“MAN IS THE MASTER OF EVERYTHING AND DECIDES EVERYTHING”
DE-CONSTRUCTING THE NORTH KOREAN JUCHE AXIOM
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v17i2.67Keywords:
North Korea, Juche ideologyAbstract
This essay undertakes a critical deconstruction of the core axiomatic principle of the North Korean Juche ideology: “Man is the master of everything and decides everything.” The author examines the axiom as an epistemic construction that structures human perception of objective reality, identifying fundamental philosophical problems in its binary opposition of “man” and “everything.” Despite official North Korean claims that Juche is an “original revolutionary philosophy” and a “man-centered philosophy,” critical analysis reveals that the axiom is nonsensical, that it has no genuine or real philosophical content, and that the Juche ideology is neither humanist nor materialist nor rationalist.
References
Ayer, Alfred Jules. Language, Truth and Logic. New York: Dover Publications, 1952.
Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. Garden City: Doubleday, 1953.
Cooke, Bill. “Religion’s Anthropocentric Conceit: Atheism’s Cosmic Modesty Is More Moral.” Free Inquiry 24, no. 1 (December 2003–January 2004). Council for Secular Humanism. http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=cooke_24_1 (accessed March 13, 2009).
Engels, Frederick. “Engels to Conrad Schmidt in Berlin.” Marxists Internet Archive. 2000. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htm (accessed March 3, 2009)
______. “Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx.” Marxists Internet Archive. 1993. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm (accessed March 3, 2009).
______. “Hegel.” Chap. 1 in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Marxists Internet Archive. 1994a. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htm (accessed March 3, 2009).
______. “Marx.” Chap. 4 in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Marxists Internet Archive. 1994b. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch04.htm (accessed June 5, 2009).
______. “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” In Dialectics of Nature. Marxists Internet Archive. 2001. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch09.htm (accessed March 2, 2009).
Göthel, Ingeborg. “Juche and the Issue of National Identity in the DPRK of the 1960s.” In North Korea: Ideology, Politics, Economy, edited by Han S. Park, 19–31. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1996.
The Holy Bible. King James Version. 1995. Electronic Text Center: University of Virginia Library. http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/KjvGene.html (accessed March 2, 2009).
Hume, David. “On Suicide.” In Selected Essays, edited by Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar, 315–324. New York: Oxford University Press. Questia. http://www.questia.com/read/74428437 (accessed March 5, 2009).
Kim, Chol U. Army-Centred Politics of Kim Jong Il. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2002. Songun Politics Study Group. http://www.geocities.com/songunpoliticsstudygroup/SongunpoliticsofKimJongIl.doc (accessed March 2, 2009).
Kim, Ha Tai. “The Religious Dimension of Neo-Confucianism.” Philosophy East and West 27, no. 3 (July 1977): 337–348.
Kim, Il Sung. “On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work.” In Duties of Literature and Arts in Our Revolution, 18–45. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1972a.
______. On the Juche Idea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1979.
______. On Socialist Construction and the South Korean Revolution in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1968.
______. On Some Problems of Our Party’s Juche Idea and the Government of the Republic’s Internal and External Policies. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1972b.
Kim, Jong Il. (On Some Problems Raised in the Education of the Juche Ideology n Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1987.
______. “The Juche Philosophy Is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy.” 1996. E-Asia Digital Library (University of Oregon Libraries). http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/easia/readb/108.pdf (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. “On Correctly Understanding the Originality of Kimilsungism.” 1976. Kuguk ch?ns?n (National Salvation Front). http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/juche/761002.htm (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. “On the Juche Idea.” 1982. Kuguk ch?ns?n )National Salvation Front). http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/juche/03.html (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. “On Preserving the Juche Character and National Character of the Revolution and Construction.” 1997. E-Asia Digital Library (University of Oregon Libraries). http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/readb/111.pdf (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. On Some Problems of Education in the Juche Idea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1995. E-Asia Digital Library (University of Oregon Libraries). http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/read/3020.pdf (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. “On Some Questions in Understanding the Juche Philosophy.” 1974. Kuguk ch?ns?n (National Salvation Front). http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/juche/01.html (accessed March 15, 2009).
______. The Songun-Based Revolutionary Line is a Great Revolutionary Line of Our Era and an Ever-Victorious Banner of Our Revolution. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2007.
Korean News Service. “U.S. Urged to Adopt Policy of Peaceful Co-Existence with DPRK.” Korean News Service, January 18, 2005, http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2005/200501/news01/18.htm (accessed March 13, 2009).
Lankov, Andrei, “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism.” Asia Policy 1 (January 2006): 95–121. http://www.nbr.org/publications/asia_policy/pdf/ap1-lankov.pdf (accessed March 3, 2009).
Linton, Stephen W. “‘Promoting Religious Freedom in North Korea’: Dr. Stephen Linton Prepared Testimony.” United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, January 24, 2002, http://www.uscirf.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1816 (accessed March 4, 2009).
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Marxists Internet Archive. 2007. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch03.htm (accessed March 4, 2009).
Lukács, Georg. “Class Consciousness.” In History and Class Consciousness. 1967a. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/lukacs3.htm (accessed March 3, 2009).
______. Labour (The Ontology of Social Being, Vol. 3). Translated by David Fernbach. London: Merlin Press, 1980.
______. “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.” In History and Class Consciousness. 1967b. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc07_5.htm (accessed March 4, 2009).
______. “What Is Orthodox Marxism?” In History and Class Consciousness. 1967c. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/orthodox.htm (accessed March 3, 2009).
Montaigne, Michel de. Apology for Raymond Sebond. Translated by Roger Ariew and Marjorie Glicksman Grene. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2003.
Myers, Brian. “Child Race in an Evil World: Understanding North Korea through its propaganda.” RASKB Open Lecture, February 13, 2007, http://raskb.korea.com/raskb/entry/VODFebruary-13-2007-Child-Race-in-an-Evil-World-Understanding-North-Korea-Throughits-Propaganda (accessed February 5, 2009).
______. “The Watershed that Wasn’t: Re-Evaluating Kim Il Sung’s ‘Juche Speech’ of 1955.” Acta Koreana 9, no. 1 (January 2006): 89–115.
Natsios, Andrew. “The Politics of Famine in North Korea.” United States Institute of Peace, August 2, 1999, http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr990802.html (accessed March 5, 2009).
Park, Han S. “The Nature and Evolution of Juche Ideology.” In North Korea: Ideology, Politics, Economy, edited by Han S. Park, 9–18. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1996.
______. North Korea: The Politics of Unconventional Wisdom. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002. Questia. http://www.questia.com/read/105844726 (accessed March 3, 2009).
Plekhanov, Georgi. Essays on the History of Materialism. Marxists Internet Archive. 2007. http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1893/essays/3-marx.htm (accessed March 2, 2009).
Ryang, Sonia. North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity. Boulder: 1997. Questia. http://www.questia.com/read/98917122 (accessed March 4, 2009).
Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1972.
Trotsky, Leon. “The Struggle for the Productivity of Labor.” Chap. 4 in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Marxists Internet Archive. 18 March 2007. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch04.htm (accessed March 4, 2009).
Voronsky, Aleksandr K. “Art as the Cognition of Life, and the Contemporary World.” In Art as the Cognition of Life: Selected Writings, 1911–1936, translated and edited by Frederick S. Choate, 95–145. Oak Park: Mehring Books, 1998.
Woo-Cumings, Meredith. The Political Ecology of the Famine: The North Korean Catastrophe and Its Lessons. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute, 2002. Asian Development Bank Institute. http://www.adbi.org/files/2002.01.rp31.ecology.famine.northkorea.pdf (accessed March 6, 2009).
Cassirer, Ernst. An Essay on Man: An Introduction to a Philosophy of Human Culture. Garden City: Doubleday, 1953.
Cooke, Bill. “Religion’s Anthropocentric Conceit: Atheism’s Cosmic Modesty Is More Moral.” Free Inquiry 24, no. 1 (December 2003–January 2004). Council for Secular Humanism. http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?section=library&page=cooke_24_1 (accessed March 13, 2009).
Engels, Frederick. “Engels to Conrad Schmidt in Berlin.” Marxists Internet Archive. 2000. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_10_27.htm (accessed March 3, 2009)
______. “Frederick Engels’ Speech at the Grave of Karl Marx.” Marxists Internet Archive. 1993. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/death/burial.htm (accessed March 3, 2009).
______. “Hegel.” Chap. 1 in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Marxists Internet Archive. 1994a. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch01.htm (accessed March 3, 2009).
______. “Marx.” Chap. 4 in Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy. Marxists Internet Archive. 1994b. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/ludwig-feuerbach/ch04.htm (accessed June 5, 2009).
______. “The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man.” In Dialectics of Nature. Marxists Internet Archive. 2001. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1883/don/ch09.htm (accessed March 2, 2009).
Göthel, Ingeborg. “Juche and the Issue of National Identity in the DPRK of the 1960s.” In North Korea: Ideology, Politics, Economy, edited by Han S. Park, 19–31. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1996.
The Holy Bible. King James Version. 1995. Electronic Text Center: University of Virginia Library. http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/KjvGene.html (accessed March 2, 2009).
Hume, David. “On Suicide.” In Selected Essays, edited by Stephen Copley and Andrew Edgar, 315–324. New York: Oxford University Press. Questia. http://www.questia.com/read/74428437 (accessed March 5, 2009).
Kim, Chol U. Army-Centred Politics of Kim Jong Il. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2002. Songun Politics Study Group. http://www.geocities.com/songunpoliticsstudygroup/SongunpoliticsofKimJongIl.doc (accessed March 2, 2009).
Kim, Ha Tai. “The Religious Dimension of Neo-Confucianism.” Philosophy East and West 27, no. 3 (July 1977): 337–348.
Kim, Il Sung. “On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work.” In Duties of Literature and Arts in Our Revolution, 18–45. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1972a.
______. On the Juche Idea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1979.
______. On Socialist Construction and the South Korean Revolution in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1968.
______. On Some Problems of Our Party’s Juche Idea and the Government of the Republic’s Internal and External Policies. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1972b.
Kim, Jong Il. (On Some Problems Raised in the Education of the Juche Ideology n Nodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1987.
______. “The Juche Philosophy Is an Original Revolutionary Philosophy.” 1996. E-Asia Digital Library (University of Oregon Libraries). http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/easia/readb/108.pdf (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. “On Correctly Understanding the Originality of Kimilsungism.” 1976. Kuguk ch?ns?n (National Salvation Front). http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/juche/761002.htm (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. “On the Juche Idea.” 1982. Kuguk ch?ns?n )National Salvation Front). http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/juche/03.html (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. “On Preserving the Juche Character and National Character of the Revolution and Construction.” 1997. E-Asia Digital Library (University of Oregon Libraries). http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/readb/111.pdf (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. On Some Problems of Education in the Juche Idea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1995. E-Asia Digital Library (University of Oregon Libraries). http://libweb.uoregon.edu/ec/e-asia/read/3020.pdf (accessed March 2, 2009).
______. “On Some Questions in Understanding the Juche Philosophy.” 1974. Kuguk ch?ns?n (National Salvation Front). http://ndfsk.dyndns.org/kuguk8/juche/01.html (accessed March 15, 2009).
______. The Songun-Based Revolutionary Line is a Great Revolutionary Line of Our Era and an Ever-Victorious Banner of Our Revolution. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2007.
Korean News Service. “U.S. Urged to Adopt Policy of Peaceful Co-Existence with DPRK.” Korean News Service, January 18, 2005, http://www.kcna.co.jp/item/2005/200501/news01/18.htm (accessed March 13, 2009).
Lankov, Andrei, “The Natural Death of North Korean Stalinism.” Asia Policy 1 (January 2006): 95–121. http://www.nbr.org/publications/asia_policy/pdf/ap1-lankov.pdf (accessed March 3, 2009).
Linton, Stephen W. “‘Promoting Religious Freedom in North Korea’: Dr. Stephen Linton Prepared Testimony.” United States Commission on International Religious Freedom, January 24, 2002, http://www.uscirf.gov/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1816 (accessed March 4, 2009).
Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich. Conspectus of Hegel’s Science of Logic. Marxists Internet Archive. 2007. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1914/cons-logic/ch03.htm (accessed March 4, 2009).
Lukács, Georg. “Class Consciousness.” In History and Class Consciousness. 1967a. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/lukacs3.htm (accessed March 3, 2009).
______. Labour (The Ontology of Social Being, Vol. 3). Translated by David Fernbach. London: Merlin Press, 1980.
______. “Reification and the Consciousness of the Proletariat.” In History and Class Consciousness. 1967b. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/hcc07_5.htm (accessed March 4, 2009).
______. “What Is Orthodox Marxism?” In History and Class Consciousness. 1967c. Marxists Internet Archive. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lukacs/works/history/orthodox.htm (accessed March 3, 2009).
Montaigne, Michel de. Apology for Raymond Sebond. Translated by Roger Ariew and Marjorie Glicksman Grene. Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2003.
Myers, Brian. “Child Race in an Evil World: Understanding North Korea through its propaganda.” RASKB Open Lecture, February 13, 2007, http://raskb.korea.com/raskb/entry/VODFebruary-13-2007-Child-Race-in-an-Evil-World-Understanding-North-Korea-Throughits-Propaganda (accessed February 5, 2009).
______. “The Watershed that Wasn’t: Re-Evaluating Kim Il Sung’s ‘Juche Speech’ of 1955.” Acta Koreana 9, no. 1 (January 2006): 89–115.
Natsios, Andrew. “The Politics of Famine in North Korea.” United States Institute of Peace, August 2, 1999, http://www.usip.org/pubs/specialreports/sr990802.html (accessed March 5, 2009).
Park, Han S. “The Nature and Evolution of Juche Ideology.” In North Korea: Ideology, Politics, Economy, edited by Han S. Park, 9–18. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1996.
______. North Korea: The Politics of Unconventional Wisdom. Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 2002. Questia. http://www.questia.com/read/105844726 (accessed March 3, 2009).
Plekhanov, Georgi. Essays on the History of Materialism. Marxists Internet Archive. 2007. http://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1893/essays/3-marx.htm (accessed March 2, 2009).
Ryang, Sonia. North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity. Boulder: 1997. Questia. http://www.questia.com/read/98917122 (accessed March 4, 2009).
Socialist Constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1972.
Trotsky, Leon. “The Struggle for the Productivity of Labor.” Chap. 4 in The Revolution Betrayed: What Is the Soviet Union and Where Is It Going? Marxists Internet Archive. 18 March 2007. http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/ch04.htm (accessed March 4, 2009).
Voronsky, Aleksandr K. “Art as the Cognition of Life, and the Contemporary World.” In Art as the Cognition of Life: Selected Writings, 1911–1936, translated and edited by Frederick S. Choate, 95–145. Oak Park: Mehring Books, 1998.
Woo-Cumings, Meredith. The Political Ecology of the Famine: The North Korean Catastrophe and Its Lessons. Tokyo: Asian Development Bank Institute, 2002. Asian Development Bank Institute. http://www.adbi.org/files/2002.01.rp31.ecology.famine.northkorea.pdf (accessed March 6, 2009).
Published
2013-10-09
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
David-West, A. (2013). “MAN IS THE MASTER OF EVERYTHING AND DECIDES EVERYTHING”: DE-CONSTRUCTING THE NORTH KOREAN JUCHE AXIOM. Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, 17(2), 67-84. https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v17i2.67
