Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (2 page)

Reading about the personality cult of the North Korean leader had not fully prepared me for what I found when I arrived in Pyongyang in April
1979,
as a member of the first large contingent of Americans to visit since the Korean War. Since I was encountering an economy and society almost unimaginably different from any I had known, the stay was full of surprises. But next to the astonishing all-pervasiveness of leader-worship the rest seemed mere detail.

Everyone sprinkled his speech with straight-faced references to “our Respected and Beloved Leader,” “our Great Leader,” “our Fatherly Leader.” Everyone wore a portrait of the round-faced, unsmiling Kim Il-sung on a gold-framed, enameled badge pinned to the left breast. Larger portraits and statues of the Leader were everywhere.

It gradually became apparent that this was a religion. To North Koreans, Kim Il-sung was more than just a leader. He showered his people with fatherly love. If I could believe what my ears were hearing he might even be immortal, able to provide his followers eternal life. The realization grew during my first few days in Pyongyang. It crystallized as I sat in the Mansudae Art Theater watching a performance of
Song of Paradise,
a musical drama lavishly staged on the scale of a grand opera or Broadway musical.

The curtain rises to reveal a nighttime view of downtown Pyongyang. Holiday crowds enjoy themselves as neon signs and fireworks light up the city’s impressive skyline of tall buildings and monuments. Son-hui, a journalist played by a buxom soprano, is about to depart on a trip around the country to gather material for
a series of articles on the glories of the workers’ paradise. She is unaware that the Great Leader, meanwhile, has commissioned a search for the orphaned daughter of a Korean War hero. The crowd-chorus, overcome with joy at the wonders of socialist construction, unleashes a mighty, soaring, swelling hymn worthy of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir: “With the Leader who unfolded this paradise, we shall live for generations to come.”

Paradise? To a first-time visitor, North Korea seemed to be providing its people the basic necessities of life. But there was little sign of opulence and I never saw anyone cutting loose and having a really good time. Even on the May Day holiday people seemed to be working—as actors, posing as merrymakers and sub-way passengers for the benefit of foreign visitors. A group of little boys in the uniform of the children’s corps sat cross-legged in a circle on the ground in a park, playing a game. A couple of hours later they still sat in the same position, playing the same game, confounding the collective wisdom of the outside world regarding attention spans of unsupervised eight-year-olds.

In the deeply dug, sparkling-clean Pyongyang Metro, with its glittering chandeliers and its imposing murals honoring Kim Il-sung, I saw “passengers” exit the station via the escalator and then turn around and go back in for another ride—their repetitive all-day assignment, I supposed
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. Trains composed of only two cars each stopped for several minutes at each station, and the tracks showed enough rust to suggest that impressing visitors was a more important consideration than transporting people in a city where buses could glide quickly through nearly empty streets.

Still, who could be more qualified to unfold a paradise than Kim Il-sung? A partial listing of his talents would have aroused the envy of a Leonardo da Vinci or Thomas Jefferson. Kim was the country’s leading novelist, philosopher, historian, educator, designer, literary critic, architect, industrial management specialist, general, table tennis trainer (the Americans were in town for the world championship)—and agriculture experimenter. “Our Great Leader,” said my government-assigned interpreter, Han Yong, “has a small plot at his residence where he tests planting for a year or two.”

One officially propagated “legend” about Kim Il-sung’s days as an anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter in the 1930s and ’40s described him as a mighty general astride a white horse, “carrying an enormous sword, cutting a big tree down as if slicing soft bean curd.” Another had him walking on water: “Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung turned pine cones into bullets and grains of sand into rice, and crossed a large river riding on fallen leaves.” To hear the North Koreans talk, Kim must have made himself heir to the ancient Taoist magicians’ secrets for transcending time and space.

Now he was paying more than lip service to pursuing the goal of living with his people “for generations to come.” Kim by 1979 was girding up for a contest with the mortality tables. He celebrated, lavishly, his sixty-seventh birthday on April 15 of that year. During his more than three decades at the
helm of the country, he had focused his considerable abilities and enormous power on ensuring that he would outlive his rivals one way or another.

The president smoked heavily and a large if nonmalignant tumor protruded from his neck, both negative signs for one who sought immortality. With little fanfare, however (I learned of this many years later), his government had established a longevity research institute in 1972 on the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. Researchers there were hard at work to make sure Kim would see his seventieth birthday and his eightieth.

Son-hui joins factory girls who are making merry in a Pyongyang park, on their day off. They sing of “our happy life, which is always in a festive mood.” The heroine’s adoptive mother, who heads a work team on a farm, comes to the park and chants her gratitude to the Fatherly Leader, who has brought up the orphaned Son-hui to be a reporter. The two women sing a duet: “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader.”

Solicitude toward “war orphans was an important aspect of the image of himself that Kim projected. A quarter of North Korea’s 1950 population of 10 million died in the Korean War.
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Afterward, Pyongyang says, the state raised youngsters who had lost their parents, teaching them to think of Kim Il-sung as their father, themselves as his children. Some of those, like the fictitious Son-hui, had grown up to become members of the elite corps of officials and intellectuals.

On a night train trip
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to the city of Kaesong, I shared a bottle of whiskey with a man who introduced himself as Bai Song-chul, an official of the Society for Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries
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. While other North Koreans I had met sounded totally rehearsed, Bai spoke spontaneously and directly through thin lips that often turned downward in a frown or into a sardonic smile. There was intelligence in his eyes, which seemed to try to peer over his dark-rimmed spectacles. Thick hair (black, of course) surmounted a high forehead and an oval yet strong-jawed face. At thirty-nine years old, he obviously was an up-and-coming member of the elite. Not very tall, he carried himself with something akin to a swagger. His forthrightness bespoke a confidence born of position and access to high levels. As the conversation progressed, I felt emboldened to tell him frankly that I could not help finding the Kim Il-sung cult ludicrous. Bai frowned and replied that such a reaction from an American, new to his country, did not surprise him—“but we feel bad when you talk that way ”

Bai said all North Koreans had personal experiences that inspired respect and affection for the Great Leader. Bai himself had been orphaned in the Korean War, he told me. “Kim Il-sung came to our village and asked how many orphans there were. He called us together and said: ‘You can stay here or you can go to orphans’ school. It’s up to you.’ We went to the orphans’ school. At New Year’s, Kim Il-sung came and told us: You have no parents, so think of me as your father.’” Bai told his story with force and feeling. It seemed to come from the heart, and I saw no reason to doubt that the filial love he expressed for Kim Il-sung was genuine.

The reporter Son-hui, visiting an orchard, recalls the Great Leader’s 1958 teaching that fruit trees should be planted on the hillsides. “Wherever you. go in my homeland, the flowers of His great love are blooming,” she sings. “We shall live forever in this land of bliss, with His love and care in our hearts.”

Dancing farm women take up the theme and sing: “Let’s spread the pollen of love. … The flowers bloom in the Leader’s sunlight.”

In North Korea, not just the arias and choruses in
Song of Paradise
but nearly all the songs we heard were about Kim Il-sung. Usually singers sang about him tenderly with that sense of exultant yet exquisitely agonizing groping upward toward the ineffable that marks the high-church Christian musical tradition. Television documentaries showed the president out among the people, giving “on-the-spot guidance” to farmers. Sweet, sad instrumental music began playing when his face became visible. A television news program showed a foreign visitor picking up a book from a display. The camera moved in for a close-up of the volume, which was one of many works by the Respected and Beloved Leader. Sweet, sad music played as the image lingered on the screen.

People, at least the ones foreign visitors could talk with, spoke about the Leader the same way they sang about him: solemnly but lovingly. Their eyes showed their sincerity, and there was no outward sign of cynicism.

The deputy manager of the fruit farm recalls the days when he fought alongside a soon-to-die Korean War hero—the man for whose orphaned daughter Kim Il-sung has now commissioned a search. As the scene shifts to a realistic-looking wartime battle, the farm leader and other war veterans sing: “For three years and three months I have been under arms. My song echoes home from the trenches when I smash U.S. invaders seeking to rob us of our happiness.”

Contrary to the understanding of most of the rest of the world, North Koreans generally believed that the South Koreans had invaded the North to start the Korean War and that North Korea then had gone on to win the war. They believed it as an article of faith because Kim Il-sung told them so. The regime worked successfully to keep at white-hot intensity the people’s hatred of American and South Korean invaders and Japanese imperialists. Those outsiders, described as forever hatching new schemes to undermine and attack the North, got the blame for any problems at home. Thus, there was no need for Kim’s subjects even to consider the heretical thought that the Great Leader and his system might have something to do with their problems.

Son-hui and the women of a fishing village welcome the fishermen back from a voyage. “Let us enhance our honor as proud fishermen of our Leader,” the fishermen sing. “Let us gladden our Leader, our Fatherly Leader. O graceful sea, under His loving care, sway your elegant waves forever! Korea’s happy, thriving sea, sing in praise of our Leader’s kindness.”

Hearing of the fishermen’s return from the deep sea, the Great Leader has instructed that they and their families be sent to vacation at scenic Mount Kum-gang. The announcement moves the fishermen to tears and the audience to
applause. “Oh, this is kindly love, a love much deeper than the deepest sea,” sings the fishermen’s chorus. “Our hearts throbbed with emotion profound when He hugged us still damp from the sea. By our Fatherly Leader’s love … even the wa-ters are touched, and quiver. We dedicate our youth to repaying His kindness. The boundless love of our Leader will last forever, like the sea.”

People were constantly telling me stories about Kim Il-sung’s benevolence. For example, he supposedly sent a team of doctors with medicine “worth the cost of a small factory” aboard his personal airplane when he heard that a resident of the mountains was critically ill.
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Even writing off 99 percent to propaganda, it was clear that Kim possessed considerable political genius. In his ability to make North Koreans feel close to him and personally indebted to him, Kim operated much like a successful old-time American big-city boss. Whatever anybody got in the way of goodies came in Kim’s name, as a “gift.” Instead of Christmas, North Koreans celebrated Kim’s birthday—and he sent a present to each child, just like Santa Claus. The Great Leader seemed to get out of the capital a lot, offer his “on-the-spot guidance” and let the people see him
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. Bai Song-chul told me that Kim was accustomed to spending very little time in Pyongyang. Thus, many people around the country had been in his presence.

Bai said that every North Korean voluntarily wore a badge with Kim’s picture. Even if someone happened not to be wearing a badge on a particular day, that did not mean he or she failed to respect the Great Leader. The person simply had forgotten—perhaps had failed to switch the badge while changing clothes.

Son-hui departs for scenic Mount Kumgang, where working people on vacation admire the magnificent view of Nine-Dragon Falls. They chant praises of their country, its beautiful mountains and limpid streams. They extol their Leader. “We shall live with Him forevermore,” they sing. “The garden of bliss blooms in His sunlight.” Son-hui joins vacationers in singing: “Our happiness blooms in our Leader’s care. How glorious to live in our socialist paradise. Let us sing of our socialist nation, of our earthly paradise free from oppression.”

Vacationing teachers laud the school system: “As soon as you are born you are received by a nursery, then led through a flowery gate to eleven-year education.”

Indeed, officials told me, mothers were entitled to seventy-seven days of maternity leave before turning their babies over to public day nurseries, or in some cases full-time nurseries. “Home education has an important meaning in a society-where private ownership of the means of production is predominant,” Kim Il-sung had said in a 1968 speech. “But it has no important meaning in a different, socialist society.”
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The state, taking over much of the parental role, had been training youngsters to worship Kim. “Our Great Leader is the Supreme Leader of revolution, its heart and the only center,” said one official policy statement. “We have to inculcate in our future generations the absolute authority of the Leader, the indisputable thoughts and instructions of
the Leader, so that they may accept them as faith and the law of the land.”
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