The vulnerability of the cult to outside information is what I’ve long considered to be a primary factor in North Korea’s persistent refusal to engage. And one I think many, if not most, analysts either miss or disregard as less important. But not all:

It has long been axiomatic that the main danger to the Kim regime is internal unrest. That is, Koreans will discover the freedoms, glitter, and diversity of the modern outside world, and stop believing the story of idolatry they are awash in. “It isn’t quite realized [in the West] how much a threat the penetration of ideas means. They [Kim’s regime] see it as a social problem that could bring down the state,” says Brian Myers, a North Korean expert at Dongseo University in Busan, South Korea.

According to the Christian Science Monitor, the level of cult indoctrination is being ramped up:

. . .North is steadily updating its ideology to make it relevant. This practice of mass control by in-your-face ideology has been laughed off in much of the world, including China. But North Korea is increasing its ideological cult worship. The scope of the current project outdoes even the cult of personality during Mao’s Cultural Revolution, according to a 2005 doctoral dissertation by Lee Jong Heon at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. Mr. Lee visited North Korea several times for his research.

[. . .]

“The cult of personality campaign is more extensive today than in 1985,” says former South Korean foreign minister Han Sung Joo, who visited Pyongyang this past October, and in 1985. “Unlike the Stalin and Mao personality cults, there is a deification and a religious emotional element in the North. . .”

Considering the level of indoctrination (‘brainwashing’ does fit) described in Helen-Louise Hunter’s “Kim Il-song’s North Korea,” which covered the 1980s and prior, that would be quite a feat, one I am not sure is true considering the breakdown of governmental control and society during the height of the famine a decade ago. Rather the current push may be a return, and eventual surpassing, of previous levels of control.

The ‘military first’ policy and racism are noted differences in past methods of indoctrination:

Perhaps the most misunderstood aspect of the Korean cult project is its recent veering toward race and ethnic solidarity, say Kim watchers. His main appeal to his people today, a push that rarely gets attention outside the North, is to the racial superiority of a people whose isolation and stubborn xenophobia supposedly makes their bloodlines purer. Mr. Myers notes that festivals of 100,000 flag wavers is not a Stalinist exercise, but a celebration of “ethnic homogeneity.” Since the 1990s Kim has more fervently claimed lineage to the first ancient rulers of Korea, a move intended to place him in a position of historical, if not divine, destiny as leader of the peninsula.

Read the entire article here.