우리나라를 해방시킨…
As a postscript to my previous post I thought it might be of interest to post another picture from the book ‘Kugŏ’. This is a drawing to illustrate the letter ㅎ (making the sound ‘h’) which, somewhat predictably stands for haebang (해방), meaning liberation.
As with the short passage shown in the previous post, the tone here is again rather obsequiously pro-Soviet:
Complete with parading Soviet soldiers being handed bouquets of flowers (must have been a good day for the florists) and bouncing Korean children on their hips. The banner hanging above the scene reads “Long live the great Soviet Army”.
Andrei Lankov’s recent article on the failure among sections of the South Korean left and academia, to come to terms with the reality of Soviet influence on the formative years of North Korea is very relevant here. As he points out:
Even a cursory look through now-available historical documents clearly indicates: In 1945-1950, the North Korean regime operated under complete control of Soviet supervisors. Who drafted the above-mentioned land reform law? Soviet advisers. Who edited and, after some deliberation, confirmed the North Korean constitution of 1948? Joseph Stalin himself. Who arrested all major opponents to the emerging communist regime? The Soviet military police. Where were the dissidents sent to do their time? To Siberia, of course.
There need be no doubt that North Korea, like the South, was a product of the inter-imperialist rivalry between the US and the Soviet Union. Occupied North Korea was no more an example of indpendent national development than Iraq is today.
However, I think Lankov is actually somewhat off the mark in his attack on the South Korean left because, like the very people he is criticising, he seems to disregard some facts that do not fit with his view of things. But that is an argument I will have to look at another time.
I would be very interested in your further thoughts on this issue. We had a kind of Lankov vs. Armstrong debate by looking at each of their books on North Korea after the war in Carter Eckert’s class last year. At the time, I was impressed by Lankov’s evidence but I was annoyed by what I felt to be an often arrogant tone in his writing, like everyone was an idiot to look for any complexity in the early postwar North Korean case.
Comment by K. M. Lawson — October 12, 2005 @ 12:50 am
Your impression of Lankov may be right, although I don’t know him personally. The problem I have is that in his bashing of the left/progressive forces in South Korea he seems to want to throw everyone in together as though there are no progressive academics or writers who recognise the role of the Soviet Union. In fact I think there are some people who have a better analysis than he does. But that’s something I’m intending to write an article on in the next couple of weeks. I’ll send you a copy when I’ve finished it if you like.
Besides the (admittedly relatively few) South Korean academics and leftists who take an anti-Stalinist view of early North Korean history, there is also the Japanese academic Wada Haruki who specialised in the Soviet role in North Korea. Since you can read Japanese you should definitely look at his stuff - I’ve only read quotations of his work in Korean articles.
With regard to your comparison of Armstrong and Lankov’s books, I have to admit that I’ve only flicked through them but I didn’t get the immediate impression that they were entirely incompatible. It seemed more that they each have their own set of sources that they have ‘mined’ and this gives their work a different emphasis. Perhaps your close reading came up with some more substantial differences?
Comment by kotaji — October 12, 2005 @ 3:04 pm
Comment on the word for Soviet Union in the banner, 쏘베트.
The use of that instead of the (Sino-) Korean 소련/쏘련 tells also of the position of Soviet Union vis-a-vis DPRK. In the case of use of Finnish in Soviet Union in the 30s before Stalin’s purges and cessation of the use of the language altogether, the same word was used. Instead of the Finnish Neuvostoliitto (”council/soviet union”), the Soviet form in the mid-30s was Sovettiliitto.
Comment by Antti — October 13, 2005 @ 8:05 am
The more I look at this picture the more interesting details I see. Like the rising sun in the background. This seems to be quite an important symbol in North Korean iconography for some reason. Obviously in this case it represents the arrival of liberation and the Soviet army, whereas later it seems to be a direct reference to the advent of the Great Leader.
Antti: that’s a linguistic subtlety I didn’t pick up on at all. Very interesting.
Comment by kotaji — October 20, 2005 @ 12:10 pm