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The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 11 | Issue 32 | Number 4 | Article ID 3982 | Aug 08, 2013 1 The Korean War and Sino–North Korean Friendship 朝鮮戦争と 中朝友好関係 Heonik Kwon The relationship between China and North Korea is a subject that attracts much discussion and speculation in today’s policy circles and media. The history of Sino–North Korean friendship is typically traced to the time of the Korean War (1950–1953), although in North Korea it tends to go further back, to the colonial period. The texture of this international friendship has been changing recently. Some Chinese leaders state that China’s friendship with North Korea is no longer a special one and that the two countries have, or should have, a “normal” interstate relationship—respecting mutual interests as well as certain international norms—rather than one that is historically determined and unchanging. In North Korea, by contrast, there has been renewed interest in reinventing its relationship with China as a historically constituted and durable friendship. This essay explores North Korea’s recent efforts to present its relationship with China as a special, extraordinary, revolutionary friendship. It will focus on how the making of this special friendship draws upon a set of powerful ideas and metaphors of kinship and consanguinity. First, however, a few words on kinship and friendship concepts. Image depicting Sino–North Korean war alliance Friendship and kinship In the history of anthropological research, studies of human friendship have developed in close interaction with those of human kinship relations. Kinship is a milieu of relations we are born into, thus making up ascribed and given relationships, in contrast to friendship, which is something we construct in the course of our lives, that is, an achieved and acquired relationship. Kinship is central to the moral and political order of a collective, particularly in small-scale tribal societies or in traditional agrarian societies—the traditional focus of anthropological research. Whereas friendship is an important aspect of personal life and interpersonal relations, the primarily personal and individual (rather than collective and

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Page 1: The Korean War and Sino–North Korean Friendship 朝鮮戦争と 中 … · Some Chinese leaders state that ... tends to highlight the ethics of reciprocity and the morality of mutuality

The Asia-Pacific Journal | Japan Focus Volume 11 | Issue 32 | Number 4 | Article ID 3982 | Aug 08, 2013

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The Korean War and Sino–North Korean Friendship 朝鮮戦争と中朝友好関係

Heonik Kwon

The relationship between China and NorthKorea is a subject that attracts much discussionand speculation in today’s policy circles andmedia. The history of Sino–North Koreanfriendship is typically traced to the time of theKorean War (1950–1953), although in NorthKorea it tends to go further back, to theco lon ia l per iod . The texture o f th isinternational friendship has been changingrecently. Some Chinese leaders state thatChina’s friendship with North Korea is nolonger a special one and that the two countrieshave, or should have, a “normal” interstaterelationship—respecting mutual interests aswell as certain international norms—ratherthan one that is historically determined andunchanging. In North Korea, by contrast, therehas been renewed interest in reinventing itsrelationship with China as a historicallyconstituted and durable friendship. This essayexplores North Korea’s recent efforts topresent its relationship with China as a special,extraordinary, revolutionary friendship. It willfocus on how the making of this specialfriendship draws upon a set of powerful ideasand metaphors of kinship and consanguinity.First, however, a few words on kinship andfriendship concepts.

Image depicting Sino–North Korean war alliance

Friendship and kinship

In the history of anthropological research,studies of human friendship have developed inclose interaction with those of human kinshiprelations. Kinship is a milieu of relations we areborn into, thus making up ascribed and givenrelationships, in contrast to friendship, which issomething we construct in the course of ourlives, that is, an achieved and acquiredrelationship. Kinship is central to the moral andpolitical order of a collective, particularly insmall-scale tribal societies or in traditionalagrarian societies—the traditional focus ofanthropological research. Whereas friendshipis an important aspect of personal life andinterpersonal relations, the primarily personaland individual (rather than collective and

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social-structural) nature of friendship rendersfriendship relations of relatively lesssignificance than kinship relations in traditionalanthropological research. Nevertheless, in thistradit ion, kinship and friendship areunderstood as interconnected, mutuallyconstitutive spheres of human relations. This isespecially the case in the segmentary kinshiptheory of early British social anthropology, inwhich friendship is discussed as an integralpart of kinship and in which friends andenemies are context-specific, shifting identities.

In sociological research, friendship has takenon a rather different significance. Here,friendship is discussed as the primarymanifestation of intimate human relationship inmodern individual society; that is, as analternative in modern society to what kinship isin traditional society. It is widely assumed inthis disciplinary tradition that kinship retreatsin relevance during the transition fromtraditional community to modern society andthat friendship fills the vacuum left by theretreat of kinship functions. Common to thesociological and anthropological traditions,however, is the assumption that friendship isprimarily an aspect of private lives rather thanof the public social order.

In political theory, the morality of friendship isdiscussed within a different conceptual order.Particularly in the normative theory that isstrongly revived in contemporary analyticalcircles, friendship is an important concept,meaningful for the moral and structural basisof a democratic social and political order. Thetopic of how to bring out friendship-likesolidarity or like-mindedness among otherwiseunrelated individual actors—a subject that goesback as far as Aristotle—features prominentlyin the discourse of contemporary normativepolitical theory. Here, the theory of friendshipemphasizes the virtues of the common publicgood and the art of reciprocity. In thisdevelopment, friendship is often presented as akey property of the democratic public order

and frequently in contrast to the image of asocial order advocated by the utilitarianphilosophical tradition. This orientation alsotends to distinguish friendship from fraternity,as shown in Jacques Derrida’s The Politics ofFriendship.1 In this work, Derrida strives toenvision a democratic political order based onan open and broad sense of public or politicalfriendship. He also tries to distinguish thisconcept of political friendship from the idea offraternity, which Derrida sees as the inventionof modern nationalism.

Political friendship is an intensely debatedconcept in circles of international relationstheory. Focused mostly on interstate relationsin the liberal international order, this analyticaltrend tends to define itself, on the one hand,against the traditionally dominant realist schooland, on the other, against the heritage ofHobbesian political thought. It questions theassumption that states, like individuals, areprefigured to pursue their self-interests and tomaximize their egoistic interests. The interestin friendship in international relations theorytends to reject the idea that the internationalsystem is a fundamentally anarchic entity(Hobbes’s “all against all” idea), characterizedby the contest of power among selfish actorspursuing their narrow interests relentlessly.This theoretical interest, like the politicaltheory of friendship mentioned briefly above,tends to highlight the ethics of reciprocity andthe morality of mutuality (although in thecontext of interstate relations, unlike thelatter). Scholars who write about friendship ininternational relations also tend to be critical oftheor ies in f luenced by the Germanconstitutional theorist Carl Schmitt andSchmitt ’s not ion of modern pol i t icalsovereignty based on a radical friends/enemydichotomy.2 These scholars question whetherthe idea of friendship in international relationsis necessarily dependent on this dyadic schemeof friends versus enemies and the fact that inSchmitt’s theory of the political, friends remainunjustifiably obscure and ill defined, compared

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to the arguably relative clarity of the concept ofthe enemy.3

Friendship between Chinese volunteers andNorth Korean people depicted in ChinesePeople’s Liberation Army publication in 1959,Glorious Chinese People’s Volunteers

What is missing in the existing studies ofpolitical friendship?

Reading these broad existing studies offriendship and political friendship, two issuesseem to stand out. One of these issues is thedisparity between the anthropology offriendship and the sociology of friendship(including the scholarship of political friendshipin contemporary political and internationalrelations theories). As mentioned, theanthropology of friendship is anchored in theanalytical contrast between kinship and non-kinship relations. This interest in friendship asa relationship that is conceptually paired withkinship is virtually absent in the contemporarypolitical theories of friendship, which approachfriendship, as mentioned, from the perspectiveof modern individualism. The other issue,noticeable in the philosophy of politicalfriendship, is that this research domain isalmost completely blind to one powerful legacyof political friendship in modern history,

namely, the morality and aesthetics ofrevolutionary friendship, or the idea ofcomradeship. Instead, researches in this genreare crowded around the constitution of politicalorder in modern liberal states and the fabricsof interstate relations among these actors.Thus, the history of socialist and communistsocial and political revolution since the late 19th

century (and the history of the Cold War in thesecond half of the 20th century) is largelyabsent from discussions in this researchsphere, despite the fact that this revolutionaryhistory advanced a powerful morality ofpolitical friendship both domestically and in thedomain of international and transnationalsolidarity. We need only think of the powerfulmusicality imbuing the spirit of internationalistfriendship as depicted in the song TheInternationale (written by the French poetEugène Pottier in 1871 amidst the chaos of theParis Commune).4 The collective singing of thissong is integral part of the organization ofpublic assemblies that celebrate the historicalsolidarity and shared internationalist spiritbetween North Korea and China.

What follows aims to explore these two hithertounexamined issues concerning politicalfriendship: the conceptual ties betweenfriendship and kinship, and the history ofrevolutionary comradeship in modern politicalthought. It shows the relevance of confrontingthese issues in understanding North Korea’spowerful rhetoric about internationalfriendship with its key historical ally,China—what North Korea refers to as jojungch’insŏn (Korean–Chinese friendship). In China,this relationship is referred to as theChinese–DPRK youyì (友谊) or qinshan (親善).

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Sino–North Korean Friendship Tower, Tumen

Before proceeding, however, a brief note onhow I came to take an interest in this particularrevolutionary international friendship as anempirical and theoretical question. In recentwork written in collaboration with a colleaguein South Korea, I discussed two interrelatedconceptual paradigms for understanding NorthKorea’s political genesis and system.5 One ofthese is the idea of the “family state,” proposedby the South Korean anthropologist andveteran observer of North Korea Lee Moon-Woong. In an informative 1979 article, Leeargues that, “The ties between the masses andtheir supreme leader are very much likekinship relations. It is therefore appropriate tocall the political system of modern North Koreaa family state … The leader’s role is akin to therole of a head of household; he exercisesabsolute authority and is the source of allwisdom. Thus the destiny of the stateresembles the fate of a family.”6 Lee’s familystate idea is instructive for understanding manyaspects of North Korea’s past and presentpolitical processes. For the purpose of thisessay, it suffices to mention that the idea of thefamily state should be understood in relation toanother important political form that aroseforcefu l ly in North Korea in the eraimmediately after the Korean War. In a seminalstudy of North Korea’s political history, the

eminent Japanese historian of modern Koreaand the Korean War, Wada Haruki, proposes adefinition of North Korea’s political system as a“partisan state” (yugekitai kokka in Japanese;yugyokdai gukka in Korean).7 This conceptdraws attention to the political actors whoplayed a central role in the foundation of NorthKorea in the middle of the twentieth centuryand to the career backgrounds of thoseformative actors in colonial times as membersof an armed resistance group based mainly inJapanese-occupied Manchuria. One relativelysmall group of armed resistance fighters wasled by the young Kim Il Sung and attractedconsiderable moral and political support fromthe large group of settlers of Korean origin innortheastern China. After 1945, these originallyManchurian-based armed revolutionaries wereprivileged over other nationalist groups in theearly years of state building in North Koreaafter liberation from Japan’s colonial rule, withstrong support from the Soviet military. Duringthe decade after the Korean War, Kim and hisformer partisan group from the Manchurian erawaged a vigorous power struggle against otherrevolutionary groups and factions. By the endof the 1950s, Kim’s Manchurian comrades hadbecome an unchallenged, unchallengeablepolitical force in North Korea, and the group(including their family members) remains so tothis day.

One of the most cherished revolutionary songsin North Korea, Song of Comradely Love(1980), shows well the morality of revolutionarycomradeship arising from the hardship ofanticolonial partisan struggles:

No matter how arduous the waymay be,

We shall climb over the hills ofhardship.

No matter how strong the wind offire may be,

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We shall stay together in life anddeath.

You can’t purchase even with tonsof gold,

The boundless love of comrades.

Let our resolve live forever,

Looking up at the Single Star.

In view of this song, as well as many othersimilar political cultural artifacts of NorthKorea, the issue I raise in this essay relates towhether the morality of comradeship such asthat expressed in the above poem, can beextended from North Korea’s domestic politicalculture to the horizon of the country’sinternational relations. So my question is this:Do the aesthetics of the partisan-family politicalparadigm also shed light on Sino–North Koreanhistorical relations?

The material culture of Sino–North Koreanfriendship

Two prominent material objects, among others,demonstrate the history of North Korea-Chinese international revolutionary solidarity.One of them is the Sino–North KoreanFriendship Bridge on the Yalu River, alongNorth Korea’s border with China. This placebustles with a fast-growing traffic of goods andraw material moving between the twocountries. The bridge connects the city ofDandong (previously Andong), China’s bordertown in Liaoning Province, and Sinŭiju, one ofNorth Korea’s northernmost towns.

Sino–North Korean Friendship Bridge,Dandong–Sinŭiju

The Sino–North Korean Friendship Bridgerepresents North Korea’s current aspiration foreconomic development and China’s sustainedstrategic interest in the stability of its old ally,which has been a quite difficult neighbor inrecent decades.

The Friendship Bridge has a compellinghistory. Originally constructed at the end of the1930s by the Japanese, it then connected theKorean peninsula to Manchukuo, twoterritories under colonial occupation, and wasintended to facilitate Japan’s deeper colonialpenetration into China. It was not the firstmodern bridge connecting Korea to China,however. Before this bridge, there was an irontruss bridge completed in 1911 with horizontalrotation capability for the navigation of largeships on the river. Both of these Yalu Riverbridges were destroyed in November 1950amidst the chaos of the Korean War by UnitedStates fighter-bombers and heavy bombers.The destruction followed the entry of theChinese volunteer army into the theater of theKorean War and was intended to cut the army’ssupply line from China. The 1911 bridgeremains broken, attracting a steady flow oftourists on the Chinese side. It is called theBroken Bridge, one of the key cultural heritagesites selected for recognition by the State

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Council of China. The bridge built in the1930s—that is, what is today known as theSino–North Korean Friendship Bridge—wasrebuilt after the Korean War. On the Chineseside, the mouth area of this bridge has nowbeen turned into a public park, featuring a longpromenade along the river, what is known inChina as the Yalu River Scenic Zone, a primetourist attraction in northeast China. In 2010,China built another bridge further downstream.

The Sino–North Korean Friendship Bridgeembodies the turbulent history of conquest,war, and revolution in northeast Asia. Thehistory of international solidarity representedby this material object incorporates anotherwar not mentioned above. During China’s civilwar in 1946–1949, North Korea providedcrucial material and logistical support forMao’s army and partisan forces, partly bychanneling Soviet military supplies to theirChinese comrades locked in battle with theGuomindang. A large number of ethnic Koreansfought shoulder to shoulder with the Chineseduring this war, and, as is well known, it wasthe end of this war and the consequentavailability of a strong contingent of Koreansfrom China that provided the momentum forNorth Korea’s invasion of South Korea in June1950.8

Thus, there are three distinct histories ofconflict involved in the exchanges betweenChina and Korea conducted through the Yalubridges. First was the expansion of Japan’scolonial and military conquest from Korea toManchuria, which provoked forceful armedresistance by the Chinese, as well as among theKorean population in northeast China. Let’s callit the colonial-era international solidarity ofresistance (which, as we will see shortly,appears prominently in the North Koreanaccounts of friendship with China). Second wasthe era of the Chinese Civil War, during whichthe Korean and Chinese armed groups foughthand in hand against Chiang Kai-shek’sGuomindang forces. Then came another

revolutionary civil war, this time, in the Koreanpeninsula, in which China took part in aid ofNorth Korea. After the Korean War ended inJuly 1953, a large number of Chinesevolunteers stayed on in North Korea until 1958to help rebuild the country’s devastatedeconomy and infrastructure. During this longera, from the early 1910s to the end of the1950s, a great number of people and a greatquantity and diversity of material objectspassed over the Yalu River bridges, sometimesnorthward and other times southward. Thehistory of the Korean War is pivotal to thehistory of the Sino–North Korean FriendshipBridge, not least because it was then that thetrue strength of this friendship was brought tothe fore, against many odds. Despite incessantassault by superior US firepower, the bridgewas repeatedly repaired and rebuilt during thewar. This last fact testifies to the unbreakablenature of North Korean–Chinese revolutionarysolidarity, according to postwar North Koreannarratives, and this “perpetual friendship” thatdefies all types of tests and overcomesadversity is what the Friendship Bridge issupposed to embody.

North Korea–China Friendship Tower,Pyongyang

The centrality of the Korean War experience inthe formation of Sino-Korean friendship isforcefully demonstrated in another built object,this time at the very heart of North Korea’spolitical geography in Pyongyang rather than

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on the peripheral border with China. Called the“Tower of Friendship,” this monument sits on amodest hill at the center of North Korea’scapital, overlooking the city’s prominentVictory Tower. Completed in 1959, immediatelyfollowing the departure of the Chinesevolunteer army, which had helped with Korea’sreconstruction efforts, the cenotaph underwenta major renovation in 1984. North Koreanleader, Kim Il Sung, and Chinese premier, ZhouEnlai, inaugurated the original memorial, andits renovation in the 1980s, like numerousother state monumental projects of the time,was overseen by Kim’s designated successorand his eldest son, Kim Jong-Il.

The Friendship Tower (Uŭitap) in Pyongyangcommemorates two things. Its primary functionis as a war memorial, dedicated to the Chinesemartyrs of the Korea conflict. Inside the thirty-meter-high granite memorial are kept therecords of 22,700 fallen Chinese soldiers. Therecords include a separate book that lists thenames of fallen officers of the Chinesevolunteer forces, including Mao Anying,Chairman Mao’s eldest son, who was killed inaction in the Korea conflict in November 1950,at the age of 28. The Friendship Tower consistsof 1,025 granite and marble stones, intended tosymbolize October 25th, the day the Chinesevolunteer army entered the theater of theKorean War. The memorial celebrates not onlythe past alliance between the two countries butalso their future friendship—“the continuity ofSino–Korean friendship across generations”—asfrequently depicted in North Korean andChinese media and literature about therelations between the two nations. Theinscription on front of the stone memorial says:

“The martyrs of the Chinese People’sVolunteers who defeated our common enemytogether with us under the banner of “ResistAmerica, Aid Korea, Protect Family and Defendthe Country”: Your eternal honor and theinternational friendship between the people ofKorea and the people of China forged in blood

shall shine over this country and this landforever.”

North Korean stamp issued in 2010 incelebration of the 60th anniversary of the arrivalof Chinese Volunteers in Korea

If the Friendship Bridge on the Yalu Riverprovides a vital connection between the twocountries and their economies today,9 then theFriendship Tower in Pyongyang plays a pivotalrole in connecting their histories and politics.The Tower is an important place to visit forChinese state delegates to North Korea,functioning on these occasions as an equivalentto the Tomb of Unknown Soldiers that plays akey role on diplomatic exchanges in othercountries. It saw a great diplomatic ceremony,joined by North Korean state officials anddelegates from China, in October 2000 andagain in October 2010, marking the 50th and60th anniversaries, respectively, of Chineseparticipation in the Korean War. In the run-upto the Beijing Olympics, it attracted a 400,000-strong crowd who came to celebrate theOlympic torch relay from Pyongyang to Beijing.These and many other similar recent occasionsdemonstrate the power of a historicallyconstituted international solidarity between thetwo countries, their leaderships, and theirpeople.

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The morality and aesthetics of Sino–NorthKorean international friendship are far frombeing timeless phenomenon, however. Inrecent negotiations between North Korea andthe United States, a North Korean delegate isreported to have said to his Americancounterpart that, “there are no eternalenemies, nor are there eternal friends.” Thisstatement is interesting, especially soconsidering that it was made during a meetingthat was squarely about North Korea’s thornynuclear armament issues. The United States, inNorth Korea’s domestic propaganda and itsmessages sent to the outside world, remainsstrongly hostile to North Korea and thathostility is portrayed as unchanging. It is alsointeresting to hear that the ephemeral natureof the China-North Korean relationship mayextend to that of interstate friendship, notmerely to that of enmity. The statement—if theidea of impermanent friendship extends toNorth Korea’s closest allies, such as China, notmerely to former Soviet Russia—goes verymuch against what is loudly asserted in theNorth Korea media about its relationship withChina.

From a historical perspective, relationsbetween North Korea and China have indeedbeen far from perpetual friendship. Sino–NorthKorean relations were under great strainduring the Cultural Revolution in China. Thelong Sino-Soviet conflicts from the late 1950sresulted in complications in internationalrelations among many socialist revolutionarystates, including North Korea (during and afterthe Korean War and the 1953 armistice, Maoadvocated China’s “unbreakable,” “perpetual”friendship with the Soviet Union—only later didwe learn how fragile this friendship actuallywas). Above all, the détente between China andthe United States in the early 1970s and thesubsequent market economic reform in Chinasince the late 1970s, radically transformed thecharacter and nature of Sino–North Koreanrelations. Since the early 1990s, especiallyafter the death of North Korea’s founding

leader, Kim Il Sung, in July 1994, North Koreanand Chinese political and economic ideologieshave been literally bifurcated along oppositestreams: China’s economy-focused socialismversus North Korea’s sŏngun, or military-centered socialism.

Thus, the “friendship” between North Koreaand China is not an unchanging, perpetualamity but involves fluctuating, malleable tiesthat are not immune from forces of change onregional and global scales. The most importantof these changes was probably the end of theCold War and the disintegration of the SovietUnion in the early 1990s, which resulted in thetectonic shift in interstate relations withinNorth Korea’s familiar international habitatduring the Cold War era (the loss of SovietRussia as a key ally and provider of economicassistance; China’s opening of diplomatic andeconomic ties with South Korea in 1992; andconsequent loss of leverage, on the part ofNorth Korea, between China and SovietRussia).

Friendship such as that advocated betweenChina and North Korea is surely not anordinary friendship. It is a particular politicalfriendship established between particulargroups of historical actors who are broughttogether for a common political ideal. TheSino–North Korean friendship, for North Korea,is a specific, revolutionary internationalfriendship—an alliance of blood built on a long,common struggle against imperialism, firstagainst the Japanese and then against theAmericans. These two eras of anti-imperialiststruggle have different compositions, however.The revolutionary international solidarity thatarose forcefully in the later part of thenineteenth century and in the early twentiethcentury, as represented by the SecondInternational, primarily involved non-stateactors and groups. By the time of the SocialistInternational after the end of World War II andat the height of the Cold War, by contrast, legenre humain, or the unity of a progressive

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human race celebrated by The Internationale,had come to refer to a new sense of solidarityand friendship. This political friendshipcentered on newly established revolutionarystates rather than merely involving strugglingmasses and progressive groups. As such, it wasbased on a certain sense of sovereignty and arelated radical friend/enemy dichotomy, asdiscussed by Carl Schmitt during the interwarera.

If the Spanish Civil War (1936–1939) wasemblematic of the ideal of internationalrevolutionary friendship in the era of theSecond International, the Korean War(1950–1953) was an exemplary manifestation ofinternational political friendship (and enmity)in the second, post–World War II sense. NorthKorea’s war e f fort at tracted s tronginternational support from state entities in thesocialist world. After the war, its economicreconstruction activities drew equally broadinternational support and assistance fromChina, the Soviet Union, and several Europeanstates in the eastern bloc. South Korea’sKorean War was an effort on an equally, if notmore, international scale. It was the firstUnited Nations war, as we know, involvingforeign combatants from 16 nations or, if weinclude medical support, from 21 nations.

The end of the Cold War radically changed thestructure of the friend/enemy dichotomyconsolidated by the Korean War. Moreover, thismomentous event contributed to hollowing outthe ground on which the Sino–North Koreanrevolutionary international friendship had beenbased historically. How do political friendsremain such when they no longer share thesense of a common enemy or no longer face theenemy in the same way as they did before?What happens to political friendship when itcan no longer be pitted against a commonenemy? Is the end of the Cold War the end ofSino–North Korean revolutionary politicalfriendship?

The politics of friendship and the amity ofkinship

On the contrary. The aesthetics of Sino-Koreanfriendship has been steadily revived since themid-1990s, and especially in the 2000s. Thebackground to this revival is complex. Itsuffices to mention in this essay that the revivalrelates closely to the North Korean leadership’sstruggle for survival in a hostile internationalenvironment after the end of the Cold War andin face of a radical collapse of the country’sdomestic economy. It also relates to theChinese leadership’s careful consideration ofits domestic and international situation, inparticular, the need to minimize upheavals inits immediate regional environment that mightjeopardize China’s sustained economic growthbut also social stability. In this regard, somemay argue that the recent revival of Sino–NorthKorean friendship is a manifestation of theirseparate yet reciprocal practical interests—inthe sense of the primacy of real politics andreal political interests that are much talkedabout in discourses of diplomatic relations,rather than necessarily in the light of the twocountries’ historically rooted moral andpolitical solidarity. In any case, the strengthand durability of Sino–North Korean friendshiphas been the subject of intense attention inrecent years, particularly in North Korea andespecially since the year 2000, which markedthe 50th anniversary of China’s entry into theKorean War.

Many important events have taken placerecently in this context, both in China andNorth Korea. The revival of Sino–North Koreanfriendship has also been remarkable in culturalproduction and exchange—an important part ofsocialist politics and diplomacy. Many notableartifacts have appeared in this domain. Here, Iwill introduce only two dramatic renderings ofthe “unbreakable, unchangeable” internationalsolidarity between North Korea and Chinabased on the experience of the Korean War.

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Image from the Sino–North Korean Friendshipdrama, Mao Anying

One of the most notable in this sphere is therecently made biographical drama of MaoAnying, the eldest son of Chairman Mao, whowas killed in action in Korea in November1950—by a napalm air strike from a SouthAfrican bomber, in fact, close to the cave wherePeng Dehuai’s headquarters of the ChineseVolunteer Army were located.

The drama is an extremely long epic narrativeof the Chinese revolution—consisting of 37chapters—centered on Mao, his family, and hisrelationship to his eldest son. It premiered inNorth Korea on November 25, 2010, the 60th

anniversary of the death of Mao Anying. Theyear 2010 was the 60th anniversary of China’sentry into the Korean War and the year afterthe Year of North Korean–Chinese Friendship.

Mao Anying (1922–1950) with his father

The drama is illuminating in a host of ways. Itdepicts how the Chinese state has decided, inthe age of liberalization, to interpret the longhistory of the Chinese revolution. I wish todraw attention to one particular element in theepic narrative that concerns Mao Anying’splace in the Sino–North Korean friendship andhis status as an internationalist war martyr.The drama’s theme song says

Many heroes were born

In the environs of the River Shang.

Whereas his body is in a foreignland,

His heart is in his homeland.

The heroic martyr,

The people admire.

As he sacrificed his life for thecountry,

His legacy will shine together withthe sun and the moon.

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Most interesting in this song is the phrase“Whereas his body is in a foreign land, hisheart is in his homeland.” Toward the end ofthe epic drama, Anying’s father, Mao Zedong,receives Anying’s nursemaid and adoptivemother figure), Madame So (Anying’sbirthmother and Mao’s second wife, YangKaihui, was executed by a KMT warlord in1930.

Anying with h is mother Yang Kaihui(1901–1930) and younger brother Anqing(1923–2007)

Madame So makes an appeal to Mao:“Comrade Chairman, you know the saying thatpeople return to their homeland after death.Anying is your son, but he is also my flesh-and-

blood. It breaks my heart that I am not able tocare for his grave … All the other martyrs areback in their homeland, including the heroicmartyr Huang Juguang another prominent Chinese martyr of the

Korean War, and they are buried in the martyrs’cemetery in Shenyang. I have been there. Whycan’t you do the same for Anying? Please bringhim back to his homeland. Please bring himback next to his mother!”

Hearing this, Mao, trying to console MadameSo, says, “Anying has to stay in Korea togetherwith other martyrs. This has huge significance.This is the decision of our organization … Ireceived a telegram from President Kim Il Sungin which he said that Anying sacrificed his lifefor the liberation of the Korean people. Thus,he is the Korean people’s son, he said, and hedemanded that Anying’s remains stay in Koreaforever so to demonstrate the friendshipbetween China and North Korea.” Later, thedrama introduces two Koreans, a grandmotherand her orphaned granddaughter, who arecaring for the grave of Mao Anying on a dailybasis. The Korean grandmother says to somesoldiers of the Chinese volunteer army whohave come to visit the grave, “If you seeChairman Mao, please tell him not to worryabout Anying. Please tell him I will take care ofhis grave and after me my descendants will betaking care of it, generation after generation.”

Cemetery for the Martyrs of the Chinese

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People's Volunteers, in Hoichang County, SouthPyong’an Province

Several interesting issues are raised by thisepisode. Here we focus on the construction of apowerful amity of kinship between the Chinesevolunteer soldiers and the people of NorthKorea, as demonstrated by acts such as theKorean grandmother and her granddaughter’sadoptive ties of kinship with Mao Anying. TheNorth Korea–Chinese Friendship Tower inPyongyang is inscribed with the followingstatement: “Our relationship is an inseparablerelationship of revolutionary fraternity; it is ablood-based, consanguinal relationship” (“피로써 맺어진 혈연적 관계”). The propensity torender the blood alliance of war between Chinaand North Korea to a notion that is far moreliteral in meaning, akin to a “real” consanguinalrelationship, is powerfully shown in NorthKorea’s many other cultural and literaryrenderings of the Sino–North Koreanrelationship. In the story of Anying, it isrendered through acts of commemoration—inthe light of Korea’s traditional family-basedcustom of ancestral veneration. In othernarratives, the relationship takes on a muchmore literal act of sharing blood and therebybecoming a “real” consanguinal relationship.

An example can be seen in the famous epicnarrative Beyond Time (“세월은 흘러도”), astory of North Korea’s eminent female war heroAn Ok Hee. A mother of a child and the wife ofa North Korea’s People’s Army officer who isaway from home, An provides shelter to aChinese volunteer soldier, Lee, who is beingpursued by the Americans. Later, whenhounded herself by the Americans, she iswounded and survives thanks to a bloodtransfusion offered by Lee. The Chinese soldieris then captured by the Americans during animportant mission, and An volunteers for ahighly dangerous mission in the hope ofrescuing him. She dies heroically in the rescueattempt. In other representational contexts, it

is Chinese volunteer soldiers who receive thegift of blood from North Korean civilians,mostly young married women (as in anotherwell-known narrative featured in Flowers onthe Hill).

Wen Jiabao at Mao Anying’s grave, October2009, the Year of Sino–North KoreanFriendship

The relationship between Lee and An has aninteresting added element. Before Lee sets outon his mission, his mother arrives fromnortheast China to see her son. Madame Anjoins the reunion, and Lee’s mother discoversthat her late husband once fought togetherwith An’s father-in-law in the anti-Japanesearmed struggle in Manchuria. This way, therevolutionary blood ties of the Korean Warbetween China and North Korea appear to havetheir own deep genealogical history, traceableback to colonial times. In this regard, theKorean and Chinese families appear to belinked in a relationship of reciprocity (An’sfamily once helped Lee’s family for the Chineserevolution, and Lee then comes to help An’shomeland for the Korean revolution). They alsoshare the proud history of defeating togethertwo powerful imperial enemies, Japan and theUnited States. The Korean woman An and themother of the Chinese volunteer soldier createa metaphorical-yet-rhetorically-real kinship

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relationship, and this reaches its sublimationwhen An Ok Hee is invited to acquire the statusof daughter-in-law by the mother of the Chinesevolunteer soldier.

Kim Jong-Il at Mao Anying’s grave, October2009

CONCLUSION

On October 25, 2010, on the 60th anniversary ofthe entry of the Chinese volunteer army intoKorea to aid North Korea, a large gatheringtook place in Pyongyang in the presence of anumber of war veterans and army officers ofthe two countries. In this ceremony, the thenvice-chair of North Korea’s powerful militarycommission, Kim Young-Chun, said, “Ourfriendship between Korea and China grew outof the revolutionary friendship of the previousgenerations, forged in blood in our anti-imperialist struggle for socialism and self-determination. Korea–China friendship hastriumphed over many hardships and storms ofhistory; let us promote it to a higher levelaccording to the aspirations of the peoples ofthe two countries.” In reply, the Chinesecounterpart said, “Our countries share riversand mountains. My hope is that Sino-Koreanfriendship will continue to prosper. I hope that

the two countries will continue to prosper andthat our brotherly people of North Korea willenjoy a happier life.”

Wartime cigarette pack depicting Chinese andDPRK soldiers, Australian War Museum,Canberra

The above discussion raises the followingtentative points:

First, China and North Korea have varying andeven contradictory interests in the history oftheir political alliance and in reviving their oldrevolutionary solidarity today. China’s interestin the h is tory of S ino–North Koreanrevolutionary solidarity, unlike North Korea’s,is no longer based on the conception of ac o m m o n e n e m y . T h e e c o n o m i cinterdependence between China and US hasgrown exponentially during the past twodecades, although geopolitical tensionsbetween the two countries continue to affectthe regional order in northeast and southeastAsia. As indicated in the exchanges cited above,China’s economy-first socialism and NorthKorea’s military-first socialism clearly do notlook back upon the two countries’ history ofrevolutionary solidarity in the same way. In thisregard, the contemporary state of Sino–NorthKorean friendship raises interesting questions

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about the concept of political friendship andpolitical enmity mentioned at the outset; inparticular, the question is whether the formeris necessarily dependent on the latter, asrendered in the constitutional theory of CarlSchmitt.

Wall painting inside The Korean–ChineseFriendship Tower, Pyongyang.

For China, moreover, the idea of internationalfriendship is closely tied to the idea of inter-ethnic friendship in the domestic sphere, whichis not the case in North Korea. China is heavilypromoting an ethic of political friendship,particularly in relation to the country’s diversenational and ethnic groups, in the hope ofintegrating the latter into its political order.Although North Korea is not a multi-ethnicsociety and hence does not share China’sstrong concerns about political integrationwithin the domestic sphere, its relationshipwith China is also strongly affected by theimperatives of its own domestic politics, themost important factors of which are thecontinuity of the given political order withoutrisk of rupture and the related need toperpetuate the authority of the polity’sfounding leader.

Wall painting inside The Korean–ChineseFriendship Tower, Pyongyang.

A certain interconnectedness between domesticpolitics and international relations is also to befound in North Korea’s mode of displayingpolitical friendship. Notable in this regard isthe interplay between idioms of kinship andnorms of friendship or comradeship. Thisaspect is strongly present in nearly all majorNorth Korean renderings of its revolutionaryfriendship with China. In order to come toterms with the politics of friendship betweenthese two countries, particularly those on theNorth Korean side, then, it is necessary toapproach f r iendship and k insh ip asinterrelated, rather than separate, domains ofvalue, and, at the same time, to attend to theparticularity of friendship based on a history ofcommon revolutionary struggle. The NorthKorean song, The Song of Korean–ChineseFriendship, says:

We are faithful brothers, blood-sharing comrades.

Our heart keeps intensely thea m i t y o f K o r e a n – C h i n e s eFriendship.

For our common purpose, hand inhand,

We march in step with each other,singing our song of friendship.

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North Korean youth on visit to the graves of ChineseKorean War martyrs

Finally, let us go back to Chairman Mao’sdialogue with the nursemaid of his children,Madame So. We can only marvel at Kim Il Sungand his close comrades from the Manchurianera for their remarkable skill in appropriatingthe morality of kinship for purposes ofrevolutionary political mobilization. Theysucceeded in building a powerful family statewhose fundamental structure and vitalitycontinue to this day, despite heavy odds againstit. They also succeeded in laying the ground foran enduring, powerful international alliancebased again on the ethics of kinship. In histelegram to Mao, Kim Il Sung said, “Anying’sremains should remain in Korea forever so thatit can demonstrate the power of friendshipbetween China and Korea.” Sixty years later,the grave of this fallen soldier once again hasbecome a vital site of diplomatic politicsbetween North Korea and China, and animportant pilgrimage destination for NorthKorean youth.

NOTES

1 Jacques Derrida, The Politics of Friendship(London: Verso, 2006).

2 Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 19961927).

3 See Felix Berenskoetten, “Friends, there areno friends?: An intimate reframing of theinternational,” Millennium: Journal ofInternational Studies, 2007, vol. 35, no. 3, pp.647–676. Also Richard Ned Lebow, A CulturalTheory of International Relations (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 2008).

4 The refrain of this song goes:

So comrades, come rallyAnd the last fight let us face

The Internationale unites thehuman race

(C'est la lutte finaleGroupons-nous et demainL'InternationaleSera le genre humain)

5 Heonik Kwon and Byung-Ho Chung, NorthKorea: Beyond Charismatic Politics (Lanham,MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012).

6 Moon-Woong Lee, Bukhan jŏngch’imunhwaŭihyŏngsŏnggwa gŭ t’ŭkjing The formation and characteristics of

North Korean political culture (Seoul: Institute of NationalUnification,1979). See also Seong-Bo Kim,“Bukhanŭi juch’esasang, yuilchejewa yugyojŏkjŏnt’ongŭi sanghogwangye Confucian tradition, juch’e ideology,

and personality cult in North Korea,” Sahakyŏngu Journal of the historical

society of Korea 61 (2000): 234–52.

7 Haruki Wada, Kita Chōsen: Yūgekitai kokkano genzai North Korea’s partisan state today (Tokyo: Iwanamishoten, 1998).

8 See Zhihua Shen, Mao, Stalin and the KoreanWar: Trilateral Communist Relations in the1950s (New York: Routledge, 2012), 127–130;Charles K. Armstrong, Tyranny of the Weak:North Korea and the World, 1950–1992 (Ithaca:Cornell University Press, 2013), 20.

9 See Adam Cathcart and Christopher Green(eds.), The Tumen Triangle DocumentationProject: Sourcing the Chinese–North KoreanBorder, Issue 1, Sino–NK, April 2013. Availableo n l i n e a t t h i s s i t e .(http://sinonk.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/ttp_issue_1.pdf)

1 0 See Uradyn Bulag , Col laborat iveNationalism: The Politics of Friendship onChina’s Mongolian Frontier (Lanham, MD:Rowman & Littlefield, 2010).

Acknowledgement: The research for this articlehas received generous support from the

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Academy of Korean Studies (AKS-2010-DZZ-3104).

Author: Heonik Kwon is professorial SeniorResearch Fellow at Trinity College, Universityof Cambridge, and an APJ associate. The authoro f T h e O t h e r C o l d W a r(http://amzn.com/023115304X/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20), he co-authored North Korea: BeyondC h a r i s m a t i c P o l i t i c s(http://amzn.com/0742556794/?tag=theasipacjo0b-20) (Rowman & Littlefield, 2012) and iscompleting a book on intimate histories of theKorean War.

Recommended citation: Heonik Kwon, "TheKorean War and S ino -North KoreanFriendship," The Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 11,Issue 31, No. 4, August 12, 2013.

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