<html><head></head><body style="word-wrap: break-word; -webkit-nbsp-mode: space; -webkit-line-break: after-white-space; ">I'd suggest that any check on the appeal that the juche idea had should be much broader than attention just to Japan. Many 3d World locations found it compelling. <div><br></div><div>One perhaps overly simple point to explain the appeal is that the DPRK economy was stronger than the South through the 1960's and into the 1970's. Measurable difference.</div><div><br></div><div>Ideas may be thin gruel, but per capita income and other such measures are not. And the windy-seeming formulation of 'philosophical nonsense produced purely for export' could cover a great many national ideological formulations. Juche had the useful portability of being just one word. Sound-bite length; eminently textable, had there been text messaging in the '70's. <div><br></div><div>David McCann</div><div><br></div><div><br><div><div><div>On May 28, 2012, at 1:52 AM, Robert S Boynton wrote:</div><br class="Apple-interchange-newline"><blockquote type="cite">I've been an enthusiastic consumer of this listserv for the past two years, and although I<br>have found it extremely helpful and informative, I've never posted before. I'm finishing writing<br>a book about North Korea's abduction project in the 1970s and 1980s, and am having trouble<br>
writing a chapter having to do with the Yodogo hijackers, juche study groups and juche thought.<br><br>My problem is that I can't find a way to explain the allure that juche has for some people, especially<br>young Japanese in the 1970s. I'm sure that leftist enthusiasm for the North Korean experiment played a role,<br>
but it couldn't have been that entirely. The juche ideas I've encountered have seemed like pretty thin gruel, and<br>I was hoping someone could direct me to literature or individuals who could hep me understand why some <br>
people have felt compelled to change their lives and become followers of juche. <br><br>I'm familiar with BR Meyers argument that juche is little more than philosophical nonsense produced purely<br>for export. Perhaps it is, but I'd like to understand why some have found it worth importing. Thank you. I welcome any <br>
responses either via the listserv, or to my email, which is bellow. <br clear="all">-- <br>Robert S. Boynton<div>Director of Literary Reportage Concentration<br><div>Associate Professor</div></div><div>Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute</div>
<div>New York University</div><div>20 Cooper Square</div><div>New York, NY 10003</div><div><a href="mailto:robert.boynton@nyu.edu" target="_blank">robert.boynton@nyu.edu</a></div><div>212-998-7594<br><br><u><b>TOKYO CELL NUMBER: 080-3413-2370</b></u><br>
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