Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

by Martin, Bradley K.

  Around that time, Kim Jong-il managed to neutralize any clout possessed by his stepmother, Kim Song-ae, who had favored Uncle Yong-ju in a bid to improve the eventual chances of her own son Pyong-il. By introducing Kim Il-sung to two women who then became favorites of the Great Leader, Kang Myong-do told me, Kim Jong-il drove a wedge into his father’s marriage and reduced the first lady’s influence. (Kang added that the Fatherly Leader’s son by one of those women was being raised in Switzerland.) To add insult to injury, the propaganda apparatus pressed Song-ae into service in 1975 to offer public praise of her late predecessor and rival for Kim Il-sung’s affections. Photographed wearing a facial expression in which some Nodong Shinmun readers thought they discerned distaste, she called Kim Jong-suk— Kim Jong-il’s late mother, then the subject of Pyongyang’s version of beatification—an “imperishable communist revolutionary fighter and outstanding woman activist.”

  An apparent interruption in Kim Jong-il’s rise came when the regime removed his portrait from public places in October 1976 and reduced what had been practically daily references to “the Party Center,” then dropped all use of the term from the early part of 1977. That curious incident remains to be fully explained, but the consensus of Pyongyang-watchers seems to be that the young Kim’s disappearance from public view was a response to concern his advance had engendered among influential people.

  Soviet newsmen stationed in Pyongyang told me when I visited the capital in 1979 that the key concerns leading to Kim Jong-il’s public sidelining had been expressed within the military, where Kim Jong-il—as we saw in his involvement in the the contest between O and Yi—had assumed an oversight role.

  The junior Kim’s portaits came down just a few weeks after the 1976 Panmunjom incident in which North Korean troops, wielding axes, killed two American officers who had led a detail to trim a poplar tree that interfered with visual monitoring of the truce zone. The killings came after the Americans had refused North Korean soldiers’ demand that they halt the tree-cutting. Having seen enough of the younger Kim’s leadership, one of the Russians told me, irate North Korean officers had blamed Kim Jong-il for the diplomatically embarrassing axe incident and had succeeded in getting him removed, for the time being, from his military role.

  An unofficial, Tokyo-based spokesman for the regime, Kim Myong-chol, insisted in a 1982 article in a Hong Kong magazine that Kim Jong-il had not been involved in the axe incident: “Kim Jong-il was preoccupied at that time with organizing the North Korean people, party and government. He was simply too busy to have had any role in that affair, Pyongyang says.” Much later, however, after Pyongyang had cranked up a propaganda campaign to glorify the junior Kim as a great general, another unofficial overseas spokesman pictured Kim Jong-il as having given an order, during the axe incident, that the Americans “should be taught a lesson.” When the United States responded to the killings with a display of military muscle, “Kim Jong-il was not impressed and laughed at the American moves.”23

  A Swedish diplomat who was based in Pyongyang as his country’s ambassador during that period offers an intriguing aside: “The pictures of the son seemed to change.” Mean-while, Eastern European diplomats openly circulated rumors that Kim Il-sung had a son older than Kim Jong-il from an earlier marriage. “Had the elder one been required to renounce his rights as firstborn in favor of his brother?” The diplomats could only speculate, as they were unable to confirm the rumors that there was an older son.24

  In a widely disseminated story from that period, a pro-Seoul Korean-language newspaper in Japan, Toitsu Nippo (Unification Daily), alleged on February 2, 1978, that young military officers led by an aide to Gen. Yi Yong-mu had attempted to kill Kim Jong-il in a hit-and-run automobile collision in September 1977, inflicting serious head injuries on him and sending him into a coma. According to the account, the young officers were immediately arrested and executed and Yi was removed from his post, while doctors specializing in treatment of “human vegetables” were invited to Pyongyang to examine the junior Kim. There is little evidence for this. Although, as we have seen, Yi Yong-mu was out of favor while Kim Jong-il drew closer to regime elder O Jin-u, Yi later made a comeback of the sort that was not uncommon in the North Korea system. He came to be ranked near the top of the regime as a key deputy to Kim Jong-il on the Central Military Commission.

  That would have been out of the question if Yi ever had involved himself in such a seriously bad career move as a botched attempt to assassinate the Great Leader–designate.

  Tales such as that assassination yarn seem to have been fed by Kim Jong-il’s still-wild personal life, which was public enough to cause some in the military and the leadership to disdain him as a young reprobate. The story of his being seriously injured in an automobile wreck fits into what some others have said—one account says he was driving recklessly and caused an accident himself—even if there is nothing to the coup story. Hwang Jang-yop after his defection to the South said he had heard that Kim Jong-il “was injured when he fell during horse riding—but I don’t know well.”25

  A leader more concerned than Kim Il-sung with the opinions of others might have heeded the signs of opposition or skepticism and withdrawn his son’s appointment. But they did not call Kim Il-sung “iron-willed” for nothing. Kim Jong-il’s retreat to the shadows was merely temporary. Meanwhile, efforts continued to remove or isolate those resisting the succession scheme.

  Vice-President Kim Dong-kyu was the center of opposition to Kim Jong-il’s succession within the older generation of former guerrillas in the leadership. Not only had he been an anti-Japanese resistance fighter but he also had lost an arm in the struggle. When ousted, he ranked number two in North Korea, right after Kim Il-sung. He didn’t like Kim Jong-il, as Kang Myong-do related to the Seoul newspaper JoongAng Ilbo. When the young man was being elevated, Kim Dong-kyu said: “I think they’re being too rash on this succession matter.” At that point, according to Kang’s account, Kim Il-sung did nothing.

  Having gotten O Jin-u on his side, according to Kang’s account, Kim Jong-il manipulated documents so as to be able to give Kim Il-sung a report that Kim Dong-kyu had been a traitor to the Japanese resistance movement. That got Kim Dong-kyu exiled in 1977 to a rural area in North Hamgyong Province. In 1980, Kim Il-sung happened to be in that area and caught sight of a very large mansion. He found that it was Kim Dong-kyu’s and became very upset. Kim Il-sung sent Kim Dong-kyu to dissidents’ camp No. 16 in Hwasong, according to Kang’s version, and in 1984 Kim Dong-kyu died there “of malnutrition and despair.”

  First Lady Kim Song-ae’s dream of seeing a child of her own succeed to her husband’s position at the helm of the nation came to naught. Her elder son, Pyong-il, had his career in the capital cut short. His younger brother Yong-il never had a place in public life in the first place.

  Born in the early 1950s,26 Pyong-il studied English in Malta in the late 1960s, attended the North Korean military academy and learned to fly light, civilian aircraft at an airport in East Germany. (Some reports say he also studied in Moscow.) He became a member of his father’s military bodyguard corps, as had his stepbrother, Kim Jong-il. Kim Yong-il, for his part, studied electronics at Dresden Technical University in East Germany, becoming fluent in German. He went on to get his Ph.D. in Berlin. His plan when he finished his studies in the mid-1980s was to go back to North Korea to head an electronics factory, according to a former East German official who knew both him and Pyong-il. The German described the two brothers as “intelligent and well-educated.” Both displayed the common touch, he told me. “They know life and they know regular Koreans.” Both spoke Russian, he added.27

  Kang Myong-do in his interviews with JoongAng Ilbo sorted out the story of Pyong-il. According to Kang’s account, as North-South tension increased following the axe incident at the DMZ, Pyong-il entered the bodyguard division. A Kim Il-sung University graduate in addition to being a member of the first family, he rose quickly at first. Soon he was promoted to colonel
and named vice-head of the strategic department of the bodyguards.

  Pyong-il’s lifestyle became extravagant, according to Kang’s account. Pyong-il’s cronies included Kim Chang-ha, son of Kim Byong-ha, who was head of the State Security Department, and Chon Wi, son of the head of bodyguards. They often met at the Kim Byong-ha home and held frequent parties there. Pyong-il’s custom was to hand out watches engraved “with Kim Il-sung’s name as presents to guests. “He was very extravagant and generous and had lots of followers who flattered him by saying: ‘Long live Kim Pyong-il!’ You weren’t supposed to say that about anyone but Kim Il-sung—it’s against the one-man rule system.”28

  At that time, according to Kang’s account, Kim Jong-il was spying on Kim Pyong-il and learned of his activities through Room 10 in the party headquarters, which was established in 1978 to set up spy net-works to catch any deviation from one-man rule. (Kim Jong-il had no use for either Pyong-il or Yong-il, caring only for his sister Kyong-hui, one former high-ranking official recalled.29) “Kim Jong-il was always waiting for a chance to get his stepbrother in trouble,” said Kang. “He used this information and made a report to Kim Il-sung.” Kim Il-sung got angry and fired Pyong-il, according to Kang, who told me in an interview that Kim Pyong-il for a time stayed in Pyongyang. Finding that few people dared to have anything to do with him, he asked to be sent abroad. Thus were Pyong-il’s political hopes dashed. In the army where real influence resided, Kang said in his JoongAng Ilbo interviews, “there is no one who supports Pyong-il. No one.” Kim Pyong-il was consigned to overseas embassies, far from the center of power. He drew successive postings as ambassador to European countries including Bulgaria and Finland.

  It seems to me that Kim Jong-il must have learned from this incident a profound lesson: He must stick to the role of the modest, filial son for a very long time. This may help to explain his reluctance to show himself publicly and step front and center, even after his father died.

  As for First Lady Kim Song-ae’s other children, Kang Myong-do told me that Pyong-il’s elder sister Kim Byong-jin was the wife of a diplomat, Kim Kwang-sop, who at the time of our talk was ambassador to the Czech Republic. Kim Jong-il’s young stepbrother Kim Yong-il, Kang said, was living an isolated life in Pyongyang, having no job. The studious Kim Yong-il was enthusiastic about the social sciences as well as the electronics-related subjects he had studied. Unlike his elder brother Pyong-il, he had never been a political threat. But like Pyong-il he found that people avoided him. Rather than going abroad he was spending his days in his Pyongyang mansion, doing history. His one friend, by Kang’s account, was O Il-su, O Jin-u’s son. The two had studied together in East Germany.30

  Hwang Jang-yop, who had left the Central Committee in 1965, returned in 1979 to find that the tone at the political heart of the country had changed drastically. Hwang’s close, sustained involvement with both Kims makes him one of the most important witnesses to the inner workings of the regime. His testimony after he defected to South Korea in 1997 was largely favorable in its appraisal of the way Kim Il-sung had run things up through the 1960s and beyond. But from 1974, when the Great Leader designated his son as heir, Hwang’s portrayal shows the country heading for disaster. The reason was partly a change in Kim Il-sung himself, who from that time “became increasingly conceited and turned sloppy in his work.”31

  But the main problem, as Hwang discovered, was Kim Jong-il’s management style and, ultimately, his personality. Hwang had “worked from 1958 to 1965 as party secretary for ideology. “At that time, Kim Il-sung’s younger brother Kim Yong-ju was in charge of party affairs. But when I returned to the central committee in 1979 as the party central secretary, it was Kim Jong-il who was running the show. I was shocked by the numerous changes that had taken place during my long absence. Life in the central party before had been filled with joy and pride at working at the heart of the nation’s brain power, but life in the very same organization after my return was filled with unease and tension. I was constantly on my toes, fearful of getting hurt by the highly-charged wire of dictatorship so close at hand.”

  Highly intensified surveillance even of top-ranking officials was one big change that Hwang immediately noticed. He found that a new headquarters party committee “specifically charged with controlling the lives of-workers in the party central committee” had been established under Kim Jong-il, “various departments within it controlling the organizational or ideological lives of the party officials or carrying out secret intelligence activities.” Thenceforth, “the lives of workers in the party central committee were placed under two- to three-fold scrutiny and control at all times.”

  Another thing Hwang noticed was a change in the style and tone of Central Committee meetings. In the earlier days when Kim Il-sung presided he “gave many positive examples to encourage the participants and refrained from too much criticism. He always emphasized that strengthening the positive could overcome the negative. In contrast, Kim Jong-il focused on criticizing bad points and encouraging mutual criticism among participants. It is only when a meeting is conducted in this manner that he claims that the meeting went well amid a revolutionary mood. Those who refrain from criticizing others during meetings are denounced because of their lack of revolutionary attitude, whereas those who loudly and harshly criticize others are praised for their revolutionary zeal and loyalty to the Great Leader.”

  Hwang wrote that “Kim Jong-il is by nature a person who does not like living in harmony with others. He makes people fight against each other and depend only on him. Thus, when he talks about strengthening the organization, he means making strict rules to guarantee unconditional obedience to him and holding more meetings for officials to criticize each other. During mutual denunciation sessions, the yardstick used is the degree of one’s loyalty to Kim Jong-il. So the more party members criticize each other and fight among themselves, the greater Kim Jong-il’s authority becomes.”

  At the mutual denunciation sessions, said Hwang, “even the smallest defect is blown out of proportions into a serious incident,” providing fodder for more elaborate “grand debates and ideological struggle rallies” to come. Then, “after making people bicker among themselves, Kim Jong-il would sit back and enjoy the fight.” His pattern was to repair to his office and watch on closed circuit television as his underlings laid into each other. Hwang came to believe that Kim actually took pleasure in harassing party officials.32

  Kim Il-sung had done business mainly through face-to-face encounters, Hwang reported. But Kim Jong-il, having turned the meetings into loyalty tests, switched to doing actual business through paperwork. “Kim Jong-il established a system of getting each department to submit policy recommendations, which he would approve before implementation. It was a strict system, especially when it came to new or basic issues, which could never see the light of day unless the recommendations were submitted for his approval. This was a system that hardly existed during Kim Il-sung’s rule.”

  It was not exactly the lazy man’s approach to governing. “No matter how busy he was, Kim Jong-il would personally read all the recommendations submitted and provide his comments or conclusions,” said Hwang. “For important documents submitted personally by the party secretaries, he would put the approved documents in his special envelope, write the recipient’s name on it, and seal it before passing it to the secretary in charge. All this constitutes a huge workload, but Kim Jong-il never passes this work to someone else but handles it personally.”

  Kim instituted a simple system of priorities regarding his rulings on the documents submitted to him, Hwang said. “Those with Kim Jong-il’s signature and date of approval written on it by Kim Jong-il himself become legal documents that must be put into action at all costs. A document with only the date of approval on it is returned to the bureau that submitted it, and the bureau can see to its execution at its discretion. A document that has neither date nor signature but only two lines means that it does not matter one way or other; it is up to the b
ureau that submitted it to execute or cancel the plan. Besides these weekly reports, important bureaus fax papers to Kim Jong-il whenever necessary to gain his approval.”

  Like others who had worked in the higher levels of the regime, Hwang noted Kim Jong-il’s penchant for holding drinking parties. But Hwang put them in context as “an important element in Kim Jong-il’s style of politics,” not merely a recreational outlet. “He throws such parties frequently, and summons artists to perform in them. These parties were probably the means through which Kim Jong-il formed his group of vassals. By inviting his trusted subordinates to a party, he can observe their personalities at close range and imbue them with pride at being close attendants of the Great Leader. But since it is a drinking party, it is often the case that those who enjoy drinking are invited more often than others. Sometimes, gossip or passing remarks at these parties can become official policies the next day. At these drinking parties, those who get drunk only need to be respectful to Kim Jong-il; they can say anything they like to anyone regardless of his title. So in a way Kim Jong-il’s system of sole leadership is strictly implemented at these parties.”

  Although the parties had a business function from Kim’s point of view, they inevitably led to some drunken policy making. Kim at his parties would occasionally issue orders so odd that they could not be carried out, Hwang said. “Kim Jong-il is more than capable of making quick and accurate calculations guided by self-interest, but he is also fickle and impatient, resulting in spontaneous and irrational instructions. For example, he commanded everyone who went on overseas business trips to wear watches made in the watch factories of Pyongyang as a mark of North Korea’s self-reliant economy. But the problem was that the watches made in Pyongyang were of very low quality, and so everyone was reluctant to wear them when traveling abroad. He also gave instructions for women to wear the traditional Korean costume in black and white, but no one follows these instructions except the women working in the party Central Committee.”