Juche - 1953?

[Benjamin Barrett]

With the passing of Kim Jong-Il, the word "juche" is in the news a lot. The OED does not have it.

Google Books reveals a number of books with "juche" in the title. Two citations in GB in 1946 and 1950 are bogus dates.

1. "Selected works," Volume 7, Il-sŏng Kim, Foreign Language Press, 1953 (http://ow.ly/84WuE)

The word appears a number of times in this book, but I could not confirm the date in the book contents.

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Therefore, all Party members and working, people should be firmly armed with our Party's revolutionary idea, the Juche idea.
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2. "The changing map of Asia," William Gordon East, Taylor & Francis, p. 552 (http://ow.ly/84W1u) - this appears to be 1970 as per page xv

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Since then, although there have been various shifts of emphasis in North Korea's relationships to its two great Communist neighbours, these have apparently been the result of a sustained effort by Kim Il Sung to maintain the country's independence against interference from either, in accordance with his doctrine of _juche_, which means the adaptation of communist orthodoxy to the distinctive circumstances of Korean and the solution of its problems by its own efforts.
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According to the English Wikipedia article (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juche), North Korean sources claim 1930 as being the earliest mention of the word, but that is disputed. The article continues to say, "The first known reference to Juche" was in 1955, postdating citation one above.

According to the Korean Wikipedia entry (http://ko.wikipedia.org/wiki/%EC%A3%BC%EC%B2%B4%EC%82%AC%EC%83%81), the word in Korean is 주체사상 (主體思想).

Benjamin Barrett
Seattle, WA

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