Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty

by Bradley K. Martin

  I wrote up my findings in a policy paper and with the help of some friends put it into the hands of the top Washington officials making policy on Korean and RFA matters, including the secretary of state and the national security advisor. They sent thank-you notes. One high-level U.S. official concerned with Korean issues told me my paper contained new and important information. He was struck by my use of defector testimony, he said, since U.S. officials had long assumed defectors were of little value. It was time to reassess that notion in view of-what I had learned, he said.

  More than eight years later I met that official again. He was still deeply involved with issues involving North Korea. If, as promised, he had reassessed his view of defector testimony, however, the reassessment had not changed his mind. He obviously did not recall our earlier conversation and told me he had little use for what defectors said. Radio Free Asia by that time had been broadcasting in the Korean language for years—but only over short wave frequencies. It was not until 2003 that the organization finally managed to acquire facilities in a neighboring country to broadcast to North Koreans over AM frequencies.

  It was former President Jimmy Carter who managed to cut through the mutual suspicions and fears, finding a temporary compromise resolution of the standoff over nuclear weapons. As both sides contemplated going to war momentarily, Carter accepted an invitation to visit Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang. There he won from Kim an agreement to freeze North Korea’s nuclear program in exchange for resumption of dialogue with Washington.

  At a June 18, 1994, press conference in Seoul, which I attended, Carter said that Kim had conveyed through him two requests to Washington. First, he wanted the United States to help Pyongyang replace its current nuclear power technology-with a more modern technology—one that would not produce large quantities of plutonium as a byproduct. Second, he wanted official assurances that neither the United States nor any other outside forces would attack North Korea.

  Although Carter had informed the Clinton Administration about his talks with Kim, he was seen in the White House as something of a freelancer. There were some ruffled feathers. However, Washington signaled that it was prepared to talk. The threat of immediate war receded.28

  One measure of how serious a possibility war had become in the minds of the leaders: Hwang Jang-yop reported that “because Kim Il-sung’s statue must not be damaged even in times of war, the recently-made statues are mostly knockdown style, so that the statues can be easily and safely moved underground in times of emergency. All Kim Il-sung statues are guarded round the clock by armed soldiers.”29

  TWENTY-NINE

  Without You There Is No Country

  In a ruined country neither the land nor the people can remain at peace. Under the roofs of houses in a ruined country even the traitors who live in luxury as a re-ward for betraying their country will not be able to sleep in peace. Even though they are alive, the people are worse than gutter dogs, and even if the mountains and rivers remain the same, they will not retain their beauty.

  —KIM IL-SUNG

  Writing those words in the memoirs that he began publishing in 1992,1 Kim Il-sung meant to contrast the horrors of Japanese colonial rule with the wonders achieved during his rule of nearly half a century. The main ruination brought by colonialism, in his view, was to national dignity. But by the time of his death in 1994 it would have been clear to almost any reader of his words that the harsh description applied, in material even if not in nationalistic terms, to the North Korea that he had created.

  Indeed Kim Il-sung himself seems to have begun in the final three years of his life to contemplate some new approaches to dealing with his country’s immense problems.

  ***

  Yoshimi Tanaka was one of nine Japanese Red Army terrorists who hijacked a Japan Airlines jumbo jet in March 1970 and flew to North Korea. Tanaka ran afoul of the law again in 1996. He was arrested on the Cambodia-Vietnam border and whisked to Thailand to face charges that he had been part of a plot there to cash counterfeit $100 bills, hard-to-detect “Super-K” forgeries produced by North Korea’s ruling party as part of its drive to obtain foreign currency. He spent almost three and a half years in a Thai jail, and then, in 1999, he was about to be extradited to Japan, where he could expect further prison time. At that point he spoke with an interviewer for the Japanese weekly Gendai, saying: “I now recollect my life in Pyongyang with a warm heart.” Tanaka related that he had lived amid greenery in a quiet section of Pyongyang, along the Taedong River. About twenty North Koreans had been assigned by the state to work at the residences of the Japanese Red Army members and some Ecuadorian guerrillas who lived next door. The helpers “were there to manage the waterworks and boilers, transport coal and propane gas, secure foods and daily necessities and repair our Mercedes Benz cars.”

  The interviewer took that as his cue to observe: “You seem to have enjoyed a higher living standard than those of ordinary citizens.” Tanaka acknowledged that some people had disparaged the ex-terrorists’ circumstances as “life within a palace.” But he himself had no complaint on that score. “I think the president”—Kim Il-sung—“simply wanted to treat us as foreigners.” At that point Tanaka acknowledged that, living in an affluent residential area that was something of a cocoon, isolated from most North Koreans, he “did not know what the ordinary life in the republic was. So I cannot tell whether I lived a luxurious life or not.” He added, “As to the issue of hunger, as well, I really do not know about it.”

  Tanaka’s comments ring a bell. There is evidence that Kim Il-sung’s vastly more splendid isolation in real palaces—combined with the efforts of underlings to report only good news and expose him to Potemkin villages that oozed fake prosperity—kept the Great Leader from realizing the full extent of his people’s plight.

  There is other evidence, however, that even on some occasions when Kim did know what was really happening he was having such a good time as Great Leader that he didn’t want to inconvenience himself in order to deal with such mundane matters. Former ideology chief Hwang Jang-yop told of “an incident that occurred during the time when electricity supply was so poor that there were frequent blackouts even in Pyongyang.” Hwang gave no date for the incident, but power outages in Pyongyang were reported from the 1980s. “During a meeting of the party Central Committee chaired by Kim Il-sung, he called the minister of electric power to account for the inconvenience he had been experiencing recently while watching movies due to voltage drops.

  The ever-conscientious minister stood up to reply: ‘Currently there is not enough electric power to meet the requirements of the factories. Because of the heavy load in transmission to the factories, the voltage of electricity supplied to Pyongyang tends to drop.’ Kim Il-sung responded “with, ‘Then why can’t you adjust the power supply transmitted to factories and allocate more to Pyongyang?’ When the Minister explained, ‘That would stop operations in a lot of factories,’ Kim Il-sung cut him off and ordered, ‘I don’t care if all the factories in the country stop production. Just send enough electricity to Pyongyang.’”2

  Probably it is unnecessary to choose between the image of an unknowing Kim and Hwang’s harsh portrait of a knowing but uncaring Kim. It should not be surprising that he behaved on occasion like the despot that he was. Absolute power does, after all, corrupt absolutely. But it appears that his knowledge was in fact imperfect for quite a long time up until the early 1990s.

  Statesmen approaching death—even the most vicious tyrants among them—look to their reputations, their places in history. Kim Il-sung was no exception. “Just as in the past, I still feel nowadays the greatest pride and joy in enjoying the love of the people,” he wrote in his memoirs. “I consider this the true meaning of life. Only those who understand this true meaning can be the genuine sons and faithful servants of the people.3

  Kim wrote—as if-writing it could make it true—that he would be leaving behind a “revolution progressing triumphantly and our country prospering, with all the people sing
ing its praises.4 The people indeed had no choice but to sing the revolution’s praises, and Kim’s. But conditions had reached the point where no one could ignore the stark evidence that the country was descending deeper and deeper into poverty and hunger.

  Economic conditions only grew worse in the early 1990s. Food distribution became increasingly irregular, with much smaller quantities of inferior grains such as millet substituted for the usual rice rations. People survived by using their cash savings to buy grain in the private sector—especially in a black market dealing in grain that had been held back illegally from collective-farm harvests. (This form of corruption had taken hold by the mid-1980s.) Beef, the Korean meat of choice, had become a once-a-year delicacy for most North Koreans. More than 50 percent of manufacturing had been idled due to shortages, and the workers who showed up had nothing to occupy them but cleaning the facilities. Even new factories built in the late 1980s were not operating. A largely military work force built an immense factory complex at Sunchon to make the synthetic fabric vinalon; it had its opening ceremony in 1991, but could not go into production. Supplying the clothing needs of the populace had been one of the prides of the Kim Il-sung regime, but now people’s clothing was growing shabby.5

  Word certainly was getting back to substantial numbers of North Koreans from relatives and others who had traveled or lived abroad that life in South Korea and the West—and even in China—-was richer. Getting caught saying so brought a one-month sentence in a reeducation camp.6 The economy could hardly improve if the regime’s nuclear gamble scared off anyone considering significant investment from outside. No doubt it was significant that the government had been at pains to patch even tiny holes in the tight lid it kept on information from outside. Reports told of a crackdown on contact even with Chinese.7

  What was the need for all the frantic unity campaigns and rallies pledging loyalty to Kim Jong-il if there was not a growing recognition of a split in interests between the ruling pair and other groups of North Koreans? In particular, we now know, some people in the elite—civilian and military alike— wished that they were permitted to reform the system enough to preserve their status. That is not to say there were fully developed factions in high places in North Korea. Factions could not flourish for want of strong leaders who had not yet been purged. Nevertheless, some influential members of the elite possessed survival skills and were more amenable to change than some of their colleagues and they did engage in power struggles.

  The record of“change” under the Kims could only dismay such people: In the 1970s, the North had begun to lag behind South Korea, but had rejected major change. In the 1980s, the economy had remained stagnant and the ideology ofegalitarianism and altruism had started to ring hollow to North Koreans. Reform had been the watchword in other communist countries, but Pyongyang had redoubled its commitment to its hard-line ideology. Now it was the 1990s and European communism was dead, while in North Korea the stench offailure had become almost overpowering.

  Experience had shown how difficult it was for North Korea to change while the Kims remained in power. Kim Il-sung, his longevity, his identification with the system and the lies on which he built his personality cult seemed to stand in the way of even Chinese-style reforms. The regime feared that reform of the system would imply criticism of Kim Il-sung. Opening the country to foreign ideas and information would admit views critical of Kim Il-sung. But clearly the Great Leader could not be seen to have told or condoned lies, behaved brutally toward his subjects or made mistakes. Therefore, the regime had viewed opening and fundamental reform as out of the question. Limited to halfway measures, the ruling class had been helpless to take the serious steps many believed were needed to prolong their rule—as, for example, Chinese economic reformers under Deng Xiaoping had been able to extend Communist Party rule. With Kim Il-sung and son occupying the status of permanent royalty, their more expendable subordinates in the bureaucracy felt the pressure from above and below to perform—or, barring that, to find someone else to blame for the system’s failures.

  If there ever had been a possible way out of this historical bind for Kim Il-sung since the time it became apparent his system was losing the race, that may have been somehow to recreate himself. Could he remake his image through positive tactics such as replacing lies with truth or through destructive tactics such as blaming subordinates and evil advisers for the excesses of his system? If he could do that, then maybe, just maybe, he could permit his technocrats to go for something resembling a Chinese-style economic reform— while leaving the political system and leadership relatively unchanged for the time being. Like Mao Zedong, then, he could retain his place in history as a towering patriotic figure and the father of the republic. Evidence suggests that something like that actually occurred to Kim and that he made a beginning in that direction.

  Kim’s memoirs were one indication that an image makeover was under way The first two volumes, covering the period from his birth in 1912 until early 1933, nearly twenty-one years, went on sale in Pyongyang during his birthday celebration in 1992. Those turned out to be a partially revisionist work containing a number of attempts to distance Kim from earlier fabrications and embellishments and lies by commission and omission, as well as from some of the most widely condemned aspects of his system.8

  An example of distancing himself from old lies: Kim had been a legitimate hero of the anti-Japanese struggle of the 1930s—but only one of a number of heroes.9 To justify a personality cult, however, he had to outshine the others vastly. For his greater glory Pyongyang over the decades had downgraded or deleted the roles of others involved in the struggle—not only fellow Koreans but Chinese and the agents of the Soviet Union as well. In the memoirs, however, Kim acknowledged that he had worked as a cadre of a Chinese Communist Party organization and fought in a “joint struggle” with Chinese forces. He recalled by name many previously ignored comrades, including Korean and Chinese guerrilla leaders. And he revealed that he had accepted appointment by representatives of Moscow’s Communist International as a youth organizer in Manchuria’s Eastern Jilin Province in 1930.

  Besides those modest efforts to respond to outside challenges regarding his historical record, Kim also tried to distort that record further. In his new incarnation as revealed in the memoirs he miraculously appeared, for example, as a lifelong, staunch opponent of discrimination against people on account of their class or ideological background. It would be hard to banish the suspicion that Kim’s self-portrayal as the soul of tolerance was designed to shift the blame for his police state. Some of his claims to having uttered pro-tolerance views can be interpreted as almost a plea for Koreans of subsequent generations to honor him and his anti-Japanese guerrillas, and treat their descen-dents well, even if the communist system should be tossed on the rubbish heap of history. Thus, he complained that, after liberation, some communists had re- jected people with other ideologies, including the non-communist nationalist independence fighters. Kim said he admonished such “narrow-minded” people: “Even if we are in power, we communists must not fail to appreciate our patriotic seniors. The trend of thought differs from age to age; then why do you ostracize them, guard against them and avoid them? Are they guilty for fighting for Korea’s independence at the risk of their lives when others were living with their families in warm houses, eating hot rice?”10

  Beyond the pure public relations effort that his memoirs represented, there is evidence that Kim also concluded he could risk—and his legacy might gain from—some significant substantive changes of policy. After all, the regime’s grip was so tight that hardly anyone thought it would collapse while Kim Il-sung was alive. Most foreign and South Korean scholars ruled out a Ceaucescu scenario for Kim. Partly due to brain-washing but also because he was seen as a genuine nationalist hero, his subjects’ personal loyalty to their Respected and Beloved Great Leader remained “too great for them to butcher him like a pig,” one American professor remarked. Indeed, since they loved Kim Il-sung so mu
ch, it seemed he might be able to tell them he had decided the world was not yet ready for North Korea’s exalted version of socialism. (Recall that it took anti-communist zealot and longtime China-basher Richard Nixon to establish U.S. relations with Mainland China.) Wouldn’t North Koreans gratefully accept whatever Kim Il-sung proposed as an imperfect interim system?

  In the end, while he did not propose a new system, he did seek a shift in emphasis within the old system. According to defector Kang Myong-do, the event triggering Kim’s belated efforts to change policy occurred in April of 1992—coincidentally the month I was in the country for the Tumen River conference. “Every morning when Kim Il-sung awoke, he liked to look at the Pyongyang skyline to see the chimneys of the power plants,” Kang told reporters for Seoul’s JoongAng Ilbo. “In April 1992, Kim Il-sung was really angry because smoke was coming from only two of the smokestacks. The reason, he found after investigation, was that the Anju mines were not supplying coal. So Kim Il-sung became really curious. The reports claimed 120 percent overproduction compared with the planned goal. Kim secretly sent to the mines someone who found that the miners had nothing to eat. ‘How can we work?’ they asked. They were supposed to get 1,100 grams of rice, 200 grams of meat, 100 grams of corn oil per day. But for a week they had eaten only salt soup. It shows how little Kim Il-sung knew. It was the first time he realized the people were not getting their rations. He was surprised.”11

  Kim pursued the matter and received an accurate report on horribly grim conditions in mountainous North Hamgyong province, which adjoins the Chinese and Russian borders in the northeastern part of the country.

  North Hamgyong, throughout North Korea’s economic decline, suffered more than most other provinces. (I suspect a census of refugees who were desperate enough to flee to China would show that a majority of them hailed from North Hamgyong.) Kang Myong-do told one interviewer that his father-in-law, Kang Song-san, then the governor of that province, had leveled with the president. Shocked into action, the semi-retired Kim re-involved himself in domestic issues, author Don Oberdorfer relates. Kang Song-san, who had held the prime ministerial portfolio earlier, was brought back in the same capacity that year. Meetings on economic policy the following year led to a dramatic admission at the end of 1993 that the country was in trouble economically. The regime would move to new policies de-emphasizing heavy industry in favor of activities that would more directly improve the people’s livelihood.12