A Critical Rereading of North Korea’s Dominant Narratives: Representation and Reality of Labor and Femininity in the DPRK

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

Written by scholars closely acquainted with each other’s work, the two monographs under review show remarkable similarities in both selection of sources and approach to North Korean society. First, both authors have developed their theses mainly through the close reading and critical reassessment of a wide range of published North Korean materials. For Heroes and Toilers: Work as Life in Postwar North Korea, 1953–1961, Cheehyung Harrison Kim examines statistical and economic handbooks, newspaper and journal articles, documentaries, and a few literary works. For Rewriting Revolution: Women, Sexuality, and Memory in North Korean Fiction, Immanuel Kim analyzes novels, short stories, newspaper articles, almanacs, and the relevant speeches of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. To contextualize and verify these sources, the authors extensively consult South Korean academic works and monitor the North Korean scene through the lenses of such theories as Marxian notions of work, literary studies on socialist realism, and feminist concepts of gender inequality. Still, they generally adopt the position that North Korea’s own dominant narratives should not be dismissed as mere propaganda but rather should be examined in depth. In the same vein, they express a profound aversion toward those external counter-narratives (like the memoirs of North Korean refugees) that directly challenge the regime’s dominant narratives on the basis of human rights.

참고문헌 (Reference)

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2 Miller, Owen, "War, the State, and the Formation of the North Korean Industrial Working Class, 1931–1960" 37 (37): 1901-1920, 2016

3 Filtzer, Donald, "Soviet Workers and Late Stalinism: Labour and the Restoration of the Stalinist System after World War II" Cambridge University Press 2004

4 Davies, Sarah, "Popular Opinion in Stalin’s Russia: Terror, Propaganda and Dissent, 1934–1941" Cambridge University Press 1934-1941, 1997

5 Gabroussenko, Tatiana, "North Korean ‘Rural Fiction’ from the Late 1990s to the Mid-2000s: Permanence and Change" 33 : 69-100, 2009

6 Kotkin, Stephen K, "Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization" University of California Press 1997

7 Hunter, Helen-Louise, "Kim Il-song’s North Korea" Westport 1999