The South Korean Personality Cult

Its fair to say that the term 'Cult of Personality' has very unsavoury and totalitarian overtones. In fact I cannot think of a single positive instance of the application of the term. Just dissecting the term itself, it makes perfect sense that it should only have a negative meaning. Cults are small sect organisations that are founded on the worship of some being that is not credible enough due to popularity of said being to for these organisations to be large. Cult as a word also implies a level of unreasonable fanaticism and superstition. No organisation would want to be termed a cult, any organisation that is usually tries to dispute the application of the term. Think of Scientology; its the perfect example of an organisation that vigorously disputes the allegation of the word cult. And for good reason, its used as a derogatory term.

Therefore the term 'Cult of Personality' conjures up two concurrent meanings, the fanatical, sectional, irrationality of cults linked to the physical, and/or mental characteristics real and/or imaged of a person (usually a man). This is what Max Weber termed the 'Charismatic' type of political authority. The alleged greatness of an individual gives them political legitimacy, and thus authority in addition to the power they possess from control of the state's coercive apparatus e.g. the police, military, tax collectors etc.

Classic examples of the Cult of Personality that immediately spring to mind are Stalin, Mao and Hitler. The world today is still littered with such political authority however. When I look at Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan though, I wonder if the cult of personality has any real resonance with the people who are forced to be a part of such a shallow and obviously silly ideology. Yet in historical contexts personality cults are actually genuine loci of political group cohesion; they actually unite communities and strengthen them. They actually aid in political legitimacy and in control. Look no further than North Korea, the perfect example. Many North Koreans still like Kim Il Sung, and whilst most loathe or merely tolerate his son even some North Korean refugees in the south have a respect for his late father.

Yet are all personality cults so totalitarian and evil? I think immediately of three 'great' figures of history, Nelson Mandela, Winston Churchill, and George Washington. I guarantee you this, the popular biography is a mythology. They all had their flaws and made their mistakes. Popular percepts of these figures are founded on almost slavish and irrational half-pictures of sinless saints. Now don't get me wrong, these are not bad people who we should exhume and subject to posthumous burning. But nonetheless the popular perception of these men is akin to a cult of personality, and not posthumous in the cases of Mandela and Washington.

When we think of Kim Il Sung, if you know the man's history, it is truly vile that such a grisly dictator should have such an equally grotesque personality cult. So a second proviso, I am not in any way comparing the rather nice, and men of great deeds to Kim. Its amusing to note though; in South Korea there is one man of almost equal stature to Kim's in the North. He is almost worshipped by historians as the greatest man of Korean history. He is held up as South Korea's symbol of modernity before the concept existed, and as South Korea's first man-of-the-people. A man who was so egalitarian and such a proto-welfare liberal that he invented an alphabet of such simplistic beauty (here I wholly agree!). If you have ever held a 10,000won note in your hand then you have seen him! His name is King Sejong (세종대왕). Now don't get me wrong, the Hunminjŏngŭm writing system (훈민정음) now known as Hangeul (한글) or Chosŏn'gŭl (조선글) is incredible. In fact it has become more and more incredible as the linguistic authorities have made it so. Sejong should be lauded for it.

But let me point out some often forgotten and glaringly obvious problems with this story. Sejong was like any other 15th Century monarch, you would not know it if you went to the Gwanghwamun area of Seoul where the man has a Museum, Cultural Centre and a Kim Il Sung sized statue of himself. Not his doing, but certainly if I were him I would be very pleased to have such landmarks dedicated to my memory. Nonetheless, this alphabet was not designed just to please the peasants and slaves who remained part of the quasi-feudal system for another 500 years. If the man was really so concerned with welfare then such a system would have surely been abolished by one of the most powerful monarchs in Korean history. Concurrently, he was a bloody king who rather enjoyed punitive raids on the nomadic tribes north of the Korean peninsula. A man of his time yes, we should not be too quick to judge him by our modern standards. But surely then, we should not lionise either, or disingenuously interpret his actions as those of a 20th Century social reformer before his time.

However the other major concern is that the man is not only lionised, but the purpose this cult of personality serves. It serves the racially nationalistic purpose. Hangeul is a symbol of Korean uniqueness, a language is a key identifier of ethnic particularity. Therefore the pride that is expressed in Hangeul is part of a narrative of national uniqueness and autonomy from the outside world. These narratives are to be found in all ethnic groups, but in South Korea this narrative remains very strong. South Korean nationalism is strong and still prone to bouts of popular, irrational and convulsive mass emotion, just like a cult. This cult is part of that nationalism and therefore it would be best to tone it down a bit.

On a side note, I was talking to someone yesterday about the cult of Sejong when a thought dawned on me. Park Chung-hee the 'greatest' leader South Korea has had since the Korean War could have had a cult like Sejong's. He tried to create a shallow and silly version of Kim Il Sung's cult in the late 1970s without much success. Civil Society and popular perceptions were rather weighted against this increasingly illegitimate authoritarian dictator. Yet what would have happened if he had stepped down when his time was up in 1972 and not become a proper dictator? Well he may have very well be thanked unconditionally by history (rather than extremely conditionally) for his massive part in the creation of South Korea. He may very well have had a cult that was as large and unquestioned as Kim Il Sung's; and the difference is that people would not now be rethinking it and doubting it as many North Koreans are starting to doubt Kim's now.