What exactly differentiates Juche ideology?

Question

Wikipedia defines Juche as such:

Juche, usually translated as "self-reliance", is the official state ideology of North Korea, described by the regime as Kim Il-sung's "original, brilliant and revolutionary contribution to national and international thought". It claims that an individual is "the master of his destiny" and that the North Korean masses are to act as the "masters of the revolution and construction".

Kim Il-sung (1912–1994) developed the ideology – originally viewed as a variant of Marxism–Leninism – to become distinctly "Korean" in character, breaking ranks with the deterministic and materialist ideas of Marxism–Leninism and strongly emphasising the individual, the nation state and its sovereignty.

So, how exactly does Juche compare with movements like Integralism, Fascism, National-Socialism, National-Solidarism, Ba'athism, Maoism, Stalinism and/or other movements that promote Authoritarianism and/or a one-party state in combination with Socialist principles and Nationalist principles?

Other than being rooted in Korean culture, what is it that differentiates Juche from the aforementioned movements?

Answer 1

The Stanford Journal of East Asian Affairs published an article in 2003 which provides an overview of juche. The article is available online for free as a PDF (see the linked document). For a description of juche, that is a great place to start.

As Philosophy

If you are looking at this as an exercise in political philosophy, Lee succinctly says (pg.109):

... there is nothing particularly revolutionary or novel in the tenets of the juche philosophy

This largely seems to be true: juche rests on the basis that any generically "Marxist" theory does. There is a struggle between workers and owners, the economic subsystem dictates the political and cultural system, etc.

Context is Everything

The original question asks:

Other than being rooted in Korean culture, what is it that differentiates Juche from the aforementioned movements?

I'm going to challenge the frame of the question here. When reading political thought, context is everything. For example, the concerns of the American Founding Fathers are very similar to the concerns of classical Greek and Roman writers. What separates them is history and culture. And that is enough.

More than a few students have noted that many of our modern debates are identical to debates we find in the classics, just expressed with a different language. What makes them interesting is the nuances and subtleties that come from how the culture and history interact with that particular thought.

Answer 2

Juche is an ideology that evolved from Marxism-Leninism and became its own ideology that included "autonomy, independence, self-sufficiency for the economy, and self-reliance in defense". The ideology led to North Korea building up its military in the 1960s and was developed by Kim Il-sung to be his own version of Marxism. Juche is also a very "man-centered Socialism" ideology, arguing that historical progress was driven by material forces and 'great men', not people.

The political and ideological might of the motive force of revolution is nothing but the power of single-hearted unity between the leader, the Party, and the masses. In our socialist society, the leader, the Party, and the masses throw in their lot with one another, forming a single socio-political organism. The consolidation of blood relations between the leader, the Party and the masses is guaranteed by the single ideology and united leadership. -Kim Jong-Il

The popular masses are placed in the center of everything, and the leader is the center of the masses. - Kim Jong-Il

Juche treats the leader of the movement as one of the main driving forces of the people and history, kind of leading to the borderline worship of the North Korean leaders we see today.

Integralism, compared to Juche, is not very socialist, but a Catholic ideology as a condemnation of Modernism in Catholicism. It came to prominence around 1907 and was based around a zealous desire to defend Catholicism against modernity, usually with clandestine methods.

Fascism is an authoritarian ideology that varies among different movements (like National Socialism/ National-solidarist in Nazi Germany), but shares the following characteristics: extreme militaristic nationalism,contempt for electoral democracy and political and cultural liberalism, belief in natural hierarchy based on the 'right' people being in charge, and a desire to create a Volksgemeinschaft (German: “people’s community”), in which individual interests would be subordinated to the good of the nation. Fascism is anti-socialist but also anti-capitalist, advocating for a mixed economy to achieve national self-sufficiency while preventing too much capitalism from allowing enemies of the state to take control and too much socialism to prevent economic growth or allow a state power to have complete economic control (ex: Hitler hated capitalism and warned against capitalism, calling America Germany's enemy filled with Jewish capitalists and called for nationalization of education and healthcare. However, Hitler also hated socialism and also saw it as a Jewish conspiracy so the Jews could potentially install their own leader in places like Germany to control everything. Basically, to fascists like Hitler and Mussolini, capitalism and socialism were both extremes used by the 'enemies of the people and the state' to take down the Fatherland). Fascism also supports constant war to the point of survival of the fittest and that the state is only valuable if it fights wars on and on the guarantee only the strongest nation-state survives. While Juche and other forms of socialism and many forms of capitalism fight wars, neither ideology believes that the government is only valuable through constant war and inherently wants to constantly fight against other nations (even at the cost of things like the national economy or infrastructure) until only you and a few satellite states remain. Using fascism as a basis, let me go over other ideologies: *Maoism: a Marxist ideology where the only necessary war is the peasants rising up and taking the means of production in a revolution that allow a dictatorship of the proletariat to take control on behalf of the peasants. *Stalinism: form of authoritarian socialism/low-stage communism that has the Premier and Communist Part council control the means of production of behalf of the common worker through the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat as described by Karl Marx in his work Critique of the Gotha Program.

Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat. -Karl Marx

Stalin achieved the dictatorship of the proletariat through the Soviet Council (Stalin was elected into power by this council and had his power checked to a limited degree by said council) and implemented Socialism in one country: achieve the dictatorship of the proletariat by creating a dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia and spreading this version of Marxist socialism through a series of revolutions worldwide supported by the USSR. Everything is owned by members of the state on behalf of the common worker since socialism defines common as public ownership through the state, a cooperative, or worker's union on behalf of the community.

Ba'athism is an Arab nationalist ideology about creating a unified Arab state. Most versions are a form of Arab socialism or an Arab mixed economy. Many of these relate to Juche by being vaguely socialist in nature (though, it is technically not socialist now since it allows for limited private enterprise. That being said, most stuff is owned by the state and even modern North Korea is not capitalist since capitalism requires a market economy and North Korea still runs on a command economy This makes Juche and North Korean economics different from other ideologies mentioned based around socialism and Marxism and very different from fascism, which allowed for a very controlled, limited market economy).

Answer 3

Juche can be translated as "self-ownership" is described by the government as Kim Il-sung's original, brilliant and revolutionary contribution to national and international thought. It postulates that "man is the master of his own destiny", that man is to act as master "continuously transforms nature and society, changing as he desires[5]" and that by becoming reliant on oneself and strong the individual can "free himself from the fetters of society and nature".

Juche is new and revolutionary, because it refuses the state and is centered on the individual. Never in history has ever such thing existed. What the north Korean state has done is to change the Juche idea to make it sound socialism. But of course it the quite the opposite.

This is described by the maxim coined by Kim Il-sung in a 1972 interview with Japanese journalists: "man is the master of everything and decides everything." Man transforms the world and embodies Chajusŏng, or independence and autonomy. By putting man at the center, Kim Jong-il denies that a group can have those elements. A group doesn't has a will, consciousness, creativity only the individual has those elements and can act upon it.