When the children were finally reunited with their father following the signing of the armistice, an official biography relates, Kim Il-sung stroked their heads and said: “Now that the war is over, let us all live together as before, papa rebuilding the country wrecked by the Yanks and you going to school. … What do you say? Good?”13
The biography does not mention that the Father-Leader during the war had found time to start a new family. The happy home life he promised fell short of materializing, as Kim Jong-il and his stepmother, Kim Song-ae, were often at odds. “I heard that Kim Jong-il himself obtained permission from his father to call his stepmother ‘auntie’ instead of ‘mother,’” Hwang Jang-yop, who was the party secretary for ideology from 1958, wrote after his 1997 defection to the South.14
“Kim Jong-il always hated Kim Song-ae due to the tragic death of his mother,” according to defector Kang Myong-do. And the boy felt slighted by his father’s attention to stepbrother Kim Pyong-il, “who was born around 1953. Pyong-il looked like his father, and in the less frenzied atmosphere of the late 1950s the father was able to spend more time with him and develop a closer, more affectionate relationship than he had managed with Jong-il a decade earlier, Kang reported. “Kim Il-sung always favored Pyong-il over Jong-il,” he added.15
Kim Jong-il’s official biographies reveal nothing of such problems, making no mention of Kim Song-ae or any of her children. Indeed, to read those accounts, it would seem the household included only Kim Jong-il, his little sister and their father—-who was often away from Pyongyang for “on-the-spot guidance” trips. When Kim Il-sung was in town, he returned home late from the office, burned the lights in his study practically the whole night and only then might go for an early morning walk with Kim Jong-il, the son who had been waiting for a chance to talk with him. They strolled along the roads inside the premier’s estate, which doubled as an experiment station for agriculture, fisheries and forestry. Father and son talked about “study, art, the comradeship of the anti-Japanese fighters or … the renowned people and famous generals in Korea.”
The boy “made every effort to help his father in his work,” and the regime retailed various anecdotes to show the premier’s youthful aide in action. Once, for example, Kim Jong-il supposedly went to the market to price school supplies. Finding that the merchants were buying state-produced goods and marking up the prices as much as 300 percent before reselling them, he delivered to an accompanying pal a stinging critique of such vestiges of the market economy. “No matter how cheaply the state sells good for the people, merchants buy them up before they reach the people,” he complained. “If we leave intact private merchants, we can neither develop the country’s economy nor make the people well off. That’s why the fatherly Marshal has mapped out a line of transforming all the private merchants.” Walking with the fatherly Marshal the next morning, the boy turned over pen nibs he had bought as evidence. “Inspecting the nibs over and over again, the Great Leader said that those nibs proved that … it was necessary to remold the traders to be socialist working people.” Soon the regime adopted new restrictions on the merchants and began shifting them into cooperatives. (We must forgo any disrespectful puns here about His Nibs’ having been responsible.)
Another time, while walking in the garden with his father, the boy displayed the fashion sense that later would affect clothing styles in the country. Kim Il-sung, glancing at some People’s Army soldiers passing by, remarked that their uniform looked out of date. Kim Jong-il instantly agreed, and suggested a new design based on the uniforms that the anti-Japanese guerrillas had worn, but with modifications “to fit in with the contemporary esthetic sense.” Kim Il-sung, captivated by the idea, “stopped and looked at his son with affectionate eyes.”16
Such stories have some basis in the truth. Hwang Jang-yop, following his 1997 defection to South Korea, portrayed the younger Kim as a teenager who—-with whatever motivation—took on the role of the deeply devoted son.17
But there is a poor-little-rich-boy tinge to Kim Jong-il’s story. With his father absent so much and his relationship with his stepmother a distant one at best, the child had to find solace in possessions, such as the automobiles he drove while still a schoolboy18 and in receiving expressions of admiration and deference from servants and officials, schoolmates and playmates. He “expressed an interest in power early on, acting out his role as ‘premier’ during childhood play” according to Hwang. The lad “appointed his friends as ‘ministers’ and bellowed orders while playing with them.”
“We weren’t allowed to play with commoners,” a former playmate, who lived in a privileged suburban enclave near the premier’s mansion, told me. “We sons of high officials led a very comfortable life—but compared with Kim Jong-il the differences in lifestyles were like heaven and earth. When I was little I looked up to Kim Jong-il, envied him and regretted not being the son of Kim Il-sung myself. Anything Kim Jong-il asked me, I would do, since I looked up to him so much. What I envied was the way other people admired him.”
After the Korean War, Jong-il attended, in succession, Samsok Primary School, Pyongyang Primary School No. 4, Pyongyang Middle School No. 1 and Namsan Senior Middle School, according to official accounts.19 His schoolmates were other children of top officials. Indeed, cynical North Korean “commoners” referred to Namsan, situated opposite party headquarters, as a “school for nobility”—a knockoff of Gakushuen, the exclusive Tokyo school that had educated Japan’s pre-1945 nobility. (Senior middle school was the final level before work or university, roughly equivalent to American high school.)
According to the account of a North Korean education official who visited Namsan in 1956 and later defected to the South, the school youth corps uniforms were so nice and neat that Namsan students “could be distinguished at a glance” from the shabbily uniformed students of other schools. The man passed a group of final-year students who were chattering in fluent Russian among themselves, which seemed to confirm a rumor he had heard that they would be sent to the Soviet Union for their further education. “The children slipped out of the gate in a group passing by me, but no one made a bow to me. I was disappointed to see these privileged children who did not know how to behave before elders.”20
An official biography tells of Kim Jong-il’s phoning up a classmate— something that would have been impossible between two normal households in the phone-scarce Pyongyang of the 1950s. According to the same official account, at graduation from higher middle school, Jong-il held a dance party for his classmates, all of whom were going to universities instead of straight into the army as most North Korean male graduates did before they got a shot—if they-were very lucky—at university education.21
According to people who knew him at Namsan, Kim was not enthusiastic about his studies, preferring to take fellow students home to watch movies with him. “He was a perpetual showoff. He was self-centered and his behavior was impolite. He used to boast of his high-quality watch to other classmates. Frequently, he had fun driving a car or motorbike at a fast speed in the streets of Pyongyang.”22
The official version, on the other hand, is that during his school years the junior Kim “took honors in all subjects every school term and year, and-won first prize in every study contest.” Besides, he was an all-around athlete— basketball, soccer, gymnastics—and a musician “skilled at playing instruments of all types.”23
At twelve, according to official accounts, he was elected president of the Children’s Union sub-branch in his class. The “unitary idea” had not yet taken over, and many students cut classes, misbehaved, failed to study and idled away their afterschool hours. They would hang around the marketplace, buying lottery tickets from merchants who showed their wicked nature by rigging the draw. Official accounts tell of Kim Jong-il’s leadership of a struggle to “remodel” his classmates. “He advanced a detailed plan for extramural activities and decided who would be in charge of studies, sports and art circles.”
In honor of the seven
teenth anniversary of the Great Leader’s battle against the colonial authorities at Pochonbo, Kim Jong-il staged a play. Even though he is reported personally to have taken on the duties of producer, director, script-writer and lead actor (playing the part of “General Kim,” his father), the play supposedly occupied the other pupils’ attentions and helped keep them out of trouble.
So grateful were all concerned for his leadership that the next year, when he was thirteen, he was elected chairman of the Children’s Union for the entire Pyongyang Middle School No. 1, although he was only a second-year student. He went on to take charge of the Democratic Youth League at Namsan. There, thanks to his efforts, “the school as a whole became a disciplined, bright and harmonious collective.24
Obviously it is necessary to discount the official claims, but by how much is hard to judge. As in the case of the high posts held by the wives of Kim Il-sung and other top officials, leadership status in the youth organizations may have been assured for Kim Jong-il regardless of his interest or ability. And presumably the teachers and professional youth workers involved would have found it in their interest to provide the most unstinting support for the premier’s son in his supposed task of “remodeling” fellow students.
The official accounts are filled with reports of instances in which the youngster displayed utter devotion to his father, and implacable opposition to any who would contravene the instructions of the Fatherly Leader. When the two were riding along in a car together during the Korean War, for example, a guard standing at a fork in the road indicated with hand signals the direction of the main road. Kim Il-sung decided to take the other route, whereupon the guard protested, “General, the lane is very rough. And there are no guards posted along it.” But Kim Il-sung insisted he wanted to take the rutted lane. The guard stood in confusion until the boy admonished him: “Why are you standing like that? Didn’t the General say the car should go along the lane? Let the car go the way requested by the General.”
His words, the account relates, “were full of conviction that they should do as told by the Great Leader without fail because his instructions are always correct. At his words, the guard who was standing at a loss gave a start and, repenting deeply of his wavering for a few minutes, let the car take the path pointed out by the General.” As the car passed over a gorge, American planes bombed the nearby high-way where the car would have been if they had not taken the road less traveled. Allegedly the Pak Hon-yong “counterrevolutionary spy group” had tipped off the Americans to Kim Il-sung’s whereabouts.25 It seems from such accounts as if every twist or turn in high policy, ranging from the attack on Kim Il-sung’s personality cult to the most complicated economic debates, found reflection in Kim Jong-il’s schoolboy life as he got in his licks against his father’s enemies.
One incident sounds suspiciously similar to Kim Il-sung’s boyhood challenge to a Korean nationalist lecturer in Jilin. Jong-il purportedly got the better of a critic who complained that Kim Il-sung’s emphasis on building heavy industry was keeping living standards down. The man had made the mistake of lecturing at the school attended by the Great Leader’s son, who let him have his say before responding sternly, “Denying the necessity of making our own trucks and tractors totally runs counter to the idea of the leader.” The lecturer, the loyal son insisted, should give a “correct explanation on this matter.”
The poor fellow “turned pale, unable to answer anything as the audience got excited. Having realized the counterrevolutionary content of the lecture,’ the pupils glared at the lecturer with an indignant eye. The scared lecturer, a stooge of factionalists, was at his wit’s end and vainly rubbed his hands. He dismounted from the rostrum and hastily took leave.” Thereupon the students looked up to Kim Jong-il “with boundless admiration and adoration.” The lad responded by telling them: “We should think and act only in accordance with the ideas of Marshal Kim Il-sung anytime anywhere.”26
Such stories are very hard to credit, and the question remains: Just how devoted was Kim Jong-il to Kim Il-sung? Kang Myong-do said the Kang clan’s view was that the junior Kim had a love-hate relationship with his father.27 Kim Il-sung may have slighted the boy and his late mother by shifting affection to Kim Song-ae and her brood—but on the other hand, North Koreans, including Jong-il and his classmates, were taught to worship the godlike Leader more and more fanatically during the years when the boy was growing up. The father’s reflected glory alone gave Kim Jong-il the power that he seems to have relished using.
Stretching credulity, but perhaps not totally unbelievable, is another story, proudly related in an official biography, describing a field trip to Pochonbo by Kim Jong-il and his schoolmates. Reaching the town, Jong-il insisted on making an immediate inspection of a bronze statue of his father, which the townspeople had erected on the site of the Great Leader’s command post during the guerrilla assault on the town. “General Kim Il-sung, the brilliant commander of the anti-Japanese struggle, stood majestically looking at the enemy stronghold, with a binocular in one hand, just as he had appeared when he commanded the march into the homeland.” The visiting students “stood solemnly and bowed with respect to the statue. Then they sang the ‘Song of General Kim Il-sung’ loudly in a chorus with a feeling of infinite reverence for the Marshal.”
All of them, including Kim Jong-il, were “deeply stirred”—until, that is, Kim Jong-il started looking more closely at the statue, from various angles and distances.
A stern look came gradually into his face, but no one knew “why After a while he quietly asked the officials there if the statue was not too small. Upon the unexpected inquiry, the officials could not but feel embarrassed, not knowing what to say. Then he said in a tone of anxiety that despite the fact that the leader was the peerless patriot and national hero who had defeated the Japanese imperialists on this land and regained the country, his bronze statue was too small, its representation was not made well and its location was too low in view of the surrounding area.
His words were a great shock to the officials. Until that day numerous people had visited Pochonbo but no one noticed the defect. And the officials themselves, living in Pochonbo, could not discover its weak points, though looking at the statue almost every day. None but Kim Jong-il, who had no parallel in loyalty and was devoted to defending and carrying forward the fatherly leader’s immortal revolutionary cause, saw the failure to erect the statue properly the moment he visited it. Only when they listened to what he said could the officials realize that they had failed to build the statue better, with greater respect. … The officials dropped their heads low, feeling very sorry that there were weaknesses in their work of arranging the revolutionary battle sites and that this meant precisely a breach in their loyalty to the leader.28
As that field trip continued, it seems from official accounts that Kim Jong-il continued to throw his weight around. He wanted to visit Lake Samji, another site in his father’s guerrilla saga, but a local middle-school student serving as a guide told him the road had not been built yet and there was only a rough path. Fine, said the fourteen-year-old visitor. His group would hike through the forest—and in the process would choose the route for the new road.
That was the time when Kim Il-sung’s critics had dared to attack his personality cult. Kim and his sycophants rejected not only the criticism but the term “personality cult” itself, insisting they were simply promoting the party’s “revolutionary traditions”—that is, remembrance of the feats of the Great Leader. Gazing at the forest of Mount Paektu (his “birthplace”), Kim Jong-il is reported to have uttered aloud—and, of course, “sternly’’—a vow: “The anti-party, counterrevolutionary factional elements, although playing tricks to disparage the party’s revolutionary traditions,” would be defeated. To that end, “he said a road network should be laid out up to the ridge of Mount Paektu to link all battle sites in a chain,” so that all North Koreans could visit them. Officials took his statement as an instruction and guideline for their subsequent work de
veloping the sites for the throngs of loyal subjects who soon would be trooping there daily.29
If such stories seem to the non–North Korean reader to portray a spoiled-rotten brat shamelessly exploiting his father’s position to get away with bossing grownups around, so be it. It is almost beyond doubt that Kim Jong-il himself approved every word before the publication of those accounts in the 1980s. Quite obviously he was appealing not to outsiders but, rather, to Korean worshippers of Kim Il-sung. Nevertheless, the subsequent publication of those biographies in numerous foreign languages—projects on which he also would have had to sign off—suggests he had no sense that the behavior attributed to him would appear outrageous to many people outside the fold.
Kim Jong-il had a narrow and sheltered upbringing, subject to relatively few influences that would challenge the world-view he was developing as the son of the North Korean god-king. Although he spent his early years in the Soviet Union, the family moved to Pyongyang when he was only three. He spent most of the Korean War years in China—but was surrounded there by relatives and fellow members of the North Korean elite, not interacting much if at all with Chinese people and not learning the language.
Before finishing high school, he did accompany his father to the Soviet Union, one of the few known instances of his traveling abroad. Indeed, the politically precocious seventeen-year-old actually involved himself in planning Kim Il-sung’s itinerary for the trip, according to Hwang Jang-yop, who traveled with them as party secretary for ideology. “When Kim Il-sung left the hotel in the mornings to attend to official functions, he would help his father to the door, bring out his shoes and personally put them on his feet. Back then Kim Il-sung was only forty-seven, enjoying robust health that was the envy of much younger men. However, he was still pleased by his son’s act of taking his arm and putting his shoes on for him.” During that trip the younger Kim took a supervisory role over his father’s doctors, nurses and assistants. In the evening he would assemble them and “ask them how they had served Kim Il-sung during the day and what they should do the next day.” Jong-il “was particularly interested in me, and asked me a lot of questions,” Hwang said. “I felt that he was much too politically sensitive for a seventeen-year-old.”30 Hwang “had the premonition that Kim Jong-il would one day chase his uncle out and take over or climb even higher. Anything higher would have been inheritance of Kim Il-sung’s power, but back then I did not dream that things would come to that.”31
Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty Page 32