Prospering North Shrouded in Myth

North Korea's ideological bedrock is juche (pronounced joo-chay), usually translated as self-reliance. Like most everything the North Koreans regard as virtue, it is credited to Kim Il Sung. It is as much a state of mind as a philosophy.

It has borrowed heavily from traditional beliefs, including Confucianism, the Chinese cosmic view that shaped much of Korean society during its 2,000-year history. The ideal state is like a well-ordered family: The father is wise and benevolent, granting sustenance to his children, who respond with obedience and labor.

The Kims are so wise that they understand the most complex industrial project better than do the engineers in charge. Kim Chong Il is seen in a North Korean film giving instructions on installation of showers in a school.

Everything that North Koreans have flows somehow from the largesse of these two. Last year a North Korean woman interviewed by a foreign television crew gave that explanation for the ribbon in her daughter's hair.

Most North Koreans wear lapel buttons with the elder Kim's picture. Around the country stand imposing white statues of him, arms outstretched to the future. Wherever he visits, a monument goes up in memory. Magazines publish "hymns" of praise in which Kim senior is "the sun," Kim junior "the lodestar."

It is not all explained by Confucianism, however. Where that creed does not fit, it is discarded. Hereditary succession is anathema to Confucian principles of legitimacy through merit. So are statues and self-aggrandizement; the ideal ruler is supposed to be humble, willing to learn.

North Koreans say there is no cult of personality, only the heart-felt outpourings of a people restored to dignity. "He has led us along the correct path. That's why I follow him. Each time tremendous goals were achieved." That, says a North Korean living in Tokyo, is the average person's attitude toward Kim Il Sung.

South Korean officials claim there are concentration camps near the Chinese border where hundreds of thousands of political prisoners labor in anonymity. Occasionally, reports surface of anti-Kim slogans scrawled in public places. But with few exceptions, foreign visitors to the north leave with an impression of seamless unity. No one whispers pleas to take letters abroad. People seem contented, convinced, as their leaders tell them, that they have "nothing to envy" anywhere in the world.

No one can quite explain why this effort at regimentation has succeeded when most other totalitarian states have failed. There is political indoctrination from childhood, some police repression, and in the old days, bloody purges. But there also has been genuine improvement of living standards and national pride. Isolation is a key. "They've insulated themselves and built up walls around their society," said James B. Palais, professor of Korean history at the University of Washington. Ordinary people, he said, "don't have anything that allows them to question what they receive as wisdom."

U.S. analysts rank the North Korean armed forces today as the world's sixth largest. "North Korea is not a country in the traditional sense," comments a U.S. officer in the south. "It is one armed camp from the DMZ up to the Yalu River." Following the principles of juche, almost every weapon they use, including tanks and heavy rockets, is manufactured locally.

U.S. analysts say the North Korean Army is 800,000 members strong, schooled in Soviet doctrine of frontal assault and massed firepower. The Air Force has about 50,000 personnel and 1,100 planes and helicopters. The Navy has 35,000 people in uniform and includes 20 submarines and, according to Soviet newspaper reports, the U.S.S. Pueblo, the American spy ship that was seized by North Korea in 1968.

The north outnumbers the south by about 40 percent in soldiers and more than that in tanks, field guns and other heavy weapons. But U.S. analysts see a "qualitative" edge for the south. The north's tanks are 1950s-design; the south's have laser sighting devices. The north's warplanes are mostly first-generation models from the vacuum-tube age; the south is backed by the latest from the U.S. air arsenal. The London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies rates the two sides' military prowess as "roughly equivalent."