All Monsters Must Die

by Magnus Bärtås

  In contrast to many other analysts, B. R. Myers dismissed the idea of Confucianism’s presence in North Korea. The proof is in the synthesis of mother and father in the figure of the leader. To elevate the mother in this way goes totally against Confucian traditions, which teach that a mother is subordinate even to her sons. In The Cleanest Race, Myers even rejects referring to North Korea as a “hard-line Stalinist state” because the racial theorizing that dominates the country can’t be equated to Communist ideology, which emphasizes internationalism. During the Cold War, North Korea was the black sheep in the Communist community because of its unusual interpretation of Communism. In the end it was only China that really accepted North Korea, and this was for the pragmatic reason of wanting to maintain the status quo of their fragile relationship.

  Myers calls Juche Thought a “sham doctrine” and gives a number of reasons for its introduction. Like all leaders and prophets sent by the divine, Kim Il-sung needed his own ideology — no less would do for a man put on such a high pedestal. Most likely because the dynastic structure of North Korean society was difficult to reconcile with Marxism, there was also an ideological need to create distance from the Communist body of thought and maybe an even greater need to obscure the country’s actual system of belief — the nationalist race doctrine that has characterized North Korea since its founding.

  Analysts agree that Hwang Jang-yop, a philosophy teacher at Kim Il-sung University, was the architect of Juche Thought. Hwang was Kim Jong-il’s philosophy teacher but fell out of favour with the leadership in the 1980s. On a trip back from Japan in 1997, he escaped to Beijing and thus became the highest-level party functionary to have defected from North Korea. He later settled in South Korea and devoted himself to criticizing Kim Jong-il’s feudal regime, even testifiying about the violence and famine in North Korea.

  Myers says that the Juche texts are self-consciously jumbled and that they resemble “a college student trying to both stretch a term paper to a respectable length and to discourage anyone from reading it through.” The texts have a special function: to be harmless, impenetrable, and abrasive all at once. Still, it seems like Hwang Jang-yop truly believed in Juche Thought, however dubious it seemed. While under constant threat of assassination by agents from the North Korean secret police, he accused Kim Jong-il of having betrayed and corrupted Juche ideology. He recommended a rock-solid policy of ostracization against the North, saying it would lead to the collapse of the country, and suggested that he himself would be ready to take over as the leader of an interim government should such a time come.

  Privately, Hwang Jang-yop suffered greatly. His wife, whom he left in North Korea, committed suicide; one daughter died under mysterious circumstances, and his other children ended up in work camps.

  IN THE CLEANEST RACE, B. R. Myers emphasizes that Juche Thought gave North Korean suspicion and self-­reliance a loose ideological framework — and that it essentially must be viewed as a racist teaching built on notions of blood mysticism. The North Korean race doctrine may be extreme, but the idea of pure blood is strong throughout the peninsula. Even in the South, mixing blood is still seen by many as shameful and threatening. In fact South Korea cultivates the notion of being the most genetically homogenous country in the world, disregarding the “genetic influx” from China, Japan, and Okinawa. Such great weight has been placed on this idea of blood that South Korean citizens have not been allowed to do military service if they have a non-Korean parent. Their anomalous skin colour would make it hard for such soldiers to “mix with their Korean colleagues in the barracks,” said a representative from the Ministry of Defence in an article in the Korea Times.

  In Korea, the question of blood ties is linked to the violence the country experienced during the Japanese colonization that lasted until the end of the Second World War. The Japanese army had a comprehensive system for forcefully recruiting “comfort women,” which was the term used for “sex slaves.”

  Choi Eun-hee’s parents tried to marry her off very young so she wouldn’t be “recruited” as a sex slave. She was a tomboy at heart but was considered very beautiful and was, like so many other women, at risk. Her grandmother said, with a note of incantation: “You are a little girl with long eyelashes. The kind that sleeps a lot.”

  Madame’s own solution was to find work at a theatre as a teenager — work that was considered as lowly as a shaman’s, circus artist’s, or gisaeng’s (geisha’s), but that protected her from sexual slavery. The reason was, of course, not only to avoid becoming a comfort woman, but because she was drawn to the theatre. To everyone’s surprise — she was a shy girl — she was a natural actor. Her father was opposed to it and tried to lock her up at home. But her will was too strong. She escaped to the stage.

  UNSURPRISINGLY, RESEARCHERS AREN’T in agreement about the statistics, but from a Korean perspective the Imperial Japanese Army forcefully recruited around 200,000 Korean women as sex slaves. The issue is still incredibly charged, and those who want to approach it in South Korea must do so with great care. In 2004, the TV star Lee Seung-yeon had a hit with Kim Ki-duk’s film 3-Iron. Like so many other television stars, she decided to crown her career with a pin-up calendar featuring pictures of her, scantily clad, in exotic environs. The PR company that was brought on board booked a photographer who took a few promotional shots of Lee posing as a “comfort woman” on the Palau islands in the Pacific Ocean (Palau was one of the places where sex slaves were taken during the Second World War). The photographs were presented at a press conference and the reaction in South Korea was huge. After angry protests broke out, Lee went to visit an old-age home for former sex slaves, where she begged for mercy on bare knees. The head of the PR firm had his head shaved in front of the media, an action of regret and submission. But the public wasn’t satisfied until the photographer had burned the negatives on a public square in Seoul.

  * * *

  IT’S EVENING AT the hotel outside of Samjiyon. We’re sitting on our beds, waiting for the hot water to be turned on. During dinner, Mr. Song had explained that we should avoid brushing our teeth with the tap water.

  “The water is very strong,” he said. “You might lose all of your teeth.”

  Andrei, the Russian chemist, perked up when he heard Ms. Kim’s translation of the warning. He was looking forward to collecting yet another unique water sample to take back to Moscow.

  “Awesome, now I’m going to lose my teeth,” one of the Bromma boys grumbled. He’d already used the strong tap water.

  In anticipation of the hot water that comes on for only one hour a day, we watch scenes from parliament on the national television channel. The camera pans slowly over the rows of ageing men and the occasional woman, who all sit with their eyes shut as if lost in prayer. Sometimes a concise, low chant breaks out in response to the speaker’s sermon-like statements. Along with Kim Jong-il, the 687 representatives in the Supreme People’s Assembly are actually elected. And as nominated representatives they always get 100 percent of the votes “from the people.” When measures come up for vote in the assembly, the members always hold up their cards openly. They are always in agreement with their leader. It is as if they are the nervous system and he is the brain.

  After the long-winded political liturgy comes a film showing archival footage narrated by a man with a hysterical voice. People toil in the fields, in the steel mills, on the railroads, on the rice paddies. Physical labour is undertaken by smiling citizens who move like wind-up toys.

  The narrator goes up in pitch and the scene shifts to a group of people pulling a boat to shore during a storm. They throw themselves at the rope, eyes ablaze, someone falls but clambers up again, laughing. Kim Jong-il shows up in the next scene, and the narrator is on the verge of collapse, blubbering with tears and giddy laughter. When the leader is not shaking hands, he’s gesturing with his right hand with soft, fast movements, giving instructions about everything imaginable. This “on-the-s
pot guidance” happens wherever he is, whether it’s in an office or on the factory floor. Now a blushing woman poses by his side. She takes his arm and giggles. It’s a heated moment — something unrestrained is breaking through.

  We stare at the images of Kim Jong-il on the television. Then a montage shows the launching of a Taepodong missile, followed by people’s reactions to the announcement of the new weapon. The footage shows people reading the newspapers and cheering; there are close-ups of others who are mad with joy. They bounce up and down, arms raised, eyes shining. The narrator is ecstatic.

  The pipes cough. The hour of hot water has begun.

  DAY 4

  The Monster

  IN THE MORNING, distant rhythmic howls can be heard in the surrounding woods. We’re sitting in the bus outside of the hotel, waiting for everyone else in the group to turn up. Assuming they’ve survived the strong water, that is. The hotel personnel, who act more like functionaries, won’t let us leave. They’ve discovered that four towels embellished with tigers are missing. They have even identified the guilty among us, but none of those who are named will admit to towel theft. The Värmlanders are silent as stone and stare out at the spruce forest. The Ukrainian wearing camouflage pants denies it flat out, and the Bromma boys don’t even bother responding. But the functionaries insist. In the end, Trond tires of the fuss, and goes in and pays the twenty-four dollars for the four tiger towels.

  The incident has delayed us and it jeopardizes our visit to the first stop on the day’s schedule: the Samjiyon Schoolchildren’s Palace. Andrei has a framed certificate of friendship from the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow that he is supposed to present to the representatives of the after-school facility.

  In Samjiyon we pass a group of uniformed workers who march in lines of two, their shovels over their shoulders. A red banner has been mounted on the main street. Preparations are underway for the sixtieth-anniversary celebration of the nation. The high, peaked roofs of the residences resemble gingerbread houses, likely a design element related to the area’s intended status as a ski resort. But there are also rows of white-painted houses made of armoured concrete that look like they could withstand almost anything.

  Mr. Song is stressed out. He explains that we don’t have time to get off at the schoolchildren’s palace. But the bus travels up the driveway to the front of the building and Andrei jumps off the bus with the certificate tucked under his arm. He rushes up the stairs, manages to shake hands with a man wearing a suit, hands over the frame, and runs back. The bus is already moving when he throws himself back on board. We see the disappointed man on the stairs awkwardly waving us off.

  BUT THERE IS no time to dwell on this. We have more important things ahead of us. We are on our way to Baekdu, the holy revolutionary mountain — a dormant volcano with a crater lake. The bus travels along gravel roads through spruce forests. As we ascend the mountain, larch forests take over, the trees become more gnarled and sparse, and the air is ever cooler. The landscape is more barren the higher up we go, and soon a wooded upland with mighty views unfurls before us.

  Baekdu is the highest point on the entire Korean peninsula. The rusty red and orange streaks of lava on the volcanic rock remind us of Iceland’s landscape. The haze between the distant, bluish ridges of Manchuria creates a depth of field like stained glass. Snow leopards, wild boar, wolves, bears, and even the Siberian tiger — here called the Baekdu tiger — are said to still roam this land.

  In 1999, North Korea gifted a Baekdu tiger to South Korea as a gesture of reconciliation. The renowned South Korean stem cell researcher Hwang Woo-suk immediately began a cloning project to preserve the Baekdu tiger’s Korean origin. “I’ll spread the Korean people’s spirit by cloning the Mount Baekdu tiger,” he proclaimed. But this was before Hwang claimed to have cloned human stem cells and was exposed for having fabricated his results. Since that scandal, South Korean stem cell research has had to live down a bad reputation.

  We ascend to a plateau, pass by a military checkpoint, and make our way to the volcano by foot. When we get to the ridge of the crater we look out over the magnificent crater lake. Cheonji — Heaven Lake — is majestic, with its cerulean water. When we look across the rim of the volcano — at a distance of about five kilometres — we spot the Chinese border control, which looks like a set of small nesting boxes atop a mountain.

  To celebrate Kim Il-sung’s eighty-second birthday, enormous metal letters that spelled out “revolutionary holy mountain” were set into the slope. Over a three-year period, the letters and the amenities on Baekdu were built by so-called “shock brigades.” It was heroic work, and the suffering itself had value. According to the Workers’ Party of North Korea’s publication Rodong Sinmun (Workers’ Newspaper), the shock brigade “dragged huge tree trunks down the mountainsides” and “gathered stones from the beds of rivers where ice was floating.”

  Baekdu occupies a central place in North Korea’s national mythology. The iconography of the mountain is spread through depictions on photographs, stamps, mosaics, and paintings. The revolutionary Korean spirit — the one that drove out the Japanese colonizers and triumphed over the imperialists — radiates from the volcano like the aura of a giant magical monolith.

  According to the official national legend, Kim Jong-il was born in a little wooden cabin just down the mountain. At the moment of his birth, a bright new star appeared in the sky, along with a double rainbow, if one can imagine these two phenomena occurring simultaneously. Then, as Bertil Lintner recounts in Great Leader, Dear Leader, a swallow descended from the heavens to “herald the birth of a general who will rule all the world.” When Kim Jong-il returned to his birthplace for the first time in his adult life, a similar natural phenomenon happened: the heavy clouds hanging over the crater scattered and a rainbow stretched across the heavens. The elements acknowledged him as the master.

  A guide wearing a brown uniform and a peaked cap speaks to us using a megaphone. She gestures with her arms, explaining that the peaks of the holy revolutionary mountain are always covered in snow. When we point at the mountain and tell the guide that they aren’t actually covered in snow, she looks past us and repeats: “The peaks of holy revolutionary mountain are always covered in snow.” The observations of us mere civilians are not to sully the image of this national treasure, whose prescribed appearance is inscribed in the nation’s history forever.

  IN 1935, THE Swedish explorer Sten Bergman was one of the few Western travellers to visit the Baekdu region. With him was his entourage: Harald Sjökvist, a taxidermist and former locomotive driver, and Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese chef and Casanova. Bergman found fresh tracks from a pack of wolves, and he caught a Ural owl, a three-toed woodpecker, a black woodpecker, an azure-winged magpie, and a black grouse. Bergman also photographed the people he met on his journey. The birds are in the Swedish Museum of Natural History’s collections in Stockholm, and the photographs are today considered unique documents. In Bergman’s time, this region was largely untraversable. Under normal circumstances, the explorer claimed, you would be robbed, killed, or kidnapped by Manchurian or Korean bandits. He and his companions had once found a dead Korean on a mountain slope but they themselves survived thanks to their military escort of fifty Japanese soldiers. In his book, In Korean Wilds and Villages, he writes:

  Clouds of mist now came sweeping along and hid parts of the lake, but at moments they would clear off and we could again see the whole of it. Swifts bred in great numbers in the crevices of the crater walls and we could see many of them as they swept through the air. There was a sharp wind and it was bitterly cold. Gusts of sand also kept blowing about . . .

  On a level plateau right on the highest point of the mountain a ceremony was now to take place. The trumpet-call went forth to summon all together, and the military formed rank in perfect style, facing toward Japan. The other members of the expedition also formed themselves into a group alongside. With fixed bayonet
s and drawn swords, the following words were then called out with wild enthusiasm: “Tenno heika bansai, Kogo heika bansai!” — “Long live His Majesty the Emperor, Long live Her Majesty the Empress!”

  Our group stands in formation against the background of the crater lake. The sand whirls and the calls of swifts echo in the crevices of the crater walls. The man who films us takes a group photo.

  Swiss Bruno leads a hike up to the very top — a cliff formation that juts out over one side and has no safety railings. Bruno quickly pulls ahead of the group. He moves with incredible determination. Behind him are the Swedish fighter pilot and the Värmlanders. The rest of us taste blood in our mouths and our breathing is laboured in the thin air. We are at an elevation of 2,700 metres.

  After climbing to the summit, we don’t join those from the group who decide to take a cable car down to the lake. Instead we stare at a dangerously steep stairway that runs halfway down to the water and watch Andrei taking another water sample. It’s hard to imagine that this cold lake can accommodate any life, but after being stocked with fish in the 1960s it is now home to a subspecies of Arctic char. In 1987, a splendid specimen was caught during test fishing. It was put on ice and flown to Kim Jong-il’s palace, where it was served at his birthday dinner.

  We’ve been told that the treacherous stairway is made up of 216 steps, a numerological representation of Kim Jong-il’s birthday (February 16). Uncharacteristically, they underestimated the numbers. There are surely several thousand steps and it is so steep that even the least afflicted might get vertigo.

  The heavenly lake is deep. At its deepest, it’s nearly 400 metres to the bottom. Since 1903, there have been regular reports from the Chinese side that the lake is home to a monster, and in more recent years, film footage and photographs have been presented as evidence of its existence. The monster was described as having a long neck and a bull-like head when it was first sighted, and was said to have attacked people at the water’s edge; they responded with six shots from a gun and the creature fled back to the depths of the lake. Other eyewitness accounts describe an animal that resembles a giant seal, with a long neck and a human head. The most recent report was in 2007, when a Chinese TV reporter filmed a twenty-minute sequence that captured six creatures swimming in formation. Judging by the trails in the water and what appeared to be heads breaking the water’s surface, this footage appeared to show large animals of some kind. Their fins, or wings, were longer than their bodies, the reporter said, and they swam as fast as motorboats.