An Anxious State of Mind: The Role of Anxiety in Kim Il Sung's North Korea by Alfie Foster

I was lucky enough to be introduced to the field of the ‘History of Emotions’ by Professor Mark Rothery. His work and lectures on the role of anxiety within the ruling British elites was the spark that led me to consider the role of anxiety within the Juche rule of North Korea. As such, there clearly exists a precedence for such a conceptual framework , but to dissect this further a consideration of the historiography of the field and an establishment of the basic “rules of the game” must first be done. For our purposes, Katie Barclay’s methodology for studying the history of emotions has proved a vital foundation for the conceptualisation of anxiety in this context. In essence, it is imperative to consider the full anthropological context of an emotion, including but not limited to the physical environment in which the emotion is felt and expressed alongside the cultural values that inform a schema of emotion. As Barclay indicates, William Reddy’s work on the emotional regime also proves pertinent to our study. Not necessarily in the sense of a governmental rule, though it can be weaponised to effect power and control over a population, an emotional regime, as Reddy defines it, is ‘the set of normative emotions and the official rituals, practices, and emotives that express and inculcate them; a necessary underpinning of any stable political regime’ (Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling, p.129). Cultural norms clearly can inform the way that emotions are felt, expressed and explained and as such it is important to avoid ethnocentrism as much as possible. In the North Korean case, as I will argue, the emotional regime is one dictated primarily by the cult of personality around Kim Il Sung and the omnipresence of the official state ideology in every aspect of civilian life. Understanding what exact emotion is driving this, however, is less clear cut. Anxiety has an established understanding within societal lexicon, yet to try and define it in absolute terms is, as Jan Plamper points out, a point of contention. As a society and as individuals, our understanding of anxiety may be informed by instances where we have felt the emotion or increasingly by psychological and neuroscientific information that has come to surround the term. As such, any definition that is used within our case may prove contentious and to state that my interpretation of anxiety within this context is precisely what was felt and evidenced is obviously asinine. Though fraught with a multitude of validity and ethical issues, the DSM-V, provides a useful baseline for considering what is and isn’t anxiety. The highlighted features of an anxiety disorder of ‘persistent and excessive anxiety and worry about various domains, including work and school performance, that the individual finds difficult to control’ (APA, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, pp.189-190) proves most useful for our case as it is the prolonged and disproportionate threat that Kim Il Sung’s regime experienced and in turn utilised for political means that is under consideration rather than a discrete event. The distinction between fear and anxiety may also be a point of contention, especially when in common usage they are often used interchangeably, despite the differences in an imminent or present threat that fuels fear and the anticipation of a future threat that categorises anxiety. With the awareness of these limitations, and rather than attempting to diagnose state leaders, I will instead evoke the cultural themes and conceptions of anxiety to consider the regime of Kim Il Sung and to reflect upon the emotional underpinnings of his decisions and the lived experiences of the North Korean people. Specifically, anxiety in our case is manifested in a fervent desire to maintain power at any cost, that I argue is driven by a fear of a loss of power within a changing and turbulent international communist environment. Kim Il Sung’s weaponisation of this emotion is also due consideration, though to truly understand the emotions of a population subjected to such extreme isolation is perhaps not entirely possible.

The dynastic dictatorship established by Kim Il Sung in 1948 has been categorised as one of a cult of personality where the leader is elevated to a position above all else and is spoken of in nationalistic, supremacist language. The subsequent regimes of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un serve to reinforce this notion, with each developing on the mythic ethos around their respective fathers. Owing to the role of the international communist context of North Korea, the heightened anxiety that we are considering is most prevalent during times of turmoil and uncertainty within the state, and as such whilst not invalid to give a broad depiction of the situation, it must be stated that the levels of anxiety fluctuate across the period. As such the instances and ways in which the total power and control of this regime were perpetuated is where the most obvious example of the role of anxiety within Kim Il Sung’s reign can be found, and is indicative of a nation that, irrespective of the reality and differences across time, feels like a nation under attack and one that requires protecting. The personality cult the Kim regime enforced is founded in deeply nationalist terms, marking the state as distinctly different from its international communist community. In terms of power, this was manifested in the ‘Juche’ ideology that was, by 1972, legislated into official governance, usurping communism as the stated guiding principle of rule. A combination of communist ideals and national traditions such as Confucianism, Juche in effect prescribed the absolute power of an individual whilst justifying it in nationalist terms that was palatable to those within a newly formed state. As Charles Armstrong argued, the Kim regime and in turn Juche "became a kind of substitute and symbol for the family of the Korean nation." The patriarchal and dynastic dictatorship served as a pacifier for a nation that was told it was under constant external threats, with Kim Il Sung as the caring father. This patriarchal aspect is further evidenced by the makeup of North Korean education; as Byman and Lind indicated, around 35 percent of elementary education is political, and as such each child is raised in an environment specifically designed to create a long-lasting,devoted nation. Less evidential of his personal anxiety, it instead indicates a nation that is being prepared and is eventually willing to accept a dictatorship due to the effective utilisation of anxiety and fear, with the obvious helping hand of force. Using Archie Brown’s model of a communist state, the primary aspect of the monopoly of power naturally follows on from this cult of personality (Brown, Rise and Fall, pp.105-6.) In particular, Kim Il Sung’s elimination of political opposition as a way of consolidating power shows clearly an attempt to gain this total control of the state. Throughout the reign of Kim Il Sung, virtually all potential threats to the stability and control of the Kim regime both inside and outside the state machinery were purged. Notably, the burning of over two thousand Buddhist and Christian places of worship, as Victor Cha points out, is representative of the totality of this oppressive regime, where any slight hint of a threat was immediately eliminated. Assassination attempts both before his consolidation of power and then later an abandoned South Korean plot to eliminate the Northern leader played into this notion of attacks that were threatening the very base stability of the regime, giving a further legitimising angle to Kim’s consolidation of power. Whether it was held as a genuine threat or an excuse to consolidate power, these brutal methods are underpinned by a, if not truly emotional, then logical fear and anxiety. If Kim Il Sung did not feel threatened, regardless of the reality of the threat and whether he truly believed it to be one, the justification for further consolidation of power via violent means is the obvious culmination of a thought process driven by anxiety . To be accepted within the state machinery, not only was the cult of personality necessary to diminish the likelihood that Sung’s methods would be questioned, but further justification was necessary that, if anything, served to further elevate the leader above all else. The nationalistic founding mythology of North Korea has clear undertones of anxiety and fear of an existential threat; from Japanese to then American imperialism, Kim Il Sung framed the nation as one under constant attack. With the noted ways in which the supremacy of the North Korean leader was interwoven emotionally into the lives of the population, it created a visceral and emotive justification for Kim’s actions. Whilst there were at times legitimate threats to the regime, such as the noted example of South Korea’s Unit 684 assassination plans, the truth of the North Korean situation was irrelevant to the nation due to this perpetuating emotional state founded on anxiety. Combine this with a figure that was deified and embodied the nation and was, crucially, providing solutions to their problems it becomes clear that the role of anxiety was fundamental to create an effective, nationalistic dictatorship.

Though there exists a clear thread of anxiety in the general reign of Kim Il Sung, a close analysis of sources written by the North Korean leader gives us a further insight into the emotionality of his thinking and decision making. With the nature of the North Korea state, access to and the options of primary sources are limited; publications of works by the leader have the obvious issues of objectivity and their use as propaganda tools that must be considered and any correspondence from Kim Il Sung to other communist leaders or even the public have similar perspectives necessary to utilise them effectively in our case. However, the paradigm of anxiety means that the question of objectivity is redundant; anxiety is definitionally disproportionate and therefore the truth of the content can to some extent be disregarded in favour of the emotional underpinnings of the sources. Source: Kim Il Sung, ‘Message from the President of the DPR Korea, Kim Il Sung, to the President of the [Socialist Federal] Republic [of Yugoslavia], Josip Broz Tito’, 1 August 1976, [accessed 2 February 2025] “Unfortunately, I am obliged to let you know about the circumstances that are preventing me from fulfilling my wish. Due to the tense situation that escalated in our country recently, I can’t participate at the Summit in Colombo and I am sending prime-minister Pak Seong-cheol [Pak Song Chol] as my deputy. According to the information that we received recently, American imperialists and the puppet clique of south Korea are importing enormous amounts of the most modern weapons, grenades and ammunition from the US and Japan, while at the same time giving the American troops in south Korea and the south Korean army “the command of state of emergency”, and position 400 thousand soldiers fully ready for military operations in the area around the Military Demarcation Line. This is the way in which the danger of a war breaking out is increasing every day.” The extract above from a letter written by Kim Il Sung provides a key example of international threat that the ruler utilised to give further legitimacy to his reign. Crucially, in this instance, the noted ‘tense situation’ was not merely a heightened political tool, but a reflection of the reality of the North Korean situation. A time of heightened conflict, only seventeen days after this letter was written, two United Nations Command Officers were killed following an incident in the demilitarized zone at the 38th parallel. A team of US and South Korean forces were pruning trees to create an unobscured view from their checkpoint, when North Korean forces ordered them to stop. This was ignored, and the North Koreans attacked. Both forces at the DMZ had engaged with mutual hostilities, as a platoon member at the Joint Security Area Mike Bilbo admitted (Toby Luckhurst, ‘The DMZ ‘gardening job’ that almost sparked a war’, ). However, the rapid escalation of tensions perhaps speaks to the noted anxiety and threat the Kim Il Sung confided to Tito; reports and minor incidents fueled the anxious regime that was constantly reinforcing their defence, as Kim Il Sung’s opening address of the Fifth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea indicates. The ‘military demarcation line’ provided a nexus for tensions, where the ideological differences between North and South were physically at odds, and so Kim Il Sung’s prioritisation of the border as opposed to attending the Non-Aligned Movement summit is indicative of the fundamental anxiety and fear that drove the regime’s decision making. The development of these tensions, as has been noted, stems back to the anti-imperialist foundations of North Korea. The initial experience of these external and brutal oppression to the lives of the population provided the foundational framework for Kim Il Sung’s later use of existential threat as justification for power. The idea that North Korea has faced imperial and colonial powers attempting to determine the future of the nation throughout its history is central to the anxious thinking around warfare and conflict within every Kim regime, and when considering its relation to nations such as Japan and America, this perhaps becomes understandable regardless of their role as instigator during the Korean War. It must be reinstated, however, that despite the mythos surrounding the dynastic dictatorship, these experiences were very real and were not an entirely manufactured reality. Source: Kim Il Sung, ‘Repel the US Imperialist Invasion! Radio Address to the Entire Korean People’, 8 July 1950, North Korean Archives and Library. “Why are the US imperialists hurling their troops into our country? Why are these rapacious bloodsuckers invading our sacred territory? [...] Because the US imperialists, in their wild dream to dominate the world, aim to turn our country into their permanent colony and our places. [...] The US imperialists deny the legitimate rights of the Korean people to freedom and independence, they do not consider our people human beings. The US robbers think that the Korean people are destined only to be colonial slaves filling the moneybags of the Wall Street warmongers.” A deeply evocative call to arms, Kim Il Sung’s speech is evidence of the anti-Imperial and emotional foundations of the North Korean state as it would develop. Framing the war not just in ideological terms, lamenting the involvement of ‘Wall Street warmongers’, Kim utilised anxiety and fear to will a nation into impassioned fighting. The invasion of their ‘sacred territory’, where he would later go on to emphasis the need to ‘drive the US imperialists to the last man from our soil, where generation after generation of our ancestors lie buried and where our beloved younger generation is growing up’, is a clear attempt to play on the emotional sensibilities of the nation and emphasis the imperative need to survive. By no means a unique technique, speaking of national interests in familial terms personalised the struggle, and are themes that would clearly be evoked later by the regime. Clearly based in the real and lived experiences of a nation that fought emotionally for its right to exist, Kim Il Sung manipulated the foundations of North Korea into his own image. The rewriting of history to establish him as the sole driving force behind the regime’s establishment that, importantly, was experienced by many still alive throughout his time in power, creates a living memory that could be called upon for political means. Anxiety and fear remain central to the effective dynastic dictatorship of the nation, where xenophobia and nationalistic ideology become interwoven that gives absolute legitimacy to a God-like power. Notes For further reading around the history of emotions, I recommend the following texts: Joanna Bourke, Fear: A Cultural History Katie Barclay, The History of Emotions: A Student Guide to Methods and Sources William M. Reddy, The Navigation of Feeling: A Framework for the History of Emotions For further reading around the history of North Korea, I recommend the following texts: Victor Cha, The Impossible State Daniel Byman and Jennifer Lind, ‘Pyongyang’s Survival Strategy: Tools of Authoritarian Control in North Korea’ Paul French, North Korea: State of Paranoia