[Book review] When North Korea led the Third World

North Korea’s Naegohyang Women’s FC will face off against South Korean team Suwon FC Women in the semifinal of the AFC Women’s Champions League on Wednesday in South Korea. Some observers suggest that the North Korean soccer team’s visit to the South could set the stage for exchange between the two Koreas.

But North Korea has recently reaffirmed its “two hostile states” narrative and deleted language from its constitution committing to the struggle to “reunify the country on the principle of independence, peaceful reunification and great national unity.”

“Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader: North Korea and the Third World,” written by American historian Benjamin Young, examines the history of North Korea’s often inscrutable behavior.

The author’s chief contention is that North Korea was not a closed state, but a global actor that carved out its own niche in world history in the second half of the 20th century.

The strategy chosen by North Korea for that end was to align itself with the Third World. Today, the phrase “Third World” has taken on derogatory connotations. But in the second half of the 20th century, it was a badge of pride for those enchanted by the dream of decolonization and pursuing alternatives to a binary choice between the liberal democracy of America and the socialism of the Soviet Union.

According to Young, North Korea’s affinity with the Third World can be traced back to the Japanese colonial period. The Manchurian tradition— referring to North Korean freedom fighters’ skirmishes with Japanese settlers in Manchuria — made North Korea a staunchly anti-colonial state that sympathized with the many struggles for national liberation in the Third World.

In the mid-1950s, North Korean leader Kim Il-sung’s position was precarious. He faced opposition from the Soviet faction and the Yan’an faction. His own partisan faction, which was largely composed of former anti-Japanese guerillas, closed ranks around Kim as the “great leader” and successfully purged their political rivals in 1956.

Between 1956 and 1967, North Korea’s “Juche ideology,” with its emphasis on autonomy and self-reliance, dovetailed with various liberation ideologies in vogue in the postcolonial world and anti-colonial resistance movements in the Third World.

North Korea had particularly close ties with Cuba. The two countries concluded a pact on cultural cooperation in August 1960, and Che Guevara flew to Pyongyang shortly after a visit to China that November.

Cuba continued to back North Korea throughout the Cold War and played a critical role in North Korea’s international network. When Guevara was killed in a guerilla campaign in 1967, Kim Il-sung mourned him as a “revolutionary hero.” North Korea’s state-run Rodong Sinmun even ran a column personally penned by Kim on the first anniversary of Guevara’s death.

Kim Il-sung also waded into the Vietnam War. Along with fighter pilots, North Korea gave North Vietnam a generous amount of material. Kim’s support was based on the practical aim of weakening the US’ military position in Asia, along with the more aspirational hope that the US, if defeated in Vietnam, might pull out of South Korea.

During this period, Kim Il-sung regarded the Third World as rich soil for spreading anti-colonialism and autonomy and for boosting his own “international and domestic prestige.”

In the 1970s, the situation in North and South Korea underwent rapid changes. South Korea made economic development its chief objective, and North Korea also sought to pursue the national brand in a bid to overcome its economic difficulties.

North Korean construction firms and workers built factories, presidential palaces and stadiums all over Africa. North Korean technical experts increased farm output and developed urban water treatment systems in such countries as Somalia, Rwanda and Madagascar.

That naturally motivated governments in the Third World to take a fresh look at the Juche idea with its nationalist overtones, which they linked to local concepts that emphasized self-reliance. In effect, the credo of self-reliance sounded like a call for solidarity for many governments pursuing decolonization.

North Korean policy began to gradually change after Kim Jong-il, the son of Kim Il-sung, took on a more prominent role. The younger Kim “saw the unrest in South Korea during the early 1980s as an opportunity to undermine Seoul’s legitimacy and boost his father’s legacy as the preeminent Korean statesman.”

Perhaps the most significant incident from this time was the deadly terrorist bombing in Yangon (also called Rangoon), the former capital of Myanmar (then known as Burma), in 1983. North Korea failed in its attempt to assassinate the South Korean president, but the incident revealed a shift in the North Korean leadership’s foreign policy.

That was when the military rivalry between South and North Korea slipped the geographical boundaries of the Korean Peninsula and spread into the Third World.

Around the same time, North Korea adopted a two-pronged strategy. Kim Il-sung focused on military affairs, while Kim Jong-il, as the anointed heir, oversaw North Korea’s artistic efforts. The younger Kim strove to export Kim Il-sung’s “mass games” to other countries.

Thousands of students were trained to hold up cards bearing revolutionary slogans, while skilled dancers performed choreographed moves and gymnastics to reinforce the country’s propaganda overseas.

“To be a fully developed communist man, one must acquire a revolutionary ideology, the knowledge of many fields, rich cultural attainments and a healthy and strong physique,” Kim Jong-il told a group of mass games experts, according to Young. “Mass gymnastics play an important role in training schoolchildren to acquire these communist qualities.”

In the late 1980s, North Korea mobilized all its resources to maintain the regime. One initiative was improving relations with Ethiopia, which had sent troops to aid South Korea in the Korean War.

The dictatorial tendencies of Mengistu Haile Mariam, who took over Ethiopia in 1977, aligned with those of the Kim family, and North Korea cultivated influence by sending generous amounts of foreign aid and teams of agronomists.

But North Korea’s aid to African countries failed to yield any meaningful results. That was not only because of the unfavorable conditions, but also because of the lack of a concerted effort from the socialist bloc.

In 1986, North Korea cut back its fiscal support for the development of the Third World. Pyongyang hosted the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students to offset the success of the Seoul Summer Olympics in 1988.

But that did little to bolster North Korea’s image overseas. The North Korean regime was already facing criticism from the Western world for being “backward,” and hosting the World Festival of Youth and Students only solidified that embarrassing reputation.

The Third World is now distancing itself from North Korea because of its nuclear provocations, various assassinations and hacking activities.

Nevertheless, as Young observers, North Korea was an active player on the stage of world history in the latter half of the 20th century, and it has still maintained that basic approach in several forms.

As uncertainty clouds the future of South and North Korea, I fully expect that “Guns, Guerillas and the Great Leader” will serve as a useful historical reference guide for the road ahead.

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