Polyphonic Peace: The 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students in Pyongyang Free

Immediately following the end of World War II, the Soviets and the major Western powers began to engage in an ideological war for the support of the world’s youth. Because Western powers had not yet fully registered the outbreak of a new type of war, the first important battle was won by the Soviets, who successfully founded the World Federation of Democratic Youth during the November 1945 World Youth Congress in London with the unwitting support of the American and British leaderships. The Congress itself was thoroughly directed by the Soviets and symbolized a notable Soviet propaganda victory, tarnishing the image of countries such as Great Britain in the name of the world’s youth by denouncing the subsistence of colonialism and racism while linking these phenomena to the recently defeated German fascism (Aldrich 2003, 91). Speeches during the Congress frequently implied that the imperialist practices of Great Britain and the United States represented the new target in the global struggle for peace and liberty. Less than one year later, the International Union of Students (IUS) was founded in Prague, again with Soviet backing. Over the course of the Cold War, these two organizations—the WFDY and the IUS—became the Soviets’ primary tool for coopting youth organizations from around the world for the purpose of channeling Soviet propaganda objectives.

In order to win over foreign youth, the Soviets relied on the promotion of broad values such as peace and democracy, values that seemed nonpartisan on the surface. This strategy further prevented an alienation of these youth, which is why concepts like “communism” and “Marxism-Leninism” were intentionally forced into the background. The goal was to make young people believe that their participation in the WFDY and IUS constituted part of a worldwide movement of like-minded individuals espousing universally valid ideals transcending Cold War ideological divisions. Given the recent world war and the growing nuclear danger, people of various backgrounds and convictions, naturally, shared the ideal of peace. Hardly anyone would oppose peace in an increasingly tense international climate. In this context, the Soviets chose peace as the preeminent banner under which to assemble the world’s progressive youth. As Joël Kotek points out, the Soviet strategy of entraining foreign non-communist youth for the communist cause via broad values goes back to the very beginnings of the USSR:

Though well-intentioned, by supporting peace via Soviet-controlled organizations, foreign youth groups became Soviet propaganda tools. After all, in domestic and foreign propaganda, the USSR portrayed itself as leader of the so-called “peace camp,” the term for the Soviet Union and the newly founded people’s democracies before they became the “socialist camp.” While claiming to be a stalwart defender of peace, Moscow painted a grim, warlike picture of the United States and its allies. Non-communist youth groups’ signing of WFDY and IUS declarations or joint statements, as well as mere participation in events organized through these entities, thus implied an overwhelming international support for Soviet peace politics and a worldwide denunciation of American aggression.

The 3rd World Festival of Youth and Students, hosted by the German Democratic Republic in 1951, constitutes one of the earliest and best Cold War examples of the Soviet cooptation strategy. Coordinated under the aegis of the WFDY, these festivals occurred every few years in different countries and involved the participation of communist and non-communist youth groups from all over the globe, including those from the USSR and the people’s democracies. The Berlin festival, like so many others, offered a grandiose opening ceremony followed by several days of events, including sporting competitions, cultural performances, exhibitions, peace manifestations, and so-called friendship meetings. Almost every event featured an overt political content aimed at demonstrating young people’s fervent longing for peace and progress, with the attendant implication that these desires were being realized through the activities of the peace camp.

The Korean War (1950–53) stood at the center of peace propaganda during the 1951 festival. East German newspapers were filled with accounts of the “heroic” Korean people struggling for national salvation and paid close attention to the movements of the DPRK delegation. One contemporary East German propaganda report recalled North Korea’s participation in the 1951 opening ceremony as follows:

Such accounts suggested not only the righteousness of the North Korean struggle but also young people’s unanimous support for the communist interpretation of the Korean War, which pictured the war as an act of American aggression rather than a planned invasion by the North. Seemingly benign events, too, failed to escape the propaganda machine. Accordingly, a basketball game between the DPRK and England turned into a public display of support for communist peace politics: “Thundering applause filled stands as the English team captain, in the name of his team, in the name of the entire peace-loving English populace, warmly greeted the captain of the Korean student-team. In that moment it became truly clear to everyone that neither the British mercenaries in Korea nor the Anglo-American warmongers acted according to the wishes of the English people with their invasion of Korea” (Neues Deutschland 1951f). From handshakes to basketball games, East German propaganda politicized even the most apolitical of occurrences. Whether they were aware of it or not, whether they supported the communist version of the Korean War narrative or not, festival participants became the objects of East German propaganda.

Besides winning over foreign youth and discrediting major powers such as the United States, the WFDY and its associated activities additionally served the cult of Stalin. Peace had a distinctive meaning in the Soviet Union, one that was much deeper than simply the absence of war. As previously stated, in the early 1950s, the USSR and the people’s democracies were referred to as the “peace camp,” with Stalin at the head. In fact, Stalin was a central component of the “peace camp” concept, not just because he signified its leader, but also because he issued guidance to all the peoples of the world on how to guarantee peace. Even something as trivial as a newspaper interview—in a manner that was similar to Kim Il Sung’s later interviews—could suddenly become the focus of party ideological work. In one such interview, conducted by Pravda in February 1951, when asked whether another world war was inevitable, Stalin replied with an emphatic “No!” and instructed as follows: “Peace will be maintained and solidified if people take the cause of maintaining peace into their own hands and defend it to the utmost” (Neues Deutschland 1951a). This simple instruction was repeated on end in subsequent East German publications (Neues Deutschland 1951b). If peace were to be achieved, according to communist thinking, one needed to study Stalin’s instructions and follow his leadership. Not surprisingly, then, this interview, which could easily fit on half of a newspaper page, became the foundation of the East German youth organization’s political activities, and the 1951 WFYS was to be carried out in its spirit (Neues Deutschland 1951c). According to East German propaganda, “the youth of the world is coming to Berlin to take the cause of peace into their fraternally interlocked hands” (Neues Deutschland 1951d). As a result, foreign youth’s peace manifestations during the festival confirmed the validity of Stalin’s words and played directly into his personality cult. All achievements in the area of peace could in some way find attribution to his genius. Although many festival participants sincerely advocated for peace and did not intend to laud Stalin, within communist propaganda, their love of peace metamorphosed into a tribute to the head of the peace camp.

Under Khrushchev, the concept of peace underwent a depersonalization. To begin with, Khrushchev’s assault on Stalin’s personality cult precluded the former’s ascension to the latter’s throne in the peace camp. Rather than tying peace directly to the leader of the CPSU, Khrushchev forged a closer relationship between peace and Soviet ideology. At the 20th Congress of the CPSU in 1956, Khrushchev forwarded a reinterpretation of the present epoch in which peaceful coexistence between capitalism and socialism stood at the center. Whereas Stalin (1972, 36) had separated the struggle for peace and the struggle for socialism into two, asserting that the peace offensive only served to obviate a global war, Khrushchev attempted to combine both struggles. In Khrushchev’s view, peace was not only desirable but also an objectively necessary component of socialism’s international class struggle against capitalism. The epoch had changed, he claimed in his report to the 20th Congress. Owing to establishment of the people’s democracies in Eastern Europe, as well as the victory of the Chinese communists, socialism’s global power was now said to outweigh that of capitalism. Colonialism, moreover, was dying, only further contributing to the decline of capitalism. Under these circumstances, Khrushchev thought, imperialist attempts to undo socialism would inevitably falter. Though imperialism—that is, capitalism in its most advanced form—would certainly try to commit acts of aggression, socialism was secure and capable of countering imperialism’s colonialist ambitions. Therefore, if socialism peacefully coexisted with capitalism, competing against it in the economic realm, then socialism’s economic power would continuously grow, capitalist countries would fall into inevitable economic crises, and finally socialism would emerge victorious on a worldwide scale. Put simply, socialism safeguarded peace while peace safeguarded the forward march of socialism (Khrushchev 1956, 22–47).

In Khrushchev’s new peace scheme, which continued under Brezhnev, Soviet peace initiatives were seen as a realization of peaceful coexistence and hence also as a realization of the necessary course of history. Marxist-Leninist theory rationalized foreign policy and the realization of that policy confirmed the correctness of the state ideology. Foreign youth’s support of Soviet peace politics, in the same way, validated Soviet ideology and was converted into a domestic propaganda tool. For example, in 1961 the USSR convened a “world youth forum” in Moscow, during which youth representatives from over 100 countries participated. The forum ended with the ratification of an appeal for peace, and socialist countries such as East Germany, which adhered to Soviet ideological leadership, subsequently painted this appeal as global support for the Soviet notion of peaceful coexistence (Neues Deutschland 1961, 5). On the surface, peaceful coexistence seemed like a benign pacifistic concept, something easy to get behind, but inside pro-Soviet regimes, peaceful coexistence contained a deeper theoretical meaning inseparably linked to the Marxist-Leninist understanding of history. This is why the Soviets and their allies incessantly stressed that peaceful coexistence is a form of class struggle. In the words of a Pravda article that was reprinted in its East German counterpart, “Peaceful coexistence is a dialectical process in which the most acute class struggle between socialism and capitalism organically joins with cooperation between the states of both opposing systems in the interest of maintaining peace” (Neues Deutschland 1962, 6). Class struggle continued, particularly in the shape of an ideological class struggle, as Khrushchev himself accentuated during the 20th Congress:

Besides, communists traditionally detested what they called “pacifism,” a notion of peace devoid of class perspective and thus a bourgeois phenomenon serving the “encouragement of the class enemy” (Neues Deutschland 1958, 4).

Despite North Korea’s explicit rejection of peaceful coexistence in the 1960s and beyond, it remained steadfast in its belief that the concept of peace must be comprehended within the framework of the state ideology. While North Korea’s interpretation of peace may have diverged from that of the Soviets, its utilization of the concept was closely aligned with Soviet practices. Indeed, North Korea’s polyphonic approach bears resemblance to the strategies employed during the Stalin era, as within North Korea, the state ideology, notably chuch’e sasang, was not an externally existing ideology but rather constituted the personal domain of the leader.

In the Soviet Union, the unity of theory and foreign policy deteriorated over the course of the 1980s. Soviet ideological changes under Gorbachev expelled theory from foreign policy questions and from the concept of peace. By 1989, the quest for peace was no longer seen as a type of class struggle (Evans 1993, 200). International relations, according to Gorbachev’s reformist thinking, did not manifest socialism’s class struggle against capitalism and therefore needed to undergo a “de-ideologization.” What was once considered pacifist nonsense had now become orthodoxy.

Given the USSR’s historical ties to the World Federation of Democratic Youth, Soviet reform trends had a tremendous impact on the festival movement. Forces within the WFDY began to resist rallying cries condemning imperialism, Marxism-Leninism’s traditional class archenemy. As stated by Vladimir Aksenov, chairman of the USSR’s Youth Organization Committee (KMO), in February 1989, “one cannot blame imperialism for empty shelves” (SAPMO-BArch 1, 316). According to his analysis, anti-imperialism was no longer a viable or realistic platform, whether in relation to the Soviet domestic situation or the global state of affairs. Although neither the East German Free German Youth FDJ, North Korea, nor even the first secretary of the Komsomol shared this view, it was indeed representative of a larger trend (SAPMO-BArch 1, 317). At the 4th Plenum of the International Preparatory Committee (IPC) for the WFYS, held in Pyongyang from March 30 until April 3, the head of the IUS mirrored the KMO chairman’s views concerning the need to radically transform the WFDY and the festival movement in accordance with the “changed world” (SAPMO-BArch 2, 6–7). Others called for the “overcoming of the irritating anti-imperialist character of the festival movement” and “the de-ideologization of the movement” (SAPMO-BArch 2, 7). The Yugoslavian representative further contended that the festival “does not reflect the real interests of the youth” (SAPMO-BArch 2, 7). Next to Western communists, social democrats and “bourgeois” youth groups particularly desired an end to the anti-imperialist sloganeering and hoped to tie the festival to the United Nations and the values it represents. This proactive stance of Western social democrats already became apparent in the preparations for the 1985 Moscow WFYS. As a result, in order to not lose the backing of these groups, the Soviets allowed for a liberalization of the festival process, granting these groups more decision-making authority (SAPMO-BArch 3, 1–2). Nevertheless, many Western youth organizations still felt unsatisfied. Socialist states’ youth leagues dominated the WFYS and pushed their agenda dictatorially, not permitting true discussion and consensus based on the equality of all groups (SAPMO-BArch 4, 1). As many non-communist groups hoped for a complete democratization of the festival, the Soviets, much to the distress of the East Germans, tended to cave to their wishes, in an effort to retain their support (SAPMO-BArch 5, 1–3). Although the Pyongyang festival was still largely organized on the basis of the traditional authoritarian and Leninist methods of the socialist states, calls for democratization, modernization, and de-ideologization grew increasingly louder.

Against this background, East Germany and North Korea, countries whose ideological paths had diverged for decades, became unlikely allies. Both stood unwilling to abandon the propaganda benefits of a polyphonic strategy that connected peace with theory. Looking over archival documents, it becomes clear that the East Germans were beyond eager to assist the North Koreans, not just because of the close relations between Erich Honecker and Kim Il Sung, but also because they did not want control of the festival to fall into the hands of Western youth groups. In the East German view, the youth organizations of socialist states possessed an “objective leadership role” by virtue of socialist states’ vanguard position in the international class struggle. Fraternal youth organizations’ increasing “passivity” in the WFDY, which was in no small part due to the aloof stance of the Soviets and Gorbachev’s rejection of Soviet ideological leadership, unsurprisingly aroused East German annoyance (SAPMO-BArch 6, 30–31). North Korea’s old-fashioned ideological stance, particularly its fervent belief in an international class struggle and in the objective leadership position of socialist countries, made Pyongyang an attractive choice of venue. The North Korean hosts, so the East Germans thought, would not allow the festival to turn into a cacophonic youth assembly in which everyone freely expressed their discordant opinions about peace. For North Korea, this East German attitude was a godsend. Due to democratization trends within the WFDY and the DPRK’s limited influence in the global youth movement, it would have proved extremely difficult to either obtain hosting rights or successfully organize the festival without substantial aid from a well-connected and internationally respected socialist country.

The selection of Pyongyang as the next host city for the WFYS following the 1985 Moscow festival was not a given. Over the course of 1985, North Korean officials probed for support among the various socialist countries. Finally, on August 4, at a meeting of the first secretaries of fraternal youth organizations, North Korea openly voiced its desire to host the festival, albeit unofficially (SAPMO-BArch 7, 1). This was followed by a less than enthusiastic response in the WFDY, especially among Western organizations (SAPMO-BArch 7, 2). Due to this hostility, the Soviets initially advised the North Koreans to delay an official proposal in order to prevent “a discussion in the international youth movement” (SAPMO-BArch 7, 1). By doing so, consensus could gradually be generated through bilateral discussions with various organizations. When an East German youth delegation visited the DPRK in October and November, Kim Il Sung seized the opportunity to request the FDJ’s political support and counsel. In his talk with Eberhard Aurich, first secretary of the FDJ, Kim kindly reminded Aurich of his close relationship with Honecker and the DPRK’s approval of recent Soviet peace initiatives. Aurich informed Kim that his delegation has had close consultations with DPRK representatives concerning the festival location of Pyongyang and that the FDJ fully endorsed the North Korean proposal. He went even further by promising Kim the FDJ’s “active” participation during “international consultations” with the aim of securing Pyongyang as the festival location before the end of 1986.

Kim Il Sung responded with a reiteration of his support for Soviet peace politics followed by a direct petition for East German help regarding the participation of “youth organizations from capitalist countries,” with which the DPRK had limited contacts and influence (SAPMO-BArch 8, 1–5). After much effort to gain the approval of youth groups from around the world, on July 18, 1986, North Korea’s youth organization, the League of Socialist Working Youth of Korea (LSWYK), issued its official proposal to host the next festival (SAPMO-BArch 9). Much to the delight of the North Koreans, East Germany’s FDJ was the first organization to endorse the proposal (SAPMO-BArch 10, 4). The Soviets, on the other hand, displayed apathy and eschewed a direct endorsement, resulting in bewilderment among fraternal organizations, which adhered to the traditional bloc strategy within the WFDY. According to a critical East German internal analysis, the Soviet attitude stemmed from a desire to win over social democrats—many of whom disapproved of North Korea—and avoid their alienation (SAPMO-BArch 5). This was but a preview of the abandonment of the old class line in international affairs that resulted from Soviet reform trends. Although the festival location became formally settled at the 1st IPC meeting for the 13th WFYS on February 8, 1987, in large part thanks to continuous East German support, more challenges lay ahead (Neues Deutschland 1987, 1).

In the planning for the festival, North Korea’s treatment of religious groups became a special area of concern. In an August 1986 meeting between an FDJ representative and Ch’oe Ryong-hae, who had just become chairman of the LSWYK, Ch’oe inquired about how to achieve “democratic, equal participation of various political movements at the World Festival, the unhindered exchange of information and opinions, including with the population, and the required political guarantees” (SAPMO-BArch 11, 2). He noted that Christian youth organizations’ worries regarding freedom of religion in the DPRK proved a particularly difficult challenge, given the realities inside the country (SAPMO-BArch 11, 2). Indeed, around that time, various Western youth organizations voiced their objections to the religious situation in the DPRK or demanded that their own participation hinged on the breadth of the festival and the inclusion of religious groups (SAPMO-BArch 12; SAPMO-BArch 13). In an internal analysis, the East Germans also highlighted North Korea’s restrictions on religion and failure to mobilize religion in favor of its politics (SAPMO-BArch 14, 1).

The GDR held much experience in dealing with religion. Starting in the early 1980s, Honecker appropriated Martin Luther for his peace politics, declaring the 16th-century reformer a proponent of peace and an essential component of Germany’s progressive national heritage (SAPMO-BArch 17). Honecker even became chairman of the GDR’s Martin-Luther-Committee. This interpretation of Luther was intended to signal to foreign Christians that East German politics defended religious freedom and were inherently compatible with Christian values. To support one was to support the other.

Perhaps learning from the East Germans, in the 1980s, especially after 1985, North Korea increasingly reached out to religious groups. On March 4, 1986, for example, its Buddhist and Christian Federations—for all intents and purposes front organizations—issued a joint appeal to the world asking for support of the DPRK’s peace policy (SAPMO-BArch 14, 3). In September, prominent Christian figures from both halves of the Korean peninsula assembled in Switzerland to discuss commonalities and kindle a relationship (Park 2019, 96). The year 1988 brought the establishment of two new Christian churches in Pyongyang and another North-South meeting of Christians in Switzerland (Ryu 2006, 666; Park 2019, 97). That same year, the National Council of Churches in Korea (NCCK), a South Korea–based association of mostly Protestant Korean churches, issued a declaration calling for peace and reunification. The declaration drew on scripture to illustrate the urgency of peace on the Korean peninsula, contending, among other things, “that all Christians have now been called to work as apostles of peace (Colossians 3:15); that we are commanded by God to overcome today’s reality of confrontation between our divided people—who share the same blood but who are separated into south and north; and that our mission task is to work for the realization of unification and peace (Matthew 5:23–24)” (Kang 1997, 171). Such statements reflected larger theological trends in the South Korea of the 1980s, where so-called “unification theology” (t’ongil shinhak), a politically left-leaning theological rationalization of peace and unification, rejected the old anti-communist alliance between Christians and the state and mobilized scripture to criticize social and political evils (Park 2014, 73–83).

For North Korea, the rise of unification theology and its anti-statist attitude presented a timely opportunity. In the past, cooperation with South Korean Christians was difficult given their anti-communist inclinations. Christians espousing unification theology, quite oppositely, showed themselves open to the North Korean regime and felt no qualms visiting with North Korean officials, Reverend Moon Ik-hwan’s famous meeting with Kim Il Sung in 1989 being a case in point. In a manner similar to East Germany’s treatment of Luther, North Korea coopted these Christians’ advocacy for peace and reunification to demonstrate, in its propaganda, support for its peace and reunification program among the South Korean masses, the correctness of its peace politics, and the presence of religious freedom in the DPRK. Thus, North Korea reported about the above NCCK declaration in Nodong Sinmun, but instead of doing so directly by publishing the actual declaration, the regime used its state-sponsored Christian federation to issue a discussion of the alleged contents found in the declaration. Naturally, this discussion stressed the declaration’s call for peace and reunification and the dangers of the American military presence on the peninsula. There was zero talk of scripture, God, or Christian doctrine (Nodong Sinmun 1988a, 5). Not surprisingly, the declaration’s denunciation of both sides’ ideological systems as idol worship featured no mention as well, since North Korea did believe its system was correct. In this way, North Korea’s Christian federation served both as a conduit for the recruitment of outside Christians and as an ideological filter to prevent open circulation of Christian dogma. North Korea received the propaganda support of South Korean Christians and portrayed itself as a religiously tolerant society but obviated the negative ideological consequences that would in normal cases pursue such a promotion of Christianity.

Yet the sheer number of foreign visitors expected to attend the festival, the thousands of ideologically discordant voices who would roam the streets of Pyongyang, proved even more challenging a task than the cooptation of Christians. As early as September 1986, North Korea sent a delegation of specialists to the GDR to study the FDJ’s experiences in hosting international festivals (SAPMO-BArch 15, 14). During their stay, the FDJ’s approach to educating their youth into worldly individuals while avoiding the negative effects of Western ideology, as well as the FDJ’s role in the GDR’s foreign policy, particularly aroused North Korean curiosity (SAPMO-BArch 10, 5). Indeed, the East Germans noticed a more relaxed North Korean attitude toward “fashion and free-time interests of youth,” prompting concerns about ideological control. According to the North Korean delegation, “everyone can select clothing and hairstyle as one pleases” and “the youth’s interest in modern music was accepted.” As a result, the North Korean delegation asked about ways to ensure the proper ideological content of “imported music” (SAPMO-BArch 10, 7). This depiction of the domestic situation inside the DPRK does correspond with the evaluation of a Stasi informant located in North Korea, who reported the broadcasting of Soviet films and the publishing of Western books (BStU 1, 8–9). North Korea’s relative openness compares well with bloc-wide trends at the time, particularly in East Germany, where Western cultural products such as music, to the distress of GDR authorities, captivated young people (Brauer 2012).

To counter this trend without sealing off one’s people from the outside, the GDR paid close attention to the upbringing of the new generation. The central aim of the party’s youth politics was to link this new generation with the communist leadership so that they would grow into spiritually healthy adults who continued the revolution without the loss of faith in the communist cause. As defined by East German orthodoxy, “the main concern of youth politics is the Communist education of the youth, the consolidation of the revolutionary unity of generations” (Böhme et al. 1989, 460–461). A rift between youth and leadership endangered the revolution, which is why youth politics occupied an omnipresent position in the lives of East Germans and was realized through special youth education courses, demonstrations, international friendship gatherings, and youth brigades assisting in construction and harvest. In conversations with the East Germans, the aforementioned North Korean delegation expressed precisely this concern, “the unity of generations,” as the main content of their own youth politics (SAPMO-BArch 10, 7). Although it is unlikely that the North Koreans concurred with all the East German experiences, it seems probable that these experiences at least provided some form of inspiration.

North Korea intended to use the 1989 festival to help unite its generations and coopt foreign youth for maximum propaganda value. The concept of peace became a crucial tool to achieve these goals. Like the East Germans, North Korea approached peace from the perspective of an objective international class struggle, hoping to use peace in the traditional, communist-controlled manner of the WFDY. That is, peace possessed two meanings, a benign meaning to entrain outsiders and a theoretical meaning to promote the state ideology.

Kim Jong Il’s work “The Present Epoch and the Task of Young People” illustrates the duality of peace in North Korea. Supposedly held in October 1988, but not actually published until May 1989, the speech was written in the context of the 13th WFYS and, as supposed chuch’e-architect Hwang Chang-yŏp informed an SED (Socialist Unity Party of Germany) delegation, served as the fundamental guideline for youth activities and ideological education (SAPMO-BArch 16, 4–5). Kim Jong Il, or whoever the true author may be, framed the entire festival and the values for which it stood, especially peace, in terms of chuch’e sasang, North Korea’s ideology of state. To begin with, Kim connected the attainment of worldwide peace with the “demands of the epoch,” an epoch that also demanded the realization of “autonomy” (chajusŏng). Because imperialism, the class enemy, threatened autonomy with war, a struggle for peace meant a struggle against imperialism. In other words, the struggle for peace formed part of a lawful historical process and was coterminous with the struggle for autonomy that represented the driving force of North Korea’s conception of historical materialism, since autonomy was said to realize itself more and more completely the more progressive (i.e., socialist) a society became (Kim Jong Il 1989, 4). The speech hence also stressed the dangers of imperialist culture, which sought to poison the minds of young people and thereby hamper the fight for autonomy.

While Kim Jong Il accepted the official WFDY position concerning freedom of thought and religion, he clearly excepted bourgeois-imperialist thought (Kim Jong Il 1989, 4–5). As suggested by the speech’s conclusion, the foreign delegations to the WFYS advocated the same values as North Koreans. Solidarity with these “progressive youth and students” therefore meant a forward movement of history in accordance with North Korea’s state ideology (Kim Jong Il 1989, 12). No explanation was given as to the origins of peace and other progressive values held by foreign youth, except that they arose from the requirements of the current epoch as laid out by chuch’e sasang. In this sense, even though foreign youth did not necessarily know chuch’e sasang, their advocacy confirmed the correctness of the ideology and thereby polished the personality cults of father and son. The possibility that these values could originate and flourish in bourgeois society, irrespective of socialism, was implicitly rejected, as was their independent or alternate interpretation. North Korea’s leadership showed no desire to explore the actual ideas of non-communist youth and their understanding of peace. The concept of peace merely functioned as a method of cooptation. Mentions of foreign youth in North Korean publications occurred in the broadest possible strokes, such as “world’s youth” or “progressive youth.” Specific political tags that represented Western non-communist, yet ideologically coherent, forces, such as social democrats, were usually effaced. A recognition of social democrats’ existence as an independent, legitimate ideological entity did not occur. No one was supposed to think that progressive values, many of which North Korea shared with social democrats, could be safeguarded without socialism and the objective laws it represents.

Not only did Kim Jong Il appropriate the festival for North Korea’s ideology, but the festival additionally solidified his succession. Since his official anointment at the 6th Congress of the WPK in 1980, Kim Jong Il was closely associated with youth education and was said to “personally lead” the LSWYK (SAPMO-BArch 18, 3). Both North Korea’s youth and Kim Jong Il were viewed as the successors to the revolution, making it necessary to unify the two through a bond of loyalty on the part of the youth (SAPMO-BArch 10, 7). Already in the present they should learn to follow Kim Jong Il’s guidance. North Korea intentionally tied the festival to his figure, claiming it was his “wise leadership” under which the festival was organized (Pak 1989, 86–87). Because of this association, as well as his authorship concerning matters of the world’s youth, the festival and its representative values buttressed the legitimacy of succession. They proved the universality of North Korean ideology and Kim Jong Il’s theoretical aptitude as a communist leader, since theory was confirmed through the practical execution of the festival and foreign support for anti-imperialism, peace, and so on.

Kim Jong Il’s speech and festival preparations additionally served to develop a youth politics that taught North Koreans how to interpret the festival and its attendant values. The regime spared no efforts in ensuring that its young people correctly grasped the significance of the festival. November 1988 marked the beginning of a series of national youth festivals that functioned as a testing ground for the WFYS. At the same time, youth received intensive ideological training, to the point that starting in January 1989, schools no longer operated regularly, as students were funneled into festival rehearsals and special education courses (SAPMO-BArch 16, 5–7). Indeed, after a conversation with Hwang Chang-yŏp in June 1989, the East Germans realized that the festival was not simply a propaganda tool vis-à-vis the South but also “conceptual” in terms of “politico-ideological work” (SAPMO-BArch 16, 4). The primary focus of educational measures was to instill loyalty to Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, emphasize their ideological achievements, and foster a spirit of “our nation first” (Nodong Sinmun 1988b, 4). North Korean youth were to view the festival and its values through a national lens.

In encounters with foreign youth, however, North Korea frequently toned down its chuch’e rhetoric. Kim Jong Il’s speech was intended largely for domestic consumption and study by sympathizers of North Korean ideology, such as foreign chuch’e groups. More outside-oriented and inclusive activities, however, mostly elided direct discussion of chuch’e sasang or Kim Il Sung’s leadership. Such was the case in North Korea’s official proposal to host the festival, which came in the form of an “appeal” formulated at a large rally about peace and de-nuclearization. Its main thrust was against the threat of nuclear war. The appeal explained the fervor of North Korean youth to achieve the global goal of peace, as seen on hand of the DPRK’s call for a nuclear-free peninsula. North Korea’s youth were portrayed as essentially identical to members of the WFDY, all believing in “peace, democracy, national independence and social progress” (Nodong Sinmun 1986a, 1). There was zero talk about chuch’e sasang, Kim Il Sung, or even chajusŏng. During the actual rally that issued the North Korean appeal, however, there was no shortage of adulation for Kim Il Sung (Nodong Sinmun 1986b, 1, 4). This polyphony was an intentional strategy. By eliding theoretical conceptualizations pertaining to chuch’e sasang, it became easier to entrain foreign youth who disapproved of North Korean ideology. An erasure of ideology, ironically, enabled easier appropriation of foreign youth for the ideology.

Activities during the festival proceedings similarly revolved around broad themes. For instance, the political platform of the festival, ratified at the 2nd IPC in May 1988, consisted of “struggle for peace and disarmament, anti-imperialist solidarity with all national liberation movements, struggle against all forms of racism and racial discrimination, problems of socioeconomic development, demanding rights for youth and students, international and regional security, questions of economic security and creation of a new international economic order, environment, and other important questions that concern the world’s youth” (SAPMO-BArch 19, 11). This platform, which did not make any mention of Marxism-Leninism or chuch’e sasang, was realized through a variety of seminars and solidarity meetings over the course of the festival. Overall, the East Germans positively evaluated North Korea’s execution of the festival. They praised the fact that North Korea mainly emphasized overall festival themes. “Monumental images of Kim Il Sung,” according the East Germans, “were strongly pushed into the background and, for the most part, covered by festival decoration” (SAPMO-BArch 20, 4). Furthermore, the first secretary of the Komsomol even praised the North Koreans in regard to their “tolerance and flexibility,” stating that the festival exceeded expectations (SAPMO-BArch 21, 39).

North Korea’s suppression of theory was influenced by longstanding WFDY practices. The East Germans, too, intentionally tried to avoid talking too ideologically, too Marxist-Leninist in encounters with youth from abroad. As they themselves admitted in their evaluation of a 1987 seminar about peace, held in East Berlin and attended by various youth groups, including the LSWYK, cooperation should not be based on “fundamental questions of ideology” (SAPMO-BArch 22, 11–13, 16). Rather, broad ideas such as peace were to generate synergy with ideologically dissimilar groups. Like North Korea, the GDR then used these joint peace manifestations to reinforce its own state ideology, blaming imperialism for war and lack of social progress. To ensure this goal was met and avoid image-damaging digressions, youth gatherings usually did not involve open and free debate but employed a sharing of prepared speeches in the form of a plenum. Seminars conducted during the 1989 Pyongyang festival, covering topics such as de-nuclearization, drew on the same strategy. The festival even featured an “Anti-Imperialist Tribunal,” a mock trial of sorts, condemning the various crimes committed by US imperialism. East German newspaper articles were sure to highlight this tribunal and other joint condemnations of American foreign and domestic policy (Neues Deutschland 1989, 4). And while the East Germans, unlike North Korea, showed themselves willing to recognize political groupings such as social democrats, the end result was still an illusion, as if every attendee shared common ideals and preferred the socialist system over an inhumane capitalism.

Suffice it to say, by 1989, Western youth generally found the festival format tedious, despite contrary claims in East German and North Korean publications. As several WFDY members complained in 1989, there was “very little genuine debate” and the accepted platform “could mean anything to anybody” (SAPMO-BArch 23, 1). Times were changing, and the 1989 festival turned out to be the final communist push—with North Korea and East Germany at the helm—to maintain control of a globally coordinated youth movement.

In retrospect, the 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students signaled the end of an era. Shortly after its conclusion, in the fall of 1989, the SED politburo ousted Erich Honecker and subsequently brought about the collapse of the Berlin Wall. Indeed, the unexpectedness of the GDR’s disintegration is testament to the frequent disconnect between communist ideology and reality. Honecker’s faith in an objective international class struggle and refusal to relinquish Marxist-Leninist claims to truth, though promoted via East German party and state channels, failed to correspond with the thoughts of the population at large, regardless of how many times propaganda uttered the slogan “party and people united through deep trust” (Neues Deutschland 1986, 2).

North Korea did not collapse, however. While there are multiple factors that contributed to North Korea’s enduring stability, the influence of youth politics and ideological path cannot be underestimated. Whereas the GDR struggled with the infiltration of Western ideas, culture, music, and so on, North Korea expertly filtered out the unwanted while coopting the more benign, feigning openness to the world. Honecker naturally wished the same, but the proximity to and the vibrant exchange with West Germany—vibrant relative to the DPRK-ROK relationship—hampered insulation. Many an East German youth was acutely aware of alternate universalities and the emptiness of state slogans. In the East Germany of the 1980s, the bond between communist leadership and the youth, a bond North Korea tried so hard to solidify, was decaying. Decades of adherence to Soviet ideological leadership only further complicated the situation. Conservatives such as Honecker detested the recent changes in Soviet ideology yet at the same time had a track record of vowing subservience to Soviet ideology. East Germany’s rejection of Gorbachev’s domestic reforms, as symbolized by the banning of the Soviet magazine Sputnik, broke with a longstanding tradition of submission to the USSR’s ideological authority and naturally incensed East German youth, leading to the membership resignations of numerous FDJ members who saw in Gorbachev a youthful hope for a different life (Mählert and Stephan 1996, 245–252). All this undermined the East German leadership’s claim to universality and hence the very rationalization of communist leadership. Truth no longer seemed as absolute as in previous decades. Because North Korea had declared ideological independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1960s and in no way depended on the Soviet Union’s ideological leadership role, a rejection of Soviet reforms was an easy feat. No one could assert that said rejection was opportunistic as ultimate ideological authority rested with Kim Il Sung. In the East German case, however, ideology and its universalistic power was much less personified in the figure of the party head, making it difficult for any SED leader to authoritatively contest Soviet claims.

These different realities notwithstanding, the youth politics of both regimes championed an identical goal: the unity of generations. “The youth continues the revolutionary work of its mothers and fathers,” East Germany’s party newspaper stated in 1984 (Neues Deutschland 1984, 7). Only the new generation, firmly tied to the communist leadership and obedient to its instructions, could carry the revolution forward by building socialism and communism. This meant that young people needed to understand their historical mission—they had to become “class conscious fighters for social progress” and “steadfast defenders of socialism and communism” (Böhme et al. 1989, 461). Since the youth of the 1980s had grown up with socialism and, in the eyes of each regime, were prone to take the socialist system for granted, the task of revolutionary education became more pressing than ever. Both East Germany and North Korea believed it was necessary for the young generation to grasp “the superiority of socialist society” in order to steer young people away from the temptations of capitalism (Kim Jong Il 1989, 6).

Given the common aims of East German and North Korean youth politics, which originated from a shared Marxist-Leninist tradition, the North Koreans undoubtedly held critical opinions of GDR and other fraternal states’ policies, in spite of their eagerness to learn from the GDR. In front of his East German counterparts, one DPRK official thus stated, “We observe that youth education in many socialist countries exhibits great shortcomings, that young people look to the West” (SAPMO-BArch 24, 1). The North Koreans especially lambasted Chinese policies, even in front of the East Germans, arguing that “a generation was lost for the revolution.” This particular criticism referred to the power shift following Mao’s death and the end of the Cultural Revolution, which, from North Korea’s perspective, resulted in a generational break between leadership and youth “because the question of successor was not clear in advance” (SAPMO-BArch 10, 7). China’s former Red Guards, once fervently loyal to Mao, now faced a new Chinese leadership that declared some of the late chairman’s policies, notably the Cultural Revolution, as incorrect and in violation of Marxism-Leninism (Kluver 1996, 51–55). Revolutionary continuity was lost and the youth of the Mao era felt disenchantment and suspicion toward the communist leadership (Xu 1995, 546–47).

While China’s leaders still believed in the cause of socialism due to their direct experiences in fighting for the establishment of the socialist system, Kim Il Sung worried that the leadership generation following the present one would share no such faith. To help prevent this and attenuate the relations between future Chinese and American leaders, in 1984 Kim suggested to Honecker an active effort to tie China closer to the socialist countries and begin a process of rapprochement (BStU 2). Honecker concurred and together they successfully encouraged China’s participation at the 1989 WFYS, after a prolonged Chinese absence from WFDY activities caused by the Sino-Soviet rift. As North Korean criticisms reveal, the DPRK’s decision to formulate a potent youth education strategy and link Kim Jong Il, the successor, to the new generation was closely related to worldwide socialist developments. In this light, during Margot Honecker’s 1988 visit to North Korea, Ch’oe T’ae-bok, who served in various high-ranking positions in the Cold War and post–Cold War periods, opined that recent Soviet trends, especially the negative portrayal of former leaders, were “harmful to youth education” (SAPMO-BArch 25, 90). Pyongyang was clearly aware of the ideological problems faced by other socialist countries well before their actual collapse. Though the disintegration of the socialist world solidified their judgments, North Korea had already drawn its main ideological lessons during the 1980s, working hard to achieve a seamless succession.

This work was supported by the Laboratory Program for Korean Studies through the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and Korean Studies Promotion Service of the Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2019-LAB-1250001).

Published online: May 6, 2024