The Hidden People of North Korea (13 page)

The central theme of the Kim cult is that the highest duty of every North Korean is to protect the leader—although from what is not clearly specified. People are told that the country is nothing without the leader; therefore, protecting Kim comes before protecting the country. “If one fails to worship and uphold one’s top leader [
suryong
, in this case Kim Il-sung] and leader [
jidoja
, i.e., Kim Jong-il] absolutely, one cannot defend national dignity, nor safeguard the socialist gains won with blood, nor avoid the fate of stateless slaves.”
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An internal document aimed at those cadres who might be more concerned about their own welfare than that of their country bluntly warns, “If they fail to defend the nerve center of the revolution, our commanding members will be the first to climb up the enemy’s gallows.”
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Protecting the leader also means protecting the “number one articles” associated with him. The most ubiquitous of these are portraits of the Kims found in virtually every room in the country. After a devastating explosion on the rail tracks at Yongchon, KCNA reported approvingly that a Mr. Choe and Mr. Jon, on their way home for lunch, rushed into a burning building that was collapsing “to die a heroic death” in an attempt to rescue portraits of the two Kims hanging on its walls.
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According to another KCNA story, during the summer floods of 2006, one Kim Tok-chan awoke from a sound sleep to hear the roaring sound of a landslide. He took down the portraits of the two Kims from his living room wall, wrapped them with care, and prepared to flee the house, but he was too late. He did, however, manage to hand the pictures to his wife and push her to safety before he was buried in the landslide.

One of the more curious manifestations of Kim worship is the “slogan tree,” whose bark bears what are said to be carvings made by Kim Il-sung’s band of revolutionary fighters in the 1930s and 1940s. Thousands of trees have been “discovered” since the 1980s, leading most skeptics to assume that members of the party’s propaganda department have been busy with their carving knives. Dozens of the trees located near historical sites are surrounded by special curtained glass enclosures to protect them from the elements.
Nodong Sinmun
says that when forest fires threatened these trees, seventeen soldiers “did not hesitate to throw themselves into the fire, in the flower of their youth, to protect a slogan tree that is the treasure of ages to come. After they were burned to death with their bodies covering every inch of the slogan tree, it came to light that they died clutching President Kim Il-sung’s portrait [lapel] badges in their hands.”
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In the Kim cult, the slogans carved on these trees play the same role that the three wise men play in the biblical story of the birth of Jesus; that is, they foretell the future greatness of the newborn Kim Jong-il: “Birth on Mount Paektu of the bright star, heir to General Kim Il-sung” and “Longevity and blessing to the bright star above Mount Paektu who will shine with the beam of the sun” (Kim Il-sung is the sun and Kim Jong-il is the moon).
¹⁰³

The Next Succession

Unless he departs from office in an untimely fashion, Kim will someday have to appoint a successor; perhaps he has already done so. In early 2009, his health seems so precarious that there may well be a sense of urgency to prepare for the succession. According to the logic of the Kim cult, which sets the Kim family apart from all others, Kim must choose one of his sons to succeed him. The tradition of Confucianism, on which the Kim cult is based, would favor his eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, born in 1971. Jong-nam, a taller and fatter version of Kim Jong-il, is the son of Kim’s former mistress, the actress Song Hye-rim. He is said to be adept at using computers (a rare skill in North Korea) and has played various background roles in the party, primarily, it is believed, in the technology field. In 2001 he had the misfortune to be detained by immigration authorities while entering Japan on a forged Dominican Republic passport—not the first time, it seems, that he had traveled illegally to Japan. Press photos showed him to be a fat man with chin stubble, accompanied by two women and a small boy. The Japanese government decided to deport the group rather than press charges, but the immigration issue made him a laughing stock in Japan, caused his father to lose face, and might prove an inauspicious public debut for a future North Korean leader. Since then, Kim Jong-nam has lived in exile in Macau, only occasionally visiting his homeland.

In 2002, the North Korean propaganda organs began to elevate to cult status Ko Yong-hi, perhaps signaling that one of her two sons may be first in line for succession. In 2003, a classified document prepared for soldiers said, “The respected mother, assisting the respected and beloved Comrade Supreme Commander from a place closest to him and serving him with all her loyalty, is precisely in the same position as Comrade Kim Jong-suk [Kim Jong-il’s mother], the anti-Japanese heroine, was in the days of the anti-Japanese war upholding the fatherly leader and laying the firm basis of succession for our revolution to be carried forward generation after generation.”
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Although the identity of the “respected mother” is not revealed, since Ko was known to be Kim’s favorite consort, the reference is undoubtedly to her.

According to an internal party directive dated September 2005, the Party Central Committee “a while ago solemnly declared that it would highly uphold respected Comrade Kim Jong-chol, who inherited the spirit of Paektu intact, as our party’s nerve center in response to our party and our people’s unanimous cherished desire.”
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The “unanimous desire” is pure fiction, of course, because Jong-chol’s name has never been mentioned in the press. The directive went on to indicate that Jong-chol should be addressed as “respected comrade chief deputy department director,” that his portrait should be “cordially placed” in party conference rooms and offices but not in people’s homes, and that his orders should be implemented without question. At the time, Kim Jong-chol was only twenty-five.

For top cadres, much is riding on the succession choice. Those close to the successor will rise in the party organization, and associates and supporters of other succession candidates may even end up in prison. It is not at all clear that Jong-chol will be his father’s choice. In 2009, Ko’s younger son, Kim Jong-un, seemed to have become the succession favorite. One would think that Kim Jong-un, only twenty-six years of age, would be too young and inexperienced to be named as the successor. After all, Kim Jong-il was in his early thirties when his father chose him, and his succession was not announced to the public until he was almost forty. But Kim Jong-il’s deteriorating health may push the succession process forward more quickly than anyone had anticipated, and it would probably be better for him to name a young successor than none at all.

Little is known about either of Ko’s two sons. Like Kim Jong-nam, they both spent a few years of their youth studying at schools in Switzerland (under false names). Neither has been mentioned by name in the North Korean press, and the general public does not even know of their existence. If in the near future Kim Jong-il becomes seriously incapacitated or dies, perhaps one of the sons will begin his reign at the head of a collective leadership group, with eventual leadership succession to be decided by domestic power struggles.

Summing up Kim Jong-il

Kim Jong-il, the “respected and beloved general,” has never been particularly respected or loved by the North Korean people, but he has been accepted in North Korea’s Confucian-based culture because he is the first son of the respected and beloved father. Perhaps more importantly, after a half century of life under the Kim dynasty, the North Korean people cannot imagine who else might lead them. It would be a gross exaggeration to say that the people support Kim Jong-il; rather, it does not occur to them to oppose him. In any case, what the people actually think of him is largely irrelevant because they have no political power. On the other hand, the military does have the power to contest Kim’s rule, and the top generals, most of whom he has appointed, cannot be happy with the state of the economy, which has hurt morale and impaired military readiness. To keep the military in line, Kim spies on his generals and lavishes them with gifts. In any case, the generals would not know how to run the country without Kim.

The foreign press often calls Kim crazy, but there is little evidence to support such an assessment. Kim is a rational thinker, able to arrive at reasonable conclusions based on information he receives from loyal cadres. Given his desire to remain in power for a lifetime, his policy choices usually make sense. It would be a mistake to think Kim has made poor decisions just because North Korea’s economy has collapsed and the people are suffering. His decisions are made for the benefit of himself and his supporters, not the people. Totalitarian socialism may have weakened his country and brought suffering to his people, but at the same time it has kept him in control and kept his people preoccupied with survival. Impulsive though he may be, Kim seems capable of weighing costs and benefits and employing North Korea’s limited resources to protect his regime from the indifference and hostility of foreign powers.

The greatest flaw in his character is his attitude of exceptionalism. Although he has orchestrated a propaganda campaign to make the North Korean people selfless socialists, he himself is a confirmed capitalist. Even in a capitalist society, he would be called a “fat cat.” The propaganda stories about Kim’s frugal lifestyle (“I do not care if I only eat soup”) might fool some of the masses some of the time, but they do not fool his top officials in Pyongyang, who, thanks to personal observation and rumor, are aware of his disdain for socialism.

It is doubtful that Kim has ever seriously considered loosening his grip on the people or adopting the kind of reform policies that have transformed other current and former socialist countries. The fate of former dictators teaches that reform is usually accompanied by political change. A day of reckoning came for each of the former communist European dictators: Hungary’s János Kadar was deposed in 1988 and died the following year; East Germany’s Erich Honecker was deposed in 1989 and subsequently arrested for corruption and manslaughter; Czechoslovakia’s Gustav Husak, deposed in 1989, was expelled from the party the following year and died in 1991; Bulgaria’s Todor Zhivkov was deposed in 1989, expelled from the party, and arrested for embezzlement; and Poland’s Wojciech Jaruzelski was deposed in 1990 and later charged with crimes committed as defense minister. Yugoslavia’s Josip Tito and Albania’s Enver Hoxha were spared humiliation accompanying the collapse of communism only because they died in 1980 and 1985, respectively. Romania’s Nicolae Ceausescu, whose cult of personality, nepotism, love of grand monuments, and reign of terror paralleled the ruling style of his good friend Kim Il-sung, was so hated by his people that after he fell from power, three hundred members of the military vied for a place on the three-man firing squad that executed him and his wife on Christmas day in 1989. With these examples before him, Kim Jong-il has not heeded Mikhail Gorbachev’s famous advice to Honecker in 1989 that “life punishes those who delay.” Gorbachev himself has disappeared from political life, as have most of the first generation of reformers who followed the dictators. Kim Jong-il has delayed and remains as firmly in power as he was in 1990. Life often rewards those who persevere as well.

To remain in control, Kim or his successor must reserve power for himself. He must accept corruption, which helps a dysfunctional society survive, although he must not allow top cadres to become too corrupt or they may amass sufficient power to threaten him. As for the masses, as long as they are preoccupied with making a living, and as long as they have reason to fear the police, they will be reluctant to engage in politics. Kim does worry about foreign influence and intervention, especially from the United States. In light of this threat, he desperately needs a guarantee from the United States of support for his regime and noninterference in its domestic affairs. Kim’s conception of Korean unification follows the same line: economic support from South Korea coupled with acceptance of the North’s dictatorial system. Only if Kim keeps his eyes focused on the supreme goal of staying in power can he and his successor and associates survive in a world where socialist dictatorships are an oddity and an anachronism.

As for the twenty-three million other North Koreans, it is their misfortune that Kim and his father have been free to pursue their own interests at the expense of the peoples’. As long as Kim or like-minded North Korean rulers remain in power, the best the people can do is look out for their individual interests and try to stay out of trouble with the authorities.

CHAPTER THREE