Anti-U.S. diatribes are daily fodder for North Koreans

SEOUL, South Korea -- "Let's exterminate our sworn enemy U.S. imperialists!" reads a slogan inside North Korean jet cockpits, sailors' cabins and army guard posts. In schools, teachers tell students Americans are "two-legged wolves" and the United States is a "hotbed of all evils swarming with beggars."

From kindergarten children to People's Army troops, hatred toward Americans is part of life in the impoverished, Stalinist state that gets much of its international aid from the country it despises.

The isolated regime's bellicose rhetoric reached a new pitch in the past week, when North Korea escalated its nuclear standoff with Washington, warning of a "Third World War," "a sea of fire" and a "holy war" against the United States.

"It's hardly new to me," said Lee Jae-gun, a South Korea fisherman who was kidnapped to North Korea and lived there 30 years until escaping in 2000. "It's a daily fodder in North Korea. The first thing you hear when you wake up for the day is some form of diatribe against the Americans."

Defectors from North Korea describe the country as an Orwellian place built on three pillars: a personality cult surrounding leader Kim Jong Il, Stalinism and hatred of anything American.

Kang Chul Hwan, who defected to South Korea in 1992, remembers textbooks telling the tale of an American missionary tattooing "Thief" on a Korean boy who picked an apple from his orchard. Animated cartoons depict Americans as sharp-toothed wolves.

A schoolyard sport

Cho Myong Chul, who defected to Seoul in 1994, recalls that hurling rocks at the effigy of a U.S. soldier was a schoolyard sport.

The animosity originates from the 1950-53 Korean War, during which U.S. troops fought for South Korea, and is cultivated by communist leaders, says Cho, 44, a college professor in North Korea who now works at Seoul's Korea Institute for International Economic Policy.

"If you rule a destitute country with a personality cult, you must present the people with something to hate," Cho said. "It's brainwashing."

The propaganda has been so pervasive that it helped create a "whole new linguistic culture" both militaristic and anti-American, Cho said. North Korean news media brim with hostile slogans and TV commentators almost always speak in raised, militant voices.

A popular curse, Lee said, is "I will kill you like an American imperialist."

Last Saturday, North Korea claimed more than 1 million people turned out for a rally in Pyongyang and vowed to fight a "holy war" against the United States.

"The worst part of such a rally is that we had to be there early," Kang said. "People spent hours practicing the slogans."