Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

by Martin, Bradley K.

  The fact that Kim insisted on giving personal approval to every policy did not deter him from punishing whoever had proposed a policy that eventually caused him regret, Hwang observed. “There was once when the manager in charge of documenting the Great Leader’s instructions at the Organization and Guidance Bureau got the professors of Kim Il-sung University to write a fifteen-volume [set of] Kim Jong-il literature (100 percent fake, of course) in order to publicize that Kim Jong-il was an industrious ideologist even as a student. The manager submitted every draft for Kim Jong-il’s approval before publication. But later, when it was pointed out that the works could end up strengthening the authority of one individual [other than himself], Kim Jong-il punished the manager and the professors who authored the works, and ordered that the contents be completely revised.”

  One difference between the two Kims that Hwang noticed concerned formality. As we have seen, Kim Il-sung from his partisan days expected obedience from his subordinates. Still, the elder Kim was not one to insist on elaborate, needless formalilty Hwang said. “But Kim Jong-il has initiated numerous formalities to guarantee the people’s absolute obedience to the Great Leader. Whenever there are important functions or events, he would get people to pay their utmost respect to the Great Leader by writing and offering up grand speeches swearing allegiance to the Great Leader or congratulating him. He also ordered ceremonies for people to lay wreaths at the foot of Kim Il-sung’s statue or at the martyrs’ tomb. Every festive occasion, workers are made to hold ‘pledge gatherings,’ where they start the gatherings with songs exalting first Kim Il-sung and then Kim Jong-il and end the gatherings with songs wishing the two Kims long life and good health.”

  In these circumstances, North Koreans must “hold frequent meetings just to write up pledges of loyalty or letters of gratitude to the Great Leader,” Hwang said. “On the night of New Year’s Eve, a year-end party is held on a national scale. Kim Jong-il does not attend this official party but holds his own private one with his regular party-goers and cohorts. Then at 12 midnight or dawn of New Year’s Day, he would fax out to each bureau director a brief New Year greeting along the lines of, ‘Everyone worked hard last year. Let us work even harder to achieve greater victory this year.’ Consequently, the bureau directors must report for work even on New Year’s Day to hold ceremonies to receive Kim Jong-il’s message and send a suitable reply in the form of resolutions or pledges of loyalty. That is the way Kim Jong-il prefers to do things.”

  Two of Kim Jong-il’s least attractive qualities, Hwang found, were se-cretiveness and jealousy. “Whenever there is a gathering, Kim Jong-il always emphasizes two things. One is keeping the party’s secrets, and the other is refraining from pinning one’s hopes on any individual official. This is a reflection of Kim Jong-il’s personality; he prefers secrecy to openness, and is jealous of other people’s good fortune.” The secretiveness might have had something to do with Kim Jong-il’s well-known penchant for staying out of the public eye. “Kim Jong-il does not like to meet people on official business or make public speeches, and prefers gathering his cohorts for parties to holding official functions. He prefers working at night to working in the day.”

  Kim Jong-il’s “pathological” jealousy was another quality not shared with his late father, Hwang said. “Kim Il-sung was not jealous of subordinates who were loyal to him. He disliked conceited people, but he was never jealous of those who were faithful to him just because they had the public’s trust. But in the case of Kim Jong-il, he becomes jealous of even his loyal subordinates if they gain popularity among the masses. He even dislikes the good fortune of other countries, and becomes jealous of leaders in other countries who are known to be popular with the people. This trait may well be closely related to his thoroughly egotistic viewpoint of ideology.”

  Kim found a curious way of justifying his jealousy in ideological terms. As Hwang related, Kim “says that he opposes the worship of any individual. He is the Great Leader of the people and therefore not an individual, but the rest of the party officials are considered individuals since they are not the Great Leader. For example, if a party secretary in charge of a certain district wins the confidence of the residents, he will surely get the secretary replaced. And from time to time, he would purge officials by labeling them anti-revolutionaries who induce illusions about individuals.”

  Whether it was out of jealousy or simple security concerns or both, Hwang noted that “Kim Jong-il forbids any relationship that does not revolve around him. He condemns family orientation or regionalism as hotbeds of sectarianism, and opposes all forms of socializing including class reunions. He is even against people forming bonds based on teacher-student or senior-junior relationships. He demands that people maintain close relationships with those close to the Great Leader and keep those not close to the Great Leader at arm’s length. He also set up thorough measures to marginalize certain people such as his step-siblings born of Kim Il-sung’s second wife from the power circle and to keep them from relating to the masses. Not a few people were stripped of their titles and expelled for accepting gifts or letters from Kim Jong-il’s step-siblings. So even ordinary people avoid anyone blacklisted for marginalization.”

  The corollary was deference due to Kim’s own household, Hwang reported. “Kim Jong-il becomes furious when his loved ones are not given the hospitality due them. He loves the dancing troupe that entertains him. The dancers are meant only for Kim Jong-il’s eyes, but when in a generous mood, he would allow Party Central Committee members to watch the performances. There was once when he ordered an ideological struggle rally because the party officials did not clap hard enough during a performance. After that incident, party officials who attend performances by Kim Jong-il’s favorite artists make sure that they clap long and loud. They have to keep up the applause through several curtain calls and can only leave their seats when the performers no longer respond to their applause.”

  As for Kim Jong-il’s secretiveness, it may have been justified by fear of the consequences in case his secrets were revealed. Kim “has cruelly killed countless people,” Hwang asserted. “His worst fear is having these crimes exposed. Thus he says that ‘keeping secrets is the essence of life in the party,’ and forbids everyone from revealing anything more than what is reported in the papers. He has forbidden the wives of party officials holding positions any higher than vice-director from holding a job for fear that they would leak party secrets while at work.”33

  Without giving names or the date, Hwang offered a horrifying example of the intersection between secretiveness and killing: “One of Kim Jong-il’s secretaries got drunk once and told his wife about Kim Jong-il’s life of debauchery. The good wife, a woman of high cultural and moral standards, was genuinely shocked, and thought, ‘How can a leader who leads such an immoral life safeguard the happiness of his people?’ After much thought, she decided to write a letter to Kim Il-sung asking him to reprimand his son. Needless to say, the letter went to Kim Jong-il, who threw a drinking party and had the woman arrested and brought before him. In front of all the guests at the party, he pronounced the woman a counterrevolutionary and had her shot on the spot. Kim Jong-il’s intention was to issue a warning to those present that leaking whatever went on at drinking parties would be punishable by death. The poor woman’s husband actually begged Kim Jong-il to let him do the shooting. Kim Jong-il granted the secretary his wish, and gave him the weapon to shoot his wife.”34

  In 1979, the coast apparently clear, official pronouncements resumed their mention of the “Glorious Party Center.” Still, when I visited North Korea that spring I found that questions about Kim Jong-il were discouraged. Only one official, the forthright Bai Song-chul, would confirm for me that the younger Kim was being groomed to succeed his father. While his portraits reportedly had reappeared in some public places, those did not include the usual sites visited by foreigners. Evidently the regime wished to avoid stirring up foreign criticism of the dynastic succession scheme, perhaps becaus
e the plan still needed some tidying up.35

  So well did Pyongyang hide its cards during my visit at the time of the 1979 table tennis tournament that I had almost no idea of the enormous extent to which the country already bore the imprint of Kim Jong-il. In fact the younger Kim had exerted major influence for fifteen years already, and had served as co-ruler for five years. The economic achievements I was permitted to see were, it is true, largely those of the father, displayed shortly after they had peaked. But I realized only much later that what I had observed of North Korea’s cultural life—including the extreme form that the personality cult had taken—-was largely the work of the son.

  It was May of 1980 before an on-the-record acknowledgment to the outside world of the plans for Kim Jong-il’s future came from a spokesman for North Korea. Meeting foreign journalists, Choe U-gyun, editor of pro-Pyongyang newspapers published in Tokyo, attacked what he called the Western mass-media view that the younger Kim’s accession to power would be a case of “hereditary” succession. “We understand hereditary succession normally means takeover of power by foolish, spoiled offspring,” Choe said. But Kim Jong-il, he said, “is a brilliant leader. He is possessed of excellent leadership qualities in terms of policy decision-making. Not only that, he is possessed of moral integrity worthy of an excellent leader. He is endowed with unrivaled leadership capability over economic affairs, political affairs, cultural affairs and over even military affairs.”

  Choe extended the catalog of virtues of the junior Kim even further, piling on the sort of praise long associated with Kim Il-sung himself as he listed such a blinding array of qualities as to make dissent by ordinary mortals unthinkable. He focused especially on Kim Jong-il’s artistic achievements. The Pyongyang Art Theater Troupe was then visiting Tokyo, Choe noted. Among its members, “many of those musicians and dancers, magicians and jugglers received the personal guidance of Kim Jong-il.” The younger Kim even invented a system of notation for prescribing the dancers’ movements, Choe said. “He’s also an excellent film director—maybe something like Hitchcock but of a different genre. Lenin is credited with fostering and training and inspiring Russian novelist Gorky, but Kim Jong-il is doing a similar job.”

  Attending that briefing, I attempted to listen respectfully and keep a straight face during Choe’s recital of Kim Jong-il’s virtues. I found it a bit much, though, and finally I could not resist asking, irreverently, whether the junior Kim could juggle and dance at the same time. Choe did not answer directly, but said simply that a great composer is never the best singer, and that Alfred Hitchcock, although a great director, was never a great actor.36

  By the time of the sixth party congress in October of 1980, Public Security Minister Li Jin-su was able to announce: “In the course of our struggle against the anti-revolutionary elements, the extremely few antagonistic elements were completely isolated.” Next, he said, the regime would rally the public and “shatter” those “antagonistic elements”—presumably the opponents of the succession plan.37 By then, according to a former high-ranking official, anyone Kim Jong-il was unable to control had been completely isolated. The elder forces knew what their role would be and were prepared not to interfere in Kim Jong-il’s role.38

  A party congress provided a rare chance for Pyongyang-watchers abroad to catch up on the relative rankings of officials. One interesting change: Kim Song-ae, Kim Il-sung’s official wife and the mother of Kim Pyong-il, was demoted from number 67 on the 1970 party Central Committee membership list to number 105 in 1980.

  In the competition to glorify and cater to the aging Great Leader, supreme flatterer Kim Jong-il had emerged as the winner, hands down. “Among Kim Il-sung’s children he was the one who got his father’s trust,” a former North Korean diplomat explained to me many years later.4 “He supported Kim Il-sung’s deification.”

  Reflecting his victory at the same congress Kim Jong-il was elected to the five-person presidium of the politburo and became a member of the party military commission, chaired by his father. Celebrating this decision, Nodong Shinmun in a pre-Christmas editorial offered foreigners a pair of replacements for the father and son of the Christian trinity. “People of the world, if you are looking for miracles, come to Korea!” the paper urged. “Christians, do not go to Jerusalem. Come rather to Korea. Do not believe in God. Believe in the great man.” At the party congress that had made the junior Kim’s heirship official, “the cheers shaking heaven and earth … were an explosion of our people’s joy, looking up at the star of guidance [Kim Jong-il] shining together with the benevolent sun [Kim Il-sung].”39

  Cheer as they might, designating Kim Jong-il the heir was to prove “very costly,” as scholar Lee Manwoo has observed, since “much of North Korea’s inflexibility and isolation is due to this decision.”40 Hwang Jang-yop put it this way: “It is clear that Kim Jong-il’s dictatorship is cruel and that he has a remarkable aptitude for it. It is with this remarkable aptitude that he ruined his own father, North Korean society and the naive people who follow him. I cannot help but worry that eventually, his aptitude for dictatorship will end up ruining South Koreans and foreigners and bring unprecedented tragedy to the 70 million compatriots on the Korean peninsula.”41 Hwang probably was too kind to Kim Il-sung. The elder Kim’s policies were largely responsible for the disasters that were soon to befall North Koreans. But it is true that, by he-wing to his father’s policies, by ruthlessly cutting down anyone who suggested a new approach, Kim Jong-il ensured the ruination of the country.

  SIXTEEN

  Our Earthly Paradise Free from Oppression

  Woe betide any North Korean suspected of “behavior that runs counter to the will of the Great Leader.” As one former party official wrote, “you are stripped of your titles or expelled from school, your food rations are cut off and you are chased out of your house.”1 Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans found themselves banished to the remote countryside because their devotion was deemed unsatisfactory.

  Far worse would lie in store if one should be found guilty of serious disloyalty. During one of his purges of the suspected opponents of one-man rule, Kim Il-sung warned “factionalists” that their actions “will destroy three generations of a family.”2 He and his son made good on that threat. Over decades, the regime executed uncounted critics. Politically incorrect North Koreans sent to prisons and concentration camps numbered in the hundreds of thousands, perhaps in the millions.3 In the typical case, family members including small children, spouses and elderly parents shared in the punishment given anyone identified as an enemy of the regime. For many political prisoners, the expectation—and the fact—-was that they would never return from the North Korean gulag. They would die from overwork and hunger, or be shot for trying to escape.4

  The regime set up an array of incarceration facilities, starting with detention centers for locking up citizens deemed to have broken relatively minor rules. Failure to get permission before boarding a train and being absent from work were typical of the offenses that could land a citizen in a detention center. Terms of one or two years in reformatories were reserved for heavier criminal offenses such as theft, assault and slander (as well as escaping across the Chinese border in search of food, which became common when shortages reached famine levels in the 1990s). In the reformatories, otherwise known as labor drill units, officials used harsh discipline and hard labor to attempt to “re-educate” the inmates. Regular prisons received general offenders sentenced to more than two years. The Ministry of Public Security the general police agency, was assigned to administer the detention centers, reformatories and regular prisons.

  The Ministry of State Security was put in charge of most of the facilities designed to get really tough with major political offenders. That secret police and intelligence agency was given responsibility for political prisons as well as concentration camps housing “factionalists” and other people deemed opponents of the party, the revolution or the leader. Offenders who were not executed or placed in noncamp pri
sons would be sent to camps. Families of offenders also would be sent to the camps, accompanied or not by the offenders depending on the fate of the latter. In one type of concentration camp, eventual release might be possible. Facilities in a second, no-hope and no-exit, category could be described as slow-death camps.5

  Architect-engineer Kim Young-song tasted punishment at the milder end of the scale when he was sent to work in the mines in 1974. Afterward, until his 1992 defection to South Korea, he lived with the fear that he and his family would end up dying in a political prison or concentration camp. Family background was his initial problem, he told me. “We were intellectuals. Father taught at elementary school. I had five older brothers. Four attended university.” While the regime encouraged education, it suspected educated people—especially pre-liberation white-collar families.

  Fifty-nine years old when I interviewed him, intense and bespectacled, Kim impressed me with his obvious intelligence as well as his sardonic worldview. “I was put under surveillance for thirty years,” he told me with a sort of disgusted relish. And what did the watchers find? He laughed derisively at my question and replied, “Nothing. Everybody’s watching each other in North Korea.”