Making a Monster: Communism and Propagandized Misinformation

Communist propaganda in North Korea. Photo by Mark Fahey.

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea—otherwise known as North Korea—is a state ostensibly defined by rampant authoritarianism, sweeping poverty, and cult-like leadership under a psychopathic dynasty of presidents that began in the 1950s with the advent of the Korean War. While some aspects of this totalitarian characterization are true, Western powers have orchestrated a hyperbolic media campaign against North Korea and other “left-leaning” world powers designed to demonize leftist ideologies as a whole.

Modern-day North Korea was founded on an offshoot of Marxism-Leninism called Juche, or “self-reliance” in Korean. Kim Il-sung, North Korea’s first leader and a member of Soviet forces who led the Korean insurgence, established Juche, which was distinguished by its ultra-nationalism and isolationism despite calling for international cooperation and even revolution, to unite North and South Korea with the Eastern Bloc during the Cold War. Juche enabled the country to rapidly industrialize under the blanket ideology of Stalinism. As the country began fulfilling its principle of self-reliance, it increasingly withdrew from international affairs, especially along the polarity of the Sino-Soviet split. This history, however, still fails to explain how North Korea went from a small country guided by a fringe ideology to a household name of warmongering and dictatorship. 

One can parallel the rise of North Korea as a global communist villain with that of China—a nation which has become increasingly relevant in recent years as unfavorable views of the country have reached historic highs. By the middle of the 20th century, both North Korea and China were self-sustained states working on creating solid industrial foundations. Following the Chinese Civil War, China, under Mao Zedong, was ripe for economic development, which was implemented through the employment of a new initiative, the Great Leap Forward. Zedong’s agricultural collectivization efforts, centered around peasant labor rather than that of the working class, could have been even more successful than those of Stalin. However, the agricultural collectivization efforts ultimately failed due to individual pushback and the self-enforcing nature of the policy, resulting in widespread famine. The Chinese Cultural Revolution further damned China in the realm of international affairs, as Zedong continued to purge unwanted members of society including landlords, remaining nationalists, and non-conducive CCP members in retaliation against anti-collectivization and factionalism within the country. 

North Korea’s comparable political evolution was uncanny: Kim Il-sung consolidated “communist” rule among a new country of wavering economic stability by purging dissenters and establishing prison camps for posterity. Juche bred a sort of monarchy in North Korea that eliminated all semblances of communist sentiment, as was the case in Stalin’s USSR. China began as a communist state in the early years following World War II, but rapidly devolved into an economic and social disaster because of internal struggles. The nation would soon become state capitalist under Deng Xiaoping’s Great Leap Outward, which prioritized modernization and reintegration of the Chinese economy into the global sphere. China’s capitalism is further evidenced by its movement toward private investment and privatization, pushing its GDP growth faster than other economic superpowers such as the United States. While North Korea has a much more constricted economy as a result of its overwhelming isolationism, it is still a significant player in the world economy, profiting off of its exports of products such as watch movements, fake hair, and metals. Both China and North Korea substantively engage in capitalism, though China is more frequently demonized because of the importance of its exports and imports to and from the West.  

Despite the fact that North Korea and China are not truly communist states and only maintain flimsy facades of communism for the sake of dismissing dictatorship and human rights abuses, Western countries nevertheless associate leftist ideologies with all of the worst aspects of these countries. These facades may internally benefit these falsely communist countries by garnering their citizens’ support for their causes in the forms of nationalism and military force, yet mean nothing in the global order. It is extremely difficult to find any major Western institution that espouses North Korean or Chinese exceptionalism. Among the many who do not, The Epoch Times is one particular example of weaponizing anti-China propaganda to denounce leftist ideologies. The publication, which is aligned with the highly contentious, anti-CCP Falun Gong cult, displays the supposed oppression of the “communist” state of China. It also inculcates support for right-wing groups and politicians like Donald Trump, who initiated a trade war with China during his presidency. In more mainstream arenas, the portrayal of North Korea’s current leader Kim Jong Un as a uniquely deranged despot has become a popular method of further stigmatizing what exactly communism can be defined as in the reclusive country. Stories such as Kim feeding his own “counterrevolutionary” uncle’s body to dogs and every male in North Korea being forced to get the same haircut as Kim himself (which originated as a rumor from a U.S.-funded South Korean publication) have taken the Western media by storm despite being proven false. 

In fact, the South Korean Ministry of Unification compensates North Korean defectors up to $200 per hour to relay stories of their experiences in North Korea—however inaccurate they may be. One such defector, Shin Dong-hyuk, was invited to a personal meeting in the company of President George W. Bush, who was especially concerned with North Korea’s place on the international stage as a nuclear power within the conext of the War on Terror. After sharing his story to the president, Bush incorporated North Korea into his “axis of evil” alongside Iraq and Iran following 9/11. These stories are subsequently picked up and published as factual information by the UN, the United States, and the media. Media coverage of China is similarly biased. Even today, credible publications like The New York Times give voices to critics of China’s highly effective COVID-19 policies as well as those who suggest China saved too many lives during the pandemic. Other claims include that China exported vaccines globally in a bid to expand its international influence. Even when China is objectively successful, facts are twisted to manipulate public opinion against the country and its accomplishments. In many Western publications, it is impossible for China to ever do right, and North Korea is always a prime enemy, even if evidence must be falsified to bolster its position as one. 

As long as nominally communist states continue to work directly against Western political ideals, leftism will be demonized in order to discourage escalating leftist sentiment in the face of perpetual capitalist rule. In the United States, for instance, it remains illegal to “challenge the authority” of the government. While this is currently limited to such blatantly anti-democratic activities similar to the Capitol riot, less than a century ago it meant “anti-democratic” activities like being a communist. Western countries are well aware of the power leftism holds to dismantle the economic and social systems of capitalism and thus exercise every means possible to suppress it, even if this means circulating blatant misinformation and propaganda.

Liberal democracy, the form of government which exists in most capitalist countries today, is directly incompatible with leftist, particularly communist, ideologies. In order to perpetuate a disagreeable form of government, public opinion must be managed through the use of manufactured consent via the manipulation and control of the media. Such government overreach harkens back to the well-known history of censorship in Stalin’s Soviet Union. Once an ideology is weaponized against those it has been designed to help or represent, it ceases to functionally be that ideology. Human rights abuses under or justified by communism can never be excused and are never supported by its theoretical purpose. Capitalist theory, on the other hand, fails to even address human rights and even enables fierce competition and conflict in the name of economic prosperity. While capitalist nations like the United States have shelled anti-U.S. publication headquarters and have invaded or forcefully established dictatorships via military coups in tens of countries in the name of freedom, democracy, and the free market, society’s attention has been drawn to the nominally communist villains of the world to save face and preserve the inherently flawed ideology of capitalism.      

As the West continues to frame North Korea and China as the ultimate nemeses of the free world under the false pretense of communism, perhaps it is worthwhile to consider the similarities these countries have with states like the U.S. Censorship, endemic oppression, and political fanaticism are all characteristics commonly associated with authoritarian dictatorships. We deem communists the ultimate oppressors of society, and capitalists the ultimate liberators. However, as students across the world rise each morning to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, which was deemed legally mandatory only last century, we should collectively recall accusations of a North Korean exceptionalist cult of personality or Chinese hypernationalism, lest we forget our country’s place in the international circus of ideological warfare.   

Alexia Vayeos (CC ‘25) is a first-year at Columbia College and writer for CPR who plans to study history. She is interested in 20th-century United States history and politics, United States foreign policy, and the history of leftism.