Wednesday, 29 September 2010

Juche- the North Korean Principle (from Wikipedia)

The first known reference to Juche was a speech given by Kim Il-sung on December 28, 1955, titled "On Eliminating Dogmatism and Formalism and Establishing Juche in Ideological Work" in rejection of the policy of de-Stalinization (bureaucratic self-reform) in the Soviet Union. In this speech, Kim said that "Juche means Chosun's revolution" (Chosun being the traditional name for Korea). Hwang Jang-yeop, Kim's top adviser on ideology, discovered this speech later in the 1950s when Kim sought to develop his own version of Marxism–Leninism.[2]




The Juche Idea itself gradually emerged as a systematic ideological doctrine under the political pressures of the Sino-Soviet split in the 1960s. The word "Juche" also began to appear in untranslated form in English-language North Korean works from around 1965. Kim Il-sung outlined the three fundamental principles of Juche in his April 14, 1965, speech “On Socialist Construction and the South Korean Revolution in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”:



1."independence in politics" (chaju)

2."self-sustenance in the economy" (charip)

3."self-defense in national defense" (chawi).

Current North Korean leader Kim Jong-il officially authored the definitive statement on Juche in a 1982 document titled On the Juche Idea. He has final authority over the interpretation of the state ideology and incorporated the Songun (army-first) policy into it in 1996.

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