In Korea, we have been through tough political paths. We were conquered by the Japanese for thirty-six years, we had the Korean War in 1950, and we even experienced dictatorship for eleven years by President Park in 1970s and early 1980s. After all the chaotic political situations for more than fifty-five years, we are, finally, trying to stabilize politics with a Nobel Prize awarded president, Kim Dae Jung. In each political period, there was a specific propaganda to support its government. I saw various methods of propaganda even when I was in elementary school. Certainly, I did not know that it was propaganda, because almost everything we learned in elementary school seemed so true to me. I realized, however, that the Korean government used education as a method of propaganda.
Huxley said, ¡°All that is in our power is to be as truthful and rational as circumstances permits us to be, and to respond as well as we can the limited truth and imperfect reasoning offered for our consideration by others¡±(Huxley 15). The government put a lot of effort to make students believe in anti-communism. When I was in elementary school, schoolteachers described North Korean soldiers as if they all had ugly red faces with canine teeth. Moreover, they always carried guns or big sabers with intimidating expressions on their faces. About once a week, all the students gathered together in a big gym and sang anti-communism songs. In addition, we had to watch an anti-communism movie and write about what we felt about North Korean people and what we should do about them. I think it was pretty effective, because ¡°Bbal Geng I¡±, which commonly refers to a North Korean soldier, was the biggest insult I could ever imagine. ¡°Bbal Geng I¡± is an insulting term of a North Korean Soldier based on a movie about a Korean child, Lee Seungbok. He was living close to the border to North Korea. One day, a hungry North Korean soldier came...