Juche - Social Class

Social Class

Unlike the Joseon Dynasty where there was a huge gap between the upper and lower classes, North Korea had adopted a unified social mass, also known as the gathered-together "people". Instead of a strict social hierarchy or a class divided society, North Korea had, in theory, divided the union into three classes-peasant, worker, and the samuwon (intellectuals and professionals) where each sect is just as important as the other. The samuwon class consisted of clerks, small traders, bureaucrats, professors and writers. This was a unique class that was created in order to increase the education and literature of North Korea. Normally Communist nations would value only the farmers or laborers, thus in the USSR intelligentsia was not an independent class of its own, but an insertion between the classes proletariat and bourgeoisie. Language reforms followed revolutions more than once, such as the simplification of Chinese characters under Mao (a consequence of the divergent orthographic choices of Taiwan and the People's Republic of China), or the simplification of the Russian alphabet after the 1917 revolution in Russia and consequent struggle against illiteracy, known in Soviet Russia as Likbez (Likvidaciya Bezgramotnosti, liquidation of illiteracy).

The emphasis on literacy and education stems from the understanding, explained by Lenin, that illiterate workers or peasants can't become subjects of political struggle. It was necessary, as well, to create a class of highly skilled workers, which was impossible without a pool of literate workers to draw from. North Korea, too, believed that promoting the education of the populace was as important as economic growth. These three ideas are cherished, and are symbolized through the symbol or statue of a writing brush across the hammer and sickle. North Korea also adopted a Soviet-style socialism approach. They believed in the rapid industrialization through labor and believed in subjecting nature to human will. By restructuring the social class into a mass of people who are theoretically all equal, the North Korean government claimed it would be able to attain self-reliance or Juche in the upcoming years. This is questionable, as the country suffers massive food shortages annually and is heavily dependent on foreign aid.