Juche

Juche is the state ideology of North Korea and of its ruling Workers' Party of Korea. The word is usually translated as self-reliance or subjecthood. It was developed under Kim Il Sung, the country's founding leader, and expanded by his son Kim Jong Il. Juche began as a Korean adaptation of Marxism-Leninism but gradually replaced it in official documents. It stresses national independence, economic self-sufficiency and military strength, and it places the supreme leader at the center of political life. Many scholars describe it as functioning mainly to justify the rule of the Kim family.

Kim Il Sung first used the term in a 1955 speech that criticized copying foreign models. As the Soviet Union and China split in the late 1950s and 1960s, Juche allowed North Korea to stay independent of both. In a 1967 speech Kim set out its three principles: independence in politics, self-sufficiency in the economy and self-reliance in defense. Juche was written into the 1972 constitution. In 1982 Kim Jong Il published On the Juche Idea, which presented it as a complete philosophy. The theorist Hwang Jang-yop, who helped shape the doctrine, defected to South Korea in 1997. After Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, Kim Jong Il added the Songun, or military first, policy. References to Marxism-Leninism were later dropped from the constitution and party documents.

Songun, or military first politics, became the dominant emphasis under Kim Jong Il from the mid-1990s. Under Kim Jong Un, official language speaks of Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism and the Byungjin line, which combined nuclear weapons development with economic growth. Small Juche study groups have existed abroad, often supported by North Korea.

Human rights organizations and a 2014 United Nations commission of inquiry documented widespread abuses in North Korea, including political prison camps, public executions, forced labor and severe limits on movement and expression. Economists argue that the pursuit of self-sufficiency contributed to the collapse of the economy after Soviet aid ended, and to the famine of the mid-1990s, in which estimates of deaths range widely, from hundreds of thousands to more than two million. Many scholars argue that Juche is less a coherent philosophy than a tool to legitimize a hereditary dictatorship. Marxist critics say it abandoned historical materialism in favor of nationalism and a leader cult.

North Korea has been governed under Juche since the 1970s and remains one of the most closed states in the world. Power has passed through three generations of the Kim family. The state controls almost all economic activity, though informal markets have grown since the 1990s. The country has prioritized its armed forces and developed nuclear weapons, and it is subject to extensive international sanctions.