I took great pride that I had so successfully revolutionized the Korean movie industry. As I’d said, the cinema affects virtually every other sphere of art. It combines elements of literature, acting, directing, decoration and the visual as in a painting. As film attendance began to increase, I had to adjust to see where the audiences were coming from. I had assumed that the masses had previously been choosing to attend the symphony instead, which seemed to be the next-best substitute. Not wanting to presume that this was the case, I inquired as to symphony attendance levels—and was utterly shocked by the reply. Throughout Korea, the musicians performing in giant glorious halls were playing to empty seats. This was baffling. I decided to travel to Kaesong to see what the situation was.
I saw many banners advertising a forthcoming concert when I arrived at the city the next day. I personally heard the radio announcements urging the people to attend the event. The newspaper also ran bold notices that few citizens could miss. Clearly the musicians were leaving no stone unturned to try and win popularity. If anything, the propaganda was downright excessive. The entire scenario was making less and less sense.
That evening, I went to the hall to watch the actual performance. I sat in the rear so that I could observe the audience as well as the musicians. The theatre quickly became packed, with more than a thousand spectators in total. One thousand attendees was a spectacular turnout indeed. Something wasn’t adding up, quite literally.
As the concert progressed, many things became plain and clear. The conductor stopped the music in between every song. He then turned to the audience and lectured them about the “importance” of the next piece, about what they should be listening for and about the context in which they should appreciate it. As I looked at their faces, I saw that the people expressed no interest at all in what he was saying.
I understood their indifference and even annoyance. They had come to the club to hear music in the revolutionary tradition, and instead they were being lectured. Worse, song after song was either in the naturalist or in the sentimental style. Such music had no value: no matter how beautiful the melody might have been, it didn’t describe man’s beauty. The audience was left with the impression that man is degenerate and powerless—an utterly inappropriate message in Juche Korea. Because of all this, people began to sneak out of the theatre whenever the lights went down.
The conductor didn’t see the audience members flee, but he must have noticed the ever-increasing number of empty seats. I watched as he began to change his tactics in response. He started interjecting witty little anecdotes, with the musicians accompanying him with great frivolity. It was absolutely unwatchable.
By the time the show was over, there were fewer people in the seats than there were players on the stage. I could clearly make out the looks on the musicians’ faces even from my vantage point in the back. They were so disheartened that they wouldn’t stand up to the meager applause. I watched as they abandoned their cherished instruments by their chairs, weeping as they ran backstage. There was no other conclusion to draw but that symphonic music had lost its value in Korea.
Once again, I knew that I would have to be the one to revitalize the art form. I immediately went backstage to see the conductor. To my amazement, he seemed quite unbothered by what had happened. “How do you explain the fact,” I asked him, “that you started with over a thousand-member audience, and only had a handful left by the end?” He shrugged, his mouth twisted with arrogance. “They don’t understand.”
“Who doesn’t understand what?”
“The audience. They lack understanding. And when I try to instill it in them, they get upset and leave.”
I clenched my fists at this uncouth villain. “This is an intolerable insult to the Korean people! Are you alleging that they are too ignorant to understand? No, it is you who is ignorant. Our people have enjoyed and loved music from olden times. The question is what kind of symphonic music will be performed. You must play the kind of music that the masses like!”
The conductor saw the truth behind my logic, yet didn’t know how to apply it to his very own field. “What do you suggest, then?”
“To produce the kind of symphonies that our times demand, from our own people.”
“To remake symphonic music...” He looked away as he trailed off, seeing the brilliance behind my innovative idea.
“You think symphonies should be dramatic and therefore, mechanically, try to force drama into them. We should develop symphonies on the principle of arranging folk songs which our people like, as these pieces of music are already well-known. Everyone loves, say, ‘Beloved Home in My Native Place.’ Why not develop that into a symphony?”
“But...how?”
“I understand your confusion. It wouldn’t be dramatic in the same sense that you’re accustomed to. But neither should it be arranged in the foreign pattern of exposition, development and recapitulation. No, the symphony should be concise in form and preserve the folk rhythms. Then and only then can our symphonic music become the kind of music loved by the popular masses.”
And that is precisely what I did, throughout all of the DPRK. Instead of staging classic European symphonies (meaning, antiquated European symphonies)—or worse, music composed in imitation of them—I popularized symphonic music free from outworn patterns. The new symphonies were developed on the basis of Juche and suited to the feelings of the masses. They served as a historic declaration of the Korean symphonic revolution, causing great interest in world musical circles. Every music lover throughout the world recognized that Eastern symphonies know outshone Western ones. Korean symphonies now served as a bright beacon, throwing light on the orientation of modern symphonic music.
Months later, that very same symphony orchestra which I had first visited later toured Kangso, Songnim, Hamhung, Chongjin and other major industrial districts along the east and west coasts of Korea. This time, the clubs were overcrowded with spectators. Thanks to the state’s newfound encouragement, no one ever left a performance early again. The audiences enthusiastically applauded the players and always called for encores. It was a wonderful improvement which the history of music had never known before.
In only a few years, I’d revolutionized the written sphere, the spectacle of the cinema and the art of the song. All these accomplishments inspired me to ever-greater feats on behalf of the masses. I hadn’t originally intended to revolutionize the symphony when the Great Leader had promoted me to my current position, but the outcome was so universally well-received that I didn’t intend to stop for a moment. A lesser person would have been content to simply administer what he had built at this point. But a person with superb brain is the one with an extraordinary capacity of memory to store vividly in his memory bank more than others for a long time and later retrieve them as original as well as the capacity to accurately analyze and judge and wisdom of seeing through the world.
In true Juche fashion, I decided to go on an artistic attack. My plan was extremely bold and enormously innovative, far grander than anything I had previously attempted. I decided to wrest the most precious and most decadent of art forms from the bourgeois. I intended to recreate it in order to serve the people, by building on those elements I have previously conquered: writing, staging and composing.
I was going to reinvent the opera.
The first opera was composed and performed in 1600 to celebrate the marriage of Henri IV of France. This simple fact alone was enough to demonstrate what had been wrong with operatic art for centuries. Traditional European operas were mostly focused on the life of the small and privileged aristocratic class. The characters were largely feudal monarchs, power-obsessed misers or prostitutes. The stories were about pleasure-seeking, love affairs or addictions to extravagance.
The old operas were banal in content and too formalistic for common people to understand. Their modern admirers were only found in privileged strata, just as when the works had first been created. Such outdated performances didn’t reflect the present
time, didn’t excite the masses and didn’t possess any great vitality. They were utterly lacking in the ability to satisfy the ideology, feelings and aesthetic ideals of modern people—let alone the Korean people living in the Juche era.
I saw that there was an urgent demand to make a revolution in the opera. Even when I’d been a schoolboy, operas such as Khongjwi, Phatjwi and Moon over Kumran were staged but were never popular. They couldn’t be; these Korean operas (changguk) were simply poor imitations of the European ones. Smashing this outdated pattern would be necessary for the operatic art to blossom. In March 1971, I declared my plan to create an operatic revolution after our successful cinematic revolution. Following the exact same approach that I used for film, I decided to stage Sea of Blood as the first Juche opera.
I gathered together the best of the creative team and sat them down to work on the libretto—the main text—of the opera. “By now everyone in Korea and the world at large is familiar with the original Sea of Blood,” I pointed out. “It’s important that the operatic version be written in a way that’s faithful to the original, without damaging its profound ideological and artistic content in the least.”
Soon the libretto was successfully written, so I met with the composers and others to work on the songs. But the more I explained my position, the more confused they became. One creative worker finally raised his hand during the meeting. “You keep saying that we should do away with the old forms.”
“We’ll replace them with stanzaic songs,” I explained. “They’re simple in construction and easy to sing, in the style of popular music.”
“You want us to write operas based on pop songs?” he said.
“Yes,” I beamed. It was an innovation no one had ever considered. “Bear in mind, these songs will be sung for centuries.”
Once again, the same creative worker raised his hand. “But without things like arias, the characters won’t be able to express their personalities. Nor will they be able to explain the story as it proceeds in parallel with the play’s development.”
“They won’t have to,” I smiled. “We can do it offstage.”
“You mean via the orchestra.”
“No,” I said. “I mean via pangchang.” And here was the innovation that truly made Korean opera unique. Pangchang is a form of offstage singing, either as a solo, duet or chorus. It serves to explain the thinking of the characters from a third person’s standpoint, or plays the role of a narrator. No other opera had anything like it.
I wanted to make sure that this—my greatest artistic revolution—was performed flawlessly. I set up a three-dimensional revolving stage, so that the set constantly changed as the play developed. The writers knew that I regarded songs as weapons and a propelling force for revolution. Accordingly they deliver over 2,400 songs as potential candidates for the opera, of which I carefully chose the 47 best. Needless to say, the opera became a huge success on the national stage.
With these great artistic revolutions, the Korean arts had been successfully remade in a Juche line. I did everything that I had promised Prime Minister Kim Il Sung that I would do. The arts spoke clearly and consistently of the necessity loyalty to the leader, the Party and the revolution, in terms that common people could easily understand. All of the DPRK was becoming a family, and soon not the slightest discord would exist among the masses. North Korea was uniting behind the leader with one mind and one purpose.
The time had come for all of Korea to be reunified as well.
Chapter 9
Taking a Bow
As heir to the Mt. Paektu bloodline, I was of course always interested in military affairs. It didn’t matter that I was at the Propaganda and Agitation Department; I made sure to stay abreast of the latest KPA affairs. So when I heard that a new fighter jet was going to be tested in early 1971, I decided to take part in the virgin flight. I drove to the airfield with some Party members, not telling them what I intended to do.
As the pilot climbed into the jet, I quickly went in after him. At first everyone thought I was simply inspecting the aircraft. But as I got into the rear seat and strapped myself in, every voice rose in protest. “This is a test flight!” one Party member yelled in horror. “An accident of some kind is likely to happen!”
“I’m sure that I’m perfectly safe in the hands of this able pilot,” I shouted back. I leaned forward and patted the man on the shoulder. He nodded curtly and prepared to take off, explaining the functions of the plane’s complex instruments as he used them. Then, just like that, we were airborne.
As I looked out the window I had a bird’s-eye view of my mother country. I saw the magnificent mountain ranges overlapping one another, with hundreds of streams flowing down them like ribbons of silver. I saw a checkerboard of cultivated fields, and I saw the seas reflecting the sunlight. “Look how magnificent and beautiful our sacred land is,” I said to the pilot. He was so choked with emotion that he didn’t say anything.
We headed north, and my eyes fell upon the spot where all the mountain ranges of Korea converged. There was the august mother of all mountains: Mt. Paektu. I thought back to my childhood days, cold and hungry, when General Kim Il Sung had raised the torch of anti-Japanese revolution. His armed ranks had been equipped with flimsy rifles and matchlocks, but had since grown into a mighty modern armed force unafraid of any foe. Everywhere I looked, I saw a land that been made better due to the work of the General. Not one inch of Korean land hadn’t been improved by his hard work and shrewd tactics.
The Prime Minister would be sixty years of age the following year, on April 15, 1972. I knew that Korea needed to do something wholly unprecedented to commemorate this auspicious day. But what would that entail? He wanted for nothing and never thought of himself. Any presents he received he always returned back to the people one-thousandfold. To find him an appropriate gift seemed like an impossibility. Try as I might, I was without answers. Then I realized that the answer was staring me right in the face. Mt. Paektu itself would tell me what I needed to know.
After the plane came to a perfect landing, all the Party members ran up to the cockpit to make sure that I was fine. “Safe and sound!” I announced with a smile. “In fact, I am better than just safe. I am inspired. Everyone get a bag prepared tonight. Tomorrow we are going to scale Mt. Paektu.”
None of them knew why I was making such a request, but clearly I had some plan that they weren’t yet privy to. The following morning, we woke up early and drove all the way north. Everyone in my entourage began to protest as we pulled up and began to make our way to the mountain. The weather was simply miserable. It was snowing so hard that it was difficult for any of us to open our eyes. Worse, the raging wind created drifts that kept blocking our path. I could understand why they were upset. They weren’t a son of Mt. Paektu like I was; they hadn’t grown up under such harsh conditions.
“Let’s turn back,” pleaded one older Party member. “We won’t be able to enjoy the view, even if we do somehow manage to reach the summit.” “Mountain-climbing,” I explained through the blizzard, “is a very good exercise to cultivate one’s courage and increase one’s physical power. Strong physiques are the basis of building a prosperous society. A man who is not healthy and strong, no matter how much knowledge he possesses, cannot serve the country and his fellow countrymen. Nor can he realize his hopes and ambitions. The anti-Japanese guerrillas walked these paths in the past. It is precisely the bad weather that makes this a true Mt. Paektu expedition.”
Though they grumbled, not one other word was said until we finally reached the summit. All of us were out of breath and exhausted, myself certainly included. I smiled, since my men still had no idea why we were climbing the mountain. It seemed like there was no real reason. I knew that they were obeying me, but that they didn’t actually have faith in what I was asking them to do. They needed some understanding—so I gave it to them.
I put my hands on my hips and stared into the blinding snowstorm. Immediately, the furious blizzard stopped
blowing. The clouds gradually moved to one side, revealing a glimmering snowscape warmed by the newly-uncovered sun’s rays. Then, a rainbow appeared in the sky above the entire vista. Jaws dropped one by one, as the members of my entourage witnessed what seemed to be a miracle. To my consternation, they still didn’t understand what was happening. I turned to them, beaming as brightly as the sun itself. “Don’t you see?” I said. “Mt. Paektu has recognized its master!”
The men all began to applaud, and warmth returned to their chilled extremities. “Manse!” they yelled.
I closed my eyes for a moment to feel the energy of the mountain, the energy of Korea. Then I looked at my men once more. “Tell me,” I asked them, “which is the highest mountain in the world?”
The Party members glanced at one another before one had the courage to speak. “Everest?”
I laughed. “No! It is Mt. Paektu. And why is that? Because a mountain shouldn’t be measured by its altitude, but by the greatness of service it has rendered to history. Mt. Paektu is the highest in the world because it symbolizes how the General crushed the Japanese imperialist enemies. Where could we possibly discover a higher mountain than one which represents General Kim Il Sung’s immortal revolutionary achievements? Mt. Paektu is the highest mountain in the world because the mountain’s height is the height of Korea herself.”
“Long live General Kim Il Sung!” they cheered.
I stopped, registering the subtext of what I’d just said. There, at the apex of Mt. Paektu, I finally understood exactly what to give the Great Leader for his upcoming birthday. Just as the mountain represented Korea, so too would my present stand as tall as the Great Leader’s spirit. I began the climb back down to the cars, my entourage hurriedly followed behind me. As I got into my seat I took out a notepad and began sketching. Then, when I was done, I passed around the drawing that I had made. “So?” I asked. “What do you all think?”
Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il Page 16