Nothing to Envy

This text stresses the omnipresence of propaganda in North Korea, from the posters that give the bleak streets of Chongjin their only color, to the lessons children learn in school, to the movies at the cinema. Propaganda is incorporated into arithmetic lessons that also teach antipathy for Americans, missionaries, and the Japanese.

In his effort to be more like Santa Claus than Stalin, Kim Il-sung used propaganda to promote an image of benevolence, immortality, and god-like strength and intelligence. His time in the Soviet Union was unknown to citizens of North Korea, who saw him as a quasi-religious figure. Statues in his honor made up the hearts of cities and villages. This effort inspired real fervor in his followers—North Koreans like Mrs. Song report their absolute devastation at his death.

However, propaganda also creates an expectation that is very difficult to live up to. For some, Kim Il-sung’s death in fact revealed the emptiness of the rhetoric that proclaimed him immortal. After a period of famine, his death leads Oak-hee to feel that Il-sung had misled the country—and that his son would do no better. Coming at a time of extreme social upheaval, his death underscored the failures of North Korea’s government in reality, outside of the propaganda that claimed there was “nothing to envy.