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Jucheism as an Apotheosis of the Family: The Case of the Arirang Festival
Journal of Korean Religions
약어 : JKR
2013, vol.4, no.2, pp. 93-122 (30 pages)
DOI : 10.1353/jkr.2013.0014
UCI : G704-SER000002721.2013.4.2.002
발행기관 : 서강대학교 종교연구소
연구분야 : 인문학 > 종교학
정향진 /Hyang-Jin Jung 1
1서울대학교
초록
In this article, I am concerned with the religious nature of North Korean statehood and the religiosity of the people, as exemplified by North Korea’s hallmark mass gymnastics show, the Arirang Festival. As a ritual occasion of the highest import in Jucheism, the Festival displays the topography of statehood and shapes the mind-heart of the people through the extraordinary bodily discipline of the supposed disciples of Jucheism. By relying on video footage as well as film and other narratives about the mass gymnastics show, this article analyzes the relational structure and normative affects involving the Father (Kim Il Sung) and his faithful embodied in the Festival. By using former performers’ accounts, the research also examines the phenomenological here and now of religiosity experienced by the faithful vis-à-vis the Father in the otherworldly time and place of Jucheism. The main argument is that Jucheism in its affective-relational features is significantly modeled after the familial relational dynamics shared among Koreans. The Arirang Festival illustrates that the creativity and endurance of North Korean statehood lies in large part in its exploitation for its own purposes of the familiar and familial psychodynamics of ordinary North Koreans.
