The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (commonly referred to as North Korea) is a mystery to many. Not exactly hospitable to foreign visitors, few people have first-hand experience with the country. Those who have been there have had to trot along with their minders, unable to move around freely. They see glimpses of the North Korean people, but hardly ever have a chance to meet, let alone bond with them. The tight grip that the regime holds over its people is imposed on visitors too. With some minor alterations and changes, tourists and journalists alike are presented the same routine package; they go through the same drill, see the same monuments, and follow the same trails. The result is an endless repetition of standard images and standard stories.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (commonly referred to as North Korea) is a mystery to many. Not exactly hospitable to foreign visitors, few people have first-hand experience with the country. Those who have been there have had to trot along with their minders, unable to move around freely. They see glimpses of the North Korean people, but hardly ever have a chance to meet, let alone bond with them. The tight grip that the regime holds over its people is imposed on visitors too. With some minor alterations and changes, tourists and journalists alike are presented the same routine package; they go through the same drill, see the same monuments, and follow the same trails. The result is an endless repetition of standard images and standard stories.

As a result, North Korea is often presented as the quintessential 'other.' It is alien to 'us,' odd and incomprehensible. It represents everything we are not. Offended by the imposition of an opinion, and incapable of empathy with such a strange entity, we tend to impose our own images and interpretations. We determine what North Korea is like, we establish what it really means when it speaks. In doing so, we often fail to notice the cold war rhetoric that laces our own interpretation.

This rare collection of gouaches and paintings offers us a glimpse of how the Kim Jong Il regime interprets the domestic and international challenges facing the nation. Meant for a domestic audience, these works are only rarely seen abroad. Produced by state-run studios, they are meant to rally the population behind the political project of the nation. Though style-wise, this collection may not be representative of North Korean art in general, it is a clear example of the mobilisation of culture for the sake of the construction of the socialist state. The socialist realist paintings offer uplifting scenes of happy workers, farmers, and families in an idealised socialist paradise. They also refer to the heroic days of the anti-Japanese resistance of the 1930s and the Korean war (1950-1953) as templates for exemplary behaviour. The gouaches are much more functional and their impact much more immediate. As 'applied art' used to illustrate the latest political slogans, they are reproduced as posters, distributed and displayed all over the country. Their life span is limited, their tone exhortative. North Korean citizens are familiar with the slogans, since they are taken from the government declarations and newspaper editorials they routinely scrutinise in compulsory study sessions. As posters, these gouaches visually reinforce and reiterate the dominant political line. They are an integral part of the unremitting effort of the North Korean authorities to ideologically mould the population into utter devotion and dedication to the country, its leaders and ideals.

North Korea's founding father, Kim Il Sung improved and adapted traditional Marxism-Leninism to Korea's circumstances by introducing the concept of Juche. Best translated as 'self-reliance', this concept inverts classic Marxist historical materialism by making man the measure and master of all things. As a political doctrine, Juche promotes a staunchly anti-imperialist, anti-colonial nationalism. Koreans are the sovereign masters of their own destiny under the visionary leadership of the Korean Workers Party and its leaders, Kim Il Sung, the father, and Kim Jong Il, the son. Not the individual, but the nation is the single most important value in North Korea. As an organic union, directed by the Party under the guidance of the Leader, devotion to the intangible entity of the nation ultimately collapses into personal loyalty towards the Leader. With Kim Jong Il as the epitome of the nation, selfless dedication to the Leader is the only road to true self-fulfilment. Within the organic structure of the nation, individual freedom is at best irrelevant, at worst an impediment. In a remarkable ideological twist, North Korea harks back to the traditional Confucian values of filial piety and loyalty, focusing them both on Kim Jong Il as the personification of the nation. 

The nation goes beyond the borders of North Korea and encompasses the entire Korean peninsula. The reunification of Korea is a dogma of the Juche system. In Juche parlance, the South remains to be liberated from American domination. Kim Il Sung is said to have defeated Japanese imperialism in the North, when Japan capitulated in 1945, and to have withstood the American imperialist onslaught during the Korean war. The southern part of Korea is still under the spell of American imperialism, the South Koreans are still not the masters of their own history. Only Juche can bring true independence and liberate the South from the shackles of imperialism. Since the historic June 2000 summit between South Korean President Kim Dae Jung and North Korean Leader Kim Jong Il, the South Korean leaders may no longer be lambasted as mere puppets of American imperialism, the South Korean state and its symbols remain absent from those works referring to inter-Korean cooperation. Leadership clearly emanates from Pyongyang, shining on all the Korean people.

Under the Juche banner, the Party has developed into an inclusive people's party which represents not only the proletariat of workers and farmers, but also incorporates intellectuals. Hence the addition of the writing brush to the traditional communist party symbols of hammer and sickle. Nowadays, the barrel of a gun is often depicted alongside the traditional party symbols as an illustration of the 'Army First' doctrine, an apparent improvement on and culmination of the Juche idea. Leaning on the army to support his rule, Kim Jong Il introduced the 'Army First' (son'gun) doctrine in the late 1990s as an ideological answer to the many problems facing North Korea at the turn of the century. From the spring of 2003, the Army First line received special coverage in the North Korean press. Given that most of the works in this collection were produced in 2002-2004, they situate and elaborate on the merits of the 'son'gun' doctrine in an attempt to familiarise the people with this new leading concept.

Run as a guerrilla base camp, North Korean society has lived under a siege mentality for decades. People are constantly bombarded with the danger of imminent attack. Never before, however, did the army assume such a prominent political role. Under the banner of the Army First policy, the army is now presented as an example for the people to follow. A soldier's willingness to die for the protection of the revolution and the fatherland is heralded as model behaviour that civilians should support and emulate. The utter selflessness and dedication of the army not only merits the unswerving gratitude of the people, it should also serve as a template for civilians to follow. The nation should be mobilised as a civilian army, the people should incorporate the soldier's ethic of commitment and perseverance. No task should be too small, no effort too big in the service of the nation, in the realisation of the socialist revolution.

At the same time, the Army First doctrine makes national defence the single most important political goal of the nation. Since the US government described the country in January 2002 as belonging to an 'Axis of Evil' and singled it out as a possible target for a pre-emptive attack, all efforts have been geared towards strengthening the defence capability of the nation. Not only is the national defence industry singled out as a prime target for investment and development, the people are also called upon to stand in unflinching solidarity behind the armed forces, and to support them in every way possible.

Such solidarity and support is mutual. The army is a true people's army, its ranks are filled with conscripts who serve for several years. To promote the national standing of the armed forces, but also to alleviate the labour shortage in the economy that results from the huge number of conscripts under arms, soldiers provide (manual) labour on construction sites, and are assigned farming, mining and factory work. Students during their regular military training often join 'speed battles' in their military fatigues. Working side by side with civilians further strengthens the 'army-people unity'.

Ultimately, the Army First doctrine is meant as a justification for the diversion of the admittedly meagre resources towards the armed forces. Following a decade of economic decline, severe famine and a succession of natural disasters, economic reconstruction ranks now alongside military preparedness as the highest priority for the country. Although heavy industry - witness the recurrent image of steel mills - endures as a reminder of the Stalinist model of industrial development North Korea has adhered to since its foundation, the government has been forced to shift its economic focus towards economic reconstruction and recovery. The 'arduous march'- the euphemism used in reference to the famine and economic collapse of the 1990s - is presented as a challenge to the people, but in the spirit of the successful anti-Japanese guerrilla war and the hardship endured during the reconstruction following the Korean war, the nation will once again overcome this ordeal in a united effort of selfless devotion and common dedication towards the completion of the socialist revolution, guided by the ever-victorious Juche idea of self-reliance.

The 1990s left the economy with a number of structural problems which the government sought to tackle in its economic policies. Endemic energy shortages, declining agricultural production, and a failing transport infrastructure had brought the economy to a grinding halt. The government responded with renewed calls for land reclamation in order to increase the arable land surface. Increased food production is the target of the ongoing campaign to promote potatoes as a secondary crop. Campaigns to raise rabbits and expand fish farms also appear in this collection. Small-scale windmill projects, the construction of hydro-electric power stations, along with increased coal production are the targets put forward in regard to energy sufficiency, whereas the objective in the area of logistics is the improvement and expansion of transportation by train. 

That systemic weaknesses affected economic performance is not acknowledged to the North Korean people. Still, since July 2002, the authorities have made major market-oriented economic reforms. While these are not directly addressed in this collection, the gouaches do refer to the importance of the implementation of autonomous reform (charyok kaengsaeng). Although unsurprisingly the works here suggest that the party guides these reforms, and that they are autonomous as required by the Juche principle, the fact that reform, innovation, and change are such recurrent themes of this collection is an interesting reminder that North Korea is not as rigid as is often suggested.

Plans for economic reform often hark back to previous campaigns. The 1958 mass-motivation Chollima campaign has been revived in 1998, and the 1980s Three Revolutions banners have also staged a comeback. In true Juche fashion, both these campaigns uphold ideological firmness as the first and most formidable answer to the economic crisis engulfing the country. 
Despite the economic woes the country faces, the regime still upholds an image of a truly modern state. On the one hand, the country tries to overcome the bottlenecks in its economy (flooded mineshafts, swamped and salinated farm land, failing infrastructure), on the other hand, it clings to its trope of the construction of a socialist paradise. Paintings of construction sites abound in this collection. Many paintings show the monuments and apartment buildings along the spacious boulevards of Pyongyang, the epitome of architectural modernity in North Korea, its capital and showcase city. Alongside real economic objectives, national pride is also at stake in the promotion of information and space technology. Although these may be highly relevant to improve the defence capabilities of the North, and they may have a lucrative trade potential, they are currently no more than niche sectors in an otherwise economically barren land. 

As one looks through this collection, one might wonder what a North Korean citizen makes of this. It goes without saying that this collection of paintings and gouaches does not represent the real North Korea. All it portrays is an ideological image commissioned by the authorities and created by artists in government employ. It does not address the failings of the system, since the system is presented as infallible. It calls for the utter surrender to the wisdom of the Party, its ideology and its Leader, which will lead the North Korean people towards the completion of the revolution and the dream of a socialist paradise in a unified Korea. The journey may be long and arduous, but the rewards should be plentiful.

The value of this collection is not so much that it represent the reality of North Korea - it does not - but rather that it shows us the reality as seen by the regime. This collection is helpful in understanding the fear and anxiety, but also the pride and honour that motivates the North Korean regime. As such, it offers us a glimpse of Kim Jong Il's world. We may disagree, but at least we get to know what the regime stands for.

Dr Koen De Ceuster
Centre for Korean Studies
Leiden University