What you see and what you don't

Yesterday was the 62nd anniversary of the founding of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, more commonly known as 'North Korea'. Here is a picture from that day back in 1948 of that event posted on a pro-DPRK Russian website. There are several things interesting about this photo. First of all, the slogans in the background are partially written using 'Hanja' or Chinese characters, a practice no longer in use in North Korea and rare in the South.

Second, there is a picture of Lenin in the background, next to a young Kim Il-sung. It was noteworthy to point out that this picture was posted on a Russian website that supports North Korea's ruling ideology, Juche, which combines superficial elements of Marxism-Leninism with extreme nationalism and cultural purity. Many Russian neo-Communists particularly like Juche as it allows them to espouse Russian nationalist elements that Soviet communism eventually co-opted while, using the cultural purity aspescts of Juche, gives them the excuse to ditch international solidarity among the peoples of the world and be as racist as possible towards Caucasians and Central Asians. With this in mind, the website deliberately picked a picture showing Lenin so as to draw a nationalist/patriotic Russian link to North Korea (it's all parochial). Had it been a current North Korean source, not only would have the Chinese letters been gone but so too would have Lenin. No images and very little mention of Communist icons such as Marx, Engels and Lenin have been made in North Korea since at least the 1980s. But wait, there's a third picture which has seemingly been deliberately cut. Who could that be of? Well, let's see the same scene but from a different angle, shall we?
Oh yes, it was disgraced Stalin. This photo is a valuable insight into the DPRK nascent past that shows what ideological changes have been made since then.

Now, to the right of Stalin, a suspicious flag is flying. Why... that couldn't possibly be the South Korean flag waving there? Well, yes... and no. The flag next to Stalin is the original flag of DPR Korea, which is identical to the current flag of the southern Republic of Korea. In any case, it happens to be the historical flag of Korea, the taegeukgi, below. The North Koreans adopted their current flag, below, very soon after declaring their state. Seeing that the South declared its nationhood before the North, legally the South was entitled to keep the old flag.

This situation where a divided country used the same flag is not unique. Both East and West Germany had the exact same flag, the current German flag of black red and gold horizontal bars, from their inceptions in 1949 until 1959 when the GDR authorities added the state's coat of arms to the centre of their flag. Even for their first few years of existence, both states had their own 'Deutsche Lufthansa' as their national air carriers, though the East Germans lost out on use of the Lufthansa trademark in a court case in Switzerland in the 1950s.

Back to the photo... now, are they're North Korean soldiers? They look like they're wearing Japanese imperialist army uniforms. Well, that's correct! Korean People's Army soldiers then wore, as do some divisions to this day, the same style of uniform that their arch-nemesis, the Japanese 'imperialists' wore. Considering how much the Koreans despise the Japanese for their occupation of Korea from 1910 to 1945, it's rather bizarre that they would wear the same uniforms as their oppressors. It would be like the Israeli Defence Force wearing Nazi Wehrmacht uniforms. However there never is complete logic whenever there is historic antagonism between neighbours or foes.

A slight change in direction, and a little cropping and editing, can make a whole difference in historical perspective - Winston Smith from Orwell's 1984 would be familiar with this.