[KS] (for Eckart Dege) - Koreanstudies Digest, Vol 99, Issue 7

[Charles K. Armstrong]

Dear Ruediger and all,

Very interesting comments. I don't think any reasonable person would  
argue that there is religious freedom in North Korea or ever has been,  
although there was some degree of tolerance in the early years so long  
as the churches overtly supported the regime. Of course no independent  
religious organization is permissible (there are no ordained priests  
in the Catholic church, for example), and church officers are  
government employees. But one of my questions has to do with the  
impression Eckart also had, that the church services are not merely  
"theatrical productions for foreign tourists". One hears that the two  
protestant churches and the Catholic church were re-opened or at least  
renovated, in the 1980s as a means to extract aid from foreign and  
South Korean Christians. If so, what happened to these churches  
between the 1950s and the 1980s? And who really are these people in  
the congregation? Why do they take off their Kim Il Sung badges during  
the service? The politics of religious repression are evident, but it  
seems to me the history and sociology of religion in the DPRK haven't  
been adequately explored.

As for Buddhism, if it was indeed allowed to "die a natural death," it  
suggests that the North Korean regime completed the project of the  
Choson neo-Confucians. Certainly, in 1945 Buddhism did not have the  
central place in Korean life that it did in Mongolia, Cambodia or  
Tibet, nor did it have the taint of "US imperialism" like  
Christianity, so perhaps there was no need to attack Buddhism overtly.  
But still, the withering of Buddhism in North Korea was remarkably  
rapid. Again, there seem to be more questions than answers when it  
comes to this history. best,

Charles
-- 
Charles K. Armstrong
Professor of History
Director, Center for Korean Research
Columbia University
930 International Affairs Building
420 West 118th Street
New York, NY 10027

Tel: 212-854-1721
Fax: 212-749-1497


Quoting Ruediger Frank <ruediger.frank at univie.ac.at>:

> Dear all,
> to follow up on Chusòk and Buddhism:
> Of course a healthy dose of skepticism is advised when it comes to   
> things that foreigners are allowed to see in NK. As long as there   
> are just a couple of hundred of us in NK at the same time, we can be  
>  pretty sure that everything we see is more or less predetermined.   
> However, and that's a big however, we should also not make the   
> mistake to believe that everything is a fake. The trouble with   
> central planning including "taking care" of foreigners is that it   
> never works 100%. Not in production, not in politics, not in   
> surveillance. I was for example able to take photos of things that I  
>  definitely was not supposed to see (like related to, how should I   
> put it... pharmaceuticals).
> On Chusok and tradition: As you can read in "Korea 2008: Politics,   
> Economy and Society", p. 35   
> (http://univie.academia.edu/RuedigerFrank/Papers/474257/NORTH_KOREA_DOMESTIC_POLITICS_AND_ECONOMY_2007-2008), tomb sweeping day (Chòngmyòng) had for the first time in recent years been a public holiday on April 4th, 2008 (interestingly, same for qingming in China). It had been marked before, but now North Koreans have a day off. The logic is simple: while in most European socialist countries, such customs were regarded as superstition and equaled with religion (i.e. something improper for a modern educated socialist citizen), the unrestricted promotion of nationalism in North Korea allows the state to allow or even promote customs that are traditional and thus an expression of the unique and 5000 year old Korean culture. Kim Il Sung even applied such a logic to markets (we Koreans had markets long before capitalism, so they are not a bad thing per   
> se).
> With religion, the issue is less simple. One point has already been   
> made: thanks to its loss of political importance after 1392,   
> Buddhism for the North Korean leaders has never had that status of   
> anti-thesis as Christianity did. Moreover, in a pan-Asian logic it   
> is more appropriate as "our" tradition as opposed to Christianity (a  
>  Western product). Correct me if I am wrong, but there is no   
> anti-Buddhist propaganda in North Korean literature, at least   
> nothing comparable to the nasty stories about child-slaughtering   
> missionaries. True, some folk tales are preserved where Buddhist   
> monks are drunkards and womanizers. But this is just the   
> reproduction of Chosòn dynasty propaganda.
> As for my own experiences with Buddhist monasteries in North Korea,   
> including Pohyònsa and others, at least we can say that rather than   
> burning them down, they are being preserved. This was the case even   
> when tourism from South Korea did not yet play a role and ordinary   
> North Koreans had a chance to visit the beautiful spots of their own  
>  country. Why? My impression was that local people cared strongly  
> for  the monasteries. The donation boxes were always well filled,  
> paint  was fresh, trees cut, walkways clean and the grass kept  
> short. A  couple got its wedding picture in front of a stupa. Last  
> year I  talked to a monk at a monastery south of Pyongyang who  
> clearly was  not liked by my minders. They made fun of him and his  
> life ("can you  imagine, he doesn't even have a TV..."). He in turn  
> made a few  remarks that could well pass as signs of resistance  
> against the  system. I don't know who else is reading this, so I  
> will not provide  any details. But my strong impression was that he  
> definitely was not  an actor. Well, it's North Korea, you never know  
> for sure.
> On the Benedictines: The building of their abbey is still intact. It  
>  is now part of the University of Agriculture near Wònsan; of course  
>  my guides forgot to tell me this when I visited the place but it  
> was  pretty obvious that this neo-gothic building covered by ivy  
> leaves  was built before 1945.
> The Russian church: This clearly is a special case. It is fairly   
> well documented that this was a purely political gesture. It was   
> agreed during Kim Jong Il's last visit in Russia a decade or so ago   
> in a talk with Mr. Putin. Konstantin Pulikowskij (former General,   
> now ardent churchgoer) in his book recalls how Kim said: we will   
> build such a church in our country. When Putin asked about   
> believers, Kim said: don't worry, there will be believers. A gesture  
>  of friendship and goodwill, nothing more. But I guess the employees  
>  of the Russian embassy are nevertheless not unhappy about the church.
> A last remark: Having lived in the Soviet Union in the 1970, I was   
> struck by the speed of recovery of the Russian Orthodox Church after  
>  1990. The reasons are clear, of course - a dominant ideology gone,   
> vacuum left, growing social inequality and distress: direct ways   
> into religion. But if you consider how long and how heavily this   
> religion has (allegedly) been persecuted - more than 70 years - it   
> is simply amazing how much of it was preserved somehow. Maybe this   
> lets us draw some parallels to Christianity in North Korea. So my   
> guess is: hidden maybe, but not gone. And I agree that the mentioned  
>  churches in PY are Disneyland. Organized Christian communities  
> would  be regarded as a severe threat by the state and instantly   
> persecuted. After all, the peaceful revolution in East Germany   
> originated from the Churches.
> Cheers,
> Rudiger Frank
> PS: Forgive me this lengthy remark; it's Sunday. The latter has, by   
> the way, survived in all socialist experiments including NK...
>
>
> on Samstag, 10. September 2011 at 23:33 you wrote:
>
>> Prof. Dr. Eckart Dege is currently not subscribed
>> to the list and asked me to post the following
>> reply for him.
>> ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
>
>
>> For a long time I also wondered how Chusok is observed in North Korea.
>> Last time I visited North Korea during Chusok. Knowing that our
>> interpreter was the eldest son, I asked him who would do the ancester
>> rites on this day. He answered that his younger brother had to do them
>> since he was on duty translating for us. Then I asked how the rites are
>> performed in Pyongyang (where you don't find any graves). He explained
>> that all people are cremated and the urns are stored in special buildings
>> (one in each city precinct). On Chusok people go there, show a special
>> identity card and get the urn(s) of their ancestor(s). These they take to
>> a park, where they perform the ancestor rites and have a picnic. After the
>> rites they return the urn. We observed many such family groups on
>> Moran-bong.
>
>> Now to the churches: there are four in Pyongyang, the Changchung Cathedral
>> (Roman Catholic), the Pongsu Church (Protestant), the Chilgol Church
>> (Protestant) and a new Russian Orthodox church at Tongil Street. I took
>> part in Sunday services in two of these churches and did not have the
>> impression that these services were a theatrical production for foreign
>> tourists (in both cases I was the only foreigner). What struck me was the
>> fact that during the service they took off their Kim Il-sung badges. When
>> they went out after the service they put them back on.
>
>> Happy Chusok,
>> Eckart Dege
>
>
>
>
>