North Korean Depictions of the Future in Text Publications of the Kim Jong-un Era

North Korea is commonly portrayed as a Stalinist curiosity, a state economically and ideologically frozen in time. External narratives about its future are thus often confined to imagining either prolonged stagnation or hypothesized radical transformation, either through collapse or major reform. However, beyond these outsider perspectives, the North Korean state actively constructs and disseminates its own visions of its future(s) as all states do. The primary question this thesis addresses is what key characteristics are associated with the future in contemporary North Korea. The research is conducted by using qualitative content analysis on a variety of data sets from North Korean publications. The materials consist of domestic non-fiction texts in the Korean language, such as future-oriented news media and political writings, from the period of 2012–2023, the first decade of Kim Jong-un’s rule.
The focus of the research is on what the North Korean state hopes, wants, and expects from its own future, and what qualities it associates with modernity, progress and development. By focusing on the contemporary future visions in North Korea, this research explores North Korea’s ideology, historical evolution, and adaptive strategies in response to contemporary challenges and global political shifts. Additionally, the research also provides a better picture of how these aspirations shape the ideological worldview communicated to its citizens and help to maintain the state’s legitimacy. Finally, this study also analyzes the contemporary usage of “socialism” as part of North Korea’s future-making efforts, highlighting both continuity and changes in the political concept by contrasting the current future projections with the past ‘socialist futures’ from North Korea and other socialist states.
Activities
Presentations
- Presentation on research topic (Research Training Group GRK 2833 “East Asian Futures”, Proposal Workshop, Jun 13–15, 2024) [Poster]
- “Another Tomorrow: Revisiting State Socialist Past Futures and Their Legacy” (Juraj Dobrila University of Pula, Croatia, 10th Doctoral Workshop “Why Socialism Matters? Approaches to Research of the Political Idea and the Historical Period”, Aug 28–31, 2024)