by Ralph Hassig
KCBS (eighteen-minute news cast)
Kim thanks officials for planting trees and protecting historical relics.
The twenty-fourth anniversary of Kim’s work on “living in our own style” is celebrated.
The works of Kim and his father are displayed at the Juche exhibition hall.
New Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia greenhouses are built.
People visit the Kim Jong-suk relic room at a museum on the occasion of her birthday.
ROK authorities are denounced for their antireunification act of suppressing students.
Japan’s budget for a missile-defense program is denounced.
KCTV (twenty-nine-minute news cast)
One of Kim Jong-il’s books is published in Angola.
Various countries, including Egypt, celebrate the eighty-sixth birthday of Kim Jong-suk and the twelfth anniversary of Kim Jong-il’s appointment as KPA supreme commander.
Kim thanks a boat crew for their accident-free work at Kumgang.
People are shown listening to a lecture at the Historic Place of Revolution on the occasion of Kim Jong-suk’s eighty-sixth birthday and Kim Jong-il’s appointment as supreme commander.
Archive footage shows on-the-spot guidance at a food institute given by Kim and his father.
The winner of the Kim Il-sung poetry prize and his family are shown enjoying a “birthday table” of food sent by Kim Jong-il.
A video shows progress in land rezoning work in North Hamgyong Province.
A video shows progress in the construction of the Orangchon Power Plant.
A video celebrates the year-end acceleration of production at the Nanam Coal Mine Machinery Complex.
The operation of the Tokchon Chicken Plant is shown.
Medical researchers at the Academy of Koryo Medicine talk about their recent achievements.
A “meritorious” technician is shown working in a laboratory at the 5 October Automation Apparatus Plant.
A visiting delegation of Vietnamese is shown paying their respects to the late Kim Il-sung and reviewing exhibits on display at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace.
Representatives from various countries are shown laying wreaths at the statue of Kim Jong-suk on the occasion of her eighty-sixth birthday.
The announcer claims that in 2003 the world’s progressive people supported the DPRK’s anti-U.S. policy.
A DPRK foreign ministry spokesperson reports on the interest of various countries, including the Czech Republic, Russia, and China, in the resumption of the Six-Party Talks on the nuclear issue.15
Radio and television programming is not devoted exclusively to news, but it is mostly about politics in one way or another. Documentaries tend to be about the Kims. Interview and discussion shows highlight the virtues of Kim Jong-il’s military-first politics. Children’s stories and songs likewise provide political teachings. One can imagine who “The Boy General” is about. “Chodong and His Father” discusses “the need to assist the army,” and “A Boy Defeats Robbers” teaches that “one can find a way to beat any formidable enemy [for instance, the United States] and emerge victorious.” Cartoon shows, including Three Ant Brothers and The Clever Raccoon Dog,try to impart the values of hard work. Since 2001, a few children’s stories and cartoons from the West, such as episodes of Tom & Jerry and programs based on “Cinderella” and Alice in Wonderland, have appeared on North Korean TV, apparently in line with Kim Jong-il’s instruction that people be cautiously exposed to information about the outside world.
Songs (or “paeans,” as the press has been known to call them) extolling the virtues of Kim Il-sung include “Long Live Generalissimo Kim Il-sung,” “Our Leader Is Always with Us,” and “Song of the Sun Will Be Everlasting.” And plenty of songs praise Kim Jong-il, including “We Will Death-Defyingly Defend the Nerve Center of the Revolution,” “The General Is the Banner of Victory,” “The General Leads the New Century,” “Peerless Patriot General Kim Jong-il,” and “We Will Display Victory While Flying the Supreme Commander’s Flag.” In addition to dominating the airwaves, these songs are sung at concerts and in schools, and children sing them (under the direction of the class leader) as they march to school in the morning.
North Korea’s “third broadcasting system” is a wired network of speakers in homes, public buildings, and outdoor spaces. Third-broadcasting messages differ from those on radio and television largely in that they are tailored to specific locales and less concerned about promoting a positive image of the country. People are instructed about how to behave when a visiting foreigner is expected in the neighborhood, or they might be warned to be on the lookout for those responsible for a rash of local burglaries. The messages are sent out for about two hours a day, and the volume on home speakers can be turned down but not off, although electricity shortages and the general deterioration of North Korea’s communication infrastructure have hampered the operation of the speaker system. In a tape of a town meeting smuggled out of the country in 2006, the mayor warns people that an official will be coming around to homes checking that the speakers are properly installed, and if residents do not admit the official, they will be suspected of hiding illegal radios, operating an illegal gambling den, or even of being spies.16
Intranet and Internet
Kim Jong-il is eager to have his people adopt the latest technology as a means of reviving the economy, although how people might actually get their hands on it remains a mystery. Perhaps only 5 percent of the population has access to a computer, and probably no more than a few thousand have access to the Internet. Thousands more use computers at schools and workplaces to log on to the Kwangmyong (“brightness”) intranet, where they can retrieve information and communicate by e-mail. A 2001 article in Nodong Sinmun is purportedly written by an intranet user who does not forget to thank Kim Jong-il for this electronic miracle: “Filling the computer screen with this endless joy, I just want to write my first letter to the great mentor, our close parent, who has brought us all to the summit of modern civilization, carrying us in his bosom.”17
North Korea is unable to manufacture its own computers because it lacks the technology to make critical components. Apart from manufacturing constraints, the international Wassenaar Arrangement forbids countries from exporting technology that could have military uses to North Korea, although some countries, most notably China, are lax in their export controls, and the North Korean residents of Japan seem to have been particularly helpful in transferring technology and equipment to North Korea over the years. Only about 10 percent of offices in North Korea have computers. Most elementary schools lack computers, but middle schools are likely to have a handful. Local colleges also have only a few, and a university may have a few dozen. Individuals who wish to purchase a home computer must apply for various permits, and the cost is far beyond what the average Korean can afford.
By 2002, fiber-optic cable connected North Korea’s major cities, and the intranet operates on this network, overseen by officials of the State Security Department (SSD). So far as we know, the network is not connected to the Internet, which makes use of different telephone links, although a few portals allow intranet e-mails to be forwarded to the Internet. Kim Jong-il is probably the only person in the country who can surf the Web free of SSD monitoring. When U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in 2000, Kim gave her his e-mail address, although whether they communicated is not known. Some government administrative and economic organizations, as well as North Korean trading companies, maintain Web pages on the intranet, and the electronic version of Nodong Sinmun may be found there as well.
The “.kp” domain has been set aside for North Korea, but there are no servers in the country, so there are no “.kp” addresses. North Korea’s “official” websites are located on servers in China, Japan, and Germany. Several dozen websites showcasing the Kim regime’s ideology are sponsored by North Korea or by sympathetic groups and hosted on foreign servers.
North Korean scientific articles
occasionally cite Internet addresses, which scientists may have accessed directly or by way of the intranet, and North Korea is believed to have a robust computer-hacking program, which must function through the Internet. A former North Korean professor of computer studies claims that skilled North Korean hackers, trained at North Korea’s top technical schools such as Mirim University and Kim Chaek University of Technology, are sent abroad by the military to work undercover in other countries, especially China.18
Because information and technology can be used against the regime as well as for the good of the country, Kim Jong-il can hardly afford to let the general public get their hands on such politically powerful tools. Moving information around on the North Korean intranet is safer for the regime than letting people go on the Internet. Even the communist leaders of China, who continue to try to censor what their people can access on the Internet, have resigned themselves to a large measure of exposure to the international community. The North Korean press complains about the alleged oppressiveness of the South Korean “puppet” regime, while inadvertently revealing just how much freedom South Koreans enjoy. For example, KCBS has reported that South Koreans are using Internet sites to protest the American military presence in South Korea. What must North Koreans think about their own level of technology and degree of freedom when they cannot even gain access to a computer, much less use it to protest against anything?
Books
For a country of its size and with its high literacy rate, North Korea publishes relatively few books, which is hardly surprising given the chronic paper shortage and the authorities’ reluctance to put nontechnical written material into the hands of the people. Apart from technical works, most books, like newspapers, are unabashed instruments of propaganda. The most popular book topics are the life and teachings of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. In 2008, fourteen years after the Great Leader’s death, the number of volumes of his collected works had reached seventy-four, and more were being released all the time.
Most foreign-language books are kept in special reserve sections in libraries and are available only to party cadres on a need-to-know basis. The Kim regime is particularly proud of the library at the Grand People’s Study Hall in Pyongyang, but few ordinary Koreans spend any time there. When a French visitor asked how many volumes the study hall had, he was told thirty million. When he asked how many of the books were in the catalog, he was told twenty-five hundred.19 So the number of volumes is presumably somewhere in that range. A German visitor to the study hall was told that the two Kims had written over 10,800 works, a figure that his Korean hosts stuck too under further questioning.20 According to KCNA, Kim Jong-il performed “great ideological and theoretical exploits which ordinary people could hardly accomplish in all their life” by authoring more than fourteen hundred works (“treatises, talks, speeches, conclusions, and letters”) during his four years as a student at Kim Il-sung University.21
Among the hundreds or thousands of books written about the Kims, Collection of Legends of the Great Man recounts “77 legends about the gifted intelligence, lofty outlook on the people, and noble traits displayed by leader Kim Jong-il.”22 Books in the socialist realism tradition include such titles as Song of Humankind, “based on the fact that President Kim Il-sung visited the Kangson Steelworks and called on its workers to bring about a great revolutionary upsurge in socialist construction,” and Arms, which “shows the validity and vitality of the songun [military-first] politics pursued by leader Kim Jong-il.”23 Novels such as Breath of Land and Swaying Abele “depict farm and railway workers’ efforts to implement the policies of the Korean Workers’ Party.”
An ongoing series of novels, including Song of Desire for Reunification, Wealth, and 40 Years in My Memory, are based on the reminiscences of each of the sixty-three North Korean spies repatriated by the ROK government in 2000. These works purportedly show how these men “maintained their faith for scores of years in South Korea, undaunted by brutal torture, appeasement and deception, trusting only in Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.”24 On their return to the North, the spies were given a hero’s welcome and have been featured ever since in propaganda campaigns illustrating the loyalty of North Koreans. Unfortunately, the ROK government did not insist that the DPRK release any of the South Korean prisoners of war or abducted civilians that it has been holding for decades.
Films
North Koreans may not have access to many books, but they do like to go to the movies, whose primary function is to propagandize for the regime. Films are particularly well suited to a collectivist society because people watch them as a group, and for that matter, the films are produced not by individuals but by production companies, so both the production and consumption can be kept under the watchful eyes of the authorities.25 Popular film themes include the adulation of the Kim family, the perennial conflict between socialism and capitalism, and the dangers posed by foreign culture.26 Many films have historical anti-Japanese themes, with perhaps the most famous being the Kim Jong-il production from the late 1960s titled Sea of Blood, about a woman farmer who became a revolutionary and fought the Japanese colonialists in the 1930s. Another famous Kim film from that period is Flower Girl, about a peasant girl who receives a beating from a greedy landlord.
Korean propagandists say that Kim first showed an interest in films at the age of seven, when he supposedly commented that the snow in one movie looked too much like cotton.27 A wall chart at the Korean Feature Film Studio outside of Pyongyang tallies 1,724 visits and 10,487 instructions made by Kim up to the year 1993.28 Throughout the studio, large photos show Kim in the act of supervising, while much smaller photos show actors and directors at their work.29 In his 450-page treatise on film titled On the Art of the Cinema, Kim covers all facets of filmmaking and emphasizes the importance of the director’s role (presumably in life as well as in film).30 Two of the book’s chapters are titled “The Director Is the Commander of the Creative Group” and “The Quality of Acting Depends on the Director.” As he took on more responsibilities for running the country beginning in the 1980s, Kim had less time to devote to the film industry, but his interest in film remained strong.
The North Korean film industry fell on hard times as the economy shrank, with film output declining to only about a half dozen major films per year in the 1990s, down from a full dozen in the 1980s. Multimillion-dollar film productions are now out of the question, and technology is so limited that films are routinely dubbed with sound after they have been shot. The poor production values and didactic quality of North Korean films goes a long way toward explaining why South Korean films smuggled into the country are so popular. The one bright spot in the film industry is animation: North Korean studios have established a good reputation for producing animated films on contract for the export market.
For want of anything more entertaining in the domestic market, the public likes melodramas-with-a-message in which individuals struggle against social and physical obstacles in order to follow the socialist path and in the process achieve their personal goals, including sometimes love. A modern example is the 1997 film Myself in the Distant Future, in which a lazy young man falls in love with a girl working on a construction brigade. The girl is not interested in the selfish suitor, and after her brigade has been disbanded, she returns to her village to serve the party as a farmworker. The young man follows her and, after failing to win her back on his own lazy merits, sees the light and invents a method to run farm tractors on wood instead of scarce gasoline. He performs a heroic deed with his wood-burning tractor, is awarded a medal, and finally gets the girl.31
Out-of-Home Media
North Korean buildings are plastered with hand-painted propaganda posters and banners that urge people to commit themselves to the Juche ideology and military-first politics and to be loyal to Kim Jong-il: “Let’s Become Young Heroes in the Worthwhile Struggle to Glorify the Songun [Military-First] Era!”; “Let’s Consolidate Our Political and Ideological Position Like Steel”; “All Work
ing Class! Let’s Vigorously Display the Example and Spirit of the DPRK Working Class of the Military-First Era!”; “Let the Functionaries Lead the Ranks Like the People’s Army Commanders!” Other slogans address civic responsibilities: “Let’s Plant Trees through the Entire Country”; “More of Our-Style Stockbreeding!”; “Let’s Achieve Heroic Feats in the Construction of Hydroelectric Power Plants!”; “Let’s Turn Our Villages into a Socialist Fairyland Where Crops Are Abundant!”
About 80 percent of the northern part of the Korean Peninsula is mountainous. This is bad for farming but good for rock carving. It has been estimated that over forty thousand characters (words and syllables) have been carved on rocks, especially in the scenic mountain regions around Mt. Kum-gang and Mt. Paektu.32 Although Koreans have a long tradition of rock carving, the propaganda cult carvings of the Kim regime did not begin to appear until around 1972 to celebrate Kim Il-sung’s sixtieth birthday, and the initial carving project can probably be attributed to Kim Jong-il. Most slogans either praise or quote one of the three Kims. Carvings of Kim Il-sung’s sayings are painted in red. In the Mt. Kumgang tourist area, some forty-five hundred characters are said to be carved on the jagged cliffs for which the mountains are famous. One of the most prominent of the carvings quotes Kim Il-sung: “ ‘Kumgang is the celebrated mountain of Choson,’ [signed] Kim Il-sung, September 27, 1947.” The characters forming the words are twenty meters high and sixteen meters wide.33 The phrase “Heaven-Sent Brilliant General Kim Jong Il” was carved in characters of similar size to honor Kim Jong-il’s sixtieth birthday.34
Internal Documents
There exists a hidden universe of North Korean documents sent down from the party to provide lecture material at political study sessions. The internal documents, labeled “for internal use only” or “secret,” are supposed to be collected after use, but thanks to the widespread corruption of cadres and the wide dissemination of the documents, it is hardly surprising that some of them end up in the hands of defector groups and foreign news media.