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

by Ralph Hassig

  The number of references to Kim Il-sung in the North Korean press has declined over the years. On what would have been his ninety-first birthday in 2003, the long-running KCBS sign-on, “Long live the revolutionary thought of Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung; long live the glorious Workers’ Party of Korea,” was replaced with “Long live our glorious fatherland, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea; long live the Workers’ Party of Korea, the organizer and guide of all the victories for the Korean people.”78 Mention of Kim Il-sung’s name in the annual New Year’s Day message has dropped from about two dozen instances in the last years of his life to fewer than a half dozen since 2000. In recent years, it has been Kim Jong-il’s birthday on February 16 that nature supposedly celebrates. For example, in 2001, KCBS reported that thunder, lightning, and a rainbow appeared during a snowstorm on his birthday, causing residents to say, “Even nature seemed to congratulate Kim Jong-il, illustrious commander born of heaven, on his birthday.”79 However, the North Korean press is building up the importance of the year 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-sung’s birth, by which date the country is supposed to have become an economic power.

  Kim is even credited with some of the magical powers his father was said to have (some references to Kim Il-sung in the North Korean media claimed he could transcend time and space). In 2006 Nodong Sinmun published an article titled “Military-First Teleporting” claiming that Kim Jong-il, “the extraordinary master commander who has been chosen by the heavens,” appears in one place and then suddenly appears in another “like a flash of lightning,” so quickly that the American satellites overhead cannot track his movements.80

  As the years passed and people’s memories dimmed, propagandists became bolder in rewriting Kim Jong-il’s biography. By 2002, North Korean radio could make the claim that “Great Comrade Kim Jong-il already earned the people’s admiration as early as the 1940s and the 1950s of the last century [he was born in 1942]. He spearheaded our people’s struggle to complete the Juche cause, undertaking all the heavy tasks of the revolution all by himself in the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.”81 Kim Jong-il is now credited with all the attributes of his father, including his father’s military abilities. To extend Kim’s nonexistent military career into the past, he is now described as being at his father’s side during the Korean War, helping him to plan battles, although at the time he would have been only eleven years old: “Sometimes he sat up all night together with Comrade Kim Il-sung at the table for mapping out a plan of operation, asking about the situation of the front, thinking of how to frustrate the intention of the enemy and learning Comrade Kim Il-sung’s outstanding commanding art.”82 Kim Jong-il’s distinctive military-first politics, first mentioned in the press in the late 1990s, is now said to have originated with a visit by the eighteen-year-old Kim to a military base on August 25, 1960.83

  In point of fact, the closest Kim has ever come to fighting a war was his declaration of a “semiwartime state” in response to American pressure over the nuclear issue in 1993. However, his lack of combat experience has not prevented the North Korean propagandists from making Kim out to be a war hero. In North Korea’s long-running cold war with the United States, Kim is said to have taken a very active part: “Not escorted by tanks or armored cars, he has passed the ridge [Chol Ridge, site of a Korean War battle] and crossed the rivers for forefronts without eating or sleeping. By doing so, he has devotedly tided over the crisis of the country and the revolution, winning one victory after another in the war without gunshot.”84

  And then there is Kim Jong-il’s vaunted benevolence. Until recently, North Koreans were taught from childhood to think of his father as their father, like the Russians were taught to love “Papa Stalin.” Children thanked Kim Il-sung for everything good that came their way. Now the thanks go to Kim’s son. An article in a propaganda magazine targeting foreigners says that children and students in the DPRK “liken the embrace of the leader Kim Jong-il, who takes good care of them and has their dreams fully realized, to that of father.”85 The article quotes the first verse of a touching children’s song titled “I Will Tell Him Everything”:

  When I said I wanted to become a doctor or general

  My friends laughed at me and said I was greedy.

  I will tell the General about it when I meet him.

  Then they will not laugh at me any more.

  Most of the propaganda boasting of Kim Jong-il’s benevolence is made out of whole cloth. He is portrayed as a man who understands the suffering of the people and suffers for them: “Day and night, I always think about ways to have our people live more affluently.”86 Nodong Sinmun says that while he was being driven through the countryside during the 1990s’ famine, “his thought, heartrending as it was, went to people said to be ranging hill and dale to pick wild spinach in an effort to stave off hunger. He had to bring his car to a halt to pull himself together before resuming the trip.”87

  The myth of Kim’s benevolence is designed in part to make all North Koreans, even those stigmatized as members of the wavering and hostile political classes, feel that they are part of the same national family. Kim’s image of benevolence is also intended to persuade the South Korean people that they could live happily in a unified Korea under his leadership. Even in North Korea few people have been convinced by this propaganda because since Kim came to power, economic conditions have gone from bad to worse, and instead of helping the people, Kim has elevated the army. In private, people say, “Kim Il-sung took the people’s train, but Kim Jong-il takes the military train.”

  According to the cult propaganda, there is nothing that Kim does not know or is not good at. At the university, in contrast to recollections of former students who say he was not a serious student, the press now claims that Kim authored more than fourteen hundred works.88 His memory supposedly enables him to remember “all the exploits performed by the famous men of all ages and countries, all the political events, big and small, and the significant creations of humankind and their detailed figures. He also remembers the names, ages, and birthdays of all the people he has met.”89

  Kyongje Yongu, which is as much a propaganda journal as the country’s leading economics journal, claims that Kim’s Juche ideology “includes all areas of economic theory, and is an economic ideology with perfect features as the most correct directional guide of economic activity for realizing independence in the relationship with nature.”90 According to another article, when the “genius of geniuses” visited a computer laboratory in the North Korean Academy of Sciences in 1998, he taught the academy’s staff about computer memory capacity and processing speed and understood the computer programs “better than experts.”91 Scientific articles in North Korean scientific journals often begin with a nod to the wisdom of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il. For example, an article titled “On the Vortex Method of Pulverized Coal Gasification (Part One)” leads off with a quotation from Kim Il-sung, after which the authors can safely say, “In respectful accordance with the instructions of the Great Leader we have advanced the study of fluid flow characteristics”—certainly a good way to get one’s manuscript accepted by journal editors.

  Not to put too fine a point on the matter, Kim (and the party) are never supposed to be wrong about anything, no matter how badly things turn out:

  Today [2004], our nerve center of the revolution [i.e., Kim Jong-il] is leading the new century with the most accurate ideas and lines. The correctness, scientific accuracy, truth, and invincible vitality of all the ideas and lines put forth by the respected and beloved Comrade Kim Jong-il, including the line of party- and state-building, the line of military development, and the line of economic and cultural development, have been clearly proved in the course of the arduous and prolonged struggle that we waged over the past decades [i.e., during a period when hundreds of thousands of people died of hunger].92

  Kim Jong-il has been honored with many titles in North Korea. After he succeeded his father in the early 1970s, but before he was presented to t
he public, the press referred to him as the (anonymous) “party center.”93 In the late 1970s, he was variously referred to as “dear leader,” “sagacious leader,” and “esteemed leader.” After he was introduced to the public as his father’s successor at the 1980 party congress, the press began to refer to him as Secretary Kim Jong-il, including both his title and his name. He also became the yongdoja or jidoja (“leader”), whereas his father was and is the suryong (“top leader”).94 After he was appointed to head the military in the early 1990s, he gained the title of “supreme commander.” Since the mid-1990s, the press has favored the phrase title “respected and beloved general,” and he is the only person in North Korea who can simply be called “the general,” although the KPA has some fourteen hundred officers of that rank. Kim Jongil is also referred to in the press as the “nerve center,” the “supreme brain,” and the “heart” of the North Korean people, as well as their “mother,” as in “The people follow the great general—the mother of the revolution—who takes charge of and looks after his children’s destiny and future by devoting his whole life.”95

  The Kim cult embraces other Kim family members, except for those who are out of favor. The reputation of Kim’s mother, Kim Jong-suk, who died in 1949, grows stronger by the year. Although historical records suggest that she merely performed housekeeping chores in the guerrilla group led by her husband, the North Korean press touts her as one of the “three generals of Mount Paektu” (the other two being Kim Jong-il and his father). An internal propaganda document from 2004 describes her as “a famous master shot, a seasoned intelligence agent, and a determined communist who would not give in to any cruel challenge or difficult obstacle.”96 According to words attributed to Kim Il-sung, his wife was “his most valuable and closest comrade,” and “the greatest meritorious deed that she left behind in the revolution” was “having raised Comrade Kim Jong-il as the leader of the future and putting him up before the party and the fatherland.” In short, she is described as the kind of person that Kim wishes all North Koreans would be—people who think first of protecting the leader.

  Kim Jong-il’s grandfather on his father’s side—the schoolteacher, clerk, and herbal pharmacist—is portrayed as an “indomitable revolutionary fighter.”97 Kim Jong-il’s paternal grandmother is described as a patriot who defied the Japanese when they were chasing her son, Kim Il-sung, and who told him that he would have to take the cause of independence over from his father; thus, the line of revolutionaries continues in the Kim family from one generation to the next.98 Koreans who believe such accounts may become used to the idea of being ruled by a member of the Kim family, as if that is a defining characteristic of their country. This hereditary lineage not only confers legitimacy on Kim Jong-il but prepares the groundwork for one of his sons to succeed him.

  The central theme of the Kim cult is that the highest duty of every North Korean is to protect the leader—although from what is not clearly specified. People are told that the country is nothing without the leader; therefore, protecting Kim comes before protecting the country. “If one fails to worship and uphold one’s top leader [suryong, in this case Kim Il-sung] and leader [jidoja, i.e., Kim Jong-il] absolutely, one cannot defend national dignity, nor safeguard the socialist gains won with blood, nor avoid the fate of stateless slaves.”99 An internal document aimed at those cadres who might be more concerned about their own welfare than that of their country bluntly warns, “If they fail to defend the nerve center of the revolution, our commanding members will be the first to climb up the enemy’s gallows.”100

  Protecting the leader also means protecting the “number one articles” associated with him. The most ubiquitous of these are portraits of the Kims found in virtually every room in the country. After a devastating explosion on the rail tracks at Yongchon, KCNA reported approvingly that a Mr. Choe and Mr. Jon, on their way home for lunch, rushed into a burning building that was collapsing “to die a heroic death” in an attempt to rescue portraits of the two Kims hanging on its walls.101 According to another KCNA story, during the summer floods of 2006, one Kim Tok-chan awoke from a sound sleep to hear the roaring sound of a landslide. He took down the portraits of the two Kims from his living room wall, wrapped them with care, and prepared to flee the house, but he was too late. He did, however, manage to hand the pictures to his wife and push her to safety before he was buried in the landslide.

  One of the more curious manifestations of Kim worship is the “slogan tree,” whose bark bears what are said to be carvings made by Kim Il-sung’s band of revolutionary fighters in the 1930s and 1940s. Thousands of trees have been “discovered” since the 1980s, leading most skeptics to assume that members of the party’s propaganda department have been busy with their carving knives. Dozens of the trees located near historical sites are surrounded by special curtained glass enclosures to protect them from the elements. Nodong Sinmun says that when forest fires threatened these trees, seventeen soldiers “did not hesitate to throw themselves into the fire, in the flower of their youth, to protect a slogan tree that is the treasure of ages to come. After they were burned to death with their bodies covering every inch of the slogan tree, it came to light that they died clutching President Kim Il-sung’s portrait [lapel] badges in their hands.”102

  In the Kim cult, the slogans carved on these trees play the same role that the three wise men play in the biblical story of the birth of Jesus; that is, they foretell the future greatness of the newborn Kim Jong-il: “Birth on Mount Paektu of the bright star, heir to General Kim Il-sung” and “Longevity and blessing to the bright star above Mount Paektu who will shine with the beam of the sun” (Kim Il-sung is the sun and Kim Jong-il is the moon).103

  The Next Succession

  Unless he departs from office in an untimely fashion, Kim will someday have to appoint a successor; perhaps he has already done so. In early 2009, his health seems so precarious that there may well be a sense of urgency to prepare for the succession. According to the logic of the Kim cult, which sets the Kim family apart from all others, Kim must choose one of his sons to succeed him. The tradition of Confucianism, on which the Kim cult is based, would favor his eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, born in 1971. Jong-nam, a taller and fatter version of Kim Jong-il, is the son of Kim’s former mistress, the actress Song Hye-rim. He is said to be adept at using computers (a rare skill in North Korea) and has played various background roles in the party, primarily, it is believed, in the technology field. In 2001 he had the misfortune to be detained by immigration authorities while entering Japan on a forged Dominican Republic passport—not the first time, it seems, that he had traveled illegally to Japan. Press photos showed him to be a fat man with chin stubble, accompanied by two women and a small boy. The Japanese government decided to deport the group rather than press charges, but the immigration issue made him a laughing stock in Japan, caused his father to lose face, and might prove an inauspicious public debut for a future North Korean leader. Since then, Kim Jong-nam has lived in exile in Macau, only occasionally visiting his homeland.

  In 2002, the North Korean propaganda organs began to elevate to cult status Ko Yong-hi, perhaps signaling that one of her two sons may be first in line for succession. In 2003, a classified document prepared for soldiers said, “The respected mother, assisting the respected and beloved Comrade Supreme Commander from a place closest to him and serving him with all her loyalty, is precisely in the same position as Comrade Kim Jong-suk [Kim Jong-il’s mother], the anti-Japanese heroine, was in the days of the anti-Japanese war upholding the fatherly leader and laying the firm basis of succession for our revolution to be carried forward generation after generation.”104 Although the identity of the “respected mother” is not revealed, since Ko was known to be Kim’s favorite consort, the reference is undoubtedly to her.

  According to an internal party directive dated September 2005, the Party Central Committee “a while ago solemnly declared that it would highly uphold respected Comrade Kim Jong-chol, who inherited th
e spirit of Paektu intact, as our party’s nerve center in response to our party and our people’s unanimous cherished desire.”105 The “unanimous desire” is pure fiction, of course, because Jong-chol’s name has never been mentioned in the press. The directive went on to indicate that Jong-chol should be addressed as “respected comrade chief deputy department director,” that his portrait should be “cordially placed” in party conference rooms and offices but not in people’s homes, and that his orders should be implemented without question. At the time, Kim Jong-chol was only twenty-five.

  For top cadres, much is riding on the succession choice. Those close to the successor will rise in the party organization, and associates and supporters of other succession candidates may even end up in prison. It is not at all clear that Jong-chol will be his father’s choice. In 2009, Ko’s younger son, Kim Jong-un, seemed to have become the succession favorite. One would think that Kim Jong-un, only twenty-six years of age, would be too young and inexperienced to be named as the successor. After all, Kim Jong-il was in his early thirties when his father chose him, and his succession was not announced to the public until he was almost forty. But Kim Jong-il’s deteriorating health may push the succession process forward more quickly than anyone had anticipated, and it would probably be better for him to name a young successor than none at all.

  Little is known about either of Ko’s two sons. Like Kim Jong-nam, they both spent a few years of their youth studying at schools in Switzerland (under false names). Neither has been mentioned by name in the North Korean press, and the general public does not even know of their existence. If in the near future Kim Jong-il becomes seriously incapacitated or dies, perhaps one of the sons will begin his reign at the head of a collective leadership group, with eventual leadership succession to be decided by domestic power struggles.