Regime Survival and Sunshine Policy

[Angelique Callicoat]

I teach Ayn Rand's Anthem, Orwell's Animal Farm and his "Politics and the English Language" and this week's reading connects so nicely with those texts, not to mention several of the texts that my colleagues teach: Hunger Games, Handmaid's Tale, and The Road. Up until now, I've only thought to build historical and current event connections to the US and European countries, but learning about North Korea's famine, the unofficial economy, and the ingeniuity of the citizenry in rapidly deteriorating living conditions followed by a rapidly loosened system makes me think I need to broaden my supplemental text selection. 

I would like to know more about the "Military First" theory of "Immortal Sociopolitical Body" and how that ideology was rolled out to a population who remembered and lived within Kim Il Sung's juche ideology of "self-identity". The militiary-first approach seems likes the absorption of the self into the state. Rather than finding the self within the "most correct Marx-Leninist-oriented guiding philosophy", the "military first" philosophy gives (or does not give) immortal life to a citizen. The timing of this new philosophy, with the country reeling from millions of famine deaths and a collapse of the national economy and industry, is so interesting, and I just want to know more about the how and why. The KWP no doubt had lost a great deal of emotional credibility with the famine and nation-wide industry breakdown, so replacing the entire thing with military grandeur and strength not only gave way to better in-country optics, but also offered up some pretty strong intimidation to countries like China, US, Japan, and Russia. 

I would also like to know more about how the Sunshine Policy from South Korea was met by North Koreans military leaders internally. With Kim Jong Il finally consolidating his power in his own way, how did the three olive branches from South Korea shake up the fairly new regime? Who was all for building stronger connection with South Korea and who was resistent?