Charles Armstrong Psyche

Juche, as Charles Armstrong puts it, is the “overarching philosophical principle guiding all areas of life in North Korea”. Meaning autonomy, independence, or self-reliance, the origins of this ideological concept has been a highly debated topic. There are three main schools of thought: the instrumental perspective, which focuses on domestic and international relations as the main drivers, the traditional perspective, which looks at the influence of traditional political culture in Korea, and the individualist perspective, which explores how Juche was the intellectual result of Kim Il Sung. Armstrong falls under the first category of historians, and in Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950 - 1992, argues that not only was Juche

Brian Reynolds Myers in his book, Juche Myth. Myers discredits Armstrong’s argument that Juche is an ideology shaped by external events to assert North Korea’s independence, but instead argues that Juche is but a smokescreen for North Korea’s “real ideology”: paranoid, race-based, ultra nationalism. On the other hand, Armstrong’s stand has also been supported by other historians, Gwang-Oon Kim contends that Juche came to be due to North Korea’s need to retain its independence in the midst of major

Since articles published by North Korea are often fabricated to suit their political needs, they can hardly be taken to be true and accurate and hence, statistics and facts can only be implied from the closest available sources - those who have had access inside the country. Armstrong has drawn on archival sources from North Korea’s present and former communist partners (East Germany, the Soviet Union, Eastern European nations, etc.), the Cold War International History Project, the Woodrow Wilson Center’s North Korea International Documentation Project, and even interviews with Ethiopian officials who worked closely with North Korea. Although there is a lack of North Korean perspective, these evidences used by Armstrong not only provide a multi-faceted view and valuable insight into North Korea’s foreign relations, but also a more accurate representation of what goes on inside the hermit kingdom. For example, in 1955, the Korean Workers’ Party had reported a harvest of 3 million metric tons of grain. However, the Soviet ambassador said that the number was closer to 2.3 million, and even that might have been an exaggeration. This shows how the evidence selected by Armstrong would give the best idea of the actual happenings in North