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

by Bradley K. Martin

  The nuclear negotiations that Carter had arranged went forward despite Kim Il-sung’s death. In agreements reached in October 1994 and June 1995, Pyongyang promised it would neither restart its suspect reactor nor reprocess the spent fuel. A consortium of countries with interests in the region agreed to provide light-water reactors to replace the existing graphite-moderated technology.

  Nevertheless, in the regime’s propaganda an ominous theme became increasingly evident: a negative fate awaited North Koreans and they must embrace it. “We must be prepared to die for the leader.” “Life is not valuable without valuable deaths.” “Your life is meaningless except in the context of the party.” “We must be prepared to share the fate of the leader, good or bad.” A diplomat in Seoul saw parallels to the atmosphere in Nazi Germany during its final days. The Allies tried to starve the country into submission but Germans instead showed resilience and—-when all hope was gone— readiness for catastrophe, the diplomat noted.

  THIRTY

  We Will Become Bullets and Bombs

  In that part of the world there were neither shops nor markets nor merchants, nor any money in circulation. Here the law of value had no effect. Shoes and clothing for the population were obtained by capturing the enemy’s supplies.

  —KIM IL-SUNG, DESCRIBING CONDITIONS IN THE MANCHURIAN GUERRILLA ZONES IN THE 1930s1

  Consider a typical war scenario widely circulated in the waning years of the twentieth century and the early years of the twenty-first: Like Japan in 1941, the Pyongyang regime decides its survival is at stake and war is its last realistic—albeit desperate—chance. Responding to a real or manufactured provocation, and counting on problems elsewhere in the world to distract Washington and slow any American response, North Korea unleashes artillery barrages that destroy Seoul. Mean-while fanatical troops sneak into South Korea, disguised as locals. Some infiltrate via larger-scale versions of a September 19, 1996, coastal landing by a band of armed northern commandos aboard a submarine. Others ride tanks and armored personnel carriers through secret tunnels beneath the Demilitarized Zone. Soon swollen by troops victorious in conventional battles along the DMZ, the Northern force sweeps south and bowls over its rich—and therefore soft—foe to reunite the peninsula in a matter of days.

  Other scenarios could be imagined as well, of course. But regardless of the specifics, the message that defecting North Korean soldiers repeatedly took south was this: If-war should come, South Koreans and Americans would have their work cut out for them fighting an enemy more formidable than they might realize. Lulled by the passage of time since the last Korean war ended in 1953, civilians in South Korea and the United States at times were tempted to brush off such warnings. Drawing confidence from their state-of-the-art armaments, many expected that their combined forces would turn back an offensive by the merely medium-tech North Koreans, with more or less ease.

  Military and intelligence professionals based in South Korea, on the other hand, were more inclined to cast a respectful eye at their prospective foe. Whatever the technological gap, North Korea had a significant advantage in the location of the border—just to the north of the suburbs of Seoul, which put the Southern capital easily-within range of the North’s massive artillery. Besides, the Pyongyang leadership had spent decades of effort and vast sums honeycombing the North’s hills to turn the country into an underground fortress, which it boasted would prove impregnable to attack or counterattack.

  Despite such factors, the Gulf, Kosovo and Iraq wars inspired confidence that the American arsenal of “smart bombs” and other conventional weapons could tip the balance in Korea—-without the need to use nuclear weapons. But an intangible remained for knowledgable South Koreans and Americans, even those possessed of unbounded faith in the latest gizmos. That intangible was morale.

  For a long while, Northerners’ fighting spirit withstood—indeed, thrived upon—food shortages. Shortages became a regular fact of life in the 1970s and by the start of the 1990s had seriously afflicted much of the North’s population. The regime fanned popular hatred of outside enemies, blaming all internal trouble—notably citizens’ reduced and intermittent grain rations—on South Korea, the United States and Japan. Ordinary people bought into that theory massively, defectors and refugees reported. Most North Koreans did not find the cause of the food shortages in the top leadership or in the country’s political-economic-social system, both of which they had been taught to revere. Rather, they blamed their troubles on the military threat from their enemies. It was on account of that threat, they were told—and they believed—that they had to sacrifice in order to keep up a credible military capability.

  For many years grain rations had been reduced across the board with the explanation that the difference was going into the nation’s war reserves as a patriotic contribution. But when would the sacrifice and consequent misery stop? Defectors in the 1990s began saying that an overwhelming percentage of the people believed only war could end the North-South impasse, which they saw as the cause of hard times. “The North Korean people have been suffering a long time,” Bae In-soo, a truck driver who defected to South Korea in 1996, told me. “They’ve been investing everything” in preparations for war. And so, for them, “war is the only answer.”

  Ominously, those who felt that way included the younger soldiers who would have to do most ofthe fighting and dying if war should break out. Youngsters serving their hitches in the army-were—the overwhelming majority ofthem—not only ready but eager to fight. Combined with the war reserves ofgrain and fuel made possible by popular sacrifice and foreign aid, such focused hatred among the troops could be a formidable advantage in wartime—especially against a generation ofSouth Korean and American soldiers raised on abundance and more focused on consumption, leisure-time activities and post-military careers than on fighting.

  How “would the South Koreans and Americans perform once the bullets started flying and their buddies started dying? Ahn Young-kil, a former North Korean army captain, saw enough following his defection to the South to warn that “in case of a long, drawn-out war—anything over two months— the South Korean army doesn’t have the potential to continue and the Americans would lose interest.” The South Koreans’ “mentality is not as strong as North Koreans’,” said Ahn. “South Koreans don’t have a strong sense of-war and the sacrifice needed when war erupts.” North Koreans, on the other hand, because of what they had been taught, “believe that they have to root out the main problem.” That main problem was that “the food shortage and other difficulties in livelihood result from U.S.-led economic sanctions, and from the fact the United States and South Korea have been preparing for war and forcing North Korea to prepare for war.” Get rid of that problem, they believed, and “they won’t have this economic difficulty. So they are determined to have this war.”

  Choi Myung-nam, who served in the 124th Special Forces (the unit whose members had infiltrated to try to attack the Blue House in Seoul), offered a similar view: “The mentality and morale are very different. In South Korea, discipline is very loose. Soldiers only have to stay in the army for three years. During that time they can take leave to go meet their girlfriends.” North Korean soldiers, in contrast, Choi said, were in uniform typically for ten-year hitches filled with tough, intensive training. In their Spartan lives, the Northern soldiers had “no chance to meet girlfriends,” Choi said. They constantly shouted Kim Il-sung’s slogan: “We don’t want war but we are not afraid of war.” In fact, Choi said, “all my comrades wanted “war to break out—partly because they wanted to flaunt their potential, but also partly because the economic situation was so harsh they just wanted some change.” While he was in the North, Choi “thought we would win. I knew that in a single day we would go all the way to the Naktong River” in the southern part of South Korea. His experiences in South Korea did not change his mind materially on that point. “Coming to South Korea, I realized that in a one-on-one war with South Korea the North would always win, assuming th
e Americans and others didn’t get involved,” he said.

  True, North Koreans looking at the South might “miss the fact that pluralism in a democratic society has potential strength,” as Kim Kyung-woong, an official in the South’s Ministry of National Unification, noted. “In troubled times, society becomes cohesive.” But in terms of the prospects for the outbreak of a second, probably bloodier Korean war, the more significant fact was that fighting spirit reached such a height in the North that the leader—Kim Il-sung or his son, Kim Jong-il, after him—had only to say the word and the masses would march off enthusiastically into battle.

  A big question after the mid-1990s was whether all that Northern mental readiness for war had peaked and started to decline. Some in Washington saw reasons to think so. A congressman, Tony Hall, said at a September 12, 1996, hearing that during a trip to North Korea in August that year he had seen soldiers looking as undernourished as civilians, thin and hollow-cheeked. “That may be the best evidence that most of North Korea’s military isn’t getting much more to eat than the rest of the people,” Hall said.

  Rear Admiral William Wright, director of Asian affairs in the Pentagon’s Bureau of International Security Affairs, said at the same hearing that hunger could lead to a breakdown in discipline among the North’s soldiers. “They will begin to see indiscipline, perhaps, and infractions … as they continue to struggle to look after their own families and their own survival,” Wright said. Such slippage did indeed occur. Several defectors told me that hunger and associated health problems were starting to become more of a hindrance than a spur to military performance.

  Historians a generation hence may well point to August 1995 as the high point on a chart of North Korean fighting spirit. August 15, 1945, was the day-when the Korean peninsula-was liberated from Japanese colonial rule— only to be divided into the American-ruled and Soviet-ruled zones that subsequently became South Korea and North Korea. In the early 1990s, the Pyongyang regime made much of the necessity of ending Korean division in time for the approaching fiftieth anniversary of the liberation, August 15, 1995. North Koreans believed that “if division still prevailed on the fiftieth anniversary, it would continue forever,” said Choi Kwang-hyeok, a twenty-five-year-old former KPA sergeant who escaped across the DMZ to the South. He said Northerners were also determined to achieve reunification as a gift to Great Leader Kim Il-sung during his lifetime, as Kim Jong-il repeatedly promised.

  By 1992, the widespread belief was that all able-bodied young men should join the army so that they could take part in the war for reunification expected before that fiftieth anniversary said Choi, who was a university student but made the patriotic decision in the war fever of that year to enlist as a soldier. Already the food situation was severe enough, even for the military that the usual strenuous training had to be deemphasized, Choi said. Ideological readiness sessions that emphasized hatred of the enemy filled much of the soldiers’ time. But then Kim Il-sung died, in July 1994, having ruled for almost a half century. Like many others, Choi Kwang-hyeok was “devastated” by the Great Leader’s death. He “started doubting that reunification would occur, doubting the whole regime” and its future. When August 15, 1995, came and “went, reunification still only a dream, “people started thinking, ‘Maybe war will happen—but maybe it won’t,’ ” said Choi.

  Like an apocalyptic sect confronted with the world’s failure to end on the scheduled day, the regime did its figures again and pushed the date forward, telling the people, “We’ll have reunification by the end of the 1990s.” People still bought in, but not as thoroughly as before. “They still think war may break out, but motivation and morale are not as high,” Choi said. “Even the [military] trainers complain, ‘With that kind of morale, how are we supposed to win the war?’”

  Ahn Young-kil cited “two factors needed to keep morale up: Feed the soldiers well, and give them hope.” In fact, that formula was Kim Jong-il’s highest priority. In a speech near the end of 1996,2 Kim gave himself and the armed forces’ political commissars high marks on the second part. “I am satisfied that our soldiers have the ideological thinking to become guns and bombs to protect the revolutionary leadership in a fight to the death,” he said. The problem he saw was too much contrast between the levels of military and civilian morale. The speech marked the 50th anniversary of Kim Il-sung University, and that day Kim had watched a performance by the university’s arts performance team. He was disappointed that the performers “were lacking in spirit.” By comparison, “the performance I saw a few days ago by the mobile propaganda unit of the People’s Army was full of stamina and vitality.”

  For the morale problems in civilian life and for the economy’s failure to provide enough food, especially to soldiers, Kim blamed slothful, bureaucratic party officials. “I assisted the Great Leader’s work from 1960, but there are no party workers who can assist me correctly,” he complained. “I am working alone.” Although the military was his top priority, he also took notice of civilian suffering. “When I was visiting Chollima Steel Mill, I saw many people on the road looking for food, and in other areas the road, trains and train stations were full of such people, I was told. In many regions these heartbreaking events are happening, but all the party worker does is stay at home and study for meetings and lectures. How can we overcome our problems with such behavior?”

  Kim blamed subordinates for the fact that “the people are forced to wander aimlessly looking for rice” during what he called a “march of hardship.” Party officials, “who do not use their brains to solve problems, who just sit at their desks complaining and studying words,” were at fault, he asserted. “I cannot solve all the problems … as I have to control important sectors such as the military and the party as well. If I concentrated only on the economy there would be irrecoverable damage to the revolution. The Great Leader told me when he was alive never to be involved in economic projects, just concentrate on the military and the party and leave economics to party functionaries. If I do delve into economics, then I cannot run the party and the military effectively.”

  Exhorting party officials to take “measures to guarantee rice for the military,” Kim told them that socialism had collapsed in many countries because “the party changed and could no longer control the military.” (He might have been recalling how elements of the Romanian military had executed the Ceaucescus.) Enemies, “seeing our temporary troubles, are crying out that our socialism has collapsed and are seeking the chance to invade. If the U.S. imperialists know that we do not have rice for the military, then they will immediately invade us.”

  The solution, Kim said, was to politically educate the people, especially farmers, to spare more food for the soldiers. But the officials were going about that in the wrong way Instead of leaving their desks to make direct appeals to the people, they were relying on print and broadcast media—-which people could hardly receive due to energy shortages. “Currently the farmers and miners are hiding food at every opportunity,” for the black market, Kim said. Party workers must preach to them: “ ‘Who is going to supply food to your sons and grandsons in the army? If we cannot give them rice, then when the yankees invade us we cannot defeat them and your sons and daughters will become imperialist slaves once more.’ It is this logic that must be used to persuade those who hide and smuggle food, to regain their consciences.”

  In fact, food became so scarce that many soldiers took to stealing it from civilians, even deserting from the army. “Physically they’re very frail now, very weak,” the former army captain Ahn Young-kil told me. “So their mental state has weakened, too.” Mean-while, the soldiers were losing the hope that they might enjoy good lives following their army hitches, Ahn said. “They are very depressed because they go home on leave and see their parents improperly fed. They see no hope.” In case of-war, Ahn predicted, “the majority wouldn’t run away. But their fighting power and spirit would not be the same as in the past when they were well fed.”

  Choi Myung-n
am, the special forces veteran, said theft and embezzlement had increased drastically in the military, starting in the 1990s, as soldiers began to leave socialist ideals behind and adopt the attitude that “without money you can’t survive in society.” More and more, they focused on the means—almost all illicit—of accumulating the money and material goods they believed they would need if they hoped to marry and live reasonably well after finishing their army hitches, Choi said. Their talk turned to dreams of the goods—radios, fashionable clothes—that they hoped to buy once they returned to the civilian world. That did not mean they had begun to fear war, he cautioned. They continued to think “it would be an honor to die as a martyr in war.”

  Ex-sergeant Choi Kwang-hyeok said the changed situation had taken such a toll that “man for man I don’t think North Korea is a match for South Korea.” That would not mean the North could not call upon its other advantages if it made the fateful decision for war. Its military remained far larger than the South’s, for example, so the man-for-man comparison need not apply. And its ability to inflict enormous punishment on the South with its artillery remained. The North’s “main weapon is artillery,” said an intelligence professional in the South. “It doesn’t take that much practice and physical conditioning to shoot that stuff.”

  In terms of supplies, if outsiders had let North Korea suffer alone the aftermath of disastrous flooding in 1995, said Ahn, the year 1996 “would have been the most critical point.” Regarding their ability to make war, the North’s leaders would have had to conclude that it was a case of use it or lose it. In the absence of aid, by 1997 “North Korea would not have been able to retain the support system for waging war,” Ahn judged. But China, the United States, Japan, South Korea and other countries did come to the North’s aid with food shipments. Ahn criticized that aid as appeasement and complained it was “only making North Korea more confident.”