The Hidden People of North Korea (11 page)

In public at least, Kim is supremely confident; indeed, arrogant would be a more accurate description. Even as a young man, he often treated senior officials like subordinates, speaking to them with his hands in his pockets or clasped behind his back (like his father), or smoking in front of them, or failing to greet them when he entered a room. His demeanor unnerved those around him. Koh Young-hwan, a former diplomat, said that when he was in Kim’s presence, he became so nervous he could hardly breathe.
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Kim speaks rapidly in a rather high-pitched voice, usually in unfinished sentences, jumping from one topic to another. When he gets an idea, he wants it implemented immediately. For example, it is said that when his artistic eye rested on an empty Pyongyang vista, Kim would order that buildings be erected to fill the void. After his 2002 visit to eastern Russia, where he was impressed with the architecture of a Greek Orthodox church, he ordered that a similar church be built in Pyongyang within the year (it was finished in 2006), even though ordinary North Koreans who publicly worship anyone other than Kim and his father can expect to be sent to prison. Kim’s ideas are often impractical, such as his decision to build a 105-story hotel that remains unfinished a quarter of a century later because of structural flaws or his order to build thousands of small hydroelectric plants throughout the country (in the manner of China’s disastrous Great Leap Forward), few of which generate sufficient power to pay for themselves.

Kim has a hot temper, but he can quickly forget his anger. He sometimes sends close associates to reeducation labor camps for weeks or months at a time when they displease him, but after they have served their time, they are often allowed to resume their old positions. Then again, some are never released, perhaps because Kim has forgotten about them. When very angry, he can even go as far as to order that someone be put to death, as he has done on more than one occasion, the most famous case being the public execution of his agriculture minister in 1997.

It is Kim Jong-il’s tragedy that in nearly all respects he cuts a less impressive figure than his father. Physically, he is short and stout (although, since his stroke, he has lost much weight). At about 5 feet, 5 inches tall (165 centimeters), he is several inches shorter than his father. To add a few inches to his height, he combs his thinning hair in a bouffant style and wears elevator shoes (since his stroke, he has occasionally appeared in public wearing sneakers). His weight, which has been a problem since childhood, was about 175 pounds (80 kg) when he was healthy. He has squinty eyes and frequently wears large-framed, heavily tinted glasses, which the North Korean press explains is to keep the people from seeing how red their leader’s eyes are from hard work and lack of sleep.
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Kim has a distinctive taste in clothing. Before the 1980s, he sometimes wore a Western suit, which made him look like a portly young businessman, but for most of his life, he has worn light tan slacks with a matching workingman’s zipper jacket, often referred to in the foreign press as a jumper, but in North Korea his attire is known as
inminbok
, or “people’s clothes.” Actually, with his stout build and unruly hair, he somewhat resembles the bus driver character Ralph Kramden, played by the comedian Jackie Gleason on the old television series
The Honeymooners
. On formal occasions, he may wear a longer Mao jacket, but even when meeting heads of state, he usually wears his work clothes. The North Korean press says that Kim’s attire reflects his lifestyle as a workingman and that it shows his solidarity with soldiers, although they do not wear jumpers. “Our general is always dressed in the same outfit, a field uniform, regardless of the changing seasons. Our general’s field uniform would always be wet from the sweltering heat and pouring rain that comes down irregularly in the midsummer season, and from sleet and heavy snow in the cold winter season. … Our respected and beloved general has no time to take off his field uniform.”
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In point of fact, Kim does wear short sleeves in the summer, and in the winter he wears a heavy parka and thick gloves. His clothes are tailor-made of the finest fabrics. It is difficult to believe that he is ever drenched in sweat or covered with snow.

Kim has an eye for attractive women, and his position as dictator gives him ample opportunity to meet them; however, as he has grown older, he seems to spend less time hosting parties and chasing women. He has had many affairs, but it is hard to tell how many serious relationships and how many wives. Marriage as a legal institution hardly applies in his case because he is above the law. Some believe that Kim’s first wife or mistress was Hong Il-chon, a graduate of Kim Il-sung University and later a member of the Supreme People’s Assembly, whom he may have married in 1966 and divorced or separated from in 1971. In the late 1960s, Kim began an affair with Song Hye-rim (mentioned above in connection with Kim’s niece, Yi Nam-ok). Song was five years older than Kim and already married, but she divorced her husband, began living with Kim in 1969, and had a child, Kim Jong-nam. Neither Song, whose political origins were suspect because she had been born in South Korea, nor her son was ever presented to Kim Il-sung, and it is not known if the father even knew about their existence. Kim eventually lost interest in Song, her mental health began to deteriorate, and she spent the rest of her life in Moscow receiving psychological treatment. She died in 2002.

In 1973 or 1974, apparently to please his father, Kim took as his official wife Kim Yong-suk, a typist in his father’s office. They had at least one daughter, Kim Sol-song, who reportedly works in Kim’s private office, and perhaps one son. Kim Yong-suk may be living in an official residence in Pyongyang, but other reports say she has died. Just a few years later, in the mid-1970s, Kim fell in love with Ko Yong-hi, a beautiful Osaka-born dancer working in North Korea. He moved in with her in the late 1970s and fathered three children: two sons, Kim Jong-chol and Kim Jong-un, and a daughter, Kim Ye-jong. Ko Yong-hi died of cancer in 2004 after undergoing treatment in Paris. Kim Jong-il’s name has been associated with other mistresses, and in 2006, foreign news reports identified one Kim Ok, a professional pianist who had been Kim’s secretary since the 1980s, as his new “wife.” The North Korean people know nothing about these women, although a vague propaganda campaign glorifying Ko Yong-hi (although not by name) began around 2002, possibly to prepare the way for leadership succession by one of her two sons.

Kim’s health has been the subject of much speculation in the foreign press, although it is a taboo subject in North Korea. Over the years, he has been rumored to suffer from epilepsy, diabetes, liver trouble, brain damage (from a car accident or fall from a horse), and heart trouble. In May 2007 Kim was absent from public view for about a month, and during the same time a team of eight heart specialists from the Berlin Heart Institute traveled to Pyongyang. The head of the team said they performed surgery on three workers, a nurse, and a scientist, but not on Kim Jong-il.
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A spokesperson for the institute likewise denied that the team saw Kim Jong-il, saying the rumor was “all nonsense”; yet, no one can explain why such a high-powered team of specialists would travel to Pyongyang to treat ordinary people.
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The best guess is that either the doctors lied (people who become involved with North Korea often finding themselves doing things they would prefer not to do), or the team backed up North Korean surgeons who performed a heart procedure on Kim, most likely the expansion of a blood vessel (angioplasty) leading to the heart rather than the more serious bypass surgery.

In August 2008 Kim reportedly suffered a stroke and failed to appear in public for over two months, most notably at the sixtieth anniversary of the country’s founding on September 9. A French neurosurgeon admitted to having gone to Pyongyang to consult on treatment for the stroke but said no surgery was involved. By the beginning of 2009, Kim was once again making on-the-spot inspections, but in the six months following the incident, he met only one foreign delegation—comprising Chinese officials who, being ideological friends of the North Koreans, could be counted on not to disclose anything about his health. During this period, photographs show Kim to have aged considerably and shed much weight, and he has trouble moving his left arm.

The Kim Family Cult

It is not unusual for people to project a positive image of themselves. Sometimes they conduct this impression management by themselves; sometimes they have public relations organizations perform this service. Political leaders find it necessary to create a good impression if they want to be reelected, and leaders like Kim, whose tenure is not subject to election, find it easier to govern if people respect them. And since dictators usually remain in power longer than elected leaders, they are able to do a more thorough job of impression management. Totalitarian dictators, who control most information sources in their countries, are even in a position to make themselves into cult figures. This is the case with Kim Jong-il, whose propaganda organs have created an image that elevates him far above the people and any political contenders. Of course, the hazard of a cult image is that it is based largely on lies that must be covered up with other lies, and each of these lies is a potential threat to the leader.

Kim not only has to protect himself from the lies that have been told about him, but he must also protect the lies that surround his late father. During Kim Il-sung’s fifty-year reign, an elaborate image was fabricated for him, first by the Russians who put him in charge. Once the North Korean government was well established, by the 1950s, the propaganda and agitation people began to rewrite North Korean history to put Kim Il-sung at its center, downgrading and later expunging the roles played by other people and even by other countries. As an interesting example, on Kim Jong-il’s 2002 trip to eastern Russia, the head of port operations at Vladivostok reminded him that it was from this port that Soviet soldiers had embarked in 1945 to accept the Japanese surrender in North Korea. Kim ignored the opportunity to thank the Russians and merely said, “Please tell me about the future of this port.” Later, when a Russian reporter asked him if North Koreans celebrate the Soviet liberation of Korea, Kim responded, “I plan to talk about current issues with the president. I do not intend to talk about history.”
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The elder Kim was—and still is—portrayed as a superior being. Most North Koreans believe that Kim Il-sung was a truly great leader who brought them independence and put them on the path to prosperity, although they have serious doubts about his son. On the third anniversary of Kim Il-sung’s death, it was announced that from that point forward calendar years would be counted beginning with the year of the elder Kim’s birth (1912), making 1997 “
Juche
86” and thereby lending a dynastic tone to the Kim regime.

Millions of North Koreans have visited the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where Kim Il-sung’s body lies in state, and foreign delegations are frequently taken there to “pay their respects.” The palace, formerly the Kumsusan Assembly Hall, was where he had his offices, and after his father’s death, Kim Jong-il ordered the KPA to remodel the hall into his father’s final resting place at a cost of at least $100 million, even while the government was appealing to the international community for food aid.
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When Russian president Putin traveled to Pyongyang in July 2000, the North Korean press reported that he paid “sublime homage” to Kim at the palace.
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On the occasion of U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s visit to the palace in October 2000, the press reported that she also “paid homage” to Kim, adding that she was “harboring admiration for the respected and beloved leader who is lauded by people for his immortal accomplishments for the era and history.”
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Another way to pay respects to the departed great leader is to visit the Mansudae Grand Monument, a twenty-meter-high bronze statue of Kim Il-sung on Mansu Hill (Mansudae) erected for Kim’s sixtieth birthday in 1972. The bronze Kim stands proudly, head held high, one arm outstretched as if to offer a welcome or a blessing, overcoat flapping in the breeze. Foreign visitors are usually brought here directly from the airport, and to honor Kim properly, they must offer a bouquet of flowers. Some Koreans returning from abroad purchase their flowers in Beijing and carry them back on the airplane.

Every year around the time of Kim Il-sung’s April 15 birthday (the “sun’s day”) and the July 8 anniversary of his death, the media carry stories about the appearance of natural wonders. Some of the stories are downright curious, such as the KCNA report that on the seventh anniversary of Kim’s death in 2001, “three beautiful birds” landed on the windowsill of an apartment in the port city of Nampo and perched there for one hour and forty minutes, blinking at the wall portrait of Kim Il-sung. The one hundred apartment house residents who witnessed the event unanimously agreed that the birds were paying “respectful homage to the president, not forgetting July.”
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On the senior Kim’s birthday, North Koreans are expected to bring flowers to one of the thousands of Kim monuments scattered throughout the country. On that day people also receive from the government a small “gift,” such as a little meat or liquor, to remind them of the great leader’s and his son’s benevolence. Children receive a small bag of candy, and theaters show special movies. If possible, normal electricity service is restored for the benefit of those who have television sets. In the evening, people attend folk dances. On the following day, party meetings are convened at which people swear to uphold the Ten Principles of Kim Il-sung thought.