◆Enforced Heroism in Textbooks
ASIAPRESS obtained 75 textbooks published for the first time under the Kim Jong-un regime in June 2016. Among them, the senior middle school (high school) third-year "Korean Literature" textbook contains two poems side by side.
The first poem, "Please Forgive Me," can be summarized as follows: In the opening, a son who has gone to the army asks his mother and teacher for forgiveness, repenting his past mistakes. The next section continues with content saying that if he acts cowardly when fighting enemies (South Korea and the United States), they should not forgive him. The final section states that he will fight bravely as befitting his mother's son, and even if he dies on that path, he asks to be remembered.
The second poem, "Mother's Request," conversely captures a mother's heart as she sends a message to her son in the army. The introduction begins with memories of raising her child and worrying about her son who is in the military. However, in the next section, the mother says she has offered her son to the homeland, and therefore he must be faithful to the homeland's orders—if he fails to do so, his hometown will not welcome him, and she declares he should not return home. She concludes by saying that if she becomes the mother of a hero whom the leader remembers and the Party calls by name, her hair that turned white with worry will become black again, and then she will proudly tell the world that she is this son's mother.
Both poems glorify sacrificing individual life for the state as a noble value, leading students to naturally internalize distorted values.
◆Even in Death, Political Life is Eternal... Theoretical Education That Stimulates the Desire for Immortality
North Korea's heroism propaganda is even more dangerous because it goes beyond emotional appeals to attack students' rationality with a theoretical framework called the "political organism theory."
This theory distinguishes human life into physical life and political life, claiming that individuals who sacrifice themselves through loyalty to the leader acquire political life that lives eternally in collective memory even after their physical life ends. It cleverly exploits humanity's fundamental desire for immortality to theoretically justify individual sacrifice.
One signature case North Korea presents is Kim Geum-sun. Nine-year-old Kim Geum-sun, a children's unit member of the guerrilla forces during the anti-Japanese armed struggle, was captured by Japanese police while carrying out a communication mission but kept secrets until the end and was sacrificed. Regardless of the truth, this is a very famous story in North Korea. North Korean authorities propagate that although Kim Geum-sun's physical life did not exceed 10 years, her political life will live eternally through generations.
Such content is systematically instilled in students from lower to higher grades through various methods and formats suited to their level.
Though it may seem like a somewhat absurd pseudo-doctrine, for North Korean students who have heard the same content hundreds and thousands of times since elementary school, this is absolutely not something to laugh off.
