Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

by Martin, Bradley K.

  In 1982, Kang went to work in party headquarters’ Room 39, which was in charge of foreign exchange schemes. He became a party member the following year. In 1984, Kang—described by other defectors who knew him in Pyongyang as the playboy type—married a mansion “volunteer,” a waitress at the Majolli palace in Hamhung, against his parents’ opposition. They soon split up. He got in some sort of scrape around that time. “I was on the losing side in a power struggle in the KPA between the military and political officers, siding with the military officers,” was the way he described it to South Korean reporters. He was sent off to the No. 18 Revolutionary Work Class to have his thinking corrected. Most elite officials eventually got sent to such a camp, Kang said. The drill was mainly study of the leaders’ history. The usual term was two to three years but a friendly member of the bodyguard service recommended Kang’s release after one and a half years. Although he had a fairly soft life in that revolutionary work camp for the elite, next door was a camp for ordinary detainees and they did hard labor. Kang said he began to dislike Kim Jong-il during his stay. After his release he moved to a rural area as vice director of the local party management department.

  Kang married a daughter of the former and future prime minister Kang Song-san in 1992. She also had been married once, during her father’s first term as premier, to another graduate of the Foreign Languages University someone Kang knew. When her father was demoted and sent off to be governor of North Hamgyong Province, her husband started treating her cruelly, Kang Myong-do said, and her father urged her to divorce that man. Kang and his bride-to-be met on a blind date, a son. Kang Myong-do’s uncle had been a schoolmate of Governor Kang’s at Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, so there was no opposition from either family—although someone did mention as a drawback his having gone to revolutionary work class.

  His father-in-law arranged for Kang to become a cadre in the Presidential Palace Accounting Department, “but outside the North I was known as the vice-president of Neng-Ra 888 Trading Company,” he said. He seemed well cast in the role, pleasant and charming while displaying an authoritative manner.

  “This Neng-Ra 888 Trading Company is a nominal company, an alias for the department,” Kang said. “It took care of everything for Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, including their clothing and food. It would import televisions, refrigerators, suit fabrics, spices, soy sauce, beer and whiskey all from Japan. Kim Jong-il likes Kikkoman and other Japanese brands. The department also owned a factory and a farm exclusively producing snacks and cookies and pastries for Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, as well as meat— mutton, beef, pork—for their bodyguards. Inside the department was a special division called ‘Presents.’ Anyone who attended a political event involving Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il always received a present—usually a bag, some sort of luggage.”

  Using startup capital of $600,000 provided by the state, Kang imported Japanese cars through the Chongjin and Rajin ports and then exported them across the Tumen River to China, which lacked a seaport convenient to the more remote parts of its northeastern region, the former Manchuria. He specialized in high-end Toyota Crowns, three to four years old, which he could buy by the hundreds for around $3,000 each and then sell in China for $8,000 to $12,000. He gave port officials cigarettes to ensure smooth passage. When Beijing asked Pyongyang to halt the imports in 1993 due to oversupply Kang simply switched from legal exports to smuggling. He made $600,000 profit dealing in cars, he said, and used those proceeds to import petroleum, earning him an achievement award from Kim Il-sung.

  Taking home about $2,000 a month, Kang was rich by North Korean standards. (A Kim Il-sung University professor’s salary was only the equivalent of around $10 a month.) He was living well, in a six-room home on Pyongyang’s Changkwang Avenue, and frequented the Koryo Hotel. When groups of officials got together for drinking and carousing, he said, they always made it a point to include one trading company official like him because they needed his dollars. In the company of his impecunious pals, Kang—despite his newlywed status—-was dating actresses, buying them clothing and lingerie.

  “Personally, this was the greatest time of my life,” he said. “Many times people came to me to ask favors. Their family members were sick or something. I gave them $100 or $200—it was nothing to me. In North Korea there’s always a big shortage of beer, liquor and cigarettes. The presents I gave were a big deal to the recipients. Even a high official in North Korea couldn’t have the kind of lifestyle I led—if they did, government officials would always report on them. A couple of times I gave money to my father-in-law, who went to the foreign goods store to buy a rice cooker, a massage machine and snacks for his grandson.” Kang Song-san, who by then was prime minister again, was able to boast: “I’ve been to a foreign goods store for the first time, thanks to my son-in-law.”

  In May 1994, Kang went to Beijing, and got into trouble. “There were two reasons for my business trip to China,” he said. “One was to come to an agreement about a fertilizer plant joint venture with China. With China we usually traded bags, pollack, automobiles and steel. But as trade increased, the Chinese proposed a joint venture with North Korea. They proposed building a composite fertilizer plant in Hoeryong. The second reason I went was to collect overdue payments from the Chinese automobile merchants.”

  Kang had not received permission from the North Korean authorities to go as far beyond the border area as Beijing, and once he got there he stayed for such a long time that they feared he was preparing to defect. “I didn’t intend to defect at all,” he said. “It was accidental. While I was trading with the Japanese, one guy said he was going to Beijing. I wanted to meet that Japanese. He was old, so it was hard for him to go to the North Korean border to meet me. I stayed in Beijing twenty-five days, waiting for the guy. I was heading back to the border, when I called a friend and he said to be careful because there were forty people out to catch me.” The search party had been sent from Pyongyang to make sure the prime minister’s son-in-law would not defect. “I knew if I got sent back to Pyongyang I wouldn’t be able to leave again and would have a hard life,” he said. “If I could have gone back voluntarily it would have been no problem. But if I had gone back after they sent men to capture me, it would have been like they caught me and forced me to return.” So he boarded a plane and escaped.1

  Kim Myong-chol, former bodyguard for Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, ended his hitch in the bodyguard service in 1985 and went to work for a laser arms factory at Kim Il-sung’s home village, Mangyongdae. There his job was to trade, to accumulate foreign currency. He exported seafood to Japan in exchange for yen. The proceeds were to go to the party for use by the top leaders. I told him I was surprised to find that around 15 percent of the defectors I had met had done similar work. “We got more access to outside information,” he said, explaining why traders might be more likely than others to defect.

  “Because of my job I had lots of foreign currency and foreign products,” Kim Myong-chol said. “Lots of higher-ups pressed me to bribe them. In 1992, I had a success and accumulated a lot of foreign exchange. There were around 1,900 people working for me, exporting clams, fish, sea cucumbers and red fish roe. To boost morale in view of the food situation, I inported three tons of sugar from China and distributed it to those workers. That caused a problem. The party said that whatever I got from business must be given to the party. I couldn’t put up with it.

  “I decided that with my ability I could make a good living in China. So I went to China. I went over the Tumen first, walked across the ice in winter. I wanted to get into business in China. I wasn’t in great danger. I just didn’t like where the system was heading. I believed that I’d done something good for my workers but the party was criticizing me. I ran away before I could be punished. I would have had to go to a reeducation camp for a year. Then my career would be ruined. I wouldn’t be able to get a good job. I left for China January 29, 1993, but I found I couldn’t be a legal resident and couldn’t go into business there. N
ow I work for Donghwa Bank in South Korea.”

  ***

  Like Kang Myong-do, Choe Shin-il seemed “well cast as a wheeler-dealer in imports and exports. A handsome, slender man of middle age with a nice haircut, Choe the day I met him wore a gray suit and a necktie, gold watch, gold-rimmed spectacles and a gold ring with a big stone. He was tanned, and he spoke with a deep voice that could have had something to do with the Dunhill cigarettes he smoked. Cementing the impression that he was someone who got around, he told me he had seen me at the Koryo Hotel in 1992. He had worked for the trading arm of a major government agency. Choe Shin-il is not his real name; he was the only defector I interviewed who asked to be identified by a pseudonym. This, he said, was to protect his family from reprisals.

  “When I look back I have to say that from the moment I graduated from the university I had a very good lifestyle compared with others,” Choe told me. “I changed cars four times in eleven years. My last car was a Toyota with a 2,400-cubic-centimeter engine, which I got as a commission from some Japanese.” That commission was a kickback. If Choe’s employers asked him to sell a certain product for 1,000 yen, he might tell the Japanese buyers the price was 1,200. After haggling, he would let them have it for 1,000 plus his “commission.” Such a procedure is illegal in North Korea, “but it happens anyhow,” Choe said. “And if I got a commission of, say, $50,000, I couldn’t keep it all for myself. I had to bribe high officials to keep their mouths shut. The biggest commission I ever got was $120,000. That was in 1986 when I was trading mushrooms.

  “All departments have their own trading companies. Every government and party organization has at least one. From the 1970s the central party had its secret Room 39. In the 1980s Kim Il-sung said to gain foreign exchange, so this expanded from the central party through the ministries. In 1985 and ’86 there were only about fifty of us doing that sort of work. But entering the 1990s, Kim Il-sung said that everybody must go and gain foreign currency, so there are lots more traders nowadays.

  “Starting in 1986 I traveled a lot on business to China, Japan, Hong Kong, Russia. I stayed home only three months out of the year. When I went on a business trip inside North Korea I always stayed at a hotel. Women knew we were from trading companies and had dollars, so we could have any woman we wanted: hotel employees, movie actresses, dancers. North Korea is basically run on dollars. The higher up you are in the hierarchy, the more important dollars are. My salary was 137 won a month. The company president got 148 won a month. We just laughed at it. To me, the North Korean currency is just valueless paper. It would take 10,000 won to equal $100. Since production has virtually stopped, there’s almost nothing you can buy in the store with North Korean currency. Only dollars—you can use those at the dollar store.

  “There is a feeling of animosity and jealousy toward the returnees from Japan. People call them call them han-joppari—half-Japanese dwarves. You say you saw a wedding in the Koryo Hotel. Not even high officials could have a wedding there. Either they couldn’t afford it or there would be too much gossip. Only people whose relatives in Chongryon would come and arrange the wedding and pay for it could do that. Most of the Korean-Japanese are very stingy. If the line to Japan is cut they have no recourse, so they’re very frugal. They’re called unpatriotic, perceived as having run away to Japan during the colonial period. But now the attitude has turned from jealousy to envy: ‘How come my grandfather wasn’t in Japan?’

  “Ordinary people don’t even have soap to wash their clothes, coal for the public baths. So people aren’t clean anymore. The people who are well off are concerned, on the one hand, because they have relatives in the rural areas. But to a greater extent they’re proud of themselves for having this lifestyle, very condescending to the rest of the population.

  “The first factor that led to my defection was discrepancies between what I was taught and what I later learned in China and the Soviet Union. When I was little I was taught Kim Jong-il was born on Mount Paektu, but Russians told me ‘No, he was born here.’ Also life in North Korea is very stressful with its emphasis on group teamwork. I couldn’t adjust after trips abroad where I had felt such freedom.

  “Before I defected to South Korea I had many business trips to rural areas. I was astonished to see Kim Chaek Steel Works. It was totally shut down. I thought, ‘If this factory isn’t working, what’s the situation in the rest of North Korea?’ After the fall of the Soviet Union, North Korea totally disintegrated. Just before I left I estimated about 70 percent of the economy was dead.

  “I started having positive, optimistic thoughts about capitalism and freedom. Starting in 1990, I listened to KBS-AM radio. I could listen on my car radio to the social-educational broadcasts.

  “I can’t say there’s no one who truly believes in the regime, but belief is mostly based on self-interest. There are people who still believe in the regime because they-want to maintain their status. From 1993, the authorities taught people, ‘Look at Eastern Europe. Former high officials are beggars in the streets. If our regime collapses, you are also doomed.’ This is strictly taught to high officials only, in high officials’ conferences.

  “During New Year’s Kim Il-sung always made his annual speech. People stopped believing in those speeches. The content never changed. People are so desperate they want war. They’re sick of their life and they want things to spill over. They want a new something to come.

  “I was in China when Kim Il-sung died. When I heard the news, I couldn’t believe it at first. I never expected Kim Il-sung to die. I thought it was the end of North Korea. It could last at most four or five years—that would be the end. I have no faith in Kim Jong-il’s rule. He doesn’t have the capability to rule. Kim Il-sung had charisma. People thought of him as a god. Nobody reveres Kim Jong-il. High officials don’t revere him, but only fear him, because his character is very bad. He’s very mean, cruel. He doesn’t show respect to elders. He acts impulsively. If he’s in a good mood he can be very generous. He is very smart. In history many people who came to power were the sons of later wives. Kim Jong-il is the son of the first wife, so he must have some intellect to maintain his power.

  “From the 1980s Kim Jong-il told people, ‘We should help the old father in economic, political and cultural life.’ Every report had to go through Kim Jong-il before reaching Kim Il-sung. In the summers Kim Jong-il didn’t work—he’d go to Mount Paektu or other resorts. In 1988, South Korea had the Seoul Olympics. Kim Jong-il wanted to top that, so he put on the youth festival. That’s an example of poor economic decision making. They invested in buildings, hotels, Kwangbok Road. The deficits were so immense, North Korea never got out of the slump.

  “I knew Kang Myong-do very well when he was there, although he was younger than I. Now that we’re here I look for a lot of emotional support from him. I defected when I was in China for the trading company. Things weren’t working well. At that time I heard the news that Kang had defected to South Korea. I thought I should do the same. The government had set a price for the commodity I was trying to sell, but I couldn’t get it. There was a gap of a couple of million dollars. So I thought if I returned to North Korea I’d be in trouble.”

  In chapter 21, we met Ko Chung-song, an employee of a district office for preservation of revolutionary historical sites. Ko’s work there was supplying coal, food and other necessities for the office’s forty-five or so workers and managers. To do so, in the circumstances of the 1990s, he had to become a small-time trader.

  “I had to find the materials that the people in my office needed,” he told me. “It was difficult to buy those directly. By the 1990s there were shortages and the government couldn’t supply what we needed. At my workplace they had extra money. On my business trips, besides dealing with the government, I did my own trading. I played around with the money and bribed people. I went to another company, bought materials from it and brought them to our unit.

  “For example, to get coal once I started by trading tires for silk-worms. Tires we
re scarce, but I had access to some, so I was able to trade them for two tons of silkworms. I took the silkworms to another company, which accepted them in exchange for 220 meters of fabric and 150 pairs of shoes. One pair of shoes was worth three months’ salary for the average North Korean. With those I was able to continue trading until I got the coal that the unit needed. I had a pass to travel around the country on business, and I traveled about two hundred days a year doing that sort of trading.

  “I decided to defect when I was put under surveillance because they suspected me of being ‘anti-socialist.’ The head of one company I had bought from was caught [for accepting a bribe] and reduced in rank. I was sure they would come after me next. Sure enough, lots of phone calls came to the office, asking that I go to State Security. But my colleagues told them I was away on a business trip. The office was very appreciative of my work. They also knew that if I got nailed everyone there would be demoted or fired along with me.

  “Anti-socialist is the term they used for a competent businessman like myself. Lots of North Koreans operated as I did. It started in the ’90s with the shortages. It’s impossible to manage an organization in North Korea without doing that. They say the society is communist, but internally there are many capitalist aspects. I believe they’ll open their markets slowly. Pyongyang fears it, so it formed an Anti-Socialist Surveillance Committee.