In a word, Juche industry, Juche agriculture, Juche construction and Juche literature and art are quickly developing in our country today." KIM IL SUNG
As we approach the 26th anniversary of the passing away of the great comrade KIM IL SUNG we recall his many great exploits which covered all field and all aspects of life . Of course he is remembered as a great theorist , statesman and military commander but also devoted much time and energy to the question of culture .As the old proverb says 'Man does not live by bread alone' and certainly President KIM IL SUNG believed this as he took a keen interest in culture and art right from the start . Even during the arduous days of the anti-Japanese armed struggle when he lived under a hail of gunfire and slept under the stars President KIM IL SUNG wrote plays such as ' The Flower Girl ' which later became a classic revolutionary opera and also a film . Even before the onset of the anti-Japanese armed struggle he even wrote a satirical play to expose the useless moves of the flunkeyists. In addition to the 'Flower Girl ' President KIM IL SUNG also wrote the 'Sea of Blood' , 'Fate of a Self-Defence Corps Man' and ' A Mountain Shrine'. In those days when the Korean people were fighting the Japanese imperialists with arms in hand and were often going without food , the very idea of culture , of writing and performing plays seemed inconceivable . Nevertheless President KIM IL SUNG wrote plays and had them performed as mean to educate people , to raise their consciousness and to inspire them to rise up in struggle.President KIM IL SUNG saw culture not as some kind of luxury or an abstract thing for dilettante intellectuals but as a weapon of struggle.
'The Flower Girl ' is an especially poignant play which tells the story of Ggot Bun a young girl who experiences the oppression of Japanese rule as well as the exploitation of the landlords and capitalists . Her younger sister is blinded by the landlord . Ggot Bun comes to the realisation that the injustices and contradictions of the old society can only be resolved through revolution and takes the road of revolution .
President KIM IL SUNG after liberation placed great emphasis on culture . He wrote many works on culture , literature and art . He stressed the need to build a new independent , Juche culture liquidating the cultural residues of Japanese imperialism . His idea was that culture should be socialist in content and national in form . This concept based encapsulates Juche culture and is an application of the Juche idea to field of culture . Later, in 1983 he pointed out that ' True, the world has many fine musical works such as Tchaikovsky’s. But, however fine they may be, foreign pieces do not well suit the feelings of our people. Our people like the art national in form and socialist in content. We oppose both the tendencies to ignore our own things and copy foreign things mechanically and restore the obsolete things of the past as they are. We adhere to the principle of developing literature and art national in form and socialist in content.'
President KIM IL SUNG recognised the centrality of culture in the building socialism and saw it as part of the class struggle and the struggle against imperialism.
When some revisionist -led socialist countries opened the floodgates to the infiltration of the malignant imperialist culture , President KIM IL SUNG strongly opposed it . He denounced the revisionist non-class idea of culture saying that "In the field of art, too, they draw no distinct line between the revolutionary art of the working class and the reactionary art of the bourgeoisie, and advocate the supra-class “art of mankind”. The revisionists consider that the working class ought to learn the corrupt capitalist way of life, and believe that the revolutionary working class ought to learn the foul songs and dances which the capitalists enjoy when getting drunk and taking licentious pleasures. They maintain that the class character of art is absolutely unnecessary"
President KIM IL SUNG emphasized that imperialist cultural infiltration should be combated thoroughly saying that We should never allow the penetration of “jazz” in the future as in the past. It depraves and emasculates the youth and dulls their revolutionary consciousness. “Jazz” is an ideological weapon of the imperialists to degenerate revolutionary peoples. How can we accept the venom they direct at us, and by so doing destroy our own positions, when we have to fight U.S. imperialism to the end?"
This was in contrast to those socialist countries under revisionist leadership that were flooded with US and Western culture with the result that they became Americanised and Westernised so that socialism collapsed in those countries.
Lets remember President KIM IL SUNG the great builder of Juche culture !
Dr Dermot Hudson
Chairman British Group for the Study of the Juche Idea
Chairman UK Korean Friendship Association
President Association for the Study of Songun Politics UK
Chairman British Solidarity Committee for Peace and Reunification on the Korean Peninsula
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