by B. R. Myers
Especially interesting are North Korea’s efforts to discredit President Kim Dae Jung, the architect of the accomodationist Sunshine Policy. In real life a left-wing nationalist sympathetic to Pyongyang, he is depicted as traveling to the summit in June 2000 with the sinister goal of dragging the DPRK into the “free world.” (The scare quotes are the Text’s.) He even rehearses the talks beforehand with Kim Jong Il impersonators or kagemusha, the better to sharpen his skills of persuasion.9 (The Japanese word underscores the un-Korean deviousness of the exercise.) Days before the trip, his men trumpet their anti-communism in the “national assembly.” They will dangle aid in front of the North Koreans in the hope that the country’s economic difficulties will make them yield to the South’s proposals.
The plan backfires. Arriving at the airport in Pyongyang, Kim Dae Jung is stunned to find the smiling General waiting to greet him. Unmanned by this unprecedented departure from North Korean protocol, the doddering “president” cuts an even more pathetic figure than usual. In the following excerpt, which retains the bold font use of the original text, a journalist from Seoul remembers with embarrassment how Kim Dae Jung reviewed the DPRK’s honor guard:
The forest of serried bayonets gleaming in the sunshine! The “president” hobbling along on his ailing legs!!… We were used to seeing him walking with effort.… But at that moment we felt sorry for him … sad. uneasy. Because it looked as if the old “president” was flustered. But I felt something shooting up inside me when I saw National Defense Council Chairman Kim Jong Il walking at a deeply considerate pace behind him, saw his courteous, polite form.…10
The two men get into a limousine that takes them into Pyongyang down a road lined with crowds shouting the Dear Leader’s (and only his) name. Later, at a banquet, the “president”‘s wife sits at a remove from the two men; the novel contrives to imply that all is not well in the south Koreans’ marriage. The Dear Leader asks her to come and join them. “We can’t be having divided families even in the banquet hall,” he jokes, as the room erupts in laughter.11 On another occasion he peremptorily calls out “Come here, ministers!” to the top-ranking members of the south Korean delegation. The Text claims that schoolteachers in Seoul now use the phrase when summoning their little charges: “The kids get a kick out of it.”12
The “president” is described as having been thwarted by the genius and charisma of the Dear Leader, who, instead of yielding to Seoul in return for handouts, demanded economic cooperation—and got it. He demanded a joint declaration of the need for autonomy and unification—and got that too.13 Of course, to say that the south Korean officials had been persuaded by rational argument would be to imply that they a) were reasonable people, b) had the autonomy to sign inter-Korean agreements as they saw fit, and c) might henceforth agree with the DPRK on some issues. These are all potentially subversive notions. One is therefore to believe that the visitors were somehow dazzled and befuddled into signing on the dotted line, then “came to” during the return to Seoul, where popular “Kim Jong Il mania” kept them from reneging on the agreement.†
In short, the Dear Leader won this zero-sum game and the “president” lost. The south Korean journalist sums up:
“We conducted all manner of preparation and research to pull the North into the ‘free world.’ But in the event, not only we but the whole of ‘Han’guk’ were unexpectedly swept up in Kim Jong Il mania. There’s no knowing what power it was that turned everything on its head in a moment.… [W]e cannot but admit that our ‘peace strategy’ has suffered a total defeat at the hands of the North’s autonomy strategy.”14
This is not pure fantasy. Judging from the South Koreans photographed at the summit, whose star-struck faces would not look out of place on a Pyongyang subway mural, the Leader did indeed succeed in charming his guests. He won over millions of television-watchers in the ROK too. (Schoolgirls there began describing him as “cute.”)15 But there was nothing like the mass frenzy described in the novel, which talks of young Seoulites adopting the General’s spartan work uniform, plum-tinted glasses selling like hotcakes, and crowds piling raucously into restaurants to eat Pyongyang-style noodles.16 Young lovers take advantage of the auspicious event to get married, posing for wedding photographs before backdrops of People’s Army soldiers.17 One man drives around with the DPRK’s flag fluttering from his hood.18 (When it suits the North to exaggerate the freedom of expression enjoyed in the South, it does so; in the real ROK, flying the red star of the rival state remains a punishable offense.) No one spares a thought for the feeble “president.” Truly, the summit was “a meeting between the Dear Leader and the 40 million-strong masses (minjung) of the south.”19
Propaganda now concedes South Korea’s superior material wealth while still claiming that people there yearn to live under Pyongyang’s rule. Above, a street in Seoul erupts in joy at televised footage of Kim Jong Il.
As with the American enemy, the South Korean government’s gestures of good will are attributed to fear of the DPRK’s superior might and resolve. Kim Dae Jung’s repatriation of North Korean spies after the 2000 summit is a case in point: “The [southern] authorities bowed to pressure from the Republic’s government.”20 The following excerpt from the oft-reprinted novel World of Stars (Pyŏl ŭi segye, 2002) recounts the Dear Leader’s response to the news.
Comrade Kim Jong Il quickly skimmed the report. For a moment a smile crossed his face. “They had no choice. Hm. Well, take a look. They’re finally bowing down.” All eyes turned to the document. Soon their faces, too—faces that had been taut with excitement and tension—were wreathed in smiles.… “Comrade Supreme Commander, the bastards, their backs against the wall, made this decision out of fear, didn’t they?” “Yes, it’s true,” someone cried. “It looks like they were frightened of us, all right.” Comrade Kim Jong Il just kept on smiling.21
At another point in the novel, the South (now under Kim Dae Jung’s rule) requests that the North do a little repatriating of its own. One of the Dear Leader’s officials is stunned by this presumption:
“General,” he said falteringly. “They’re saying they’re going to apply their principle of ‘reciprocity’ even to the issue of the long-term prisoners they couldn’t convert, so it looks like once again we’re going to have to.…” [Kim Jong Il:] “Make them eat another hard blow? Of course we have to do that.”22
The Text continues to remind the public of how much North Korea’s heroic returnees suffered in captivity.23 Always the unchanging nature of the Yankee colony is stressed: “The ‘government’ can change ten, twenty times, and America will still be calling the shots,” according to The Letter (2005).24
And yet this line never prevented the regime from claiming, especially in material aimed at South Korean readers, that an accession to power by the right-wing Grand National Party would plunge the peninsula into another ruinous war. These “Yankee lackeys” are described in the Text as a lunatic fringe able to wield political influence only due to their close ties to Washington. The election of a conservative to the South Korean presidency in 2007 thus forced the propaganda apparatus to claim that “the traitor Lee Myung Bak” had deceived voters about his true intentions. The following is from the KCNA’s English-language service:
Propaganda celebrated the defeat of the South Korean right in regional elections on April 29, 2009, but President Lee Myung Bak, shown here in the noose, had already begun rising in opinion polls—much to the DPRK’s consternation.
As far as Lee Myung Bak is concerned, he is a conservative political charlatan who took the office of mayor of Seoul from the ticket of the GNP after doing business since the period of the “Yusin” fascist dictatorial regime [of Park Chung Hee—BRM]. No wonder he revealed his true colors as a sycophant towards the US and anti-north confrontation advocator as soon as he came to power.25
Though massive street protests in Seoul against American beef imports in 2008 seemed to confirm this propaganda line for a while, they were quick to fade away, an
d Lee’s approval ratings have since climbed steadily. A popular conservative president in the South, and the information cordon too full of holes to keep the North Korean masses ignorant of him: the propaganda apparatus seems at a loss to deal with this unprecedented state of affairs. In apparent desperation it has reverted to preposterous, pre-2000 style claims of widespread South Korean poverty.26 Thus does the regime run the risk of forfeiting the credibility it managed to maintain for so long, but what choice does it have? Even if Lee’s popularity declines again, it is but a matter of time before most North Koreans realize that the southern brethren are proud of their state, indifferent to the Dear Leader’s very existence, and content to postpone reunification indefinitely. Such revelations may not bring down the regime at once, but they will certainly bring down the Text.
† Much the same motivation was behind propaganda about the US-DPRK talks of the mid-1990s; it was gloatingly claimed that American negotiators had signed an agreement disastrously unfavorable to their side. See for example, Ry’ŏksa ŭi taeha, 496.
CONCLUSION
“Kim Jong Il doesn’t believe that stuff himself,” an American diplomat cheerfully told me in 2005 after I had finished a lecture on North Korean ideology. “He told Madeleine Albright it’s all fake.” Many in Washington evidently think the same way. Indeed, America has so far negotiated with Pyongyang under the apparent conviction that the regime believes the opposite of what it tells its subjects. The louder the Text calls for a “blood reckoning” with the Yankee enemy, the more firmly Washington believes that the DPRK wants better relations. At a government-sponsored conference in Washington in 2008 I heard more than one Pyongyang watcher argue that Kim Jong Il wants America as an ally.
The obvious retort to this wishful thinking is to ask how the DPRK could possibly justify its existence after giving up the confrontational anti-Americanism that constitutes its last remaining source of legitimacy. We are dealing here with a failure not just of information analysis but of common sense—a failure to understand that North Korea is one of two states laying claim to the same nation. It must either go on convincing its citizens that it is the better Korea or acknowledge Seoul’s right to rule the whole peninsula. This is why it is so futile for the West to promise Pyongyang aid and assistance in return for disarmament. As if the poorer Korea could trade a heroic nationalist mission for mere economic growth without its subjects opting for immediate absorption by the rival state! But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the regime in Pyongyang is as unaware of this problem as so many outside observers seem to be. The question still arises why it would enshrine the military-first principle in the DPRK constitution, groom the putative successor as yet another invincible General, and continue demonizing America as the eternal race enemy, if it had not already rejected the possibility of a fundamental change in policy.
Some might insist on the unlikelihood of such a manifestly intelligent leader, such an urbane and well-informed ruling elite, such a literate and resourceful populace genuinely believing things that everyone else in the world finds so irrational. But if outside observers knew North Korean ideology better, they would understand (as I trust the reader of the preceding chapters has understood) that it is not as irrational as all that. Praising a leader as the perfect embodiment of ethnic virtues is less extravagant than praising him, as Stalin was praised, as the highest authority in every science. One could also argue that there is at least more historical justification for the DPRK’s anti-Americanism than many other states have had for their own hatemongering campaigns. Paranoid nationalism may well be an intellectual void, and appeal to the lowest instincts—there is nothing in North Korean ideology that a child of twelve cannot grasp at once—but for that very reason it has proven itself capable of uniting citizens of all classes, and inspiring them through bad times as well as good ones.
As I explained in the historical part of this book, the regime was very quick to adjust its claims downward when it had to, i.e. in response to post-Soviet economic realities and the influx of heterodox information. But to concede the regime’s genius for propaganda—a genius which only now seems to be deserting it—is not to imply that it does not believe the official myths itself. Could it be any clearer that in its relations with the outside world, the leadership practices what it preaches in the Text, and not what it tells impressionable foreign visitors behind closed doors? Barely-veiled hostility to allies and aid providers, terrorist adventurism and drug-running, blithe indifference to trade and debt obligations, abortions forced on returnees from China—whence does this unique pattern of behavior derive, if not from the belief that the world’s “cleanest, most civilized people” can and indeed must play by its own rules? What other kind of regime would be able to boast to its own people that it had signed a nuclear treaty in bad faith?
* * *
I have dwelt in this book on the continuity between the imperial Japanese worldview instilled into colonial-era Koreans and the official North Korean worldview that immediately succeeded it. This racialism is utterly irreconcilable with Marx and Lenin; not for nothing was the DPRK almost as isolated from the rest of the East Bloc as it still is from the West. But while drawing a clear line between North Korean ideology and communism, we should not overlook that which distinguishes the former from Japanese and (even more so) German fascism. The Text has never proposed the invasion of so much as an inch of non-Korean territory, let alone the permanent subjugation of foreign peoples. This is not to say that it does not propose military action against the US either as a pre-emptive strike or as revenge for past crimes. (I have already mentioned the wish-fulfilling posters of the US Capitol being blown to pieces.) But this is not the same as wanting to re-shape the world. Where the Nazis considered the Aryans physically and intellectually superior to all other races, and the Japanese regarded their moral superiority as having protected them throughout history, the Koreans believe that their childlike purity renders them so vulnerable to the outside world that they need a Parent Leader to survive. Such a worldview naturally precludes dreams of a colonizing or imperialist nature.
This does not make North Korea any less of a threat to South Korea—or vice versa. At present the DPRK’s main security problem is not America, but the prosperity of the other Korean state, whose citizens are content to prolong the division of the peninsula indefinitely. This is another reason why Pyongyang cannot normalize relations with Washington: the Text would never survive the North Korean masses’ inevitable realization that it was their own blood brothers and not the Yankees who had been blocking reunification all along. From the North’s perspective, America’s friendship would be—to paraphrase something Burke once said of revolutionary France—more dangerous than its enmity.
Pyongyang therefore negotiates with Washington not to defuse tension but to manage it, to keep it from tipping into all-out war or an equally perilous all-out peace. Ignorant of this, because ignorant of the North’s ideology, Americans tend to blame problems in US-DPRK relations on whoever happens to be in the Oval Office, thinking him either too soft or too hard on Pyongyang. The right talks in moralistic terms of Kim Jong Il’s evil and perfidy in refusing to disarm, with no apparent understanding that he cannot disarm and hope to stay in power. The left, meanwhile, continues to call for bold American trust-building measures.1 In doing so, it overlooks the failure of the ROK’s Sunshine Policy (a decade of generous and unconditional aid) to generate even a modicum of good will from the North. To expect Washington to succeed with Pyongyang where the South Korean left failed is to take American exceptionalism to a new extreme. The unpleasant truth is that one can neither bully nor cajole a regime—least of all one with nuclear weapons—into committing political suicide.
Much hope in the West centers on the infiltration of heterodox culture into the DPRK, but here too it would be folly to extrapolate from Cold War history. Blue jeans will not bring down this dictatorship. Race-based nationalism does not need to fear cultural subversion as much as Marxism
-Leninism did. Hollywood films were all the rage in imperial Japan, and Luftwaffe aces famously flew into battle with Mickey Mouse painted on their fuselages. More to the point, perhaps, South Koreans were as ready in 2008 to believe that America was saving its deadliest beef for their consumption as they were in 2002 to believe that US soldiers had run over two schoolgirls for the fun of it. Anti-Japanese sentiment, for its part, has actually increased in the ROK since a ban on Japanese cultural imports was lifted several years ago. There is little reason, therefore, to believe that smuggled CDs and DVDs will undermine the average North Korean’s hostility to the outside world.
The DPRK is more likely to suffer a mass legitimation crisis if it is seen as failing on its own ideological terms. Such a perception could result from a humiliating retreat in regard to nuclear weapons, but the North Korean leadership is less likely than our own to make that kind of error. The chronic nature of the economic malaise poses a greater problem. It is all well and good for the military-first regime to shrug off responsibility for such matters, but if the acquisition of a nuclear deterrent constituted such a glorious victory over the US, where, the malnourished citizen may well ask, are the material fruits of that victory?