An interesting quote from the Daily NK:
Until the late 1960s Das Capital, the selected works of Engels and books and publications related to the dialectical materialism and metaphysics were set on my father’s bookshelf.
However, in 1968 or 1969 the authorities took away every book claiming, “Let’s establish Juche.” Since 1970, there was no house where books related to Marx and Engels remained. The only books with regard to an ideology were the analects and selected writings of Kim Il Sung.
The generations that learned Marxism are those who took lectures in universities from 1950 to early 1960s. Since 1967, there have been no lectures on Marxism and no professors who used the publications of Marx.
Since 1970, theories of philosophy or even dialectical materialism have been fabricated as Kim Il Sung’s analects, and theses of Marx and Engels have been revealed as Kim Il Sung’s ones, placing at the forefront the words, “According to the Supreme Leader, Kim Il Sung.”
Finally, later Kim Jong Il even got rid of such things. He made people study only the Juche Ideology as he took away the dialectic. Even the issue on productive forces and their relation to the means of production in the Marxist theory were dealt with in the Juche Ideology. They didn’t teach cadres the dialectical materialism in the Communist College.
The Party omitted the line, “the Chosun Workers’ Party struggles to practice Marxism-Leninism,” replacing it with “the Kim Il Sung Ideology,” at the 6th Party Convention in October, 1980.
Read the full article here:
North Korean Intellectuals Oppressed and Watched
Daily NK
Kim Seo Yeol
10/22/2008
