invocations

[unpakwon]

Would you please explain the following in bold?

1. Obligatory in tales of work life are invocations of the campaign slogans of the day, but these tend to be extraneous to variations of the same morality tale about a model worker inspiring his or her comrades, surmounting this or that bureaucratic obstacle or material shortage, and perhaps shaming a mildly bad egg into reform.

Does this mean "the campaign slogans of the day should be widely used in tales of work life"? I don't know why the word "invocations" is used.

2. Whatever kind of country the successor stands to inherit, it will not be a communist one. The North Korea's revised constitution... forbore even to pay lip service to that term, instead invoking "military-first" socialism as the country's guiding principle. Short of reviving the kamikaze slogans of the Pacific War---though of course it has done that too---the regime can hardly make its ideological affinity to the first "national defense" state on Korean soil any clearer.

Would you please paraphrase the above more easily?

Thank you for your time.

[susiedqq]

Obligatory in tales of work life are invocations of the campaign slogans of the day

=

What is necessary in work life is to refer to (or call upon) campaign slogans of the day . . .

[unpakwon]

Thank you for the answer.

[freezeframe]

Would you please explain the following in bold?

1. Obligatory in tales of work life are invocations of the campaign slogans of the day, but these tend to be extraneous to variations of the same morality tale about a model worker inspiring his or her comrades, surmounting this or that bureaucratic obstacle or material shortage, and perhaps shaming a mildly bad egg into reform.

Does this mean "the campaign slogans of the day should be widely used in tales of work life"? I don't know why the word "invocations" is used.

2. Whatever kind of country the successor stands to inherit, it will not be a communist one. The North Korea's revised constitution... forbore even to pay lip service to that term, instead invoking "military-first" socialism as the country's guiding principle. Short of reviving the kamikaze slogans of the Pacific War---though of course it has done that too---the regime can hardly make its ideological affinity to the first "national defense" state on Korean soil any clearer.

Would you please paraphrase the above more easily?

Thank you for your time.

Does this mean "the campaign slogans of the day should be widely used in tales of work life"?

#1. Every story (what kind of story depends on your context -- literature? news?) about work has to include the slogans of the time. Your interpretation is correct except not just "widely" but they must be used (obligatory).

#2. The kind of socialism in North Korea now is a "military-first" kind and its main goal is "national defense". The regime is not hiding that but made it as explicit as possible. "Short of" means "without going as far as". But the parenthetical comment says that the regime did even that (kamikaze slogans). This is a rhetorical device. Hope this helps.

[unpakwon]

I've been waiting this answer.

Thank you so much.

On #1, the story refers to novels that have a goal for propaganda.