______________________________________________________________________________

Volume 3 Article 46
______________________________________________________________________________
2022

The Sacred Revolution: Propaganda and

Personality Cult in North Korea
Sean Huy McNamara Vu
University of California, Irvine

Recommended Citation
Vu, Sean Huy McNamara (2022). “The Sacred Revolution: Propaganda and Personality Cult in
North Korea.” The Macksey Journal: Volume 3, Article 46.
This article is brought to you for free an open access by the Johns Hopkins University Macksey
Journal. It has been accepted for inclusion in the Macksey Journal by an authorized editor of the
Johns Hopkins University Macksey Journal.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022

 The Sacred Revolution: Propaganda and Personality Cult in North Korea
Sean Huy McNamara Vu
University of California, Irvine

Abstract
Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and while most former
and current communist states have integrated themselves into the global economy, North
Korea is still largely, and fiercely, resistant to it. It is one of the poorest countries in the world
and also one of the most repressive regimes in contemporary times. Typically, widespread
destitution and oppression inspire liberal reforms or democratic revolutions, but neither have
happened in North Korea. This raises the question of how the regime has maintained internal
control so effectively for so long. One explanation for its survival is the pervasive security
apparatus, but mass surveillance and state-sanctioned violence cannot be the exclusive
explanations. One of the key ways cultures maintain stability without coercion is religion, which
can be defined as a belief system adhered to by a community and supported through behaviors
that result in a desired psychological state. This article argues that the ruling-Kim dynasty’s
personality cult functions as a state religion that regulates the daily lives of North Koreans and
contributes to the regime’s survival. By primarily using Émile Durkheim’s religious framework
and Clifford Geertz’s thick description, I will examine propaganda works, social institutions, and
defector testimonies to understand and explain the efficacy of the myths and rituals of the
state.
Keywords: North Korea, communism, nationalism, religion, culture, Cold War, Asia, socialism

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 1

Introduction
Thirty years have passed since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and while current and
former communist states have integrated themselves into the global financial order, North
Korea remains largely, and fiercely, resistant to it. Why have liberal reforms or a democratic
revolution not taken place, despite the widespread repression and destitution? How has the
state existed for so long, against incredible odds? One explanation for the regime's longevity is
its security apparatus, which elicits conformity and obedience from the populace through
surveillance, intimidation, and coercion. As the historian Charles Armstrong has pointed out,
however, “coercive methods can only go so far before they create hostile reactions,” forcing
the North Korean regime to “rely on moral exhortation to mobilize the masses.”1 This “moral
exhortation” is primarily accomplished through the dissemination of propaganda, or
deliberately manipulated information based on selected facts, assumptions, and falsehoods,
designed not to pursue objectivity, but to persuade an audience of a particular worldview or
narrative. As Armstrong has suggested, when analyzing the nature of state power in any given
regime, it is necessary to consider how customs influence the thoughts and actions of people in
a society, and maintain the political status quo without violence. What, then, is the North
Korean state ideology that the nation’s people are inculcated in? How are its tenants
transmitted to the citizens? To what extent has the ideology’s propaganda secured the political
establishment of the country, for the past 73 years?
South Korean political scientist Jae-cheon Lim proposes that the personality cult of
North Korea – the true ideology of the state as a oppose to communism – can be interpreted as
a religion because of the quality of its leadership, beliefs, and practices. He invokes the French
sociologist Émile Durkheim, who defined religion as a system of intensely held beliefs that are
protected and adhered to by a community through rituals. Lim also builds on the American
anthropologist Clifford Geertz, who defined religion as a network of symbols that presents a
lifestyle and interpretation of reality in such an authoritative and persuasive manner, that the
believer accepts the symbolic representations as true unto themselves.
The religious framework that Lim proposes is helpful in understanding the nature of the
North Korean ideology, which from here on I will call a state religion, and the longevity of its
regime. It demands a level of intensity well beyond a normal political ideology and evokes a
degree of emotional investment that is unrivaled by other authoritarian or totalitarian cults.
More significantly, the state religion of North Korea is predicated on a grand, teleological
narrative that resembles the world’s religious and mythological stories. This narrative — what I
call “The Sacred Revolution” — is a map of meaning for North Koreans. It is a story that
prescribes for the individual an ethical model for how to act in the world, as well as a sense of
purpose or direction in life towards an idealized destination. That purpose is loyalty to the
state, to the Kim family and their holy war against South Korea and the United States.
According to Karen Armstrong, modern novels, operas, ballet, and other works of art are
the spiritual successors of myth and religion from antiquity. They deal with the same questions
about existence, draw from the same source material, profoundly elevate our lives, and offer

1
Charles K. Armstrong, The North Korean Revolution, 1945-1950 (New York: Cornell University Press, 2003), 170.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 2

guidance for them. Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il were, in the words of Lim, both “aware that art
and literature were powerful instruments in educating people through a dramatic recreation of
reality and emotional evocation.”2 Thus, recognizing the power of faith – the need to believe
and the need to belong – and the power of art and emotive storytelling, the North Korean
regime harnessed the country’s talent and creativity to construct an indigenous value system
that would permanently propagate party policy, the dictators’ doctrines, and mobilize the
masses into political action.
1. Myths
Virtually every religion contains a narrative around its central figure, whose life serves as
a model for its followers to emulate, or who propagated a dogma that was meant to be
believed and practiced. In the North Korean state religion, the metanarrative is called “the
revolution,” and its main character is Kim Il Sung, the founding father of the country who ruled
it for almost half a century. Kim entered the world at a time of great national sorrow and
humiliation, when Korea was occupied by Japan from 1910 to 1945. His mother was a devout
Presbyterian and his father was a member of an underground Christian nationalist organization.
In 1919, the Kim family moved to Manchuria (present-day northeast China) in search of better
economic opportunity and greater political autonomy. Kim Il Sung returned to Korea briefly in
1923 for middle school, but would return to Manchuria two years later. On his way back to
China, he allegedly experienced a damascene moment. According to the official history, after
witnessing the oppression of his people throughout his country, Kim began to devote himself to
national liberation, vowing to never return to Korea until she was free. While attending high
school in Manchuria, Kim converted to communism and joined several underground Marxist
organizations, even apparently creating his own called the Down-With-Imperialism Union. After
the Japanese invaded Manchuria 1932, Kim allegedly founded a guerilla army composed of
mostly Korean partisans in Manchuria (officially known as the Korean People’s Army) to push
back the invasion. By traveling on foot and conducting hit-and-run tactics, the Korean
communists — after enduring years of hunger, defection, bitter winters — supposedly liberated
Korea from Japanese fascism in August 1945 under the wise leadership of the General.
The existing historical evidence, however, does not paint such a rosy picture. Like other
national mythologies or hagiographies, Kim Il Sung’s revolution is a constructed historical
narrative based on selected facts, distortions, and fabrications, but to a much more extreme
extent. The communist leader did not create an independent guerilla army but was simply a
member of one created by the Chinese Communist Party in 1931. Nor of course is Kim Il Sung
solely or even remotely responsible for Japan’s defeat in World War II. The propaganda
apparatus’ contempt for facts may seem rather incredible, but we must bear in mind that their
goal is not to create a positivist chronology, but a compelling, dramatic story about the Kim that
makes strong appeals to pathos and sacrifices factual accuracy.
As a result of the propaganda apparatus’s myth-making, Kim Il Sung functions as more
than just a national hero to North Koreans, but as a messianic figure who brought salvation and

2
Jae-Cheon Lim, Kim Jong-il’s Leadership of North Korea (New York, Routledge, 2009), 77.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 3

redemption to his people and the holy motherland. Like a religious narrative, his myth is passed
down from generation to generation in homes and classrooms as an incontrovertible dogma,
with no tolerance for doubt, dissent, nuance, or competing narratives. The words and actions of
Kim Il Sung and his guerilla comrades serve as models for the rest of society to emulate in all
aspects of life, from studying, musical performance, to construction.
Not only does Kim Il Sung’s myth function like a religious narrative, it is even structured
like one. According to Jae Cheon Lim, Kim Il Sung’s official biography “appears consistent with
Joseph Campbell’s development cycle of the hero myth.”3 An eminent scholar of mythology,
Campbell theorized that underlying the particularities of humanity’s most sacred stories is a
universal narrative structure that resonates with the desires and moral intuitions of many
people across time and cultures. In Campbell’s analysis, religious or mythological narratives
contain a hero – usually a male protagonist – who is first separated from his home, either of his
own volition or against his will. This phase, known as the “Departure,” can be compared to Kim
Il Sung’s call to adventure for Manchuria in Korea. After his separation, the hero is forced to
endure a series of trials that test his resolve and strength; tempted at times to deviate from his
destiny, but guided towards his goal other times. This phase, known as the “Initiation,” can be
compared to Kim Il Sung’s entry into guerilla life. After enduring many difficulties, the hero’s
journey culminates in a final battle that leads to the attainment of his goal. Kim and his
comrades achieve their ultimate boon of liberating Korea before reaching the final phase of the
hero arch: the “Return.”
The Sacred Revolution, however, does not end with the conclusion of Japanese rule.
Following the former colonizer’s defeat in World War II, the Soviet Union and United States
helped establish separate governments on the Korean peninsula. In the summer of 1950, the
North invaded the South to force reunification, making national division permanent. In the
DPRK, however, North Koreans are taught that the “US imperialists” and their “south Korean
puppets” were the ones who crossed the line on June 25, 1950, in an attempt to colonize the
whole peninsula. Myths such as these in the official North Korean history of the Korean War
(1950-53) are either unfounded or exaggerated. The North Koreans, however, do not
necessarily need to invent every detail. “The United States dropped more bombs on North
Korea than it had during the entire Pacific campaign in World War II,” North Korean defector
Yeonmi Park writes, “[they] bombed every city and village, and they kept bombing until there
were no major buildings left to destroy.”4 Villages were set ablaze at night with napalm to force
out guerillas. Irrigation dams were destroyed, inundating villages, cities, railways, highways,
bridges, and rice paddies. These bombing targets left North Koreans on the brink of mass
starvation, until Soviet aid arrived. In total, the North suffered about 2 million casualties, the
majority in the conflict, constituting 15-20% of its population.5
Although the Korean War is sometimes referred to as the Forgotten War in the US, it is
far from forgotten in North Korea, as propaganda art and literature routinely reinforce the

3
Lim, Leader Symbols and Personality Cult in North Korea: The Leader State (New York: Routledge, 2015), 56.
4
Yeonmi Park, Maryanne Vollers, In Order to Live: A North Korean Girl’s Journey to Freedom, (New York, Penguin
Press, 2015), 31.
5
Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: Modern Library, 2010), 78.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 4

victim consciousness and collective trauma by emphasizing American atrocities committed
during the brutal conflict. Common across almost all North Korean propaganda about the
Korean War is a cardinal doctrine in the state religion: a Manichean worldview of good versus
evil, oppressor versus oppressed, that assigns moral purity, innocence, and victimization to the
oppressed Korean race, while attributing depravity, culpability, and sadism to the American
oppressors. This simplistic and dehumanizing dichotomy is a powerful source of persuasion for
the regime, for “a majority” of North Koreans believe in the anti-American propaganda,
according to Andrei Lankov.6 Many defectors, like Yeonmi Park, found the propaganda very
compelling as children. The harrowing myths elicit from North Koreans fear and disgust towards
Americans, while inspiring ethnic solidarity and trust towards each other. By extension, this
motivates North Koreans to either rally around the regime, or at the very least acquiesce to it,
despite its coercive methods.

Figure 1.3: A painting from the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities. This illustration, of Americans
brutalizing Korean women and children, is relatively modest compared to the other exhibits in the museum.

2. Rituals
The sociologist Erving Goffman famously argued that all of life is a performance, where
everyone is an actor fulfilling a role, presenting and maintaining a front to others, and switching
out between different masks depending on their audience. There is perhaps no better example
of his dramaturgical analysis than the theater state of North Korea. As Merkel wrote, North
Korea is a highly performative society where “Public and private events, such as
commemorations, celebrations, rituals, parades and festivals, as well as everyday life and
routines, are all governed by a code,”7 called the Ten Principles of the Monolithic Ideological
System. In essence, the Ten Principles require North Koreans to learn and memorize “the Great
Leader’s Revolutionary thought, implementing his instructions and party policies, and struggling
against hostile ideological elements,” according to Jae-cheon Lim. Since their publication in

6
James Jones, Secret State of North Korea, PBS Frontline, 2014.
7
Udo Merkel, “Arts, acrobatics and athleticism in North Korea: power, politics and propaganda,” in Power, Politics
and International Events: Socio-cultural Analyses of Festivals and Spectacles (New York: Routledge, 2014), 147.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 5

1974, they, along with their 65 clauses, have served as “the main legal source for rule-setting
and monitoring the cult activities of [all] North Koreans,” being more powerful than even the
constitution itself. The Ten Principles have been compared to the Ten Commandments of
Christianity by many North Korean defectors, since “they display similar language patterns and
have the same purpose of regulating the daily lives of their adherents.”8
Among the most important rituals of everyday life in North Korea are Organizational
Life, where North Koreans are routinely indoctrinated in long meetings several times a week,
and are required to perform critical self-purification sessions. Criticism sessions are also
another way the state conducts surveillance on its people, not through directly policing their
lives, but by making ordinary citizens complicit in the monitoring of society. During these
sessions, North Koreans rarely ever admit actual deviations or snitch on peers, making them
mostly performative activities, and although this may give the impression that they are
ineffectual, this is not the case. A religion is more than just a set of propositions meant to
inspire a believer to act in specific ways. It is an entire social network that connects people
through intersections of symbolic significance. It is not just about belief, but also about action
that leads to the formation and sustenance of a community, by individuals demonstrating
commitment to an orthodoxy regardless of their degree of conviction. If Organizational Life
rituals can cause people to act and possibly believe together, then they are efficacious in
sustaining the regime’s power.
Organizational Life also serves other purposes. By constantly inundating people with
information to memorize and making them incessantly prepare for meetings, North Koreans
have less free time to think for themselves or pursue personal hobbies, according to defector
Yuna Jung. Building on this claim, we can speculate that the time-consuming and all-
encompassing nature of them also makes it extremely difficult, if near-impossible, for North
Koreans to privately communicate or gather. This would by extension prevent them from either
airing grievances against the regime, or organizing to plot against it.
Not all rituals in North Korea are so dry and austere. There are also national holidays
such as Day of the Sun, and mass spectacles such as parades and Mass Games that artistically
display the pillars of national solidarity and state power. As Suk-young Kim eloquently puts it,
mass spectacles as performances “embody the collective ways of North Korean life in a literal
sense, bringing the members of the family-nation into a physical space and thereby visually
ascertaining the corporeal unity of the collective.”9 These rituals not only discipline the
population, they more importantly elicit the universal sentiment of collective effervescence.
When an activity such as a religious ritual, a music concert, a political convention, or a sporting
match reaches a certain degree of emotional intensity, it produces an ephemeral but powerful
social psychological phenomenon that elevates the psyches of participants from the level of
mundane everyday life to the rare, ineffable sentiments of ecstasy. The participants at once
“lose” themselves, yet become part of something larger; producing feelings ranging from bliss
to delirium. The result is that the values of the group are affirmed and its unity is strengthened.
8
Lim, 2015, 24.
9
Suk-young Kim, Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (Ann Arbor: University of
Michigan Press, 2010), 58.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 6

 Despite their long and arduous rehearsals, many defectors have regarded mass rituals
as some of the most memorable moments of their lives. “In North Korea,” defector Jae Young
Kim recollected, “the enthusiasm to participate in mass gymnastic and dancing groups was so
high that those who did not participate were considered weird.”10 The rituals of the North
Korean state religion paint a more complicated picture of itself, expanding our question in
regards to its effectiveness beyond the mere binary of belief and unbelief. Instead of simply
being a set of propositions about reality, it is also a set of highly emotive activities and routines
that successfully garner support or compliance from the true believer, the private skeptic, the
agnostic, and the apathetic alike. In this way, we can conclude that the rituals of the North
Korean state religion are efficacious in manufacturing the consent of the governed.

Figure 2.1: A float with the Workers’ Party flag passes through Kim Il Sung Square to commemorate the 110th
anniversary of the founding leader’s birth. Image taken by Korean Central News Agency on April 15, 2022.
Conclusion
For decades, North Korea has been approached as both a national security problem and
as humanitarian crisis that must be understood and resolved in terms of hard power and
economic motives. It is also a culture, however, whose existence withstands the test of time
through more subtle and covert methods of domination and survival; namely, through the
manipulation of language, censorship of media, and politicization of art. The state goes even
further than this, I argue, by offering North Korean a kind of nationalistic spirituality that is
channeled through a strongman leader and his family. As Tatiana Gabroussenko, an expert on
North Korean literature, has stated, “The ideological practices of North Korea are constructed
according to the patterns of conventional monotheistic religion, with their own holy scripts and
festivals, priests and disciples, catechisms and homilies.” The lived experiences of numerous
North Korean defectors, such as Ji-Min Kang, corroborate with Gabroussenko and Jae-cheon

10
Jae Young Kim, “People Who Don’t Like The Mass Games Are Weird,” NK News, January 21, 2013,
nknews.org/2013/01/people-who-didnt-like-mass-games-were-weird/.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 7

Lim, since defectors often draw similarities between the personality cult and Christianity in
particular.
One of the most momentous of events in the history of North Korea’s state religion was
the death of Kim Il Sung in July 1994, which shocked a majority of citizens and initiated an
intense period of national bereavement. “It felt like the world was coming to an end,” In-hua
Kim recalls 25 years later, “A Democratic People’s Republic of Korea without Kim Il Sung was
unthinkable and so without him the Korean people felt that they no longer had any purpose in
life.” Even if Kim no longer lived on Earth, he lived on in the hearts and minds of his people. The
myth of the Great Leader was routinely reinforced through propagandistic art and political
rituals during his lifetime, and continues to be so today under Kim Jong Un through the state
religion that his father Kim Jong Il built. By no means was In-hua’s sentiments or of those she
witnessed universal. In an interview with Barbara Demick, “Mrs. Song” felt a sharp
disappointment when she realized that the North Korean regime would continue under Kim
Jong Il. “Now we’re really fucked,” she remembers uttering to herself. Mrs. Song’s
prognostication was all too prescient, as North Korean society transition to a catastrophic
famine that killed between 3-5% of the DPRK population, or 600,000 to 1 million people.11
The “Arduous March” famine, as it is officially called in North Korea, was a human
failure that not only resulted in the collapse of the socialist system, but also gave birth to a new
generation of North Koreans who are more skeptical of the regime’s propaganda and less
faithful to the Kim family. They are known as the jangmadang generation, named after the
North Korean word for market. Women have become breadwinners for their families by selling
smuggled goods from across the Chinese border while their husbands are forced to “work” at
state enterprises. In addition to miscellaneous foodstuffs and hard currency (mostly Chinese
yuan), DVDs, CDs, laptops, radios, and USB drives, containing foreign media such as South
Korean pop music and dramas, Chinese TV shows, and American films, are also making their
way into North Korea. Clothes and make-up from China, Japan, America, and South Korea (and
their knock-off forms) end up on the jangmadang markets too, allowing North Koreans to
subtly rebel against the state-mandated restrictions on fashion. Cheap cell phones and radios
smuggled across the border help North Koreans coordinate defections, keep in touch with
family members, and hear foreign news. While the North Korean government does not like the
rise of market activity, the regime simply has no choice but to tolerate it to avoid another
famine.
The jangmadang generation, by importing outside knowledge, growing private
communication, and cultivating self-sufficiency, is laying the foundations for change in North
Korea. Although exact figures cannot be known, the broad consensus among defectors is that
only a minority of North Koreans buys-into the propaganda now. “It is not wrong to say [that
North Koreans] believed propaganda 100% before the death of Kim Il Sung,” Mina Yoon stated
in 2014, “Nowadays, people believe less than 20% of what is being televised or broadcast.”
However, not all propaganda is of equal quality or effect, and the minority who either believe
or tolerate the system is still substantial. Many North Koreans old enough to remember the Kim

11
Marcus Noland, “Famine and Reform in North Korea,” Asian Economic Papers Vol. 3, no. 2 (2005): 18.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 8

Il Sung era still have nostalgia for it because of its larger-than-life leader and relative economic
stability. According to defector Yuna Jung, if South Korea or especially the US were to invade
the DPRK, hundreds of thousands would lay down their lives for the regime because of the
impact of anti-American propaganda and the leader cults. Since it is unlikely that a war would
feasibly resolve the situation, nor do economic sanctions appear to be improving it, the only
people who can truly change North Korea are the North Korean people themselves. Once the
people become fully aware of their oppression, the state religion will look too delusional for
them to believe or pretend to believe, and they will rise up.

Published by JHU Macksey Journal, 2022 9

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