Chapter 9 The State Leader as Inventor of Food Traditions in the DPRK (original) (raw)

National food traditions play an important role in national identity, and therefore constitute an effective instrument in a state’s cultural politics and the construction of its global image. Since the division of the Korean Peninsula into two independent states in 1948, Korean cuisine has developed in two separate directions. Today, two variations of Korean cuisine not only differ in their official names (hansik in the South, chosŏn ryori in the North) but also transmit different cultural and ideological messages both within and beyond the two Korean states. This chapter examines the construction of the national food narrative in the DPRK and its relationship to North Korean ideology. It shows that the state’s ideological apparatus often mobilizes food topics to address its immediate problems. To do that, it may invent food traditions by connecting new food practices with the country’s leader (his words, images, writings or biography), and thus legitimizing and institutionalizing these new practices into North Korean social reality. At first glance, the main reason for such inventions might appear to be the DPRK’s notorious food shortages, especially in the 1990s. However, a close study of the North Korean national food narrative reveals that there are more diverse reasons. By stressing the idea of improving people’s nutrition and the key role the state leader plays in this process, North Korean national food discourse reinforces the connection between the people and power. The state leader in this respect not only takes on the role of “the father feeding his children” but is also promoted as the (re)creator of national food history and traditions. To prove this argument and to show the actual mechanics of the invention process, various examples of invented food traditions are presented including the one that the author defines as guerrilla cuisine – the contemporary North Korean eating practices which propaganda relates to the time of Kim Il Sung’s anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle. In this way, the invention of new food traditions can be interpreted as an instrument for unifying the North Korean people. These new elements in North Korean food culture and imagery help the regime to construct a new, chuch’e-styled worldview and life patterns that will contribute to the formation of the accepted national identity on a very basic level – that of dietary culture.