and radio and on public loudspeakers. It’s difficult to escape the gaze of a nationalistic worker or national leader peering down at you from his poster, urging absolute loyalty to the pure Korean race.
Posters are addressed to different groups of people. For farmers, they offer a resounding call to the fields, to boost food production amid chronic shortages. For industrial laborers, the placards urge no able body to sit idle in the withering factories, but rather encourage them to double their efforts for a strong and prosperous nation. Students are pushed to become skillful scientists who can develop sophisticated technologies and to propel the country into “a brilliant new era,” to quote a common catchphrase on the posters. Nobody is left out: other targets include grandchildren being urged to care for their grandparents and rascals being cautioned against doing something dangerous.
That’s not to say the propaganda is trite and childlike. Sometimes the party is clever in how it plays with imported foreign ideas. In response to George Bush’s declaration of the “axis of evil” in 2002, one North Korean poster launched subtle counterpropaganda: “The world turns with Korea as its axis.” Of course, not all North Koreans believed the world actually revolved around their country.
Even the newspapers play a prominent role in spreading state ideas. In North Korea, state-run publications do not compete to break the fastest and hardest-hitting news. The mass media’s purpose is spelled out in the Constitution: it defines the press as “strengthening the dictatorship of the proletariat, bolstering the political unity and ideological conformity of the people, and rallying them behind the party and the Great Leader in the cause of revolution.” North Korea’s media correspondingly carries strict proofreading procedures. Any journalist committing an ideological “error” is quite certain to be sent to a harsh wasteland to be thoroughly “revolutionized.”
Every administrative district in North Korea is home to a so-called immortality column, a reference to the immortal heroes of the revolution. Statues of Kim Il Sung adorn the special zones, usually found in provincial capitals and places of national significance. All of the effigies display the same tagline: “The Great Leader Comrade Kim Il Sung will be with us forever.”
SOME PROPAGANDA SLOGANS
Instilling a sense of loyalty in the Korean Workers’ Party (created in the 1980s, still fully valid):
“What the party decides, we do.”
Worshipping the best:
“Worship the Great Leader, General Kim Il Sung, like the eternal sun.”
“Let’s thoroughly arm more and more through the revolutionary ideas of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung.”
“The Great Leader Kim Il Sung will be with us forever.”
“Hurray for General Kim Jong Il, the sun of the twenty-first century.”
“Thank you to General Kim Jong Il, our loving father.”
“Let us become human bullets and bombs guarding the Great Leader General Kim Jong Il with our lives!”
“Let us defend the party Central Committee headed by the respected comrade Kim Jong Un, at the cost of our lives.”
“Let us become revolutionary soldiers boundlessly loyal to the party and Great Leader!”
“Let’s accept our party’s Songun (army first) revolution loyally.”
“Our [Leader/ideology/military/system] is the best.”
Calling to uphold Juche and Songun (army first) politics:
“Let’s stick to self-sufficiency and nationalism in revolutions and construction!”
“Our country’s socialism is the best!”
“Ideology, technology, and culture according to the demands of Juche!”
“Spread the ideological, fight, speed, and skill battles. [This is a literal translation from Korean, but it roughly means the battles fought everywhere such as against imperialist enemies and to build up the country.] Let’s use Juche Korea’s wisdom and bravery.”
“Let us complete the Juche revolutionary cause under the leadership of the respected comrade Kim Jung Un!”
“Living methods, fighting spirit, new ideas, all according to the needs of Songun.”
“Songun politics. The DPR Korea moves the world.”
Promoting Korean culture devoid of any impure foreign content:
“Let’s make the beautiful Korean clothes a way of life.”
“Let’s establish a social spirit for enjoying our people’s clothes.”
“Let’s actively promote our people’s traditional folk games.”
Parents and teachers being asked to make Korean children more intelligent and able than they already are:
“Let’s actively develop children’s intelligence.”
“Let’s learn how to swim starting young.”
“Let’s all become expert swimmers.”
A propaganda poster at the school of the Chongsanri farm, a model farm shown to foreign tourists, praising a North Korean kids’ game:
“It is exciting to play soldiers beating and seizing the Americans!”
Messages directed at farmers: the first one, issued years ago, expressing a wish that has yet to be fulfilled:
“Let’s send more tractors, cars, and modern farming machines to the farm villages for the working class.”
“Let’s raise a great number of goats in every family.”
“Let’s raise a lot of livestock through multiple methods.”
“Let’s expand goat rearing and create more grassland in accordance with the party.”
“Let us turn grass into meat!”
“Let’s grow more sunflowers.”
“Prevention and more prevention. Let’s fully establish a veterinary system for the prevention of epidemics!”
Messages on posters, in newspapers, and on loudspeakers urging voters to take part in elections held every five years. Elections are mostly a formality, though: citizens elect the candidate for their district chosen by the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, which is dominated by the Korean Workers’ Party.
“July 24 is day of elections for deputies to provincial (municipal), city (district), and county people’s assemblies.”
“Let’s demonstrate the power of single-hearted unity.”
“Let’s all vote yes.”
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