Dr. Ted Mosch speaks about Korea

By: Amanda Rogers

Posted: 11/18/09

Dr. Ted Mosch, professor emeritus of Political Science at UTM, spoke on "A Look at North Korea" Monday, Nov. 16, at 7:30 p.m. in Watkins Auditorium. Mosch's appearance was co-sponsored by the Honors Programs and the Department of Accounting, Finance, Economics, and Political Science.

Mosch is among the most widely honored educators in the history of the university and has received numerous awards for teaching and service. He was the University of Tennessee National Alumni Distinguished Professor from 1996 until his retirement in 2002. Mosch was also richly decorated during his years of service in the U.S. Army Reserves, in which he achieved the rank of colonel. He has widely traveled and has visited a number of countries, including Russia, Germany, China, Vietnam, Cuba and North Korea.

Mosch began his talk by saying that he wanted to visit North Korea because it is the model totalitarian state in the world.
"If Hitler went to North Korea, he would cry and say 'I thought I had control over Germany,'" Mosch said.

Because the United States has no diplomatic relations with North Korea, it is a task to visit there. In the airport, Mosch expected his luggage to be checked piece by piece but this was not the case. Mosch compared being in the airport to being in the old Soviet Union again. In the airport were many pictures and portraits of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il and the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, as well as other authority figures.

Mosch said cameras may be carried but they must be registered and all cell phones are taken away because of a belief of an assassination attempt through the use of a cell phone. Although the airport was behind in terms of facilities and the street lighting was poor, the portraits of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong Il, were well lighted.

Mosch said that the propaganda machine in North Korea is unreal, and backed this with a few examples. The people tell stories of the death of Kim Il Sung and how when he died a flock of birds went through the Kim Il Sung University and landed on his statue and sang a burial hymn. The people of North Korea firmly believe in these stories.

During his stay in Pyongyang, the capital of North Korea, Mosch was able to communicate with soldiers and found that they love American cigarettes and enjoy taking them from the American package and putting them in the Korean package to avoid any questions.

Mosch's speech included many interesting facts about North Korea. The high point of his visit, he said, was seeing the Mausoleum of the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung, which included a lint removal machine and an area to clean shoes before viewing the corpse.

To conclude his speech, Mosch showed a clip from a DVD recording of the Arirang performance. This performance is a practiced show that promotes reunification of the North and South and includes 100,000 performers.

"I was on the edge of my seat the whole time," Mosch said.