On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work

On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work, colloquially known as the "Juche Speech", was a 28 December 1955 speech by Kim Il-sung that mentioned his Juche ideology by name for the first time. It is widely considered one of Kim's most important works and a "watershed moment" in North Korean history. Views differ on whether it launched the Juche ideology or used the ordinary Korean word juche more conservatively to simply assert that Koreans are the "juche" (subject) of the Korean revolution.

On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work
Speech to Party Propagandists and Agitators, December 28, 1955
Cover page of 1973 English edition
Korean name
Chosŏn'gŭl
사상사업에서 교조주의와 형식주의를 퇴치하고 주체를 확립할 데 대하여
Hancha
思想事業에서 敎條主義와 形式主義를 退治하고 主體를 確立할 데 對하여
Revised RomanizationSasang saeob eseo gyojojuui wa hyeongsikjuui reul toechi hago juche reul hwangni palde daehayeo
McCune–ReischauerSasang saŏp eseŏ kyojojuŭi wa hyŏngsikchuŭi rŭl toech'i hago chuch'e rŭl hwangnip halde taehayŏ
[1]

Many details of the exact time and setting of the speech are either unclear or have been backdated. The speech was delivered against a backdrop of factional strife within the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) following developments such as the Korean War, de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union, the Soviet–Yugoslav thaw, and economic problems. Kim criticizes the Soviet Koreans faction of "dogmatism" and "formalism" by citing various Soviet practices they had naively adopted. Most of the speech is not about Juche, but about ways in which to win the hearts and minds of South Koreans through propaganda.

North Korea started promoting Juche as a distinct ideology after Hwang Jang-yop re-discovered the speech. The speech was published for the first time in 1960 and in many subsequent, heavily edited revisions since.

Background
Stalin's death (funeral procession depicted) triggered de-Stalinization.

The general background of the speech is North Korea's defeat in the Korean War and the subsequent political turmoil within the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK).[2] Also looming in the background was the death of Stalin and the budding de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union.[3] A third point of reference is the Soviet–Yugoslav thaw following the Tito–Stalin split that marked an opportunity to re-define the relationship between the Soviet Union and other communist countries.[4] Much of the background is economic. North Korea was reconstructing after the war on Soviet money and on Soviet terms. Kim Il-sung needed the money but did not want the Soviet influence that came with it. Conditions for Soviet aid included implementing the Soviet New Course policy of favoring light industry and improving living conditions. This conflicted with Kim's vision of seizing the moment to build production chains so as to create an independent economy. Kim's factional adversaries, the Soviet Koreans faction and the Yan'an faction, favored the Soviet model instead of his, which set them on a collision course.[5]

Setting

The exact time and setting of the speech are not known, but there are two distinct possibilities. The first theory is that the speech – subtitled "Speech to Party Propagandists and Agitators, December 28, 1955" – was delivered on that date to a small audience of propaganda workers. The second possibility is that the event was a meeting of the Central Committee of the WPK that same week.[6]

According to Dongseo University professor B. R. Myers, it is likelier that it was the small-scale event of propagandists that is identified in the subtitle, because downplaying the importance of the event in the subtitle would have served no conceivable purpose.[6] It is possible that the writer Han Sorya influenced Kim Il-sung to wage his campaign against the Soviet Koreans' faction specifically on the literary front (i.e. among propaganda workers).[7] Han had given a speech on the day before, which Kim references in his own.[8] Kim's speech credits Han for uncovering[9] "big ideological errors" on the literary front,[10] and promotes him to the leadership of the literary establishment.[11]

Kookmin University professor Andrei Lankov and Korea University professor Balázs Szalontai, on the other hand, conclude that it must have been a meeting of the Central Committee.[12] There was an extended meeting of the Standing Committee of the Central Committee along with a great number of invited guests totaling more than 420 participants around that date.[13] Kim's speech might have been the concluding speech of the event.[14]

Speech

Criticism of factionalists
Kim Il-sung with party elites and foreign visitors in August 1955

When Kim delivered the speech in 1955, his most acute concern in domestic politics was how to reconcile two rival factions within the WPK: the Soviet Koreans faction and the Yan'an faction.[15] Having been at first reluctant to take sides, Kim felt vulnerable to critique by factionalists after he had mismanaged the country's economy. Thus, the speech specifically criticizes members of Soviet Koreans' faction.[16] Of those that had already been purged Pak Hon-yong and Yi Sung-yop are identified by name. The main focus was however on named officials who were still active: Pak Yong-bin, Ki Sok-bok, Chong Yul, Chon Tong-hyok, and Pak Chang-ok.[17]

Kim decided to criticize propagandists (writers) specifically for two reasons. First, some of them had come under influence of de-Stalinization in the Soviet Union. Second, this group offered Kim a convenient pretext to attack factions.[3]

The speech was soon followed by the August Faction Incident of 1956 and factional purges within the leadership of the party,[3] for which Kim weaponized the concept of juche.[18]

Political independence from the Soviet Union

According to Suh, the speech is anti-Soviet and pro-Chinese. Kim lists many Soviet practices that he finds unsuited to Korea: printing tables of contents at the back instead of front of books, headlines copied from Pravda, pictures of Siberia, Mayakovsky and Pushkin hung in public places. In contrast, Kim calls for the adoption of the Chinese rectification campaign to Korea.[19] James F. Person calls this an attempt to abandon sadae ("serving the great") attitude (sadaejuui) and "decolonize the Korean mind".[20]

Dogmatism and formalism

"Dogmatism" in the title refers to the rigid application of Soviet communism and had already been used in that sense in China. Likewise, "formalism" had meant an emphasis on the Soviet form of communism at the expense of the actual substance of revolution that needs to take local conditions into account.[21] Both dogmatism and formalism had already been started to be criticized in the Soviet Union following de-Stalinization.[22]

As Myers points out, the title does not posit establishing juche as more important than the other two tasks (eliminating dogmatism and formalism). Neither does it claim that juche is to be established as an overarching ideology, simply that it is something to be established in "ideological work" (i.e. propaganda).[22]

Only the first half of the speech deals with the topics of juche, dogmatism, and formalism. The rest is on encouraging an uprising in South Korea.[23]

Juche

The December speech is the first published mention of juche by Kim. He had, in a speech in April that same year, talked about "subjective capability", but used a word other than juche. In later editions of that speech, the word has been replaced with juche (chuch'ejŏk).[16]

Myers calls the wording of the title – "establishing juche in ideological work" – clumsy. The Korean word juche[lower-alpha 1] literally means "subject", in the philosophical sense of an active subject (the opposite of object, which is acted upon). It is therefore not logical to say that a subject is established, when it should be what establishes something in the first place. Myers offers two possibilities for why the phrasing was used. First, it might have been employed by Kim Chang-man,[21] who had talked about juche even before Kim Il-sung,[24] and either wrote the 1955 speech or at least gave Kim Il-sung material to do so. Second, Kim might have opted for "establishing juche" as a code word to present his covert point that North Korea was moving toward more political independence instead of using a more forthright but provocative wording like "Koreanization of communism".[21]

The key passage in the speech is:[25]

What is the subject [juche] in our party's ideological work? What are we doing? We are engaged in Korea's revolution and not some other country's. Precisely this Korean revolution is the subject [juche] of our party's ideological work, all of which must therefore be made to serve its interests. Whether we research the history of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the history of the Chinese revolution, or the general principles of Marxism–Leninism, it is all in order to carry out or own revolution correctly.

While some scholars think it is a bold declaration of nationalism or political independence, Myers considers the rhetoric something not out of the ordinary in Eastern Bloc countries at the time.[25] John Gittings goes further, questioning the passage's authenticity saying that it "reads as if has been inserted later into the original text" of the speech.[26]

In the speech, Kim then goes back and forth:[27]

By saying that the subject [juche] is missing from our party's ideological work, I do not mean, of course, that we did not carry out a revolution, or that our revolutionary work was carried out by some passer-by. But the subject [juche] has not been firmly established in ideological work, for which reason dogmatist and formalist errors have been made, doing much harm to our revolutionary cause.[28]

This, concludes Myers, can be summed as: "the subject—the Korean revolution, as distinct from other revolutions—has not established itself clearly in ideological work."[29]

In a similar vein, Kim continues:[30]

Marxism–Leninism is not a dogma. It is a guide to action and a creative theory. So only when it is applied creatively to suit the specific conditions of each country can it display its indestructible vitality.

This passage contains a specific paraphrase of Lenin (and Engels) that was not considered provocative back then:[lower-alpha 2][30] "Our theory is not a dogma, but a guide to action".[33]

North Korean historiography has subsequently backdated the origin of the Juche ideology to Kim Il-sung's guerrilla days in the 1930s. In his memoir, With the Century, Kim seeks to clear up the discrepancy between the purported 1930s origin and 1955 first mention. Kim writes that his 1930s speeches only contained an "element" of the Juche idea, but that 1955 marked "the period of postwar socialist construction, when we particularly stressed the task of the sentimentalism of Chuch´e". Kim Sung-chull notes how Kim does not deny that 1955 was the first appearance of the word, saying that the 1992 autobiography ended the debate on the origin of juche.[34]

Propaganda work
Purported original manuscript of the speech

Most of the speech is about ways in which to win the hearts and minds of South Koreans through propaganda.[35] Much of the criticism is presented in a rambling fashion, suggesting that Kim either went off the script or was speaking from sparse notes.[36] Myers notes that "[f]or what it's worth, the 1980 edition of the speech includes a photograph of what is purportedly a page from Kim's handwritten notes; they are jottings of phrases and keywords, studded with Chinese characters so as to appear more authentic".[lower-alpha 3][38] Similarly, a picture of Kim writing the speech was published, but according to Myers "there is no reason to believe the caption's claim that it was this very speech".[lower-alpha 4][16]

The content of this part of the speech makes clear Kim's intention to destroy the South Korean state.[40] Kim says historians should study Korean resistance movements like the Gwangju Student Independence Movement and the June 10th Movement. This largely did not happen as the focus of North Korean historiography gravitated toward studying only Kim Il-sung's exaggerated role in the liberation of Korea.[41]

Aftermath and significance

The speech was not published immediately. Some references to it were made in contemporary press, but these mentions were vague.[42] It was, however, distributed to party members.[43] It was not published until 1960 in the fourth volume of Kim's Selected Works (sŏnjip) in Korean.[44] In advertisements for the volume in the magazine Kulloja, seven individual works were highlighted in chronological order and the Juche speech came last, suggesting that it was not considered the most important at the time.[45]

The term began to appear untranslated and capitalized (Juhce) in English scholarly texts in the 1960s. According to Myers, this result of lazy (non-)translation made juche "jump out" from text and seem like an original idea instead of the ordinary word it was.[46]

The speech is often considered a "watershed moment" in North Korean history.[47] For example, University of Hawaii professor Dae-Sook Suh calls it "perhaps the most important speech" that Kim made.[48] Conventionally, it is seen to have launched the Juche ideology. Those who disagree with this interpretation include Myers.[49] Similarly, Alzo David-West calls Juche in 1955 merely a political slogan, not an ideology.[50] According to David-West, the speech did not so much launch a new ideology as it espoused the return to an old one, that of national Stalinism.[51] The "speech prioritized North Korean national interests a propos of the Stalinist policy of socialism in one country on North Korean terms."[52] Myers points to scarcity of material on Juche in Kim's writings until the 1960s as a sign of the ideology's insignificance.[53] According to Suh, this can be explained by a tactical position. Kim could not press on with Juche when he still had not decisively taken sides in the Sino-Soviet split. After he started supporting China, and the Soviets retaliated, Kim could talk about Juche again.[41] Consequentially, North Korean propagandists had to develop Juche into a full-fledged ideology.[54] In particular, Western academics credit Hwang Jang-yop with re-discovering the 1955 speech and expanding upon its conception of Juche.[55] Kim's first subsequent speech to elucidate on the ideological content of Juche was not until 1965.[lower-alpha 5][57] According to Lankov, only this "can be seen as the first Juche speech", adding that "the 1955 statement used the word in a different meaning".[58] Kim Jong-il, who had studied under Hwang at Kim Il-sung University,[59] soon became the chief official ideologue of Juche and the ideology was coupled with dynastic succession.[60]

According to Myers, the significance of the 1955 speech has only been applied retrospectively and erroneously. It did not deviate from the official Marxist–Leninist line nor did it assert the two key features that are now commonly associated with Juche: self-reliance and nationalism.[61] Myers thinks the speech represents a call for the creative appliance of Marxism–Leninism that was common in the Eastern Bloc at the time.[62] David-West disagrees with Myers, and thinks that Myers has reached his findings by a formalist reading of the speech (here understood as an "empirical mode of literary analysis [that] essentially takes form for content and appearance for reality").[63]

The speech was not only followed by purges by also industrial programs culminating in the Chollima Movement. This, given the political backdrop of the speech, leads David-West to conclude that Kim wanted to espouse rather than discard Stalinism, in both politics and economics, and that the speech was a reaction to de-Stalinization. David-West calls it "an emergency writ of mandamus, commanding the party and government not to abandon the autarkic economic policies and political program upon which the DPRK regime was founded in 1948."[54]

The speech has been published many times in various editions. According to Suh, there is only "slight editing" from the early versions,[64] but Myers considers versions after 1960 "bowdlerized" and has identified numerous changes.[65] The favorable mention of the Chinese rectification campaign was removed from subsequent revisions.[19] Names of writers Pak Yon-am, Chong Ta-san,[66] Ri Ki-yong, and Han Sorya were also omitted.[67]

See also

Notes
  1. Korean: 주체; RR: juche; MR: chuch´e.
  2. The reference is to Lenin's 1917 "Letters on Tactics",[31] which in turn paraphrases Engels' 1886 letter to Friedrich Sorge: "To them [German communists] it [theory] is a credo [creed] and not a guide to action."[32]
  3. An example in an earlier publication can be found from 1970.[37]
  4. See Kim Il Sung Biography: From Building Democratic Korea to Chullima Flight.[39]
  5. The speech was On Socialist Construction in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the South Korean Revolution.[56]

References
  1. Myers 2015, p. 47f11.
  2. David-West 2007, p. 138.
  3. David-West 2007, p. 139.
  4. Person 2016, p. 213.
  5. Person 2016, pp. 213–214.
  6. Myers 2015, pp. 46–47.
  7. Lankov 2007a, pp. 39–40.
  8. Myers 1994, p. 93.
  9. Myers 2006, pp. 94–95.
  10. Myers 2015, p. 227.
  11. Myers 1994, p. 94.
  12. Myers 2015, p. 47f10.
  13. Lankov 2007a, p. 40.
  14. Lankov 1999, p. 54.
  15. Myers 2015, p. 45.
  16. Myers 2015, p. 46.
  17. Armstrong 2013, p. 143.
  18. Kim 2012, p. 108.
  19. Suh 1988, p. 306.
  20. Person 2016, p. 214.
  21. Myers 2015, p. 47.
  22. Myers 2006, p. 94.
  23. Myers 2015, p. 48.
  24. Myers 2015, pp. 33–34.
  25. Myers 2015, p. 49.
  26. Gittings 2008, p. 243.
  27. Myers 2006, p. 97.
  28. Myers 2015, p. 228.
  29. Myers 2006, p. 98.
  30. Myers 2015, p. 52.
  31. Lenin 2005.
  32. Engels 2000.
  33. Myers 2015, p. 239.
  34. Kim 2012, p. 107.
  35. Myers 2015, p. 50.
  36. Myers 2015, p. 51.
  37. Album 1970, n.p.
  38. Myers 2015, p. 51f33.
  39. Baik 1970.
  40. Myers 2015, p. 53.
  41. Suh 1988, p. 307.
  42. Lankov 1999, p. 51.
  43. Lankov 1999, p. 53.
  44. Gittings 2008, p. 243; Myers 2014, p. 780f10.
  45. Myers 2015, p. 68.
  46. Myers 2014, pp. 781–782.
  47. Myers 2006, p. 89.
  48. Suh 1981, p. 109.
  49. Myers 2006, p. 91.
  50. David-West 2013, p. 67.
  51. David-West 2007, p. 142.
  52. David-West 2013, p. 68.
  53. David-West 2007, pp. 142–143.
  54. David-West 2007, p. 148.
  55. Becker 2005, p. 65.
  56. Kim 1984.
  57. Myers 2015, p. 91.
  58. Lankov 2007b.
  59. Becker 2005, p. 68.
  60. Becker 2005, p. 69.
  61. Myers 2006, p. 92.
  62. David-West 2007, p. 130.
  63. David-West 2007, p. 128.
  64. Suh 1981, pp. 109–110.
  65. Myers 2015, pp. 48, Appendix I.
  66. Myers 2006, p. 229.
  67. Myers 2006, p. 231.

Works cited
  • Album: Revolutionary Activities of Comrade Kim Il Sung. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House. 1970. OCLC 176847360.
  • Armstrong, Charles K. (2013). Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-6893-3.
  • Baik, Bong (1970) [1969]. Kim Il Sung Biography: From Building Democratic Korea to Chullima Flight. 2. Tokyo: Miraisha. OCLC 630184658.
  • Becker, Jasper (2005). Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-029099-3.
  • David-West, Alzo (2007). "Marxism, Stalinism, and the Juche Speech of 1955: On the Theoretical De-Stalinization of North Korea" (PDF). The Review of Korean Studies. 10 (3): 127–152. doi:10.25024/review.2007.10.3.007. ISSN 1229-0076.
  • — (2013). "'Man is the Master of Everything and Decides Everything': De-constructing the North Korean Juche Axiom". Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism. 17 (2): 67–84. doi:10.1558/eph.v17i2.67. ISSN 1522-7340.
  • Engels, Friedrich (2000) [1886]. "Engels to Friedrich Adolph Sorge In Hoboken". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
  • Gittings, John (2008). "The Juche Doctrine and Kim Il Sung's Success". In Pares, Susan (ed.). Korea: The Past and the Present: Selected Papers from the British Association for Korean Studies BAKS Papers Series, 1991-2005. 1. Folkestone: Global Oriental. pp. 232–247. ISBN 978-90-04-21782-9.
  • Kim, Il-sung (1984) [1965]. "On Socialist Construction in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and the South Korean Revolution: Lecture at the 'Ali Archam' Academy of Social Sciences of Indonesia" (PDF). Kim Il Sung: Works. 19. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House. pp. 236–284. OCLC 827642144.
  • Kim, Sung Chull (2012). North Korea under Kim Jong Il: From Consolidation to Systemic Dissonance. Albany: State University of New York Press. ISBN 978-0-7914-8093-9.
  • Lankov, Andrei N. (1999). "Kim Il Sung's Campaign against the Soviet Faction in Late 1955 and the Birth of Chuch'e". Korean Studies. 23 (1): 43–67. doi:10.1353/ks.1999.0003. ISSN 1529-1529. JSTOR 23719215. S2CID 154905899.
  • — (2007a). Crisis in North Korea: The Failure of De-Stalinization, 1956. Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press. ISBN 978-0-8248-3207-0.
  • — (27 November 2007b). "Juche: Idea for All Times". The Korea Times. Another Korea (246). Retrieved 24 October 2020.
  • Lenin, I. V. (2005) [1917]. "Letters on Tactics". Marxists Internet Archive. Retrieved 13 August 2020.
  • Myers, B. R. (1994). Han Sŏrya and North Korean Literature: The Failure of Socialist Realism in DPRK. Ithaca: East Asia Program, Cornell University. ISBN 9780939657698.
  • — (2006). "The Watershed That Wasn't: Re-evaluating Kim Il Sung's 'Juche Speech' of 1955". Acta Koreana. 9 (1): 89–115. ISSN 1520-7412.
  • — (2014). "Western Academia and the Word Juche". Pacific Affairs. 87 (4): 779–789. doi:10.5509/2014874779. ISSN 0030-851X. JSTOR 43592450.
  • — (2015). North Korea's Juche Myth. Busan: Sthele Press. ISBN 978-1-5087-9993-1.
  • Person, James F. (2016). "North Korea's Chuch'e Philosophy". In Seth, Michael J. (ed.). Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History. Oxon: Routledge. pp. 211–220. ISBN 978-1-317-81149-7.
  • Suh, Dae-Sook (1981). Korean Communism, 1945–1980: A Reference Guide to the Political System. Honolulu: The University Press of Hawaii. ISBN 978-0-8248-0740-5.
  • — (1988). Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press. ISBN 0231065736.

Further reading
  • Kim, Il-sung (2015) [1955]. "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing the Subject in Ideological Work". North Korea's Juche Myth. By Myers, B. R. Busan: Sthele Press. Appendix I. ISBN 978-1-5087-9993-1 – critical and annotated translation based on the 1960 edition.
  • Kim, Il-sung (1981) [1955]. "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work" (PDF). Kim Il Sung: Works. 9. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House. pp. 402–425. OCLC 827642144 – official modern translation
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