North Koreans trained to hate U.S. from childhood
By NATE THAYER
The Associated Press
Friday, April 24, 1992
PYONGYANG, North Korea — At a kindergarten in Pyongyang, children take turns firing wooden machine guns at an effigy of a U.S. imperialist soldier. The teacher then pulls a string and the hinged head collapses.
The scene is no distant memory from the darkest days of the Cold War. It is a snippet from daily life in this hard-line communist state, where anti-American propaganda is everywhere. From beginning classes to diatribes in the state-controlled press, there is no escaping anti-U.S. propaganda.
It depicts Americans as wolves and urges North Koreans to remain vigilant against supposed U.S. plans to launch a war. Annual mass rallies throughout the nation bring hundreds of thousands of people together to condemn the "U.S. imperialists."
"Yankees are wolves in human form" is one sentence found in a popular book to teach English-language sentence structure. "Let's mutilate the American imperialists!" is an entry in an English phrase book.
"Of course I think the United States will start another war," said Kim Due Sun, 77, speaking in this capital city, which was virtually flattened by U.S. bombs during the Korean War. "Even the children in kindergarten know that the United States wants to bring war again. Even the babies hate the American imperialists."
Foreign residents from North Korea's former socialist allies say that even at the worst of times, anti-U.S. sentiments espoused by their governments could not compare to those encouraged by the North Korean regime.
Most of the North Koreans interviewed cited the stationing of U.S. soldiers in rival South Korea and annual U.S.-South Korean war games as reasons to fear a U.S. attack. "We are still in a state of war with the United States," Maj. Kim Song Nam said in an interview at Panmunjom, the truce village that straddles communist North and capitalist South Korea. "Of course, I am very hostile to them. We have done nothing wrong to them, but they have unilaterally given us suffering and misery. That is why we all call the Americans wolves."
His hostility was on display when he conducted a Western reporter through the Panmunjom neutral zone as American soldiers watched silently a yard away. "This is where we negotiate with the American bastards," he said evenly through an interpreter. Despite the rhetoric, President Kim II Sung appears ready for a thaw in relations with Washington, in part because the fall of his socialist allies has created a domestic economic crisis.
North Korea is desperate for hard currency to purchase items such as fuel and spare parts for factories. This month, Kim called for opening of diplomatic relations with the United States. Washington, which accuses Pyongyang of trying to build nuclear weapons and of engaging in international terrorism, has held meetings with North Korean officials since January in search of improved relations. The annual Team Spirit war games between the United States and South Korea were canceled this year, but fear of the United States instilled by a generation of relentless propaganda may be hard to erase.
A guide assigned to interpret for a U.S. reporter said his wife was frightened for his safety during the weeklong assignment, and his 2-year-old asked fearfully if the "Yankee was really a wolf."