Ideologically induced biases against and in favor of particular age groups have been a stable part of North Korean culture since the country’s very beginning.

North Korean ageism has vacillated between two opposites: the disparaging of older people as alleged bearers of outdated mentalities while holding up the progressive youth, and the devaluation of the young for lacking the mountains of wisdom and loyalty of the elderly.

These changes have correlated with the overall goals of North Korean propaganda, such as legitimizing the country’s leaders.

AGE IN THE CHOLLIMA ERA

North Korea did not experience the riotous repudiation of the past often associated with the early years of revolutions.

Kim Il Sung did not uproot Korean cultural legacy and condemn it as a remnant of the feudal past, as had happened in the nascent years of Communist Russia or Maoist China. Instead, like Stalin, he de facto incorporated this legacy into his new ideological platform.

Kim Il Sung’s political course, like any revolution, implied the existence of dissenting public voices that had to be written off in the appropriate manner. Any objections to his progressive changes were dismissed as simple old man grumblings.

At the same time, Confucianism-derived filial piety has a special place in the North Korean political sphere. Since North Korea was a society that recognized the tradition of the unquestionable power of elderly people, Kim Il Sung’s young age necessitated additional efforts to legitimize his rule and the destruction of the traditional hierarchy.

Early North Korean mass culture reflected these conflicting demands, combining an emphasized reverence to mature age with the simultaneous devaluation of the older generation.

One the one hand, the new discourse kept intact such cornerstones of traditional morale as concepts of care for in-laws and aged neighbors. In works of fiction and films, the elderly were referred to in polite terms such as roinnim or ryeongamnim and were addressed in respectful language.

On the other hand, the said fictional ryeongamnim were devoid of independent will and thinking.

THE OBEDIENT OLDIES

The majority of older people in early North Korean literature and films unreservedly recognized the authority of the revolutionary youth and rebuffed their own life experiences that did not fit into the new paradigm.

The supposed invigorating effect of the revolution on the old characters often turned them into comic figures.

The 1960s comedy “Young at 60” (60 chongchung) focuses on the adventures of an old peasant who confronts public skepticism and signs up for a marathon. The ostensible theme of the film was resistance against the celebration of hwangap, one’s sixtieth birthday.

Hwangap was deemed a wasteful and unnecessary tradition in the new Democratic People’s Republic of Korea because sixty-year-olds was a supposedly young age now thanks to the care of the government. The new hwangap was to be celebrated only when a person turned ninety-years-old.

In the film, sport serves as a symbol of the protagonist’s new youth. But the senior marathon runner is presented not as a brave individual of strong will and inner independence, but rather as a clownish creature.

He fawns over the progressive youth and is head over heels about Kim Il Sung. He’s met with condescending laughter from even the broadminded part of the community.

THE OBSTINATE OLDIES

Many senior characters in cheollima cinema and literature were presented as infected by “old ideas” (nalgeun sasang). Such works make it clear that the objections of old men against the new state policies are mere expressions of age-derived stubbornness and social inadequacy.

As if to further devalue dissenting views of the elderly characters, their grievances are portrayed as endearing and funny rather than annoying or dangerous.

Typical in this regard were fiction and films about collectivization. A lengthy novel by Cheong Se-bong “New spring in Seokkaeul” (1955-1956) and the film “The son of earth” (1963-1964) portray a progressive family irritated by their elderly relatives who resist the idea of pooling their ox and land with the collectivized property.

In the famous film “Blooming village” (1970), which takes place in an already collectivized village, a backward old man saves his money to buy new pigs for his private household and egoistically rejects donating his saved private timber for the needs of the cooperative farm.

The actor who specialized in the roles of stubborn old peasants was Pak Min, the People’s actor who kept acting until the early 2000s. He was born in 1922 and so was in his forties by the time of the cheollima film era, yet Pak Min never had the chance to play a middle-aged character.

Even in the 1960s and 1970s, he remained typecast: an unkempt old man with a thin beard and evasive smile, a person to be reformed.

KIM IL SUNG: TAMER OF THE OLDIES

To cure an elderly character’s ‘infection with old ideas,’ the younger characters would remind the stubborn oldie about his moral debt before the sun of the nation, Kim Il Sung, who presented this land to the Korean people.

This leads the senior to acquire the necessary “contemporary spirit,” give up their position, and feel ashamed for their past inadequacies.

The way in which the infantilized roinnims and ryeongamnims worship the 33-year-old Kim Il Sung, not dissimilar to how the three wise men worship the newborn Jesus, has far outlived the cheollima era.

Early North Korean mass culture reflected these conflicting demands, combining an emphasized reverence to mature age with the simultaneous devaluation of the older generation

You can see this trend in texts written long after Kim Il Sung’s death. For example, in The Storm Fills the Big Sail (2005) by Hong Seok Jung, depicts interactions between Kim Il Sung and elderly people in 1947.

Pak Yong Su, a senior intellectual, is completely infatuated with Kim Il Sung despite being almost twice his age. Normally a melancholic and skeptical person, after meeting with “the sun of the nation” Yong Su “had not simply become younger but seemed to turn into an excited child” who was overfilled with “exhilaration and holiness that seemed to erupt from some well deep within his chest.”

 Yong Su cherishes every moment he spent with Kim Il Sung, and keeps a little cup in which the Leader once served him rice wine as a precious family treasure.

Among his many poems about the leader is the following:

The sea is wide

But the sky is even wider

But even wider than the sky, 

Is the love of a great person

That envelops thousands of people in one embrace.

Another character, an old peasant who has just learned to read and write, eagerly rushes to Kim Il Sung “like a child who is bragging to his parents about his good marks.”

He scribbles in the leader’s notebook: “Thank you for providing a bright life for us.” Kim Il Sung looks at the old peasant “with the joy of a loving mother who observed the first steps of her child.”

THE DIGNIFIED OLDIES

As Kim Il Sung’s generation grew older, the presentation of seniors in North Korean literature and the arts began to change.

Since the mid-1980s, elderly characters started to gain dignity and social authority. Pak Min finally managed to break out from the Procrustean roles and turned out to be a rather versatile actor with rich facial expressions, warm personality, and humor.

In the film “The first year after the marriage” (1984), Pak Min plays the supporting role of Yun Sam, the senior chairperson of the cooperative farm.

With funny scheming and delicate persuasion, Yun Sam brings the protagonist, a conservative young husband who forces his wife to quit her job in growing seaweed and spend all her time on home chores, to his senses.

He demonstrates the same humor in the film “Three girls in Seolhanreyong.” His less positive character, the senior official Cheong Gyu, sabotages reading of the politically important fiction imposed on him by the young female book distributor Sung Jeong.

The naïve enthusiasm of Sung Jeong constrasts with Cheong Gyu’s “been there done that” attitude (‘Ah, books again! Very good! Another time, ok?’), making the picture very realistic.

Notably, the person who reproaches Cheong Gyu for his anti-reading stance (again by resorting to the authority of Kim Il Sung) is not the progressive youth, but a more politically conscientious colleague of his age.

Though the colleague persuades Cheong Gyu to show more respect to the efforts of the book distributor, the film does not show Cheong Gyu in the mode of Pak Min’s previous characters who would openly reject their anti-social ways and follow the youngsters with childish enthusiasm.

Apparently, North Korean ideologists decided to keep the images of weak and dependent oldies for the earlier historical epoch and not apply them to Kim Il Sung’s generation.

AGE UNDER KIM JONG IL: ABAI-CENTRISM

With Kim Jong Il’s ascendance to power came economic difficulties and social discontent, but the old soldiers of the regime emerged as a buttress behind the new leader. State propaganda subsequently aggrandized the older generation’s social role to enormous proportions.

The older protagonists of films like “The way of dignity”(1996) and “Veteran soldiers” (2003) emerge as strong, uncompromising teammates of the deceased Great Leader who conscientiously transfer their loyalty to his son as his legitimate successor and unconditional follower of his father’s course.

Changes in portrayals of the elderly have correlated with the overall goals of North Korean propaganda

They demonstrate exemplary stoicism and devotion to the Dear Leader and criticize the younger characters for lacking such qualities; the young people meekly accept the criticism.

In the literature of Kim Jong Il’s time, the sheer number of elderly personages — politely referred to as abai — markedly increased.

In the sixth issue of Choseon munhak in 2011, all three of the published short stories are centered on elderly characters: Ri Chong Ryeol’s “Stillness” (an exemplary stationmaster of a provincial train station recollects about his meeting with the Dear Leader), Kim Tae-seong’s “The Victory Day” (Pak, a modest old soldier, has been awarded for capturing an American war criminal during the Korean War but keeps this fact silent), and Yun Min-jong’s “Forest” (a patriot in his seventies spends his life protecting forests).

The issue also includes a poem by Ri Gye Sim, “An old soldier’s warning,” in which an old soldier reminds people about the Korean War and warns about the lurking danger from America. A poem from Choe In Deok, “Meeting,” is about an aged unconverted political prisoner who kept loyal to the Dear Leader and happily repatriated to the North.

AGE UNDER KIM JONG UN: AGEISM-FREE

Due to his young age, Kim Jong Un, like his grandfather, faced the challenge of legitimizing his rule in a gerontocratic society. Some of Kim the Third’s first steps, such as the purge of his uncle Jang Song Thaek, seemed to point to the impending overthrow of the older generation.

Yet this did not happen. So far, North Korean official culture has pushed a surprisingly age-balanced narrative.

Despite the widely promoted slogan “cheonnggyeon kangguk” (strong country of the youth) and the cult of a well-educated city youth, seniors continue to occupy a respectful, though not disproportionally exaggerated, place in North Korean mass media. 

In the TV serial “Long Awaited Father” (2015) — about kindergarten-aged pianist Chang Hyeok — the talent of the boy’s much-loved grandfather, a circus magician (played by the distinguished actor Hang Yong Pal), is a source of pride for Chang Hyeok.

A TV spy serial “Bullet proof wall” (2015), set in post-Liberation Korea, reminds the audience about the work that the older generation did for the country. TV shows (such as “Grandfather stories”) often employ older characters as narrators and educators of the young.

State publishing houses publish the works of writers who belong to all age groups, from the literary novice Kim Cha Gyeong to the octogenarians Ri Chu Chang. The concerts of veteran singers such as Cheong Hye Yeong (“Whistle singer”) are held alongside performances from the Moranbong band.

It seems that North Korea has finally reached intergenerational harmony – at least, in its mass media.

Edited by Oliver Hotham