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Those damn North Koreans PUST us again!

Suckers ….

A monument dedicated to Kim Il-sung was installed on the campus of the new Pyongyang University of Science and Technology (PUST). Built with donations from South Korean and US Christians, it could tank intra-Korean relations for good. The 20-metre granite monstrosity embodies the Juche idea, North Korea’s quasi-religious state ideology. [Asia News, Joseph Yun Li-Sun]

For good, he says? Hasn’t this guy ever read the Hankyoreh? As if the likely diversion of funds from Kaesong or Kumgang, or of some unknown percentage of South Korea’s unmonitored food aid, ever mattered to those guys, or to the Unifiction Ministry. For that matter, South Korea’s current government is no paragon of clear principle, either:

[B]uilding the monument has stopped the inauguration of the new university. The delay is due to protests by donors, who coughed up 40 billion North Korean wons (US$ 35 million) to put up the structure.

In the case of South Korean taxpayers who contributed to the project, they will have to rely on their country’s Unification Ministry for a response. An official with the ministry said, whilst “North Korea’s stance is that PUST cannot be an exception” to the rule that all educational facilities in the North have their “Yeong Saeng monument, if “the Yeong Saeng monument becomes a propaganda tool aimed at outside visitors, we will readily respond.

Put differently, what funds have ever been sent to North Korea that weren’t misused? In truth, no one really knows. The defense here, as I might have predicted, is an implicit recognition of North Korea’s “right” to divert some percentage of its education resources toward indoctrination, but that doesn’t answer the question of why South Korean taxpayers and donors must fund this, or how much actual education this “university” is really going to provide.

3 Responses

  1. Joshua, this is a case where you are underselling the role of religion in Korea. The religious tensions between the two Koreas could not be more severe. This is clearly a response to the aggressive inroads being made by Christians into NK, especially the defectors who have converted to Christianity and are leading the cultural infiltration efforts. The balloon launches have inflamed His Withering Majesty more than any military actions that could be taken by the ROK and are a direct affront to the Juche religion. The fact that large percentages of defectors are converting to the Christian religion and eagerly participating in evangelization efforts has the regime terrified.

    This is probably a ploy to spit in the eye of the zealous South Korean missionary groups that work the Sino-Korean border to smuggle defectors south and teach them about Jesus.

    The DPRK can erect an infinite amount of monuments to KIS but Jucheism is rapidly becoming odious to North Koreans outside of Pyongyang. Saddam built himself 50+ palaces after Gulf War I and his own people tore down his mouments to himself with their own hands in 2003. Same with Ceaucescu.

    The religion of Juche is the center-of-gravity in North Korea. Christianity poses a mortal challenge to it and is gaining significant momentum. In my judgment, this ‘news story’ from the DPRK is a sign that NK is admitting engagment in an ideological war with the Christian religion, a war it cannot possibly hope to win.

  2. KCJ – this is very interesting. Here in Los Angeles there is a significant population of Korean and Korean-American Christians. They are very energetic and many of them have a great burden for the brothers in the North. I went to a service at an all-Korean Presbyterian Church in Irvine a few years ago where a defector spoke about how he had escaped from North Korea. According to him, people in the North are very interested in Christianity precisely because they have had it with “Jucheism.” Also, they think Christianity must be important if people are willing to sacrifice so much in its name.

  3. Will – thanks for that testimony – it validates the body of research I have immersed myself in. Without Juchesim, the cult of the Kims is finished. That is why they spend 38% of their GDP on maintenance of the cult.

    North Koreans are taught to worship Kim Jong Il as a god. In a manner unique among nations, the North exerts extraordinary control through deification — a cult ideology of complete subservience — that goes beyond the “Stalinist” label often used to describe the newly nuclear North.

    While outsiders can see film clips of huge festivals honoring Mr. Kim, the extraordinary degree of cult worship is not well known, nor that programs promoting the ideology of Kim are growing, according to refugees, diplomats, and others who have visited the Hermit Kingdom.

    In fact, in a time of famine and poverty, government spending on Kim-family deification — now nearly 40 percent of the visible budget — is the only category in the North’s budget to increase, according to a new white paper by the Korea Institute for International Economic Policy in Seoul. It is rising even as defense, welfare, and bureaucracy spending has decreased. The increase pays for ideology schools, some 30,000 Kim monuments, gymnastic festivals, films and books, billboards and murals, 40,000 “research institutes,” historical sites, rock carvings, circus theaters, training programs, and other worship events.

    In 1990, ideology was 19 percent of North Korea’s budget; by 2004 it doubled to at least 38.5 percent of state spending, according to the white paper. This extra financing may come from recent budget offsets caused by the shutting down of older state funding categories, says Alexander Mansourov of the Asia Pacific Center for Security Studies in Honolulu.

    It has long been axiomatic that the main danger to the Kim regime is internal unrest. That is, Koreans will discover the freedoms, glitter, and diversity of the modern outside world, and stop believing the story of idolatry they are awash in. “It isn’t quite realized [in the West] how much a threat the penetration of ideas means. They [Kim’s regime] see it as a social problem that could bring down the state,” says Brian Myers, a North Korean expert at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.