Juche Ideology

Introduction
After the Korean War, North Korea was devastated. The USA had dropped more bombs on their country than what they had during the Second World War. The capital city of Pyongyang was completely destroyed and the people’s moral was very low after the failed attempt to unite the north with the south. The leader Kim Il Sung needed a plan to give the people of North Korea a brighter picture of what the future had in store. Kim Il Sung also wanted to increase his influence in the workers’ party as well as starting a cult of personality, in order to do so he had to have the support from the people and so he set forth the Juche ideology. This essay will explore the nature of Juche ideology; its relationship to Korean society; the similarities and differences from Marxist-Leninist thought and how it helped to consolidate Kim Il Sung’s absolute power in North Korea.
Juche Ideology
Juche is the official state ideology in North Korea and has been since 1972. The definition of Juche is self-reliance. Juche became

a slogan in a speech by Kim Il Sung December 28, 1955 titled On eliminating dogmatism and formalism and establishing Juche in ideological work. From there until 1966 it became a political catch phrase used in order to stop political campaigns influenced by the destalinization in the Soviet Union from emerging in North Korea. A big reason why Juche was introduced in North Korea was also to cut of ties and influence with the Soviet Union as well as getting rid of political rivals and opponents. Juche was also introduced in order to increase Kim Il Sung’s power and influence, since he did not have the full power in his party, as well as intensifying his personality cult. One could argue that the Juche Ideology during its early stages was a propaganda scheme created in order to benefit Kim Il Sung in the way that he would become an authoritarian dictator who could create his own laws without anyone being able to infringe on his ideas. Because of this he was able to impose laws making it impossible for North Koreans to question neither him nor his regime. In order to continue increasing and spreading his propaganda machine Kim Il Sung had to make the people of North Korea as unaware about the outside world as possible so that they would not start questioning the ongoing internal problems in which North Korea was facing and so North Koreas isolation process started. The isolation process in North Korea wasn’t as difficult of a process as it would have been in other countries because of its location plus it had already been isolated before during the Choson dynasty which ruled from the 14th century until the early 20th century. The first application of the Juche Ideology was the five year plan (1956-1961). The five year plan was an attempt to make North Korea politically independent from the USSR by rapidly increasing North Koreas economic development with a focus on heavy industry.
Juche is more of a nationalistic ideology rather than a socialist ideology and you can clearly see that when looking at the main components of the ideology.

Juche is deeply rooted in traditional Korean thinking as well as racial pride. According to the Juche ideology Koreans are the chosen people, Koreans are ethnically and racially pure and they are naturally xenophobic. You can see the national pride when looking at what Juche wants to accomplish, the Marxist-Leninist ideology stresses that eventually all social classes would merge into one egalitarian socialist utopia while in contrast the Juche ideology focuses on building the perfect Korean state and increasing Korean identity. The reason North Koreans feel such pride in their race and believe that they are the only pure ones in the world can be traced back to the people of Korea always being under the rule or influence of other nations such as Russia and Japan, and later on by USSR and Maoist

China.