The Hidden People of North Korea: Everyday Life in the Hermit Kingdom

by Ralph Hassig

  Decision Making

  We only partially understand how decisions are made at the highest levels of the North Korean government because no close aide to Kim Jong-il is known to have defected. Throughout most of his career, it appears, Kim did not consult with advisors as often as his father did; however, since suffering a stroke in 2008, he has very likely begun relying heavily on other top officials to help him make decisions.51 He intervenes in even the smallest affairs if they come to his attention and engage his interest. On important matters, Kim turns to his subordinates for policy suggestions, telephoning them at any hour of the day or night and encouraging them to discuss and argue among themselves. These subordinates forward their recommendations to Kim, who evaluates them in terms of what is good for national security and what is good for himself.

  Kim works late into the night, a practice he says he picked up during the years when he was preparing reports to put on his father’s desk first thing in the morning. Kim Jong-il’s adopted niece, Nam-ok, says he often brought work home, and one of his associates says Kim would sometimes sneak out of late-night parties he was hosting in order to work in his office. It is not known whether Kim engages in a true exchange of ideas or simply solicits opinions and then makes unilateral decisions. Kim’s imperious behavior in public suggests that he uses the latter decision-making process. There is little doubt that once Kim has made a decision, no one can question or contest it. The North Korean political system lacks checks and balances because the legislature and courts must answer to the party, and the party is, first and last, a tool of Kim’s leadership. Even in the era of military-first politics, the top generals seem to have no political agenda and, in any case, live and work under close party surveillance.

  Because Kim governs by personal power rather than organizational position, the best way to assess how much political power officials exercise is to look at their personal relationships to Kim. Those closest to him may never appear in public, but they are probably the most powerful people in the regime because they have Kim’s ear and, more importantly, his trust. High-ranking officials who appear at meetings with foreigners are often only front men. A good example is the chairman (also called “president”) of the presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly. Even though he is the highest official in the government, he probably has less political clout than some party officials. In any case, the SPA is nothing more than a part-time legislature that convenes for a few days each year to ratify the party’s decisions. Likewise, Kim surrounds himself with high-ranking generals who follow him around on inspection tours, thereby demonstrating to the army and to the public that Kim is the man in charge.

  Real power resides in what could be called Kim’s inner cabinet. The makeup of this informal cabinet, whose members presumably never convene as a group but instead work with Kim at his office or socialize with him at his parties, has always been the subject of much speculation among foreign analysts. Most of the people who seem to belong to this inner circle are of Kim’s generation or younger; all are presumably loyal to him and believe that their interests coincide with his. Some hold positions of power in the military, others in the party, and others in the government. Many hold multiple positions. Some in the inner circle are members of Kim’s own family, such as his sister and his brother-in-law.

  Kim’s personal secretariat, which screens incoming reports and communicates Kim’s instructions, has offices next to his. An Yong-chol, a former officer in the KPA, has written about the secretariat and described the physical layout of Kim’s office, which is in the three-story headquarters of the KWP’s Organization and Guidance Department, the most powerful of the party organizations.52 Formerly housing Kim Il-sung’s office, the building is in a special party compound in downtown Pyongyang, surrounded by tall trees and an eleven-meter-high wall. It is believed that Kim can commute to his office by way of an underground tunnel from one of his Pyongyang houses.

  To keep Kim better informed than anyone else, information channels are vertical, not horizontal. Over the years, Kim has developed an extensive reporting system that keeps him apprised of what is happening in all sectors of society, while people in those sectors do not have accurate information about what is happening outside their domains. Officials are expected to transmit information to Kim in a timely fashion, and if he receives that information from another source first, heads may roll. The regime’s principal security organizations—the Ministry of People’s Security (MPS), State Security Department (SSD), and Security Command—have separate communication channels with Kim and often compete among themselves to provide him with information.53 Kim’s spies are everywhere, and people in critical lines of communication, and therefore with the most power, are the most carefully watched. The top elites, such as cabinet ministers, party secretaries, and KPA generals, must account for their comings and goings.

  Defectors say that reports sent to Kim are often doctored to make conditions look favorable to the departmental bureaucrats, a phenomenon that characterizes most bureaucracies. Kim is nobody’s fool, but he certainly does not know many things about his country, if only because officials keep bad news from him, just as he kept bad news from reaching his father. A possible case in point is the regime’s decision to end World Food Program (WFP) aid in 2005, even though the WFP estimated that North Korea would continue to experience a serious food shortfall. Three months later, with food already running out, Kim relented and permitted a partial resumption of food aid. A plausible explanation for this fiasco is that Kim’s agriculture officials misinformed him about the size of the 2005 harvest.

  Although Kim has a wealth of information about the outside world available to him from foreign media sources and from intelligence provided by North Koreans stationed abroad, he has limited first-hand experience with foreign lands and people. As a teenager he accompanied his father on a trip to Moscow in 1957 and to Eastern Europe in 1959. In 1965 he and his father visited Indonesia, the only time either of the Kims is known to have traveled by air. Since the 1980s Kim Jong-il has made occasional trips to China, and in 2001 and 2002, he visited Russia. In short, he has much less exposure to foreign lands than do many of his officials. The prism through which he views the world may be distorted by the movies he loves to watch, and his officials’ reluctance to be frank with him deprives him of a sounding board for his impressions and opinions. Interestingly, lack of experience has not inhibited his forming opinions about other countries or conducting international relations, as illustrated by the closed-door talk he gave to visiting Chongnyon officials.

  For Kim’s style of personal governance to be effective, he must have loyal and dependable followers. To garner this loyalty, he needs funds to reward followers because he is hardly the kind of leader who inspires others through his example or charisma, although some may follow him because they feel that their fate depends on keeping the regime in power or because they respected his late father. On the birthdays of Kim Jong-il and his father and on New Year’s Day, the top twenty thousand or so cadres receive special gifts, such as liquor, clothing, foreign food, and wristwatches.54 People who please him especially, like his former Japanese chef, receive more expensive gifts, including luxury cars. Ordinary party and government officials receive coupons on Kim’s birthday for, say, a bottle of liquor and a carton of fruit. In 2008, local-level officials, depending on local economic conditions, received something like a domestic bottle of liquor, a toothbrush, and a bar of soap, while school children received several pieces of chewing gum, a few rice crackers, and a small pack or two of candy.55

  Kim’s On-the-Spot Guidance

  In ancient Korea, the king would send out officials, sometimes in disguise, to report on conditions around the kingdom. Unlike the ancient kings, Kim Il-sung liked to conduct inspections personally; according to the North Korean press, Kim made eight thousand “on-the-spot guidance” tours in his lifetime, and Kim Jong-il has continued this tradition. In fact, these carefully arranged visits are practically the only ti
me Kim appears in public. Since the late 1990s, he has made about one hundred public appearances a year, over half of them at military bases. These inspections keep people on their toes and serve a public relations function by suggesting that Kim cares about his people.

  A special unit called the Support for Inspection Unit (bojangjo) goes around preparing for these “number one” visits by sprucing up the inspection sites so they will please Kim.56 People who live in the vicinity undergo new background checks to confirm their political reliability. Those not deemed reliable are cleared from the area or told to stay in their homes on inspection day. People who will come in contact with Kim are given health checks to insure they will not pass on any germs. If an adoring crowd is needed to welcome Kim, actors and the most attractive children and adults in the area are selected, trained, and provided with appropriate clothing and flags to wave. Old equipment at the inspection site is swapped with new equipment from other organizations. Food supplies are provided. If the military base or factory to be inspected raises livestock on the side, a full complement of animals must be procured.

  Shortly before Kim arrives at the inspection site, it is swept by his bodyguard personnel, and all entrances and exits are sealed. If Kim is inspecting a military base, small arms ammunition is locked up, and tanks and artillery pieces are secured with their gun barrels pointing away from where he will be standing. At a time of his choosing, Kim appears briefly, speaks to the top officials or commanding officers, walks around the site, has his photograph taken, and departs in his caravan of black Mercedes. A plaque will later be placed at the site commemorating Kim’s visit, and if he sat in a chair or at a table, the furniture will be taken out of service and preserved as a historical relic. Anyone fortunate enough to meet him can expect to receive a measure of preferential treatment for years to come.

  Kim’s guidance tours are not always immediately reported by the North Korean media, and since 2003 no date is ever given for a visit—the better to keep Kim’s schedule secret—although it seems that most of his appearances are reported within a day or two.57 Press coverage of Kim’s on-the-spot guidance dominates the entire first page of Nodong Sinmun (the first page is pretty much “Kim’s page” anyway). Because there is no way to confirm that Kim actually made a visit, some of the reports may even be fabrications; this is especially likely since his stroke in 2008.

  A typical news report of Kim’s guidance to a military base goes something like this: “Comrade Kim Jong-il, great leader of our party and our people, who is general secretary of the Workers Party of Korea, chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission, and supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, inspected KPA Unit Number 802, honored with the title of O Chung-hup-led Seventh Regiment.”58 Then follows a list of the generals who accompanied Kim on the visit.

  The news report will claim that Kim acquainted himself carefully with the unit’s operation, especially emphasizing his interest in the soldiers’ living conditions: “Comrade Kim Jong-il looked into every detail of the soldiers’ living, ranging from entertainment means and room conditions to every photograph they had taken and their personal belongings.”59 Kim also inspects any agricultural operations run by the unit to support itself, such as pig farms, catfish ponds, orchards, and cornfields. According to the press reports, Kim is usually satisfied with what he finds and declares that the unit is highly prepared to protect the people and defeat any aggressors. At the conclusion of his visit, he has his photograph taken standing in front of the assembled soldiers and gives the unit a few commemorative presents, typically an engraved rifle and pair of binoculars. These “number one articles” will be displayed in the special room set aside at every military post and civilian factory to study the works of the two Kims.

  News reports of Kim’s military visits usually conclude by painting a word picture of the soldiers enthusiastically cheering the departing Kim: “All the officers and soldiers … were full of burning determination to death-defyingly protect the nerve center of the revolution, becoming guns and bombs like the members of the anti-Japanese Seventh Regiment did, and to defend the outpost of the fatherland as an impregnable fortress.”60 Follow-up news reports often explain how Kim’s guidance benefited the people he visited. For example, in a television program titled “Legend of Love That Blossomed on the Path of On-the-Spot Guidance,” Kim is credited with providing uniforms to soldiers, instructing that barracks be built with smaller windows to keep the cold winter air out, and instructing that soldiers be provided with heavy blankets (to be provided by a “magnificent blanket-producing factory” commissioned by Kim). Kim is said to have supplied soldiers with toothpaste and toothbrushes (rare commodities in North Korea) and even taught the soldiers the correct way to brush their teeth.61

  On his guidance tours, as well as at all other times, Kim Jong-il’s security precautions are probably more thorough than those of the president of the United States—and for good reason. American soldiers captured the leader of another “axis-of-evil” country, and President George W. Bush made no secret of his dislike for Kim Jong-il and his preference for “regime change.” When U.S. forces attacked Baghdad in 2003, Kim disappeared from public view for two months, and for several weeks after the July 2006 North Korean missile launch, which the international community condemned, the domestic press made no mention of Kim’s activities and whereabouts.

  Although there is no firm evidence, rumor has it that over the years more than one coup or assassination attempt has targeted Kim and his father. In 1992, a group of officers who had received training in the Soviet Union allegedly plotted to turn their tank cannons on an assemblage of top government officials, and in the aftermath, officers throughout the army who had received training in Russia were purged. In 1995, officers of the army’s Sixth Corps also may have been planning a coup against Kim Jong-il, leading to a purge of many of the corps’s officers. In April 2004 a large explosion rocked the rail yard in the northern city of Yongchon, leveling an entire section of the city. The North Korean security services appear to have received information that the explosion was meant to assassinate Kim Jong-il, whose train was passing through the city around that time. Moreover, it was believed that a cell phone was used to trigger the detonation. Within weeks all cell phones were banned in North Korea, and only in late 2008 was the ban partially lifted.

  The Bodyguard Command or General Guard Bureau (the names and organizations seem to shift over the years) is the organization tasked with guarding Kim. Separate from the Ministry of People’s Armed Forces and under the control of the party, its soldiers are fiercely loyal to Kim. A number of other party offices close to Kim also provide security and keep him informed about possible threats.

  Important testimony about Kim Jong-il’s security arrangements has been provided by Yi Yong-kuk. In 1977 Yi was recruited at the age of seventeen to become a member of Kim Jong-il’s bodyguard unit, which numbered only about three hundred at the time. Yi served for eleven years, until security officials discovered that one of his cousins had become a chauffeur for Kim Jong-il. Since only one family member is allowed to work for Kim, presumably to ensure that the bodyguards are more loyal to Kim than to anyone with whom they work, Yi had to retire. According to Yi, the bodyguard unit was so secretive that it took security organizations six years to discover that he and his cousin were related! During the entire time Yi worked as a bodyguard, he was not permitted to communicate even once with his family.62

  Bodyguards are recruited from families with spotless working-class credentials. After rigorous training, they are housed in apartments isolated from the rest of Korean society, and if they marry, their wives come to live in the same quarantined housing. Upon retirement from the Bodyguard Command, soldiers are sworn to secrecy and given comfortable positions in the party or government. While in service, bodyguards live as well as top party and government officials, but Yi admits that there is a cost: the people working close to Kim are always on edge, never knowing how Kim will react from one m
oment to the next. Sometimes Kim praises the guards for stopping his car when the driver does not follow proper security procedures; at other times taking the same precautions is grounds for dismissal.

  In public, Kim is surrounded by a half-dozen senior bodyguards, with another hundred bodyguards forming a second circle at a range of about a hundred yards. On the outer perimeter of the security field, guards from the SSD and MPS secure the neighborhood. Kim’s travel plans are secret; even the bodyguards receive only an hour or two’s notice before Kim departs. Security personnel at the destination of Kim’s travels are given sufficient time to prepare for his arrival, but they will not know the exact hour of his arrival. When Kim is moving from place to place, people living along his travel route must stay indoors, and all other cars or trains along the route are halted.

  Kim Jong-il’s Personal Qualities

  Because of the wide latitude of behavior granted to a dictator, his personality has particular relevance to his leadership and, consequently, to the welfare of his country. The North Korean press, somewhat incoherently, describes Kim’s work style as “aiming high at all times and making a bold operation, the skillful organization and extraordinary sweep of achieving a target with the mobilization of all forces, the staunch propelling power of attaining one target after another for leaping progress without marking time.”63 Yet, on important matters, Kim is not as reckless as his reputation might suggest; instead, he always seems to leave himself room to maneuver. Time and again, North Korea (i.e., Kim) has issued a threat (such as to blow up South Korea’s Chosun Ilbo newspaper) or a promise (such as to make a summit trip to Seoul), only to let the matter drop. Those experienced with North Korea are not unduly alarmed by even the shrillest North Korean threats.

  Kim Jong-il is a very private person. Few North Koreans know anything about his life other than that he is the son of Kim Il-sung. They do not know who his wives and mistresses are, who his children are, or where he lives. In fact, he has gone through multiple wives and mistresses, even though a party lecture condemning divorce opens with the following Kim quote: “In our society the home is the foundational unit of life. Home life must be wholesome and happy for overall social life to be carried out cheerfully and energetically.”64 They do not know what he eats or how he amuses himself (other than listening to “meritorious military choir groups”). While his father was alive, Kim’s secrecy was popularly explained as his playing the role of an obedient Confucian-style son. But since his father’s death, Kim has continued to work behind the scenes, suggesting that some combination of his personality, concerns for his personal safety, and a particular pleasure derived from ruling in secrecy better explains his avoidance of the public.