The Discourse of the Three Revolutions

The most apparent revision in the 1972 DPRK Constitution is the structure of the chapters and the discursive strategy that make the text drastically different from its 1948 Constitution and the Soviet Constitution.

In order to decipher the 1972 Constitution, it is necessary to understand the cultural context in which it was written. In 1973, the Party initiated a national campaign called the Three Revolutions movement, which consisted of ideol­ogy, technology, and culture. Chronologically, the Three Revolutions came after the 1972 Constitution. However, the planning of the Three Revolutions began in the mid-1960s, and the 1972 Constitution legitimised the Party’s action to enforce the Three Revolutions as a national campaign by which all must abide.

The three pillars of the Three Revolutions are symmetrical to the first three chapters of the 1972 Constitution. The idea of the campaign was to transform North Korean society into an ideologically uniform nation under a single philo­sophical principle, an industrialised nation worthy to compete on the international stage, and a cultural nation that placed Kim Il Sung as the only leader of the coun­try. The ideological component of the Three Revolutions was the implementation of Juche as the governing principle of the nation. In terms of technology, ‘the process through which North Korea envisioned success was by elevating the work­ing class from performing manual labor to performing specialised, skilled labor, which entailed the need to acquire the latest technology’.^[331] Finally, the cultural component was to transform every cultural production (newspaper, literature, songs, films, education system, television and radio programmes, etc) to venerate the Great Leader.

Following the three tenets of the Three Revolutions (ideology, technology, and culture), the first three chapters of the 1972 Socialist Constitution are structured the same: politics, economy, and culture. Chapter 1, Article 1 says, ‘The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea is an independent socialist state representing the inter­ests of all the Korean people’. The use of the word independent here is referring to North Korea’s decision to isolate itself from the Sino-Soviet Conflict in the 1960s. Despite Kim Il Sung’s cunning diplomatic appeasement to both the Soviet Union and China, he announced to the North Korean citizens that the DPRK will be independent from the other socialist countries. In Article 2, the Constitution reads, ‘The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea politically and ideologically unifies all the people based on the alliance of the workers and peasants led by the working class’, which is another way of saying that Kim Il Sung has secured political dissension among rivaling factions. Kim II Sung initiated two purges to rise to power: the first was postwar and the second was in the 1960s. These two purges established his impervious authority over the Party. This new Constitution helped solidify Kim Il-Sung's absolute grip on power through the creation of several instrumental institutions and positions which ‘consolidated his power into an undisputable one-man dictatorship'.^[333] The biggest institutional revision and most evident discourse presented in the Socialist Constitution was the creation of the presidency position through the Office of the DPRK and the Central People's Committee (CPC). It was established that the SPA, which remained the supreme legislative body, would elect the President, however ‘defacto State power was the President's to exercise’.^[334] Unsurprisingly, Kim Il-Sung was thus named the first President of North Korea.

Chapter 1, Article 4 is perhaps the most significant addition to the discourse of the 1972 Constitution as it officially claims Juche (self-reliance) as the govern­ing principle of the DPRK. On 15 April 1967, Kim Jong Il declared three historic revisions to the public discourse and historiography of the DPRK: first, Juche as the ideological principle of the nation; second, the anti-Japanese struggle that was led by Kim Il Sung to drive out the colonists from the country; and third, the monolithic system that placed Kim Il Sung as the one and only leader of the DPRK. The Constitution, then, is the legislature that ensures Kim Il Sung's Juche ideology as North Korea's ideology. It says that Juche is the ‘creative application of Marxism-Leninism’ which pays no more than lip service to the international communist community. Both Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il began to use the phrase ‘uri sik’ (our way) of socialism, distancing North Korea from the rest of the social­ist countries. Much like how the ideological component of the Three Revolutions is based on Juche, the first chapter of the 1972 Constitution is based on Kim Il Sung's unquestioned leadership and Juche ideology.

In order for Kim Il Sung to have his people accept his authority, the Constitution revisits the legendary discourse of the Cheongsanri Spirit and Cheongsanri Method premised on the Chollima Movement in the late 1950s and 1960s.^[337] Cheongsan is a small village that Kim II Sung visited to compliment the villagers’ collective spirit of working and living together in harmony. Thereafter, Kim Il Sung would commend the villagers in Cheongsan in his speeches to motivate the rest of North Koreans to join the spirit of collectivism.

Chapter 2 of the 1972 Constitution is about labour, means of production, and the national economy in preparation for the advent of a new technologically advanced generation. As Kim Il Sung places greater emphasis on heavy and light industries, he also recognises the importance of educating the younger generation about the latest technology. In Article 30, it says,

The state shall direct and manage the national economy through the Taean work system, a socialist form of economic management whereby the economy is operated and managed scientifically and rationally on the basis of collective effort of the producer masses, and through the new system of agricultural guidance whereby agricultural management is conducted by industrial methods.

There are two major points in this article that reveal the systematic approach of the Party to change in the economy: first is the discursive use of science and industrial methods, which refers to the technologically advanced methods of production; second is the implication of economic management by the Party officials, refer­ring to the famous Taean Factory. Cheehyung Kim says, ‘In the decade after the Korean War, factory management in North Korea saw a transition from manage­ment headed by the factory director to management led by the Party, known as the Taean Work System’.²¹ Instead of managers and supervisors operating facto­ries, the Party has decided to centralise all means of production by placing Party officials in positions of economic authority. The message is clear: the Party would rather operate all means of production rather than relying on experienced work­ers.

Moreover, the 1972 Constitution completely eradicates private ownership and businesses ‘ushering in the completion of the Socialist central economic planning

North Korea will reconstruct the country sooner than South Korea. Refer to Kwi-nam No, ‘Bukhanui ilsang saenghwal (North Korean Daily Life)’ in Cheon Hyonjun (eds), Bukhan sahoe (North Korean Society) (Kyung-in Publishing Co, 2006) 21.

²¹ Cheehyung Kim, Heroes and Toilers (Cambridge University Press, 2018) 45.

²² ibid 58.

system as the principle of collectivism was broadly introduced and strongly emphasised'^[338] and introduces dramatic changes to the overall rights and duties of the citizens. The concept of collectivism, which is notably absent from the 1948 Constitution, is strongly emphasised in the 1972 Constitution, as seen in Chapter 4 (Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens), Article 49 that proclaims that ‘in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the rights and duties of citizens are based on the collectivist principle “One for all and all for one”'. Thus, collectivism quickly becomes the guiding constitutional principle of all the rights and duties of North Koreans. In regard to the elimination of private property, the state is now declared ‘responsible for providing the daily necessities people would need through a ration­ing and public distribution system, the system of taxation was abolished’.^[339] The elimination of private ownership also represents a blunt distinction to the 1948 Constitution which is cemented in Chapter 2 (The Economy), Article 18 of the Socialist Constitution, which decrees that ‘In the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the means of production are owned by the state and social cooperative organizations'.

Private property is the property for the private consumption of workers. The private ownership of workers is achieved through the socialist distribution due to work and through additional benefits from the state and society. The products of individual side­line activities including those from the kitchen gardens of members of cooperative farms shall also be private property. The State shall protect private property and guar­antee the right to inherit it by law.

In short, the socialist concepts of collectivism and state ownership are used as lip service to the communist community and to his fellow citizens; in reality, all of the power is to be centralised under the guidance of Kim Il Sung and his Juche ideol­ogy in ‘our style of socialism’ This begs the question: how and why would anyone in North Korea allow for this to happen? This leads to the central issue of North Korea's cultural revolution.

III.