Now I know what you’re thinking: why didn’t I hear anything about IFLRY wanting to join a festival in North Korea?! Well, that’s because this happened quite a while ago. If you’re currently active in IFLRY probably before you were born. (Five months before I was born in fact, and with my 32 years the idea that I’m a young liberal is becoming somewhat debatable.)
I’m bringing this up now because 2022 is the 75th anniversary of the founding of IFLRY’s predecessor organization WFLRY. And since Vincent Biancardi Da Camara already wrote an excellent account of IFLRY and WFLRY’s history for IFLRY’s 70th anniversary, I thought I’d dig through our archives to find something interesting to write about. And so I found this press release dated 23 June 1989 titled: Young Liberals and Radicals Abandon Process of North Korean Festival.
The press release states that IFLRY “has announced its withdrawal from the preparation and the proceedings of the 13th World Festival of Youth and Students, which is to be held in Pyongyang, People’s republic of North Korea, 1-9 July 1989.” The World Festival of Youth and Students is a recurring international event organized by the World Federation of Democratic Youth and the International Union of Students. While initially more diverse, the event became an outlet for Soviet propaganda during the Cold War.
The festival’s link to the Soviet Union explains why the 1989 festival was held in North Korea. What it doesn’t explain however, is why IFLRY was involved in the festival. Why did IFLRY take part in an event that was dominated by the Soviet Union and other totalitarian countries of the Eastern Bloc?
Here, an interview Larissa Saar and I held with former IFLRY president Imke Roebken sheds light on the matter. Imke explains that IFLRY started to participate in East-West conferences after the Helsinki Accords in 1975. This also led to IFLRY’s involvement in the World Festival of Youth and students. An article in Libel from 1987 even reports that IFLRY Bureau members attended a conference of the Komsomol, the youth wing of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. And not only that, the article also mentions that then IFLRY tried to steer the organization of the festival in North Korea. Clearly, the assurances by the North Korean representatives that were mentioned in the article turned out not to be sufficient for IFLRY to join the event.
So that is how IFLRY came to first try to attend, and then abandon attending an event in North Korea. I realize that I haven’t explained here why they decided not to attend. But since the press release does an excellent job explaining that, and it’s included here in full, you can find out by reading it yourself.