Abstract
Vinalon (vinylon) is a textile fibre made from the common chemical compound polyvinyl alcohol. In North Korea it is often called chuch’e som, or ‘cotton of self-reliance’. Vinalon was so named due to its place in North Korea’s history as a home-grown product that relieved the dire need for textiles in the post-Korean War period. Recently, this most independent fibre made a comeback in North Korea, when the February Eight Vinalon Complex — the factory where vinalon was first produced, back in 1961 — reopened in 2010 after a 16-year-long hiatus that began as North Korea’s state-socialist economy collapsed in the mid-1990s. During his visit to the factory in February 2010 to provide ‘on-the-spot guidance’ (made famous by his father), Kim Jong II (Kim Chŏngil) called the factory the model of chuch’e kongŏp (industry of self-reliance) because its workers had ‘revived the dying factory with their indomitable will’.1 His visit made the front page of Rodong Sinmun, the main party newspaper, and in the newspaper’s multiday coverage, the word chuch’e is mentioned numerous times in reference to vinalon, the factory, and the workers. The word describes not only things but also people: the fabric of self-reliance can come only from the hands of indomitably willed workers.
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Notes
Nodong sinmun chŏngch’i podobu, ‘Widaehan yŏngdoja Kim Chŏng-il tongji kkesŏ hyŏndaejŏk ŭro kkuryŏjin ip’al pinallon yŏnhapgiŏpso rŭl hyŏnjijido hasiyŏtda’, Nodong sinmun (8 February 2010), 1–2.
Hŏ Myŏngsuk, ‘On nara ga hŭngsŏng inda’, Rodong Sinmun (11 February 2010), 4.
Im Chihyŏn (Jie-hyun Lim), ‘Ilsang ŭi miro e kach’in kwŏllyŏg ŭi kkum’, in Lim Jie-Hyun and Kim Yong-Woo, eds, Taejung tokjae: Ilsang ŭi yongmang kwa mimong (Seoul: Ch’aeksesang, 2007), p. 555.
Kim Il Sung (Kim Ilsŏng), ‘Uri tang ŭi chuch’esasang kwa konghwagukjŏngbu ŭi taenaewejongch’aek ŭi myŏtkaji munje e taehayŏ’, Kim Il-sŏng chŏjakchip 27 (P’yŏngyang: Chosŏn Rodongdang Ch’ulp’ansa, 1984), pp. 390–94.
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B. R. Myers, The Cleanest Race (New York: Melville House, 2010), p. 47.
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The story of Korean-Japanese who are pro-North Korea is complex. The membership of the General Association has declined today to around 150,000 (out of over 600,000 Korean residents in Japan), and their relationship to North Korea has changed. They no longer officially endorse chuch’e, and they are more critical of the North Korean state. Nevertheless, they maintain that the ethnic nationalism created and promoted by North Korea is important to their identity. On this topic, see Sonia Ryang’s North Koreans in Japan: Language, Ideology, and Identity (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1997).
The estimates of the number of people who died during the 1990s due to famine and disease range from 200,000 to 2 million. The 1990s was the most difficult period for the North Korean people since the Korean War. On the accounts of life during the 1990s, see Choŭn pŏttŭl, Pukhansaramdŭri malhanŭnpukhan iyagi (Seoul: Chŏngt’o Ch’ulp’an, 2000).
Han S. Park, North Korea (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner, 2002).
See Andrew S. Natsios, The Great North Korean Famine (Washington, DC: US Institute of Peace Press, 2001), and Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea (New York: Columbia University Press, 2007).
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Ch’oe Hojin, ‘Uri nara nŭn widaehan chuch’esasang ŭi chogugida’, Ch’ŏllima 9 (1973), 31.
The malleability of human character was an important premise in the socialism of the twentieth century. As Fitzpatrick writes, ‘human remaking was part of the whole notion of transformation that was at the heart of the Soviet project’. Sheila Fitzpatrick, Everyday Stalinism: Soviet Russia in the 1930s (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), p. 75.
Chosŏn Yesul Yŏnghwa Ch’waryŏngso, Uriyŏllch’ap’anmaewŏn (P’yŏngyang, 1972).
Yi Kuyŏl, Pukhan misul osipnyŏn (Seoul: Tolbegae, 2001).
Ernesto Laclau, Emancipation(s) (London: Verso, 1996), p. 21.
Janice C. H. Kim’s To Live to Work (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2009), p. 76.
See chs 6 and 7 in Karatani Kojin, Transcritique (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2003).
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© 2013 Cheehyung Kim
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Kim, C. (2013). Total, Thus Broken: Chuch’e Sasang and North Korea’s Terrain of Subjectivity. In: Mass Dictatorship and Modernity. Mass Dictatorship in the Twentieth Century. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137304339_13
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