Dreams of Socialism Reflected in a 1947 North Korean School Textbook

Abstract

In 1945, with the participation of the Soviet Union, which sent naval forces to the northern coast of the Korean peninsula as well as paratroopers to Pyongyang, Korea was liberated from Japanese colonial rule. A limited contingent of Red Army units was dispatched in the northern part of the Korean peninsula to accept Japanese surrender and maintain law and order until the establishment of the national administration. From 1945 to 1948, Soviet citizens who worked in North Korea and the new North Korean authorities both made efforts to propagate a positive image of Soviet socialism. Their efforts would be successful among the lower classes of Korean society. The middle school textbook the “Kugŏ (Native Speech 국어),” published in 1947 in North Korea, provides a clear example of how the positive image of the USSR, when it came to village development, was presented to the Korean younger generation in the framework of traditional dreams about the lives of peasants. In particular, the Korean language textbook broke down the Japanese perception of the socialist village where, according to the former Japanese colonial authorities, peasants have no private property. The “Native Speech” textbook stated that the “peasants who choose socialism will own their land themselves and will be able to have private property.”