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Thesis (M.S.) in Mechanical Engineering--University of Maine, 2008. / Includes vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 86-91).

This dissertation examines how North Korea’s version of nationalism was constructed by taking a material thing as my point of departure. Vinalon is a kind of synthetic fiber developed by a Korean scientist during the Japanese colonial era. North Korea succeeded in the industrial production of vinalon in 1961. The construction of the Vinalon Factory in Hamhŭng was completed by North Koreans using their own resources and manpower. Unlike nylon, which uses oil as the main raw material, vinalon uses locally-mined anthracite and limestone as the main raw materials. For these reasons, North Korea was proud of the industrialization of vinalon, eventually giving it the title of “Juche [self-reliance] fiber.” Although North Korea emphasizes solely its self-reliant aspect, vinalon has had a global history from the colonial period to the post-war era. I argue that the global network of technological knowledge made the industrial production of vinalon possible and that the industrialization of vinalon was a historically contingent process of experimentation. Uncovering the global history behind the industrialization of vinalon and probing vinalon as a material produced in the dynamics between Juche and the global, my work contributes to the rethinking of U.S.-Soviet-centered Cold War scholarship by investigating Second World-Second World and Second World-Third World relationships. Furthermore, focusing on the agency of the vinalon products in people’s everyday lives, my project explores how vinalon threaded North Korea’s Juche discourse through a variety of products that penetrated into the everyday and the gendering of those products. By analyzing the interaction between the scientific and the socio-political realms on the one hand and by exploring how the Mother Party discourse became embodied in the form of the material vinalon on the other hand, my dissertation goes beyond the politics-centered narrative that has dominated scholarly work on North Korean ideology. In this dissertation, I utilize diverse sets of textual, material, and visual sources, as well as interviews, while combining methods from social and global history, material culture studies, history of science and technology, gender studies, and STS studies. Each chapter of the dissertation explores different aspects of the social life of vinalon in North Korea. Chapter 1 investigates how the industrialization of vinalon allowed North Korea to promote its legitimacy as a postcolonial independent nation-state while contributing to the expansion of the Juche discourse, providing background on the processes through which vinalon was invented and industrialized. This chapter shows that the successful industrialization of vinalon and subsequent fetishization of Juche science facilitated the formulation of Juche ideology in middle to late 1960s North Korea. Chapter 2 uncovers the global history that enabled vinalon to be industrialized, focusing on the global circulation of technological knowledge from the colonial period to the 1960s. This chapter also traces how the vinalon industry developed differently in Japan and China in response to changes in the world chemical industry. Chapter 3 explores the social conditioning processes in which people’s perceptions of vinalon were constructed through their interactions with the state’s promotion of science, particularly in the form of literature. Taking a look at how the popularization of science and vinalon products consumed in the everyday lives of the people were connected to the construction of North Korean national identity, this chapter uses the case study of vinalon to examine the crossroads where science, the masses, and national identity intersect. Chapter 4 deals with how vinalon played the role of a maternal artifact that embodies the leader’s love for the people as well as the discourse of the Mother Party. Here I probe how the affective aspects of the fiber based on its materiality and representation contributed to the process of making the Mother Party discourse stronger and more pervasive. Chapter 5 addresses how the uses of vinalon in the realm of the everyday have changed over time, what role vinalon played in the process by which North Korea reinforced nationalism in response to social crises, and how vinalon has been consumed in the process of constructing an ideological fabric of North Korea today. Clothes, socks, blankets, scarfs, bags, and other products made from vinalon became the objects by which people directly experienced Juche in their daily lives. By looking at vinalon as a thread that played a pivotal role in weaving the Juche discourse into North Korean society, my dissertation shows that vinalon acted as an effective vehicle to project North Korea’s Juche materially and discursively in the people’s everyday lives.

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本文以企業策略家Micnael Porter 1990年著作國家競爭優勢中的國家競 爭力之鑽石四條件互動為基礎，探討我國成品布產業現階段的作業品質及 下一階段之競爭策略。其中並以Werner International之分析方式，將全 球成品布業者分為四群，就鑽石四條件間互動方式的差異，確認我國與貼 身對手國的位階及與先進國的差異。本文實地訪談的地理範圍包括日本、 香港、大陸深圳、馬來西亞，實際訪談的國內外企業組織包括德國、日本 、香港、台灣約共60家，業務範圍包括化纖業、紡紗織布業、染整業、成 衣業、進口布料業、成品布外銷業者及協力廠商，希望能以「全球產業」 、「國際分工」的理性宏觀觀點來觀察。研究發現，我國化纖類成品布因 人纖技術的突破而具優勢，此優勢形成原因在於1960年代具競爭力的生產 要素中的高等因子；1990年代以後我國成品布業者，若仍繼續著非相關事 業多角化，在人材培育上無具體有力與全面的投資，我國的成品布將無法 在研發團隊的建立、織物設計能力與網路形成之三大工作上突破。本研究 中亦發現，我國成品布全體工作者的觀念與技術能力均有待全面的提升， 除非與先進國家各相應的組織進行密切的策略聯盟，僅靠自身的努力將不 足以提高四條件本身與互動的品質，亦即將無法超越國際分工的命定角色 ，而我國成品布業將只能成為香港與東南亞成衣業之供應源而已。自民 國78年迄今，我國成品布業者，尚只有零星而局部的在公司策略與組織的 調整上努力；至於人材培育與相關產業方面，看不出來有進步的趨向，就 短期而言，我國仍只能在生產基地移轉、彈性生產及短交期、短碼數接單 上獲利，至於新市場(通路)開拓與新產品開發(布料設計與行銷資訊之結 合)方面，仍有待我方長期的努力。