Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

by Martin, Bradley K.

  Despite what foreign analysts had thought, Kim Yong-ju did not have it sewn up. Instead the nod would go to his nephew, Kim Jong-il. Testing his son’s abilities before anointing him as the successor, Kim Il-sung had Jong-il handle the arrangements for the elder Kim’s own sixtieth birthday. The sixtieth is a major milestone for any Korean; in the Great Leader’s case, his son turned it into perhaps the most extravagant celebration in North Korean history up to that point—-which helped earn him the right to try to outdo himself with the bashes honoring the Great Leader’s sixty-fifth and seventieth birthdays.

  Brilliantly reading his father’s psychology, Kim Jong-il established (as noted in chapter 1) the Kim Il-sung Institute of Health and Longevity. In a country that advertised an average life span of seventy-three, the institute was mandated to find ways for the Fatherly Leader to live longer and enjoy himself. For medical and dietary research it used human guinea pigs whose ages and physical characteristics were similar to his.45 A former high official of the regime explained to me that the institute focused on the aging Great Leader’s symptoms of insomnia, cardiovascular problems and advancing sexual impotence. In due course the doctors came up with a prescription: the Respected and Beloved Leader should eat dog penises at least seven centimeters (2.8 inches) long. That prescription was not, of course, the only product of the institute. One European who served as a diplomat in Pyongyang told me he treasured a box of special matches that were produced as part of the massive effort to protect the Iron-Willed, Ever-Victorious Brilliant Commander from harm. The matches would burn for a maximum of half their length, and then they went out. That way there was no risk that they would burn the Great Fingers.

  Kim Il-sung and his family-were accustomed to luxurious living in mansions and villas. Chinese Red Guards criticizing him for his bourgeois ways reported that his estate in Pyongyang, commanding a full view of the Taedong and Potong rivers, covered tens of thousands of square meters and was “surrounded on all sides by high walls. All sides of the estate are dotted with sentry posts. One has to pass through five or six doors before one comes to the courtyard. This really makes one think of the great palaces of the emperors in the past.” Besides his main residence, Kim had “his own palaces everywhere in North Korea. … All of these villas are on a grand scale. Although Kim Il-sung stays in these villas for only a few days every year, such stays usually require the services of large numbers of military and security personnel.46

  Hwang Jang-yop, who had worked in close contact with the two Kims, confirmed that account: “All around the city of Pyongyang are several special facilities, or what can be termed ‘special royal villas,’ equipped with all sorts of luxuries from performing arts centers to medical facilities and even exclusive hunting grounds,” Hwang wrote. “There is probably no other country in the world both in the past and present that has as many royal villas as North Korea. Any place deemed to boast the slightest scenic beauty is designated as a site for one of these royal villas. An army of escorts [bodyguards] guard all these places, and hostesses are stationed there round the clock in readiness for a royal visit. …47

  But those competing for Kim Il-sung’s favor believed that more was better and did not mind spending huge sums for yet more elaborate facilities to show their loyalty. As a former Public Security Ministry official observed dryly, “In the process of such competitive idolization, excessive funds were spent.48

  In his memoirs, recalling a conflict with a wicked landlord in his guerrilla days, Kim wrote, “Long experience had bred in my bones the feeling that the richer people were, the more cold-hearted they were, the more devoid of virtue.” Wealth, he lamented, is “a trap which swallows and destroys virtue.” But after taking power Kim Il-sung had changed. He was no longer the outraged young revolutionary who had vowed to “wipe out the old society of immorality and corruption” and replace it with a beautiful society permitting “no gulf between the poor and the rich.49

  A Chinese Red Guard publication that attacked him as a fat counterrevolutionary also catalogued some of the villas Kim had to choose from by the late 1960s, for weekend getaways. One was set among the pines of the San-mien District near Pyongyang, a second in the scenic Chin Mountains, a third at Chuwol Hot Springs, a fourth in the border city of Sinuiji and a fifth along the coast in the vicinity of the port of Chongjin. The article also criticized Kim for building a cemetery to demonstrate filial piety toward his parents and ancestors. And it attacked North Korean officials for giving expensive gifts and hosting elaborate parties.50

  For his sixtieth birthday, Kim got the most expensive mansion up to that point, costing the equivalent of tens of millions of dollars, according to a former official’s estimate. The funds, this source told me, came from gold mining. “North Korea can mine up to 50 tons of gold a year, so they can afford that sort of thing.”51

  By the time of Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, he and son Kim Jong-il had some one hundred places to call home. The same source reported that out of those hundred, there were some that Kim Il-sung “has not even visited yet.” He added that Kim Jong-il’s younger sister, Kyong-hui, as well as his half-brother, Pyong-il, had their own villas.52 One former official told me while Kim Il-sung was still alive that the Great Leader “moves around, changes houses every day for his safety.”

  Kim Il-sung’s taste in architecture was “modern Oriental style,” according to an architect-engineer who worked on a project to build an elaborate, 15,000-square-meter villa for Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in the mountains near the east coast port of Chongjin. The structure had “a tile roof, but straight rather than curved as is traditional. All the windows are imported from Austria. The furniture all comes from Japan.” The villa was “nestled into a valley, with mountains on three sides and a tunnel coming down from one of the mountains to bring fresh air.”53

  An official who visited a lakeside villa at Songhan-Ri near Sinuiju and a seaside villa between Hongwon and Iwon in South Hamgyong Province told me that both featured underwater glass walls one foot thick, giving the interiors the feel of an aquarium. (One of those was Kim Il-sung’s sixtieth birthday present; the other, a present for Kim Jong-il on his fortieth birthday in 1982.) At another villa in South Pyongan Province, at a hot spring, “all the furniture was made of ebony, very expensive,” the official told me. “In the mid-’70s I visited Moranbong. It’s a secret mansion of Kim Jong-il’s behind the television station,” in Pyongyang. Various units of the complex had been connected with underground passages.

  The same official said he had visited a mansion at Tongbuk-ri at Kim Jong-il’s invitation in the late 1960s. “Tongbuk-ri is beside a big lake. In several complexes there, one for Kim Jong-il, another for Kim Il-sung and a third for public banquet use, there are lots of women.”

  Lots of women, indeed. From mere philandering, Kim Il-sung had advanced to presiding over something not far removed from a harem. In this he may have learned from the Chinese. North Korean officials who had spent a lot of time in China picked up the traditional belief that having sex with young women prolongs a man’s lifespan. After the Korean War, Choe Yong-gon, Kim’s top deputy, came up with the idea of establishing a Mansions Special Volunteer Corps, which organized young-women as companions for Kim.

  The “volunteer” corps was a small-scale operation at first, said a former elite official, but “the extravagance built up year after year.” As a birthday present for Kim Il-sung—again, supposedly to help prolong the life of the Great Leader—Kim Jong-il greatly expanded the operation. According to Kim Myong-chol, who served in the bodyguard corps of both Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, bodyguards learned in the course of 1981 that female companions had been organized into three corps, called in Korean kippeunjo, man-jokjo and haengbokjo. Members of the kippeunjo, or Happy Corps, were actresses and singers who entertained at parties and might have slept with Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il. The manjokjo, or Satisfaction Corps, was more explicitly focused on sexual services. So, too, according to Kim Myong-chol, was the haengbokjo,
or Felicity Corps—-whose members he said were recruited from the Workers’ Party organization and from among the female bodyguards. (Another defector said the haengbukjo also performed menial work in the mansions.)

  Corps members would “follow Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il wherever they go, and massage them,” Pak Su-hyon, a Kim Il-sung bodyguard from 1982 to 1989, told me. Architect-engineer Kim Young-song, who worked on construction of villas and other projects of interest to the leaders, told me, “Whenever Kim Jong-il or Kim Il-sung were to arrive, the happy girls would come early and wait for them. They’re Kim Il-sung’s and Kim Jong-il’s concubines.”

  At any given time, literally thousands of young women would be in service in positions in which they might be called upon to provide sexual favors to Kim Il-sung or his son. (Eat your heart out, Hugh Hefner.) Most were recruited systematically from among the prettiest in the land. But there was always room for one more who happened to be discovered by accident. Indeed, for any underling wishing to flatter Kim Il-sung, yet another especially beautiful girl was the perfect gift—along with health foods and elixirs thought to improve his boudoir stamina.

  A special unit was established in the party’s Central Committee to select girls, a former official told me.54 Staff members would check with schools all over the country to find beautiful girls. Finding one with potential, “they tell people around her that she may become a member of the service detail, so no one can touch her.” If a girl passed final scrutiny and was selected, the authorities would tell her parents something of-what her assignment would be. Eager to show their loyalty, the parents were “happy to give their daughters to Kim Il-sung.” Besides, after their daughters’ selection, the families got preferential treatment.

  Among training centers in various parts of the country, “the girls’ most important training is at Tongi-ri,” this former official told me. Kim Il-sung had a great mansion complex there, he explained. The training was handled with even more secrecy than the training for terrorist-saboteurs. The future Happy Corps girls “are trained as entertainers: comedy, dancing, singing— but not for public viewing. The public stars are selected differently.” The girls formed classes of ten for special training. Their teachers, senior service corps women, “train them in sex education, the special characteristics and preferences of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.”55

  One such special preference was the “human bed,” an arrangement in which women lie with their legs intertwined and the man lies on top of them to sleep. I had some difficulty imagining why even an aging and lecherous ruler would have wanted to lie on a “human bed,” and I wondered where the North Koreans might have gotten such notions. A former official told me he understood that the companion corps trainers had gone on study tours to Poland and China. The Chinese, in particular, “have a long history of sexual culture. They bound their wives’ feet and so on. Chiang Kai-shek and the Empress Do-wager had similar lifestyles. The Shah of Iran was also a sex fanatic. But in modern times the three farthest out are probably Mao Zedong, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.” The former official was not kidding about Mao. Soon after he spoke with me a new book by the late Chinese leader’s doctor appeared, detailing a potentate’s lifestyle almost as uninhibited as that of Kim Il-sung—although on a far less grand scale and without the degree of formal organization the efficient Koreans had adopted.

  Quite a few scholars have assumed that defector testimony exaggerated the Kims’ sexual practices, and I imagine that might be true. I have not caught any defectors lying about these sexual matters, but if I had to pick one story as being so bizarre as to set off extra-loud alarm bells I guess it might be the human bed. For the girls or young women on the bottom, the arrangement sounded gruesomely uncomfortable. My source assured me, however, that the bed was “arranged so that both top and bottom people are comfortable.” The former elite official had a reputation for veracity and I was inclined to think he had not made up the story. But in this case he was passing along a rumor, not his own eye-witness account, and rumors do have a way of becoming embellished as they pass from mouth to mouth.56

  That source told me that the nubile human mattresses were more than happy to oblige. “North Korea, you know, claims that men and women are treated equally—after the babies are weaned, both are the same. In fact, though, it’s a totally unequal system. Much more so than in South Korea, even. Women are brought up to be submissive and subservient. Being part of Kim Il-sung’s human bed is an honor for them.” Former bodyguard Pak Su-hyon confirmed that picture of the North Korean attitude toward selection as one of the Kims’ vestal virgins: “When you hear of this group you think of them as low-class. But in North Korea it’s an honor to sacrifice themselves for the Great Leader.”

  Once they had worked until their early twenties, the women retired. Referring to foreign newspaper articles accompanying a photo of one of Kim Il-sung’s mistresses who had gone abroad with the Great Leader’s five-year-old daughter, a former official explained that “women like that are ones who have already retired from Kim’s personal service team.” The party provided for the retirees’ futures, taking responsibility for marrying off at least the childless ones when their duties in the mansions and villas were over. Promising never to talk about their experience, they were given husbands chosen from among party members, including bodyguards.

  Mix with children, share their feelings, and you will feel a strong urge to live, and you will understand that they bring beauty and variety to people’s lives. You will also feel inspired with a sense of the noble duty of bringing them to full bloom and safeguarding the ideals glowing in their eyes.

  —KIM IL-SUNG57

  Before Kim Il-sung’s death, I interviewed a former official who told me that the North Korean president, as he aged, craved the companionship of girls in their early teens. Kim had a history of that. Recall the time he had spent while in his early twenties with pubescent and prepubescent tap dancers in the guerrilla zone. Later, after the Korean War, he took in three orphaned girls, fifteen-year-old Kim Young-ok and her thirteen- and eleven-year-old sisters, and raised them, eventually sending them to college, the former official told me.58

  The practice developed of having one or two of the most beautiful thirteen-year-old Happy Corps recruits assigned to each mansion or villa start training immediately, instead of waiting to graduate like the rest. Kim Il-sung “wanted more than sexual satisfaction,” the former official told me. “He wanted to become younger through their ki—life force. The thirteen-year-olds don’t sleep with him. They get training. Then at fifteen they become sexual product. Kim Il-sung likes to be with them as they mature—thinks it’s good for his health. If you’re in the same room with young people, their ki is supposed to transfer to you.”

  Some other very high-ranking officials also became entitled to special privileges. In the 1960s, one of Kim Il-sung’s early mistresses, a well-known entertainer, became madam of a brothel established to service big-shot clients.59 Former bodyguard Kim Myong-chol told me that in 1983 he and fellow bodyguards learned of a new division of the female companion corps established to service very high officials other than Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. This was the kwabu-jo, made up of beautiful widows from all over the country who were recruited to participate in a sort of recycling. (In Korean tradition, widows normally could not expect to remarry.)

  Mainly, though, for officials outside the inner circle, unsanctioned sexual relationships had to be furtive. A former official described to me a casual love affair. “Once I went to a rural area and was returning to Pyongyang at night in my Mercedes-Benz 230. I saw a girl in the road—roads are mostly deserted, as you know. She was waving, trying to hitch a ride. I stopped and she said she had missed her bus. She worked at a textile factory in Pyongyang. I said I’d take her there. On the way I got to know her. She was interested in me and asked for my address. I gave her my office phone number. One day she called and said, ‘I have some free time this afternoon.’ I took her to the Pyongyang Hotel for di
nner. Somehow we grew close, and I slept with her. I went home and, the next day, went to the office as usual. My wife called and said, ‘You’d better come home early today’ When I got home my underwear were on top of the bed and my wife told me to look at them. The girl had been a virgin, and there was a stain on my underwear. I got in trouble— there was a lot of hostility at home. I didn’t see the girl after that, but a couple of years later when she got married I bought her some clothes. Her name was Sun-yi—same name as a famous South Korean singer. Lots of high officials have similar affairs.”

  On occasion the regime cracked down to show that the rules applied even to the affairs of the high and mighty. Kim Yong-sun, who later would serve as a very high-level Workers’ Party secretary in charge of relations with the United States and Japan, was sent to a camp for three years of reeducation early in his career, in 1979. His offense was getting caught in a compromising situation with one of the pretty young women assigned to clerical duties in the offices of the leadership.60

  In 1965, there was a case that a defector later reported to international human rights organizations. A woman university student was tried publicly for having sex with numerous men, including influential party officials. The trial was held in front of some twenty thousand citizens, who criticized and accused her for about four hours. Finally the judge ruled that her moral depravity had violated Kim Il-sung’s instructions, so she must die. The excited crowd shouted curses at her and a firing squad shot her dead.61