitary hard line stance in the aftermath of the Cold War solidified North Korean nationalism, and concepts such as the “Chosun people first ideology” and the “people of Kim Ilsung,” and “Taedonggang culture” were produced as strategies to unify the regime in this atmosphere. In sum, the term “national culture” was an affective mechanism to preserve and unite the country in the face of national crises as well as a bastion of its self-esteem demonstrating the country’s existence.