Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il

by Michael Malice

  From that point on, I constantly went to the People’s Palace to prepare for the important day. I offered advice on the location of the theatrical microphones and the volume of the music. I made sure the temperature and humidity levels would be maintained at exactly the right levels. I even told the workers to remove the white cloth covers from the chairs. “They might reflect the light,” I pointed out, “and distract President Kim Il Sung’s attention from the performance.” The preparations were my personal version of the Great Leader’s field guidance techniques.

  Finally, I accompanied the President to the People’s Palace of Culture on his birthday. Just before the curtain rose, the two of us went backstage to meet the act. The troupe members had revered the Great Leader from afar, so they immediately burst into tears when they saw him in the flesh. President Kim Il Sung smiled at their emotional display. He always had a kind word for everyone, and once again he didn’t disappoint. Even though this was his celebration for his birthday, the Great Leader was still putting others first. He went over and patted the troupe’s lead singer on the back. “Come now,” he said, choking up a bit himself. “Crying will badly ruin your makeup. Don’t you want to look pretty when you perform for my birthday?”

  The girl singer couldn’t find her voice, so she just nodded her head vigorously. She then struggled to regain her composure.

  “Go ahead,” I told President Kim Il Sung. “I’ll be out in a moment.” “Very well,” he said, shaking every hand as he left backstage.

  I knew that an actor can’t prove his skill unless it’s supported by a high degree of political enthusiasm. Accordingly, I wanted to provide the performers with some last-minute direction. “None of you know what enormous burdens President Kim Il Sung has had to bear all his life,” I said. “The Great Leader has never enjoyed peace of mind. He has experienced every trial, sorrow and agony which any man has ever undergone. He has shed many a tear taking his dying comrades in his arms, and even today he thinks of them at night. He spent over twenty years in the snow of the Manchurian wilderness, then set out to build a new country after liberation and finally underwent untold trials in the three years of war. After the war he fought against vicious rivals. He tightened his belt along with the people, spending his days on the road carrying out field guidance while missing his meals. So keep that in mind, and let’s all put on a wonderful performance!”

  Sporadically they all began to clap, moved by my touching words. Without saying anything else, I turned and went to find my seat beside the Great Leader. Soon the curtain rose and the show began. The program consisted of songs, dances and short plays. Everyone in the audience could sense the passion emanating from the performers. So entranced was the crowd that virtually no one snuck a peek at the Great Leader—they were too interested in what was happening on stage.

  At one point, the orchestra began to play a song that we were all very familiar with: “The Love of Our Homeland is Warm.” The lyrics expressed thanks to President Kim Il Sung for remitting educational aid to the resident Koreans in Japan. The soloist stepped up to the microphone, the same girl who had been moved to tears backstage.

  After the opening verse, the soloist couldn’t keep in tune with the orchestra. Her voice began to crack a bit and then she just stopped singing entirely—before bursting into tears once more. A silence came over the auditorium, broken only by the sobs of the soloist. The orchestra conductor stood there with his baton hanging in mid-air, extremely embarrassed and not knowing what to do. He gestured at her with his baton, urging her to continue singing. What had been the performance of a lifetime was swiftly becoming a career-ending failure for the entire troupe. I worried that they would all kill themselves when the night was done.

  Then the soloist stepped up to the microphone again. Instead of singing, her crying now became amplified across the entire auditorium. Eventually the girl managed to find the strength to speak. “Since I was a little girl,” she said, “I have yearned to return to the fatherland. To perform in presence of the Great Leader on his birthday is like living in a dream. After seeing the paradise he has constructed, and feeling the love of my fellow countrymen, it seems that my heart has become stronger than my voice. Please do not take my failure as a reflection upon my troupe. Great Leader, I only beg that you find it in your infinite benevolence to forgive me for ruining this performance.” Then she made a deep bow of regret.

  This woman had been raised in Japan. Yet, as a Korean, she’d still managed to articulate what all of us felt, how blessed we all were to live under the loving care of the fatherly leader. The conductor lowered his baton, wiping away tears. Several dignitaries in the audience openly begin to cry, as I myself struggled to maintain a serious composure.

  Then, the Great Leader stood up from his seat and began to applaud. “Thank you!” he called out, taking off his glasses and dabbing his eyes. “This is the best birthday present I could ever have received!” Loud cheers rocked the hall as everyone began to weep openly. As I wiped my own face with a handkerchief, I felt as if I were witnessing one of the greatest scenes in Korean history. It was a scene of amalgamation of President Kim Il Sung and the masses, grounded in the boiling blood of the nation.

  The Great Leader had finally gotten the birthday wish that he so desperately hope for. For one special moment, the Korean nation was reunited at last.

  Chapter 11

  Axes of Evil

  Everything changed after the President’s birthday celebration. I’m not sure if it was the Great Leader’s recognition that his legacy was in capable hands, or if he realized that he deserved to spend his elder years relaxing, or some combination of the two. I do know that issues that had previously been his to manage increasingly began to find their way to me for input. I had to work harder than ever as a result of the increased leadership responsibility.

  In fact, I worked so diligently and effectively that my comrades could neither believe nor understand it. One typical morning began with me putting documents on top of my already-full briefcase and then going to a meeting. There, I worked on signing important papers as I analyzed economic recommendations from various parts of the country—all while simultaneously listening to the speakers. My attention was divided even further when I was repeatedly interrupted by officials who needed immediate clear-cut answers on urgent business.

  Though I was dividing my focus successfully, the speakers kept pausing whenever I looked away. I kept gesturing for them to proceed, as they weren’t disturbing my work in the slightest. Not only did I perfectly follow every speech, but I often interjected to address problems which the speakers put forward. At times I even praised speakers that didn’t fully deserve it to show that I’d been listening to them.

  How could I do so many things at once? I learned from the Great Leader. Just as General Kim Il Sung had created land-shrinking tactics to terrify the Japanese imperialists, I employed time-shrinking to step up the transformation of society. Try as I might, I could never change the fact that one hour consisted of sixty minutes. But what I could change was the quantity and intensity of the enthusiasm that I poured into my work. In Morse code, an ordinary person’s output would be expressed in dots and lines. But my output would be several straight lines covering the same distance. I managed to do the work of ten or even a hundred days’ work in the same period by saving every fraction of a second. By using time in a cubic, three-dimensional way, I carried out brilliant work of historical importance every single day—the likes of which ordinary people could never do in years.

  But I was only one person, and there was an entire nation relying on me. The national production figures were released in October of 1974. Though Korea’s agriculture had scored a better-than-usual harvest, the industrial sector had seriously failed to hit its target. This was causing an economic chain reaction, restricting the country’s development. Worse, failing to carry out the year’s goals posed a threat to the Six-Year Plan which had begun in 1971. In the DPRK, we prefer not to report bad news lest
it upset our people. Yet we would never be able to hide the failure if things continued the way that they were going. It would be an embarrassment abroad and demoralizing at home.

  President Kim Il Sung called an emergency meeting of the Political Committee of the Party Central Committee to address the crisis. In attendance were cadres of committees and departments, Administration Council members and able economic leaders. The Great Leader bluntly laid out the production difficulties that the country was facing. “Given these issues, what measures should we undertake to fulfill the annual target?” he asked the room.

  The economic leaders kept their heads down, feeling guilty for their failure. No one else rose to speak, either. Unfortunately not a single person had an idea as to how to handle such an admittedly complex problem. The air in the room was equally full of shame and urgency—shame for not having answers, as well as the nation’s urgent need for them.

  To this day I remain unsure if the Great Leader was testing my economic mettle on purpose—why else would production be so low?—or if things had simply happened that way. In either case, this was the sort of thing I needed to be able to handle were I to be his successor. I had the foresight to stay up the entire night prior, scribbling ideas right up until the meeting began. I was prepared with answers. “I can tackle the problem by mobilizing Party organizations,” I announced. “It will be difficult, but together we can do it.”

  Quickly satisfied, President Kim Il Sung authorized my governance. I only had seventy days before the end of the year to meet the production goals. Even though I had many ideas, I was still unsure which ones to implement, in which order, and when. It was an intensely interrelated matter to study in an extraordinarily limited amount of time, with the entire nation and the prestige of the Great Leader at stake. I started by asking myself what the President would do. Yet, try as I might, in this instance I was unable to deduce how he would operate under the given conditions.

  But what if the conditions weren’t a given? I asked myself. What if I looked at it, not as an economic problem, but as a military affair? Characterizing the operation as a war, I drew a picture of the country’s industrial conditions as if I were drawing a battle map. I deduced that the root problem was the failure of the mining industries to surge ahead. This made it impossible for the machine-building, metal, chemical and other sectors to be supplied with sufficient materials. Delays in mined coal meant delays in cargo transportation, which slowed down exports and had a serious effect on related sectors. Identifying the problem in this way allowed me to develop a solution: I could take the “speed campaign” that I’d used in filmmaking and apply it to economic construction.

  That same day, I brought together various Party officials and laid out the actual conditions, problems and tasks for each specific economic sector. Then I explained my operation plan for the “70-day battle.” “Some socialist countries,” I said, “have begun to claim that the speed of economic development must be lowered as the scale of economic activity expands. The imperialists are taking this further, perpetuating the slander that economic stagnation is an essential defect of the socialist system. We will make it known that the socialist system is a rushing locomotive!”

  I still firmly believed that speed of labor was not inversely proportional to its quality. When workers are educated as revolutionaries, as in Korea, the quality of their production is in proportion to its quantity. When workers work hard with high skill, they not only do more work but they do more good work. The speed and quality of production are so closely related that each promotes the other.

  On October 21, I issued the orders for the start of the battle. The smallest hitch could cause problems in the implementation of the “speed campaign”—especially when dealing with a mere seventy-day period. I forbid stopping even a single machine for one moment. Producers immediately began to struggle for increased production with all their might. Senior officials and workers set their targets at high levels and, competing with each other, developed collective innovation movements. The entire Party and all the people rose up as one.

  Then I took a further lesson from my days in the Juche arts: I created economic propaganda teams. I sent both central and local art troupes to the production sites. Though singing and dancing were both created through labor, never before had the arts been so organically linked up with work. Famous actors and singers made speeches or sang songs in front of the machinery to encourage the workers. Whether they were using machines in factories, climbing towering cranes or even underground in pits, the workers were able to enjoy passionate art performances as they did their jobs. Many a worker was driven mad with pleasure from hearing the accordion—“the people’s instrument”—all throughout the workday.

  Of course, everything didn’t go precisely according to plan. I anticipated that things would go wrong, and employed mobile tactics so I could settle any problems on the spot. When a pit became flooded I sent a large-capacity pump via helicopter. I rerouted large-sized trucks when the stripped-earth heap at a mine grew too high to carry out the coal. I was constantly solving all sorts of localized delays, then recalibrating the balance of the plan accordingly. It goes without saying that I never returned home to take a rest.

  Knowing that the entire Six-Year Plan was depending on them, the people began to overcome difficulties on their own. An accident caused three Kangson Steel Plant heating furnaces to suspend operations—but I only learned about it after the fact. The furnaces needed to cool before repair work could be done, but the workers refused to halt production any further. They vied with each other to fix the still-hot furnaces. Some became terribly burnt, but they just continued on as if nothing had happened. Soon the furnaces were repaired and production resumed. While many other nations boast of their workers “putting their country first,” it is only in Korea where the masses take that dictum to heart and act accordingly.

  As a result of the entire nation working as one, the “speed campaign” ended in victory. When I took charge, the remaining tasks for 1974 had seemed impossible to carry out. Instead, they ended up being overfulfilled by 17.2%. I had passed my leadership test, and Korea was all the better for it.

  What I didn’t fully appreciate is how much the test of a leader depended on outside forces. General Kim Il Sung was a phenomenal administrator, but he had made his name through waging two successful wars. Would I be able to do the same? Though they didn’t know it, it was the Americans who would give me the next test of my leadership prowess.

  Within the DMZ is the Joint Security Area, which operated under the auspices of both parts of Korea. One day in mid-August 1976, a group of Americans approached a poplar tree on the DPRK side with the intent to trim its branches. The US side claimed that the tree was a hindrance to its surveillance. In other words, they wanted to chop down one of our trees simply to improve their view!

  It has always been the DPRK’s explicitly stated policy that we do not want war but we are not afraid of it either. The Americans were told that any such activity would be taken as a sign of aggression and met with force. What’s more, such action was clearly against the regulations of the Military Armistice Commission which governed the area.

  In keeping with that favorite American tactic of “strike first, apologize later (if at all),” on the morning of August 18th more than ten US soldiers turned up with axes to chop the tree down entirely. This was an explicit challenge to the authority of the DPRK and the Great Leader himself. Would the Korean soldiers let this go unanswered? Or would they bring the two nations to the brink of war because of a mere poplar tree?

  “The tree is on the DPRK side,” insisted a KPA guard. “If you want to fell it, you need our approval.”

  Instead of listening to him, the US soldiers pounced with their axes and called in reinforcements. Soon there were four Korean guards against more than forty Americans. These were not very fair odds, since each Korean soldier was a match for one hundred foes. As the Americans launched their axes, they were swiftly disarme
d by Korean Taekwondo tactics. The Koreans then threw the axes back, killing two US officers on the spot. The Korean guards then used kicks and chops on the remaining Yankees, inflicting wounds that sent dozens of Americans running upon their heels in a panic.

  I was in my office that morning when an official ran in to tell me what had just happened. I wanted to make sure I had all the facts straight before I proceeded to give direction. “Are we certain that the Americans were armed, whereas the Koreans were not?” I said.

  “We are certain, comrade.”

  “They were armed with axes?”

  “With axes,” he confirmed.

  “And they supposedly wanted to chop down a tree because it hindered their surveillance?”

  “Yes.”

  “The US side is always boasting of its high technology,” I pointed out. “They know whatever we do by means of information satellites or electronic spy planes. Are we to believe that they can go to the moon but can’t see past a poplar tree?”

  The official broke composure only for a moment, but he recognized the farce in what the Americans were claiming. “That is their version, yes.” “Even if that’s true, shouldn’t they have at least used a chainsaw? Why use axes? Those would take a very long time to chop a tree down. Is West Point a training camp for lumbermen now?” “I don’t believe so.”

  “No, I don’t believe so, either.” I turned back to the documents I’d been reading. Out of the corner of my eye, I could see that the official was still standing there.

  “Comrade...?” he said. “Yes?”

  “What shall we do?”

  “Well, have the soldiers been commended yet?”