The Level of Mind Control in North Korea is Unprecedented
Victor Cha is the former Director for Asian Affairs at the National Security Council, where he served as an advisor to the President from 2004-2007. The recipient of two Outstanding Service Commendations during his tenure at the White House, Cha is also the award-winning author of Alignment Despite Antagonismand Beyond the Final Score: The Politics of Sport in Asia. His writing has appeared in Foreign Affairs,International Security, and Political Science Quarterly, among other journals. As an expert on North Korea, he has been interviewed on many national news outlets, including ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, Fox, PBS News,and he has written on the topic for the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Financial Times, the LosAngeles Times, and for USA Today. Cha currently holds the D.S. Song Chair in Government in the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University and is a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, D.C.
Photo Credit: Kaveh Sardari
If you’re trying to understand what this cult of personality is in North Korea, think about George Orwell's 1984. This is a case of a country in which the leadership has eyes everywhere and they try to not only influence how you behave in society but how you think. And you are only allowed to have one sort of faith and that is faith in serving the Kim family leadership. There really is no space for anything else in your mind or in your body than doing these things in service of the leadership, the family and the state.
So it is a form of mind control that really is unprecedented in modern nation-state history. We have not seen anything like this. Mao’s Cultural Revolution was certainly quite ideological but nothing on this order and this sort of absolute control in this small country.
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