Actualized Stigma: The historical formation of anti-Americanism in North Korea* | Modern Asian Studies | Cambridge Core

Actualized Stigma: The historical formation of anti-Americanism in North Korea* | Modern Asian Studies | Cambridge Core

Volume 51, Issue 3
May 2017 , pp. 543-576

Actualized Stigma: The historical formation of anti-Americanism in North Korea*
TAEWOO KIM (a1)


DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/S0026749X15000396
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 April 2017


Abstract


During the Open Port period and Japanese colonial period (1876–1945), Koreans generally had a positive image of the United States. This positive view of the United States held by Koreans persisted until after liberation from Japanese colonial rule in 1945. The United States was a ‘liberator’ that saved the Koreans, and was viewed as ‘a cooperator’ with whom Korea was to solve its national task of establishing a new country. However, the concept of ‘American imperialist warmonger’ had begun to be promoted in North Korea from 1948–49. It was a concept advanced by the Soviet Union and the North Korean leadership. The negative image of the United States, which spread throughout North Korea from the early years of the Cold War, was merely a perplexing stigma lacking substantiated grounds. 

However, the experiences of the Korean War actualized the image of the United States as a ‘warmonger’ in the hearts of the North Korean people. Alleged indiscriminate aerial bombings, mass slaughters, sexual assaults, and arson attacks against Korean civilians became the most important reason for the expansion of intense sentiment. 

Anti-Americanism began to be systemized and routinized in every aspect of North Korean life after the Korean War.