For over 20 years, Pyongyang has celebrated July 27 as the “Day of Victory in the Great Fatherland Liberation War,” known to the rest of the world as the day on which an armistice for the Korean War was signed. The North rolls out propaganda to amp up celebrations to mark the occasion annually but, according to sources inside the country, such efforts are met by an increasingly dismissive population.
“Yesterday, state factories halted production and schools suspended class; instead, workers and students attended V-Day commemorative lectures, meetings with elderly veterans, and art performances by small troupes,” a source in South Pyongan Province told Daily NK on July 28 a day after the event. “But a lot of residents and university students were questioning why the state was making such a fuss about July 27, which they knew to be the day the war was suspended.”
Sources in North Hamgyong Province and North Pyongan Province reported corresponding developments in those regions.
As the covert consumer base of illicit media–including South Korean TV dramas and foreign radio broadcasts–grows, so does the percentage of the population shifting its perception of historical events. According to the source, in addition to the newfound knowledge about the armistice, a sizable number of people now believe that Pyongyang sparked off the Korean War by first invading Seoul, not the inverse narrative promulgated by the state.
Pyongyang first designated July 27 as Victory Day in 1996 and continues to celebrate it annually. In fact, in the Kim Jong Un era, the reinforced propaganda base underpinning the occasion has elevated it nearly that of a national holiday. These efforts, the source explained, are to shape Kim Jong Un’s image as a “great military leader.”
They typically have the opposite effect, he added. In addition to the ongoing “200-Day Battle,” North Koreans must attend a series of events scattered throughout June and July–designated as the months to “fight against anti-US. imperialism”–regardless of the stifling heat.
“This leaves less, or some days no, time and opportunity for market endeavors, thereby driving the wedge between the general public and the state even deeper,” he concluded.
