Authoritarianism at School: Indoctrination Education, Political Socialisation, and Citizenship in North Korea

ABSTRACT

It is well known that North Korea uses political propaganda to elicit popular support, and this article focuses on how primary and secondary schools play an essential role in conveying the regime’s messages. The article asks how this process shapes North Koreans’ perceptions towards citizenship and how their perceptions of ‘democracy’ differ from those in other parts of the world. School education, I argue, socialises North Koreans and shapes their everyday political attitudes and citizenship perceptions. This study examines 32 North Korean Socialist Moral textbooks and identifies four core regime messages embedded in these texts: Personality Cult education in relation to the Kims, promoting socialism, fostering nationalism, and cultivating communitarianism and collectivism. I propose that these regime messages positively and negatively affect perceptions of democratic citizenship. Messages that promote communitarianism can encourage North Koreans to engage in democratic politics, but messages about political leadership, nationalism, and collectivism can hamper North Koreans’ understanding of democracy and their capacity to develop democratic norms. This study has implications for research into how North Korean defectors are integrated into democratic South Korea, suggesting that these defectors’ longstanding exposure to authoritarian education in North Korea will necessarily influence how they conceive of democracy.

KEYWORDS:

• North Korea
• indoctrination
• political socialisation
• authoritarian legitimacy
• authoritarian textbooks
• authoritarian education
• citizenship

Acknowledgements

The author thanks Alexander Dukalskis, Junhyoung Lee, and anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback, and the Information Center on North Korea in Seoul for its kind guidance in analysing North Korean textbooks.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

^1. Kim’s death coincided with the North Korean famine, which also caused high death rates.

^2. In reality, however, because of the economic crisis and the North Korean famine (1994–1998), many children, especially on the periphery, have been excluded from school education.

^3. The concept of political efficacy is mainly discussed and studied in the context of democratic countries, but it can also explain the trust and belief of the people in authoritarian regimes in their ability to affect political affairs and change their governments.

^4. Dukalskis and Gerschewski (2017) did not include ‘international isolation’ as one of the legitimation mechanisms, but the strategy is heavily used in North Korea. The regime tries to insulate its population from other sources of information. The border is tightly controlled, and international trade and mobility of people are strictly regulated. This strategy strengthens North Korea’s indoctrination efforts.

^5. This official regime message has not changed significantly from the Kim Il Sung era to that of Kim Jong Un, but the extent of its impact on ordinary people has been decreasing.

^6. In theory, under the system, all North Korean children must receive basic school education. However, after the famine, many children on the periphery were overlooked for education.

^7. The Varieties of Democracy project provides five high-level indices based on different dimensions of democracy – electoral, liberal, participatory, deliberative, and egalitarian. The electoral index highlights ‘the core value of making rulers responsive to citizens, achieved through electoral competition’, while the liberal democracy index stresses ‘the importance of protecting individual and minority rights against the tyranny of the state and the tyranny of the majority’ (Coppedge et al., 2020, 42, 43). Participatory democracy emphasises ‘active participation by citizens in all political processes, electoral and non-electoral’, deliberative democracy stresses ‘the process by which decisions are reached in a polity’, and egalitarian democracy highlights material and immaterial equality (Coppedge et al., 2020, 43, 44).

^8. ‘The Spirit of the Korean Nation First’ (Chosŏn minjok cheil chŏngshin) first appeared in the ‘Moral’ (Todŏk) textbook in 1995. Kim (2021) analyses the changes in the ‘Korean Nation First’ narrative in Rodong Sinmun and argues that the main goal of the narrative is to view the Korean nation as a subject that can accomplish socialist development, and thus its nationalistic function is weak. The textbook, however, still highlights the Korean nation originating from Dangun and its superiority. I categorise the chapters that promote the ‘Korean Nation First’ narrative as nationalist.

^9. Hanawon is a South Korean facility that trains North Korean defectors. North Koreans who enter South Korea must go through the National Intelligence Service’s screening process. After the screening, they are sent to Hanawon and receive the necessary training for three months to obtain citizenship.