(Ethnic) Nationalism in North Korean Political Ideology and Culture

This study examines nationalism in North Korea through an exploration of that country’s political ideology and culture throughout time. It argues that a nationalist consciousness has always existed in North Korean history, but that it has been purposely changed and manipulated in form to deal with at-the-time difficulty and circumstance that the regime was faced with. This study asserts that state ideology was more state-focussed and subtle in nature in the earlier decades, and more ethnie, or ethnic-group oriented, and extreme in latter decades. More concretely, a state-based patriotism is seen to have constructed the nation in the 1950s and 1960s, and an ethnic-based nationalism is seen to have maintained the nation from the mid-1970s onwards. This claim is illustrated in the thesis by various primary material of a propagandistic nature sourced from the time and published in North Korea, and supported by a recreation of the political and social milieu in which these data were domestically consumed. A theoretical base underpinning the argument is provided in opening, and an elaboration into the main themes of the structure of North Korean ethnic nationalism is given in closing