The Reflection of Totalitarianism in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell towards the Political Situation in North Korea

Credit: https://inc.mizanstore.com/aassets/img/com_cart/produk/covBT-017.jpg

ABSTRACT

Totalitarianism is a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial where the state regulates nearly every aspect of human life both private and public. As Orwell witnessed that totalitarianism would destroy a human being, “1984” served as the warning to the world that was approaching the damage. The aim of this research is intended to explore the mechanism work of totalitarianism in the novel “1984” by George Orwell, to examine the similarities between Oceania and North Korea in the scope of politics as well as the depiction of North Korea's situation in today’s world. The method of this research is used a qualitative and conducted content analysis. The findings of this research are: 1) The mechanism of totalitarian state, Oceania, is telling to us with the inevitable rules to control the society through several abusive acts and the four ministry like Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love, Ministry of Peace, and Ministry of Plenty as the tools by the state to remain the stability of a country as the “Big Borther” needs; 2) The similarity between Oceania and North Korea governments are (a) from the political system which pressure the society through abusive acts as the order that uphold as a main system; (b) the propaganda that is being the core tools by the state to maintain a good figure for the public and manipulate the real news; and (c)the political transaction between the borjouis to take the advantages of the resources as much as possible; and lastly 3) The depiction of North Korea under the Kim Jong-Un governments has conveyed the cruelty to the civil society such as abolished the power to violate human rights and the cause of it revealed as many people leave the country through a border with full of risky ways.

INTRODUCTION

The idea of a totalitarian state was first introduced by Mussolini in 1932. Totalitarianism became a subject of study by many American academics yet the academics tended to place emphasis upon aspects of totalitarianism not stressed by Mussolini. Totalitarianism is defined as the political system as a representative of social condition where all the activities of mass society is chosen by the state, whether about morality or spirituality (Mussolini, 1970:2).

According to Franz Neumann (1950) which sees totalitarian dictatorship as that political system, he stated that “where it may be necessary to control education, the means of communication and economic institutions and thus to gear the whole of society and the private life of the citizen to the system of political domination”. Totalitarianism, therefore, involves the presence of an elaborate ideology, consisting official body of doctrine covering all vital aspects of man’s existence to which everyone living in that society is supposed to adhere, at least passively; this ideology is characteristically focused and projected towards a perfect state of mankind (Friedrich and Brzenzinski, 2013).

While many practitioners or scholars attempted to resist this sort of dictatorship through a work of literature. One of the famous contemporary writers who discussed this phenomenon is George Orwell. Orwell is well-known as a novelist and a journalist simultaneously from the UK yet he was born on June 25, 1903, in Bengal, India. The novel “Nineteen Eight-Four’ was created in 1949 and this creation was the last of works that he made in his lifetime.

“1984” is mainly regarded as a famous satire novel that tells about the political situation in an imaginary state, Oceania. According to the thesis by Nabila (2016), “1984” has become the fact of humanity and the response to the social issue that happened during the making of the novel. As Orwell witnessed that totalitarianism would destroy human beings, “1984” served as the warning to the world that was approaching the damage. Furthermore, this works was inspired by the war of ideology amongst many countries which uphold the system of totalitarian to control their society such as the USSR, China, Germany (Hitler’s era), and, indeed, North Korea.

North Korea is the state which implied the ideology of Juche or combining the ideology of Marxism and Leninism in accordance to Kim Il-sung's practical own needs (Jutten, 2008). Also, as the former of the so-called communist state, Kim II-sung, he unites the Korean proletarian, low-class society, and peasant masses and leads them in their development of collective revolutionary consciousness, and in their movement towards their socialist destiny (Mtichell Learner, 2001).

It stands to mention that this paper firstly examined the views of totalitarianism within the novel “1984” by George Orwell. In addition, the writer would like to seek the similarity of totaliatiarinsm which applied by Oceania and North Korea as well as the depiction of the political situation in North Korea in today’s world. Hence, this paper entitled “The Reflection of Totalitarianism in Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell towards the Political Situation in North Korea”.

RESEARCH PROBLEM

1. How does totalitarianism imply within “1984” by George Orwell?
2. What are the similarities between Oceania and North Korea in the scope of politics?
3. What is the depiction of the current political situation in North Korea?

PURPOSE OF THE RESEARCH

1. Exploring the mechanism work of totalitarianism in “1984” by George Orwell
2. Examining the similarities between Oceania and North Korea in terms of political discourse.
3. Examining the depiction of North Korea within the scope of politics.

THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK

The researcher intended to apply Genetic Structuralism as it is concerned to control the strength in works of literature as it has an obvious fundamental and still emphasizing the values of the literary work. It is not merely relied on the texts, but it also focuses on the author and the historical background that shapes the literary work and its related occasions. There are numerous basic concepts within this research, they are the concept of totalitarianism, the fact of certain states: North Korea, and politics.

LITERATURE REVIEW

A. TOTALITARIANISM

Totalitarianism relates to a system of government that is centralized and dictatorial where the state regulates nearly every aspect of human life both private and public. In addition, a totalitarian society will aim at and succeed in organizing masses, not classes” (Hannah, 308). This term usually is pointed towards the fascist Italy, German Nazi, Stalinist Russia whose leaders or tyrants maintain their political power by spreading their ideology and forms of propaganda such as state-controlled mass media, a single party to rule the state, the use of mass surveillance, a statecontrolled economy, restrictions or regulations on free discussion, criticism and expression.

There are six elements related to the depiction of totalitarianism as a state based on Friedrich and Brzinski (2013), they are :

1. Official ideology

Ideology is becoming a fundamental for the leaders to lead a totalitarian state to form a perfect idealism as the way to run the governments. The policy and the rules can be an excuse for the governments to establish its ideology. Furthermore, ideology is intact to the cultural studies and for such activities that related to education, morale, and trust (Andrzej Borowski, 2017: 90). Hence, ideology is refer to the application of how it will be used to legitimate the whole activities that is run by the government.

2. Single party only

The leader of totalitarian state often has single party, which is very powerful, and it symbolized to the leader or well-known as the dictator. Despite the wealth of the party, each member of the party consist a bunch of high social class individuals (elite); educated person as well as loyal to the state, which specifically ready to serve the state for particular purposes (2013: 90).

3. The system is intimidating

One of the most crucial aspects from totalitarinism system is the existence of a terror system. It means that the efforts from the dominated state to control the society with intimidating rules or policies. This system is fully controled by the authority who has a job to watch the system. This efforts is doing so by harrasing physically and mentally. Prison camp is the place for the opponents of governments or so-called political prisoners. Further details regarding the physical harrasment that can be depicted for those who offended the state such as unsuspected murder by anonym, exploitation, slavery and so on. While the mentally harrasment can be seen with the doctrin by the state to convince them with radical perspectives which is jeopardize to the human mental health.

4. Monopolized mass communication

Mass communication is one of the pivotal tools for totalitarian state. Due to it is important to manipulate the fact into the falsification information which is often widespread into mass society. Establishing the opinion to the society is extremely needed to maintain the wealth of power without abusive policy.

5. Monopolized army force

The army force, special agent or special-forces, are inextricably linked with the authoritative of political system. The army force has a significant function within a totalitarian state as the “the right-hands” of the leader to watch the stability of the states. The army is applied to against the crime case, threat, or offended from the opponents of the governments. Nevertheless, in specific ocassion, the army force also has a role to watch the underground movement form the civil society to prevent such a political discourse from internal (2017: 90).

6. Economical sentralization and full authority

Full control of the policy and the sentralization of economics are the efforts by the authoritative state to keep the stability of its state. The economy policy is fully controlled by the main party. For instance, the whole demand of economy productivity, the distribution of goods, and the income of the state is centralized by the party (2017: 90).

B. POLITICS

Politics derived from Greek word that is “polis” which means “city-state”. It is argued that politics is a term that transforms the totality of humankind's activities within a state. According to Heywood (1997, p.4) politics, in its broadest sense, is the activity through which people make, preserve and amend the general rules under which they live.

Heyhood also stated that the existence of opponent opinions, different wants, competing needs and opposing interests guarantees disagreement about the rules under which people live. On the other hand, people recognize that, in order to influence these rules or ensure that they are upheld, they must work with others — hence Hannah Arendt’s (see p. 9) definition of political power as ‘acting in concert’. This is why the heart of politics is often portrayed as a process of conflict resolution, in which rival views or competing interests are reconciled with one another.

METHODOLOGY

This research is used a qualitative method. According to Sukmadinata (2009: 60), qualitative is aimed to describe and analyze the phenomenon, ocassions, social activity, beliefs, perspectives, thoughts and so on. This research is attempted to illustrate the data through words or sentences which divided into certain parts to gain the conclusion. While Frankel and Wallen (2007: G6) stated that qualitative research is the research which obligates the researcher to examine the phenomenon that occurs as naturally as its complexities of the issues.

Specifically, this research is applied a content analysis. This method is one of the methods of social sciences conducted to learn and expel the concrete meaning within the dynamical process of one literary work or certain documents.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The Mechanism of Totalitarianism in the Nineteen Eighty-Four

Oceania was a dystopian state that Orwell made within the novel “1984”. This country dominates the whole story with the acts order towards the society explicitly. Oceania has one official language called “Newspeak”. It is used as the main language for the society and the state to communicate with each others. However, this language has different meaning with English, there are several addition words as well as words that is deleted from the vocabulary.

Even though there are no laws, there is a army force as the tools by the Oceania to maintain the imbalance within a state. The “Thought Police” and the constant reminders, on posters, that show several famous slogan within a novel that are “BIG BROTHER IS WATCHING YOU”, “WAR IS PEACE”, “FREEDOM IS SLAVERY”, and “IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH”.

The main characther, Winston Smith, work at the Ministry of Truth. Initially, there are several ministry that govern the Oceania with different job desks. Based on the novel (page 6–7), the ministry are divided into four departments, they are:

- Minisitry of Truth

The Ministry of Truth or so-called Minitrue is mainly contained three thousand rooms above ground level and it focuses on broadcasting the news, entertainment, controlling the education as well as the fine arts. It basically tells about the role of this department to spread the actual news while, in fact, the news that is actually broadcatsed is the hoax news in order to establish the figure of states as the good ones.

- Ministry of Peace

While this department or well-known as Minipax is concerning the army-related forces movement like war agenda and so on. For instance, the “Thought Police” as the ruler of the society to maintain the balance of state needs as well as manage the war between Eurasian.

- Ministry of Love

Ministry of Love or so-called with Miniluv is the department which maintained the law and order. This department is collectively controlled the society in any space. It is looks like there is no room for the people to against the government due to many double-agent that involve in each society. This ministry tend to control the moral behavior of the society to keep on the track of what government needs like there is no privacy room for civil society to have the connection between men and women intimately.

- Ministry of Plenty

It is the department, Miniplenty, which focuses on economical aspects of the state. This department ruled the aspects of life needs like food, household, and so on.

The Similarity Between Oceania and North Korea

There are various similarity between Oceania and North Korea, they are:

- The political system

It is obvious that if Oceania and North Korea has only single political party that dominate the whole situation of the state. In Oceania, it has “Big Brother” as the name of the party who always comes up to do the acts, whereas in North Korea, it has only one party which name as “The Labor Party”.

- The propaganda

In accordance to the main story of chapter 5, it shown that many posters, hate songs, and streamers which was broadcasted to the whole regions in the Week of Hate campaign. While in North Korea, nearly day-by-day many people heard the news from the one and only TV channels that broadcasted by the government control.

- The elite

It is shown that through the facilities obtained by Julia as Julietnya Winston, seen in paragraph 8, this woman mentions “expensive” objects which are said to be only accessible to members of the ruler (Oceania elite). Similarly, North Korea also establish the connection amongst other elite to preserve the dynasty which descendant by Kim’s blood.

The Depiction of Political Situation in North Korea

According to the editors of Britannica (2019), the first constitution of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea was promulgated in 1948 and was replaced with a new constitution in 1972. Revisions were made in 1992, 1998, 2009, and 2016. The 1998 amendments, made in the years following the death of Kim Il-Sung — the country’s leader from 1948 until his death in 1994 — were so extensive that a preamble was added to underline the continuity with the previous regime. Furthermore, North Korea is divided administratively into nine provinces, the special province-level municipality (jikhalsi) of Pyongyang, the special city (thŭkpyŏlsi) of Rason, and two special administrative regions (chigu) — the Mount Kumgang tourist region and the Kaesong industrial region.

According to Washington Post (2017), North Korea technically has a centrally planned economy, but now, under the power of Kim Jong-Un, people’s lives revolve around the market. It is suprisingly effected to the people who expects the government to provide things anymore yet, in contrary, everyone has to find their own way to survive.

The regime of North Korea which descendents from the regime of Kim Jong-Il (1948–1991) to Kim Jong Un (2011-now) has been depcited the three characteristics, they are :

1. Single Political Party Only

The party has been centralized the ideology as the top structural of political system which has inevitable power on controlling the defense, legislative power, administrative, and yudicative as a whole. The party is not merely control the institutions, yet the leader of the organisaton also lead the social lives of the society. Hence, North Korea can be mentioned as a ‘state that lead by the party’. Despite of having one more party, the oppoistion sides is not the enemy of the governments, they became the partner due to the political transaction which beneficial for both of them.

2. Oligarchy

Oligarchy is from the origin word of Greek that derived from two words, oligoi which means less and arkhein means governs. According to Jeffrey Winters (2011), oligarchy is the group of people, elite, which poses the power of one government or the minority who control the majority. Hence, it means that North Korea is indeed being controlled by only certain group of people who consolidate the purpose to control the states to gain the prosperity in symbiosys mutualism between other partners like the governments, army, and even their opponents.

3. The Dynasty

As the historical events that leads North Korea to get the independence which struggled by Kim Jong-Il, this has led to the unbearable heritage to the political system who under controlled by the Kim’s dynasty. As the great successor of North Korea’s independece, it is inevitably argued that the leader of the state should be from the blood of Kim’s dynasty until none date. The state is a unity of families, and the head of all these families is none other than the king. Therefore the king is the common father of all families, and just as people show filial piety to their parents, they must swear loyalty to their king (Hwang, 2002).

Another occasions that frightened the society by the power of North Korea, these days, is the case of many North Korean were fleeding across the border at risky ways. This is because of the standing at the forefront of the Korean Revolution, Kim Jong-Un, who is the successor to the revolutionary cause of Juche (self-reliance ideology) and outstnading leader of the party and the army, stated by the Korean Central News Agency on December 19, 2011.

Further and more importantly, North Korea has been accused from the international law by UN due to the violance of human rights. According to the former of International-secretary of KWP, Hwang Jang (2002) stated that if North Korea has been abolished the power through their own policy to violate the human rights such as:

- The North Korean governemnt does not provide a guarantee to the people’s basic living needs and start to make a massive starving to death. That more than 1.5 million people died of hunger from 1995 to 1996 is an irrefutable fact. We do not have accurate data about the situation from 1997 to 1998, but since the food supply did not improved much, it can be deduced that at least a million people have met their deaths every year. According to reports that Chinese telecommunications company Xinhua claims it received from officials of the Agricultural Committee in North Korea, a total of 2.8 million people have starved to death at last count at the end of 1997. From this and the irrefutable fact that 1.5 million had died by the end of 1996, we can deduce that another 1.3 million people died in 1997 to add up to a total of 2.8 million deaths by starvation. We have consistently said that more than 1.5 million died between 1995 and 1996 and that 1 million more probably died every year from 1997 to 1998. We never resorted to exaggerating the situation.

- There is no guarantee for the workers as their safety and work for hourless without a compensation. According to the Organization Guidance Bureau official, more than 500 thousand people, including 50 thousand party members, had starved to death in 1995. And as of mid-November 1996, almost 1 million people had already starved to death. He went on to say that only 2.1 million tons of grain was produced in 1996. If the situation did not change, the official predicted that about 2 million people would starve to death in 1997. An official of the Organization Guidance Bureau would never have made irresponsible reports to the secretaries of the Central Party (within Hwang, 2002).

Therefore, the researcher assume that the political system of North Korea on these days is terribly to discussed due to it violate the human rights as well as the prosperous of the North Korean.

CONCLUSION

To put in a nutshell, the result of the paper confirm that several assumption that is revealed on the research background, they are:

1. The mechanism of totalitarian state, Oceania, is telling to us with the inevitable rules to control the society through several abusive acts and the four ministry like Ministry of Truth, Ministry of Love, Ministry of Peace, and Ministry of Plenty to remain the stability of a country as the “Big Borther” needs. Also the propaganda has spreaded into many parts of the region to establish the image of government as a good ones through a tele-screen and etc.
2. The similarity between Oceania and North Korea governments are (a) from the political system which pressure the society through abusive acts as the order that uphold as a main system; (b) the propaganda that is being the core tools by the state to maintain a good figure for the public and manipulate the real news; © and the political transaction between the borjouis to take the advantages of the resources as much as possible.
3. The depiction of North Korea under the Kim Jong-Un governments has conveyed the cruelty to the civil society such as abolished the power to violate the human rights and the cause of it revealed as many people leave the country through a border with full of risky ways.

REFERENCES

[1] Arendt, H., Friedrich, C. J., & Friedrich, C. J. (2013). zAirticles RWeview.

[2] https://www.britannica.com/place/North Korea/Government-and-society (Acessed on-line on April 24, 2021.

[3] Nabila, Maulidio (2016) The Structure and World View of George Orwell’s 1984: A Genetic Structuralism Application. Diploma thesis, Universitas Andalas.

[4] Neumann, Franz (1950). Notes on the Theory of Dictatorship. Free Press 1957. pp. 233–257

[5] Mitchell Lerner. (2010). “A failure of perception: Lyndon Johnson, North Korean ideology, and the Pueblo incident”

[6] Hannah Arendt. (1951). The Origins of Totalitarianism. OCLC: 52814049.

[7] Jutten, Stephan A (2008). North Korea’s Juche ideology and the German re-unification experience. Naval Postgraduate School Archive.

[8] Sukmadinata, Nana Syaodih (2009). Metode Penelitian Pendidikan. Bandung : Remaja Rosdakarya.

[9] Fraenkel, J. R. & Wallen, N. E. (2007). How to Design and Evaluate Research in Education. Singapore: The McGraw-Hill Companies.

[10] http://www2.law.columbia.edu/course_00S_L9436_001/North%20Korea%20materials/hwang%20jang1.html. (Accesed on-line on December 25, 2021).

[11] https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/2017/world/north-korea-defectors/ (Acessed on-line on April 25, 2021).

[12] Winters, A. Jeffrey. (2011). Oligarchy. Books

[13] Orwell, George. (1949). 1984. New York: Signet Classic.