Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

by Martin, Bradley K.

  Up to the time of our visit, Daewoo Group had made the closest thing to an actual investment deal. Chairman Kim Woo-choong (-whose brother, Kim Duk-choong, was on our trip) had gone to Pyongyang at Deputy Premier Kim Dal-hyon’s invitation in January 1992. While there, he had signed a contract for a joint venture in which the Northern regime would provide the land and the labor for a big industrial complex at the west coast port of Nampo—-which Pyongyang would designate as another free trade zone. Daewoo would provide capital and technology and help operate nine factories, making textiles, garments, shoes, luggage, stuffed toys and household utensils. The Daewoo chairman was on record as expressing confidence that the factories could export $10 billion worth of goods a year.

  In view of such developments, it was tempting during much of 1992 to foresee that investment in North Korea might proceed according to what might be called the China pattern. When China a decade before had set out to reform its economy and attract outside investment, Japanese and Western business people and financiers had watched with interest—but put down relatively little money particularly at the beginning. The largest part of the outside investment came from co-ethnics: Chinese in Hong Kong and abroad. Seoul lawyer Shin argued that North Korea, like China, was more fortunate in its built-in overseas net-work than the likes of Vietnam, Cambodia and Cuba—-which “don’t have brother countries.” Indeed, it seemed a good bet that, for a while at least, the bulk of any significant investment in North Korea would come from ethnic Koreans abroad—not only in Japan and the United States but, especially, in South Korea.24

  Although some South Koreans still argued that the South should not lift a finger to prevent a collapse of the North’s system, Southerners who were on the tour generally took a contrary view. To many of the visitors the odds at long last seemed to have shifted decisively in favor of economic reform in the North; although the process would take years, they wanted to encourage reform because it would bode well for North-South detente and, down the road, a relatively smooth reunification. “If you get wealthier you’ll get more flexible,” observed economic researcher Kim Ick-soo.

  Such optimistic thinking, however, soon fell victim to more politics. Shortly after Daewoo’s Chairman Kim signed letters of intent with Pyongyang— and before a contract could win the required approval by the South Korean authorities—the Seoul government suspended all economic cooperation talks and banned all economic exchanges. To get the ban lifted, the government said, Pyongyang must go through with its agreement to permit inspections by North and South Korea of each other’s suspected nuclear-weapons facilities.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Sea of Fire

  One is pleased to see the bugs die in a fire even though one’s house is burned down.

  —KIM IL-SUNG1

  Was Kim Il-sung an East Asian Saddam Hussein? There certainly were some similarities. With a ruthlessness that would have won Saddam’s approval, Kim consolidated his power after being installed by Soviet troops in 1945, purging members of rival factions. Afterward he displayed what we might now describe as a Saddamesque love of sycophancy and aversion to hearing straight factual reports that might conflict with his views. And when Kim started the Korean War in 1950 by invading the South, he guessed “wrong—as Saddam was to do in 1990 and again in 2003—about American resolve and found his own military capabilities quickly overrun. If the Chinese “volunteers” had not come to the rescue and taken over the war effort from Kim and his Korean People’s Army the struggle would have ended in regime change.

  That was not to say however, that he would make the same mistake twice. Kim had presided over an enormous amount of construction. Although his people suffered, and were about to suffer even worse, up until the 1990s the citizens of truly destitute Third World countries would have welcomed a North Korean standard of development. Miscalculating and waging a war—-without Soviet or Chinese help—-would have brought the certain destruction of all the North’s economic achievements and of Kim’s and his son’s dreams of dynastic rule. Kim’s caution in not attacking since that first mistake in 1950—he didn’t move even when Seoul was engulfed several times in anti-government riots—suggested, as did his age, that he would not do so now that South Korea’s superiority had become so evident.

  Seoul-based analyst Kim Chang-soon said as the first North Korean nuclear crisis raged that in the wake of Desert Storm, the U.S.-led assault that cancelled Iraq’s conquest of Kuwait, “I don’t think any North Korean leaders believe they can win a war with their present weapons systems. They are developing nuclear weapons not to win a war but to deter and to avoid losing a war.” Japanese Korea-watcher Katsumi Sato offered a similar assessment: “They don’t have enough oil to make war.” Still, it was believed that Kim could not help but dream that the South’s people would prepare the way for him or his son one day. “They are thinking of keeping a military balance, and also they hope that the South may some day experience a crisis of domestic chaos so that a Vietnam-type war could be waged,” said Kim Chang-soon.

  Kim Il-sung had pretty much transferred day-to-day power to his son except in three fields, experts believed. Those three were foreign diplomacy North-South relations and the military. Kim senior remained chairman of the military commission while Kim Jong-il was number two. The military had always been the older man’s base, and there was little evidence of disloyalty. But many in the South and elsewhere theorized that once Kim Il-sung died, a movement would arise within the military to kick out Kim Jong-il and install a military government similar to the one under which South Korea had modernized. That was only speculation, of course. The point is that Kim Il-sung himself—not his son—-was believed to be in charge of the military and of any decision to attack or not. The assumption was reassuring to many analysts. The elder Kim had been around for long enough and seen enough world leaders that they could at least make a stab at figuring him out. The younger Kim had been unwilling to have much to do with foreigners and was a largely unknown quantity. Only a few odd traits such as his movies fetish were known.

  The consensus of those abroad who had thought about it—and it was faint praise, indeed—-was that they would much rather try to deal with Daddy while he remained alive than take their chances with Junior.

  Not only in title, however, but also in fact—as defector testimony since then makes clear—Kim Jong-il’s power was increasing, so much so that his father became almost a figurehead. People’s Army First Lieutenant Lim Yong-son, who defected in 1993, recalled that in 1988 Kim Il-sung had instructed the army, “As you have been following me in participating in a revolution, from now on follow the orders of the Central Committee’s secretary for organization, Kim Jong-il.” At that point, “inside the military, people thought Kim Jong-il didn’t have the ability to rule,” Lim said. Some officers pointed out, “He didn’t even enlist in the army. He went to university and spent only one month or so in military camp. He doesn’t know how to lead the army. If we make war with Kim Jong-il as our leader, we will all die.”

  The Kims brushed aside soldiers’ private reservations. In December 1991, Kim Jong-il took over as supreme commander of the People’s Army. In April 1992, he was named to the top military rank of marshal alongside only one other soldier of that exalted status, O Jin-u. (His father was promoted that year from marshal to a newly created super rank translated as generalissimo or grand marshal.) That day, said Lim, Kim Jong-il “was supposed to wear a marshal’s uniform, but he declined. O Jin-u told him, ‘You should wear it!’ But Kim Jong-il said, ‘It’s not suitable for me to wear a clean marshal’s uniform. That uniform should be torn with shrapnel.’” Lim related this bit of army lore (which I also heard from another former military man) explicitly to illustrate the new marshal’s bellicosity. But the anecdote also suggests that Kim Jong-il felt—or wanted to be perceived as feeling—something akin to modesty.2

  On April 25, 1993, the sixtieth anniversary of the People’s Army, Kim Jong-il became chairman of the party’s military comm
ission. Reviewing a military parade that day, he had to give a short speech before an assembled multitude. Although he uttered just a single sentence invoking glory upon the armed forces, delivering a message in person to such a vast audience was an unaccustomed task. One former high official who watched the event on a videotape in Seoul told me, “I saw Kim Il-sung turned toward Kim Jong-il with an expression of concern—could he make it through his phrase?”

  The younger Kim did make it through, smoothly enough. But rumors spread that he had a speech problem, a former army sergeant, Lee Chong-guk, told me. Even if that was the case, however, public speaking may have been the least of Kim Jong-il’s problems. “Kim Il-sung was idolized,” Lee said, “but for Kim Jong-il, there are only bad rumors, like the kippeunjo. Although there were rumors that Kim Il-sung had a five-year-old son, he was idolized anyhow because of his role in the anti-Japanese struggle and the Korean War. As for Kim Jong-il, it’s rumored that he sleeps in the afternoon, parties at night and has affairs with actresses. Nothing good is said about Kim Jong-il.”

  “At first, Kim Il-sung made a conscious effort to hand over power to his son,” said former party secretary Hwang Jang-yop. “But as Kim Jong-il began to take control of every area of the government, there was nothing Kim Il-sung could do to control his son anymore. By the 1990s, Kim Il-sung was merely an advisor to his son. But they were father and son, with father having an interest in passing his power down to his son and son having an interest in using the authority of his father. So any conflict between the two did not surface.” Kim Jong-il’s promotion to commander in chief of the People’s Army in 1991 signaled “the end of the transition of power from father to son,” according to Hwang. “The entire party and nation of North Korea must swear unconditional obedience to the commands of the People’s Army commander in chief. Eventually things came to the point where Kim Il-sung actually had to suck up to his son. On Kim Jong-il’s fiftieth birthday in 1992, Kim Il-sung wrote a ridiculous ode of praise about a king honoring his royal heir, proving once again the cold-hearted political theory that power defines everything.” The poem:

  Heaven and earth shake

  With the resounding cheers

  Of all the people

  United in praising him.3

  Kim Jong-il proceeded to use his chairmanship of the military commission to change the North Korean system from a party dictatorship to a military dictatorship. “In the army” said Hwang Jang-yop, “there is the Defense Headquarters, which is under the direct supervision of Kim Jong-il. Agents of this Defense Headquarters are stationed at every level of the military right down to the platoon, and are in charge of monitoring the movements of the soldiers. The Defense Headquarters has enormous power, authorized to arrest even civilians if necessary. In this regard, even the Ministry of State Security and Defense is under the surveillance of the Defense Headquarters. In recent years, as the North Korean economy faced bankruptcy and food rations got cut off, the regime could no longer maintain its tight control over the people through the old methods alone. So the North Korean rulers are committing armed forces to the effort to maintain the dictatorship of the Great Leader.” Calling the results a “blatant military dictatorship,” Hwang said the army began “keeping law and order in all the agricultural cooperatives, factories and markets in North Korea.”4

  Starting in May 1992, Pyongyang permitted some international inspections at Yongbyon. In view of its economic straits there was reason to hope it might soon decide the price was right to accept a complete inspection program or otherwise relinquish its nuclear card. South Korean companies hoping for a breakthrough on the nuclear issue continued to prepare to act quickly once the ban on dealing-with the North should be lifted. Executives of the Daewoo, Samsung and Lucky Goldstar conglomerates had meetings with North Korean Deputy Premier Kim Dal-hyon in Beijing as late as December of 1992.5

  On March 8, 1993, though, Kim Jong-il announced that he was placing the nation on a “semi-war” footing during the U.S.–South Korean Team Spirit exercise. At rallies, North Koreans pledged loyalty to Kim Jong-il. “If the enemies trample upon an inch of land or a blade of grass of our country we will become bullets and bombs to annihilate them,” one participant said.6

  In the capital, where soldiers from elite families tended to be posted, Sgt. Lee Chong-guk joined 5,000 comrades rallying in a gymnasium. “All heads were shaved in the army; I thought war was coming soon,” Lee said after his defection to South Korea the following year. A small man, looking younger than his twenty-five years, Lee when I met him was no longer shaven-headed; he had let his hair grow long according to Southern fashion. He described the atmosphere of hysteria among those rallying in the gym and elsewhere in North Korea: a widespread feeling that North Koreans had nothing more to lose and might as well embrace their fate, fight to the end and be done with it. “I felt isolation,” Lee recalled. “I believed North Korea was on its own, without allies. In the case of East Germany, the high-ranking people hadn’t done well after reunification. I thought change was not good for us in the elite class. We were singing and waving red flags.” By that time, Kim Jong-il’s name had replaced Kim Il-sung’s in military slogans and songs; soldiers were studying the “revolutionary history” of the younger Kim. Lee recalled the verses of the song the soldiers had sung that day, “Without You There Is No Country”:

  Pushing away the fierce cyclone,

  Marshal Kim Jong-il gave us faith.

  (Chorus) Without You there is no us,

  Without You there is no country.

  Takes care of our future and our hopes,

  Our nation’s fate: Marshal Kim Jong-il.

  Even though the world is overturned a hundred times,

  Still the people believe in Marshal Kim Jong-il.

  “We were crying together at our fate,” Lee told me. “Kim Jong-Il attended, without saying anything—but then Kim Jong-il never says anything in public. As we sang about the world being ‘overturned a hundred times,’ we were thinking that our world would be overturned and it would be bad for us. We were crying for ourselves.” Soldiers in Pyongyang normally were not supplied live ammunition, presumably for fear they-would mount a coup, Lee said, but on that occasion bullets were issued even to troops in the capital.

  They were told to don helmets. The government announced a curfew, and residents who did not already have bomb shelters began digging them.

  Lee had been assigned as a noncommissioned officer to the Bureau of Nuclear and Chemical Defense since 1990. “Since the enemy is the United States and the United States possesses nukes, North Koreans feel they should also possess them,” Lee told me. “I believe they’d use them if war broke out.”

  Lee believed that war was imminent and that it would be cataclysmic for all Koreans, North and South. In that regard, he had more to say about chemical than nuclear weapons. One of the privileged young men permitted formal study beyond high school, he had majored in biochemistry at Pyong-song University before enlisting. His military job was translating foreign journals. Following his arrival in Seoul in 1994, he warned publicly that his military superiors had claimed that North Korea had the capability to wipe out the South Korean population with chemical weapons as well as wreaking havoc on Japan.

  I asked Lee how his superiors justified their talk of killing 40 million South Koreans. “They’re saying every South Korean is full of anti-communist ideology,” he explained. “When we reunite the country-we can’t make them communists, so we should get rid of them.” One officer in Lee’s unit, Lieutenant Colonel Hwang Chang-pyong, had made clear that genocide was on his mind when, in August 1993, he taught in an ideology course that “not only the U.S. army, or the South Korean army—everybody should die.”

  Lee was less than a true believer by the time he heard those chilling words. “I had started having doubts about the regime when I was in the university,” he said. “I wondered if capitalism was better.” He failed to buy Hwang’s argument, believing that fighting American and S
outh Korean soldiers was one thing; massacring civilians, quite another. He kept silent, though—“It’s hard to voice your opinion,” he said—and had no idea how many of his comrades agreed with the officer.

  Lt. Col. Hwang, who from Lee’s description sounded to me like Pyongyang’s version of Dr. Strangelove, was “one of the North Koreans most intensely loyal to Kim Il-sung,” Lee said. “He graduated from three universities and is a very important person in the development of nuclear and chemical weapons in North Korea. The development wouldn’t take place without him. Kim Jong-il during his birthday celebration personally thanked Hwang and gave him a commendation.”

  Lee explained the structure of chemical weapons development. “The Thirty-second Division is involved in making chemical weapons in Sakju, North Pyongan province, and Kanggye in Chagang province,” he said. “The products are sent for storage in Yongsong Maram in Pyongyang, also to Ji-hari Sansa in Anbyon County and to Anbyon County in Kangwon Province. Then they are distributed to each army section. There is a training and experiment site in Sokan-ri, Pyongwon County, South Pyongan Province. The nuclear and chemical Eighteenth Division is there.”

  Next to the Eighteenth Division, Lee added, “there is a cemetery for victims of experiments gone awry, and of accidents. Soldiers are trained for chemical war, but even though they wear gas masks some of them die accidentally. Often they die inside the tanks, even with their masks on. They basically think that inside the tanks they are safe.”

  Quoting North Korea’s warning that it could turn Seoul into a “sea of fire,” Lee said he believed it was possible and believed that the North had delivery systems sufficient to ensure that chemical weapons could figure in a major way in such an assault. While he was in North Korea, he said, he had expected “a nuclear war, spreading chemical weapons, in which the South Koreans would all be killed.” But death would be the lot of the Northerners as well. “It wasn’t a matter of winning or losing. If war broke out, everyone would die, North and South. Everybody else in the North also believes it.”