This essay reinterprets North Korea’s Juche ideology as the product of a longing to become “master of the nation,” and examines the security implications of inter-Korean summit diplomacy, the Moon Jae-in administration’s pro-unification posture, the possible withdrawal of U.S. forces from South Korea, and the southward shift of the U.S.-Japan security line. From a cold-eyed social-scientific perspective, it also criticizes the emptiness of liberal political theory.

2019-04-11
No one will any longer believe that world politics contains any prearranged harmony or pre-established point of equilibrium, and reality itself will become so.

This is a chapter I published on 2018-11-06 under the title: The Juche-oriented regime in the South is intensifying its domestic authoritarianism in order to bring forward unification.
Japanese people must be on their guard.
The following is a continuation of the previous chapter.

◎Juche ideology is nothing more than a wish.

This is what North Korea’s “Juche ideology” is.
In both South and North Korea, people ordinarily say “manly” (namjiyatapge) and “womanly” (yeojayatapge), using the same tapge, and they also say “like the master of the nation” (narae chuintapge).
The reason is that it is a wish, because they cannot easily become the master of the nation.
As for Mongolia, they asked Ming China, “May we attack them?” regarding the Manchus, who had divided the country at the 39th parallel, manipulated it, and kidnapped its people into slavery; they had despised the Manchus as barbarians, but once those Manchus became the rulers of China as the Qing, they submitted to them, and when the national treasury became empty, they threw the burden of rule onto Japan.
They were then liberated by the Soviet army and became a puppet state, but after purging the pro-China and pro-Soviet factions, Kim Il-sung loudly sang that “man is the master of his own destiny,” and that was Juche ideology.
At last, he became the master of the nation.
That is why translating this “master” as “protagonist” is a mistranslation.
The reason it is fantasy is that the very man who sang it fled as far as Tonghua in Manchuria during the Korean War.
That was an abdication of the master’s responsibility.
Incidentally, all Korean kings fled when faced with foreign invaders.
Because the peninsula is shaped like a “dead-end corridor,” it can never truly be defended.
It is recorded that King Injo of the Yi dynasty, for example, was surrounded by Manchu forces on Ganghwa Island, where there was a royal palace prepared for flight, and “froze like a clay doll.”
Juche ideology is still fantasy even now.
Chairman Kim Jong-un, pinned down by the two pistols of U.S. President Trump—an end-of-war agreement and nuclear abandonment—and by the glare of Chinese President Xi Jinping, cannot move freely and still cannot easily become “master of the nation.”
At the inter-Korean summit in September, he climbed the sacred mountain Paektu with South Korea’s Juche-oriented President Moon Jae-in, and the two of them fully savored the feeling of being the “masters of a unified Korea.”
Because it was fantasy, both of them were enraptured.

◎The politics of hollow liberalists.

At such a time, the “causal story” adopted by the Korean people is a delaying tactic.
They prolong resolution endlessly until the other side gives up, or until circumstances change.
The Juche-oriented regime in the South is intensifying its domestic authoritarianism in order to bring forward unification.
Japanese people must be on their guard.
If they prevail, a peace treaty will be concluded while the North retains nuclear weapons, and because North and South will no longer be enemies, U.S. forces in South Korea will leave.
If that happens, the U.S.-Japan security line will move south as far as Tsushima.
What a magnificent discipline social science is.
It allows one even to understand things like this.
And the results always come to reflect the bleak and cruel reality.
Not only scholars, but also journalists, bureaucrats, and politicians who have mastered the methods of social science are now active all over the world.
Their成果 are incorporated into the people as “causal stories,” the people progress, and they become wiser and wiser.
By contrast, the humanities, which seek noble things and solemn things, cost too much money and will therefore continue to decline.
No more noble or solemn things will be born on this earth.
No one will any longer believe that world politics contains any prearranged harmony or pre-established point of equilibrium, and reality itself will become so.
The politics of liberalists will become fantasy.
(Hiroshi Furuta)