Revolutionizing Sports: The Construction of Sports Culture in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, 1957 - 1959

This thesis examines the construction of sports culture in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea's (DPRK) in the late 1950s. Specifically, it focuses on the north's sports spectacles and sports programs in factories in the historical context of the DPRK's post-Korean War reconstruction efforts. Through the close examination of the state's official discourse and imagery in the media, it is clear that the Workers Party of Korea (WPK) considered sports to be an important cultural practice that needed to be revolutionized for the masses. By examining the state's efforts to "revolutionize" sports in the name of socialism, this thesis attempts to illustrate the numerous challenges of interpreting and implementing the WPK's centralized sports policies in the 1950s. In particular, the state's various sports organs were non-uniform and inconsistent in their interpretation and implementation of the Party's sports policies. Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to demonstrate that the DPRK's state-controlled sports enterprise was a system that was ultimately centralized, but not necessarily unified, consistent, or exclusively limited to the control of the state.M.A