Socialist Construction and National Culture Inheritance: North Korea in the 1950s

The policy of inheritance and development of national cultural heritage has been a consistent policy of North Korea after the Liberation. In the early 1950s, North Korea needed internal integration and mobilization of internal resources in order to reorganize the Workers’ Party and the state system and to carry out post war reconstruction projects. Accordingly, the importance of national cultural heritage was further emphasized in terms of both ideology and practical use. In 1955, Kim Il-sung directed the establishment of ‘Juche’ based on the National Cultural Tradition and the Anti-Japanese Revolutionary Tradition. After the policy of socialist construction was fixed at the 3rd Congress of the Workers’Party of Korea in 1956, the project to inherit national cultural heritage was carried out with the goal of socialist construction. In particular, the advanced and reforming aspects were rediscovered in Silhak ideology. North Korea justified its radical socialization path through the ideology of Silhak. On the other hand, national cultural heritage in each sector, such as traditional science, architecture, weaponry, medicine, crafts, musical instruments, and clothing, was directly utilized and applied to the construction of socialism in North Korea as socio-economic resources, and it was closely related to the lives of the residents. Inheriting the tradition and realizing it in the present era was the realization of Juche, and it contained the orientation of the people's sovereignty in the sense that the people enjoy the nation’s treasures. Through the inheritance of national cultural heritage, North Korea’s socialist construction was ideologically reversed and utilized practically. In this way, North Korean socialism and national cultural traditions were closely related, and thus the nationalistic character took root in the North Korean socialist system.(University of North Korean Studies)