For several years Kim rarely appeared in public, delegating most tasks to his underlings. But his presence was ubiquitous. His quotations were in every newspaper. Every publication in every domain, from civil engineering to molecular biology, came with an obligatory reference to his work. His speeches were anthologised and issued as his Collected Works. His Selected Works appeared in translation. Beneath his benevolent gaze his subjects studied his words in every office and classroom across the country. Marx, Engels and Lenin, on the other hand, were rarely seen or read.30
On 9 September 1963 North Korea held a huge parade to celebrate its fifteenth anniversary. Not a single mention was made of the Soviet Union in the opening speeches. The slogan was ‘All Through Our Own Effort’, as a huge effigy of Kim Il-sung was carried through the streets of Pyongyang.31
Like all good dictators, however, Kim needed to establish himself as the founder of an ideology. His writings were widely studied, but he needed a philosophy, preferably one that added the suffix ‘ism’ to his name. In December 1955, even as the Soviet Union and China were sending emergency food to North Korea, Kim Il-sung had presented his Juche Thought. The word juche, loosely translated, means ‘self-reliance’. Buried in jargon was a simple idea: people are the masters of their own destiny, and by becoming self-reliant they can achieve true socialism. Marxism-Leninism, which insisted that material conditions were the primary force of historical change, was turned upside down.32
For years Juche Thought was barely mentioned, even though the notion of economic self-sufficiency ran through the Chollima Campaign, while independence and self-reliance had always been among the most prominent slogans in North Korea. But in April 1965, as the Sino-Soviet rift was in full swing, Kim travelled to Indonesia on the occasion of the tenth anniversary of the Bandung Conference of African and Asian countries. It was Kim’s first trip outside the socialist camp, and he used it to stake his claim as leader of the non-aligned countries of the Third World. In Jakarta he talked at length about the basic principles of Juche. He advocated a barely disguised position of independence from the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China in the anti-imperialist struggle.33
At home Juche Thought served a very different purpose. In October 1966, after fifteen years of breakneck development in heavy industry, even some of Kim’s own followers began asking for an improvement in the living standards of ordinary people. The country was again on the verge of starvation. The capital Pyongyang had not seen cooking oil or meat for months.34
Kim viewed these demands as a threat and demanded that Juche Thought become enshrined as the official ideology of North Korea. He wanted nothing less than a monolithic ideological system, the ‘unity of ideology and will’, in order to lead the revolution. He required unconditional obedience from every member in the party. In 1967 his critics were purged.35
As Kim’s word became absolute the epithets used to describe him became ever more extravagant. He was hailed as the ‘genius leader of a 40-million nation’ and ‘the outstanding leader of the international communist and workers movement’. He was the one who had liberated the fatherland from the yoke of colonial rule in August 1945, and he was the one who had inflicted a ‘hundred and a thousand-fold retaliation’ on the American imperialists, forcing them to their knees during the Korean War. He was the red beacon for the oppressed in Africa, Latin America and Asia. ‘Kim Il-sung is the Red Sun’, wrote a Nigerian poet in the Pyongyang Times.36
His cult extended to his family. A theatre troupe from the Ministry of Security performed a widely disseminated play about the ‘heroic deeds’ of his mother, described as ‘the mother of Kim Il-sung and our mother’. His father was canonised as a saint of the revolution, while the revolutionary family circle extended to his grandfather, grandmother and one of his great-grandfathers.37
In 1967 May Day, celebrated for the first time in four years, was held under the banner of Juche Thought. There were no foreign flags. The pennants came in yellow, green and blue, the colours of the national flag, but not a single one in red. ‘All Through Our Own Efforts’ or ‘Unity through Self-Reliance’, proclaimed the banners in the parade, which was opened by several giant winged horses followed by endless portraits and effigies of the Great Leader. The event ended with the participants ceremoniously singing a Kim Il-sung song, then chanting his name for several minutes.38
There was no Cultural Revolution. Like other dictators, Kim Il-sung was baffled by the chaos it engendered in China. But with the elevation of Juche Thought came an attack on everything that smacked of bourgeois culture. Some 300,000 people with a family member considered ‘politically unreliable’ were removed from the capital Pyongyang. Love songs and love stories were banned. Popular theatre, with singers and musicians recounting folk tales, became taboo. Classical music, including Beethoven, was proscribed. Even How the Steel Was Tempered, a socialist-realist novel published in 1936 by Nikolai Ostrovsky, fell victim to the censors. A more sweeping approach followed in May 1968, as all foreign books were confiscated, while studying the original works of Marx and Engels was considered ‘undesirable’. In meeting places, lecture halls and dedicated study rooms, sometimes described as ‘cult rooms’ by foreigners, captive audiences studied the works of Kim Il-sung, committing his work to memory to betoken their burning loyalty.39
Tension was ratcheted up, a martial atmosphere fostered. The parade in May 1967 was also a display of military prowess, with long formations of anti-tank guns, anti-aircraft artillery and grenade launchers rumbling through the capital. ‘Let Us Free South Korea!’ and ‘Let Us Arm the Entire People’ were slogans that set the tone. In an atmosphere of impending war, air-raid drills were held regularly in cities and villages, compelling even the sick and elderly to march for kilometres to seek shelter in underground tunnels.40
There is nothing like the threat of war to focus attention on the leader, as people close ranks and rally together, but the heightened tension was also the result of changes in the party membership that took place in 1962. With all his opponents purged, Kim promoted his own young generals to key positions. It was to some extent a reaction to a successful military coup in South Korea in May 1961. It was also part of a renewed desire to reunify the peninsula through military conquest. For several years his generals strengthened the military and armed the people, turning the country into an ‘impregnable fortress’.
But in January 1968 they went too far. First, they sent a guerrilla unit to Seoul on a mission to assassinate the South Korean president Park Chung-hee. They failed, with several of the commandos killed on the spot. Then, on a whim, a few days later they seized an American intelligence vessel named the Pueblo. Its crew of eighty-three were abused and imprisoned for eleven months, bringing the country to the brink of war.41
In public Kim congratulated the officers responsible for the capture of the Pueblo, but after the crisis was solved through lengthy negotiations he quietly removed twelve of the highest ranking generals from his own partisan group. No dictator feels secure with a powerful military group in command, even when they have been loyal all their lives. It marked the end of the militant policy of the 1960s.
In 1969 young followers devoted to economic development were promoted instead. Kim’s family members began filling some of the most senior positions, now vacant. His younger brother advanced to the fourth-ranking post. His wife took over as chair of the Democratic Women’s Union of Korea. When in May 1972 the East Germans and Soviets compiled a list of Kim family members in positions of power, they counted a dozen.42
On 15 April 1972 Kim turned sixty. Preparations for the event had begun months earlier. In October 1971 the propaganda machine announced that across the country monuments were to be built in honour of the Great Leader. Shrines appeared to memorialise revolutionary battlefields, and poems were inscribed in stone to mark the ground he had stood on. New roads, bridges and embankments were built. As a sign of gratitude for his on-the-spot guidance, monuments were unveiled in every province and
every major city, factory, mine and agricultural cooperative. No one wanted to lag, as people volunteered to work around the clock, often by artificial light during the night. Their personal sacrifice was a demonstration of genuine love for the Great Leader, a gift to the one who had bestowed so much on his people.43
Kim’s place of birth at Mangyongdae, already visited by 1.3 million students and workers on annual pilgrimages, was rebuilt with markers commemorating historic moments in his life: the place where he sat with his father, his sledding hill, his wrestling grounds, his favourite fishing spot, his swing, even a tree under which he had sat. On display were the wooden ploughs and rakes used by his family, as well as the yellow bowl from which he had eaten his rice. Further north in Pochonbo and Musan, two historic sites where the Great Leader had fought the Japanese, twenty-three historical monuments were erected.44
The scale of the public works was pharaonic. Vast resources were diverted towards the anniversary projects, which required so much cement that despite contractual obligations all deliveries to the Soviet Union were halted. Miners were enrolled to meet the deadline, plunging entire towns into darkness as the coal needed to fire power plants ran out.45
Pyongyang was transformed. The capital had been reduced to rubble during the Korean War, but urban planners used the opportunity to turn the city into a monument to the Great Leader. Over the years large boulevards lined with trees had appeared, interspersed with parks, fountains and flower beds. Work on a new Kim Il-sung Square had started in 1954 and was completed in time for the sixtieth birthday celebrations. On this vast space paved in granite stood a bronze statue of Kim Il-sung.
The most imposing tribute, however, appeared on the high hill of Mansudae, overlooking the city. Here the revolutionary museum that had boasted a mere 5,000 square metres some fifteen years earlier had been completely revamped, turned into a colossal monument covering an imposing 50,000 square metres with more than ninety exhibition rooms. In front of the museum stood a statue of the Great Leader, one hand on his hip, the other outstretched with open fingers, as if presenting the future. Towering twenty metres high, it was the largest statue ever built in the country, floodlit at night and visible for many kilometres outside the city.46
Weeks before the event a campaign entitled ‘Loyalty Gifts’ was inaugurated. It was an opportunity for everyone to demonstrate their love of the leader by voluntarily reaching even higher production quotas than usual. Real gifts also arrived in the capital ahead of the birthday, with ships sent by Koreans living in Japan. They were loaded with hundreds of imported vehicles, including Mercedes-Benz cars, together with lorries, bulldozers and excavators, also colour television sets, jewellery, silk and other luxuries.47
On 15 August the museum was inaugurated with great pomp, as some 300,000 visitors shuffled through its many rooms in respectful silence. Seven sections allowed them to follow the story of the Great Leader, from his struggle against the Japanese to his exploits in the international arena. Thousands of items were on display: Kim’s gloves, shoes, belts, caps, sweaters and pens, maps and pamphlets, dioramas of famous battles, scale models of famous meetings, paintings of famous scenes. Statues stood everywhere, each one approved by Kim Il-sung himself.48
Badges were introduced. They had appeared two years earlier, but were now widely distributed. A first batch of 20,000 arrived from China in time for the celebrations, showing a stern-looking Great Leader against a red background. A more benevolent smile would only appear much later. At first they were known as ‘party badges’, displayed by high-ranking officials, but before long every subject was required to wear one, always on their left breast pocket.49
Six months later, in December 1972, a new constitution was passed. It enshrined Juche, in effect substituting the Great Leader’s thought for Marxism-Leninism. A new position was also created. Besides chairman of the party, Kim was crowned president of the republic. As president he was simultaneously head of state and commander of the armed forces, with the power to issue edicts, grant pardons and conclude or abrogate treaties. The constitution not only ensconced Kim Il-sung at all levels of government, but also marked a subtle shift of power away from the party towards the state.50
North Korea had been a hermetically sealed country, with few visible foreigners besides embassy members from the socialist camp, all of them under surveillance. But Kim’s sixtieth birthday was also a coming-out party, with delegations from thirty countries attending the ceremonies.51
For the first time an American correspondent was invited to visit North Korea. He had been carefully selected, having reported for many years from the Soviet Union and Albania. The morning after he landed, Harrison Salisbury was driven around Pyongyang in a brand-new Mercedes-Benz. He was taken to model schools, factories and farms. Everything impressed him, from the happy villagers working in the fields to the proud children in kindergartens who sang to the glory of the Great Leader: ‘We Have Nothing to Envy in the Whole World’.52
Salisbury met the fatherly marshal, who welcomed him with outstretched hands. Like Stalin and Mao, he walked slowly, projecting a stately aura. And, like them, he knew how to smile and put his guests at ease, laughing and even chuckling at times, occasionally turning towards his colleagues for support in his statements. Salisbury concluded that Kim Il-sung was a ‘monumentally astute and visionary statesman’.
The camera took photographs of the carefully choreographed meeting between Salisbury and Kim, although in the newspapers next day the interpreter who sat between them vanished, excised from the record. A week later another American journalist arrived, followed in turn by more visitors, as North Korea prudently opened its doors.53
In Jakarta in 1965 Kim had presented himself as an advocate for non-aligned nations, courting the Third World while the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic were at loggerheads. After some 250,000 troops led by the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in the summer of 1968 to suppress the country’s campaign for democratic reform, North Korea refused to attend the International Meeting of Communist and Workers’ Parties in Moscow. Kim Il-sung invoked Juche Thought openly to confront Moscow, proclaiming that national revolution took precedence over international revolution. Newspaper articles, pamphlets and potted biographies of the Great Leader were published abroad, with full-page advertisements in leading newspapers in Sweden, Britain and the United States. The bulk of the propaganda effort was to present Kim Il-sung as a genius, a leader of international stature who had creatively developed Marxism-Leninism into a body of work that was an inspiration for revolutionary peoples around the world.54
Over the following years North Korea explored every opportunity to establish relationships with countries that had expressed reservations about the Soviet Union, from Yugoslavia in September 1971 to the Republic of Seychelles in August 1976. China’s isolation during the Cultural Revolution was also exploited, as tens of thousands of people regularly lined the streets to welcome foreign dignitaries to Pyongyang. Kim himself went abroad, taking to international travel with the same energy with which he had toured his own country. In 1975 he undertook two major trips, granting liberal interviews to foreign correspondents in a dozen countries. He was trying to win friends abroad.55
Much of this charm offensive had to do with the United Nations, which finally admitted North Korea in 1975. But throughout the 1970s Kim continued to project himself as a leader of the Third World. North Korea financed more than 200 organisations in some fifty countries to study Juche Thought. An International Forum on Juche was held in Tokyo in 1974, at long last inaugurating the term Kim Il-sungism. The biggest event came in September 1977, when representatives from seventy-three countries were invited to Pyongyang to attend a series of seminars on Kim Il-sungism chaired by the Great Leader himself. The participants listened respectfully, not one of them raising a single question.56
By 1978 Kim Il-sung realised that his efforts to promote Juche Thought abroad had earned him derision rather than respect. The campaign came to a ha
lt. Funding for study centres abroad ceased, interviews with foreign journalists were scaled down. North Korea’s brief support of the Third World came to an end.57
At home Kim Il-sung was presented as a key player on the world stage, a great and influential statesman with a say in every international issue. In 1978 an International Friendship Exhibition Hall was opened in Myohyangsan, a sacred mountain some two hours north of Pyongyang. Built like a traditional temple, the sprawling complex displayed countless tokens of esteem received over the years by the Great Leader. There were armoured carriages sent by Stalin and Mao, black limousines from former Soviet premier Georgy Malenkov, a crocodile-skin briefcase from Fidel Castro of Cuba, a bear skin from Ceauşescu, an elephant tusk, a coffee maker, ashtrays, vases, lamps, pens, rugs, endless objects in endless rooms, all of them providing tangible proof of the endless respect for Kim Il-sung by leaders around the world. By 1981 roughly 90 per cent of the international news shown on television each evening consisted of reports about foreign seminars, conferences or publications on the Great Leader. The world revered him.58
Oaths of absolute loyalty to the leader became common after Kim Il-sung’s sixtieth birthday. When he turned sixty-three, radio and television showed workers at the beginning of the day swearing an oath of loyalty and bowing in front of his portrait, a book of his quotations in one hand. They bowed again at the end of their shift. Party members also began swearing loyalty to his son, Kim Jong-il, a chubby young man aged just over thirty, in charge of the party secretariat.59
Enlarged photographs of Kim Jong-il, who always assumed the same poses as his father, now began appearing. On 16 February 1976 some 15,000 children and youngsters celebrated Kim Jong-il’s thirty-fourth birthday at the Pyongyang stadium. Even more telling, perhaps, was the conspicuous absence of several top leaders from public functions in the following years. A number were purged in December 1977. Kim was removing those suspected of opposing the appointment of his son as heir apparent. In October 1980 Kim Jong-il was elected the fourth highest ranking member in the party.60
How to Be a Dictator Page 17