탈북민의 구술을 통해 본 북한의 프로파간다 문화: 시각적 프로파간다에 대한 기억과 경험을 중심으로

Abstract

This study analyzes how North Korean propaganda culture is received and interpreted from the people's perspective. Previous studies have described visual propaganda as routinely internalized by the people, but in reality, it is not reliably internalized. Rather, the feeling of contradiction with reality is much stronger, and people feel the meaninglessness of propaganda from the dominant discourse in a continuous cycle of repetition and circulation. In that sense, North Korean propaganda can be explained as a kind of socialist ritual that reproduces the mechanism of the form itself rather than the meaning of the discourse. In particular, the people are expected to learn the emotional skills of expressing agreement and laughing without revealing their internal antipathy and awareness of the contradictions in reality that are contradictory to the official discourse. This shows that North Korea's propaganda culture not only operates as a system for maintaining social order, but is also part of a lifestyle that is involved in people's daily lives and the expression of emotions. This study is limited by the fact that it relies on the experiences of a few North Korean defectors, and it is difficult to reflect the differences in regional, gender, and class differences, socioeconomic changes, and individual life history contexts. However, as an alternative to the existing studies that mostly analyzed the production mechanism of North Korean propaganda and the message itself, this study can be considered as a part of the research on North Korean propaganda and propaganda as an experience and practice.