Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

by Martin, Bradley K.

  I felt that in my years of studying Kim I had succeeded to some extent in my goal of getting into the mind of that traditional Oriental despot, who happened to be my own age. A key perhaps the key I concluded, was the importance of maintaining face. For years I had believed that Kim Jong-il remained determined to win—to rule all of Korea. Lately though, I had come to think that his real bottom line was to avoid humiliation. I remembered and pondered anew his odd 1998 remark (see chapter 29) about South Korean President Kim Young-sam’s refusal to attend the funeral of Kim Il-sung: “If he had come, he might have taken over North Korea and become president of a united Korea. What an idiot!” Perhaps Kim Jong-il wished he could have carried out his father’s dying wishes and brought into being the long-discussed federation or confederation, in which the two separate states could coexist, trade and gradually merge into one. In any case, the remark did not sound to me like the words of a ruler determined that he would either win or destroy the world. Kim did not, after all, speak of victory. It sounded more like the words of a ruler who could not accept the loss of his own and his country’s face. As one of his negotiators put it in December 2003: to the North Koreans, capitulation meant “death itself.”68

  If that part was right, it followed that negotiated solutions to the United States’ and other countries’ problems with Kim should be possible. He could compromise if they also compromised—and if they showed respect rather than hostile contempt. Verification could be negotiated. Defector Hwang Jang-yop, who had almost nothing good to say about Kim, was skeptical when a Washington Times reporter asked whether the Dear Leader could be trusted to keep an agreement on nuclear weapons. But Hwang conceded, “People can change, and conditions can force a person to follow a certain path.”69

  THIRTY-SEVEN

  Sing of Our Leader’s Favors for Thousands of Years

  How much longer could North Korea survive as a separate country? Although no one knew, as of early 2004 it seemed that the answer might turn out to be: a while yet.

  After all, it was by no means clear that forces favoring speedy Korean reunification were strong enough to prevail any time soon. Each of the major players, on and off the peninsula, had interests in seeing division continue. For Beijing, continued existence of a separate North Korea would leave a communist party-ruled buffer state between the Yalu River and the U.S. troops in South Korea. In Washington the Pentagon liked the idea of keeping U.S. troops in Asia, but countries willing to play host to them had dwindled in number. A separate South Korea might well be more willing than a unified Korea to tolerate a contingent of GIs. Moscow could derive some satisfaction from seeing a former Soviet client state remain outside the American sphere of influence. Even in Tokyo people might sleep better knowing that the Koreans, whose resentment of Japan formed a common bond between North and South, had yet to manage the creation of a politically and militarily united country. For South Korea, continued division would postpone the dreaded time of reckoning when Seoul would have to attempt to develop the northern part of the peninsula quickly enough to keep a horde of hungry and homeless job-seekers from rushing south.

  Would a separate North Korea continue to change internally, as rapidly as in the period since 1998 or even faster? To the extent that Pyongyang could find ways to proceed with its planned experiments in special zones, it did not seem unreasonable to guess that the country would change economically. Especially once long-forbidden information from outside became widely available, it could change politically as well. Still, political changes might come more slowly than economic ones—in that regard following the Chinese pattern rather than the Russian one. Mean-while, for the reasons discussed in chapter 36, coup-dreaming outsiders might think better of the notion that a new, military leadership should be installed.

  Under such circumstances, the Kim dynasty might last long enough to crown a successor to Kim Jong-il. At dinner with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright in 2000, Kim signaled that this was his plan. When Albright asked if there were other models he had considered emulating besides Sweden (itself a constitutional monarchy), Kim replied: “Thailand maintains a strong royal system and has preserved its independence through a long, turbulent history, yet has a market economy. I am also interested in the Thai model.”1

  Pyongyang began soon after to prepare the world for the next succession. A long essay in the party newspaper Nodong Shinmun for October 2, 2002, spun out an elaborate claim that Kim Jong-il had been the right choice to succeed his father precisely because he was “a partisan’s son,” specifically the son of Kim Il-sung. (The emphasis on the blood tie was far greater than had been the case when Kim Jong-il was put forth initially. Then, the propagandists’ argument was that he just happened to be the most capable man for the job, regardless of his lineage.)

  The Nodong Shinmun article then quoted an article, printed in an unnamed Japanese newspaper (perhaps one published by Chongryon), entitled, “The Korean Revolution Carried Out From the Son’s Generation to the Grandson’s Generation.” It said, “Already a long time ago President Kim Il-sung expressed his determination to win the final victory of the Korean revolution by his son, if not by himself, or by his grandson, if not by his son. President Kim Il-sung reportedly expressed this determination at the secret camp on Mount Paektu in the spring of 1943.”2

  The appearance of the Nodong Shinmun article indicated that Kim Jong-il had decided it was time for people to start thinking about his ultimate successor. Recall that it was shortly after Kim Il-sung turned sixty that he made his choice of Kim Jong-il known to high-level intimates. Kim Jong-il himself turned sixty on February 16, 2002.

  In the normal scheme of things in a Confucian society, the eldest son would be expected to carry on the family enterprise. Younger sons are, essentially, spares. But having multiple wives traditionally has complicated matters. The ruler’s favorite wife is in a good position to push the case of her own son.

  * * *

  In April 2001, Japanese public security authorities got word from a friendly foreign intelligence service that a person believed to be Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son of Kim Jong-il, would travel to Tokyo from Singapore on May 1. The passenger manifest of a Japan Airlines flight from Singapore that day listed a man who was going by a Chinese-sounding name, Pang Xiong. With him were three traveling companions: two women and a four-year-old boy. Security officials at Tokyo’s Narita Airport approached the four at the immigration desk and took the man into an Immigration Bureau room to question him. He refused to answer at first, but after an hour or so he told them, “I’m Kim Jong-il’s son.” He explained that the group just wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. The date of birth given on his forged Dominican Republic passport, May 10, 1971, was Kim Jong-nam’s birth date. The man said he had paid $2,000 each for the passports. His had been stamped to record entries into Japan the previous year. Questioning went on for several hours. At one point the man announced that he was hungry, peeled off a 10,000-yen note (worth around eighty dollars) from a wad of large U.S. and Japanese bills and asked that someone be sent out for food.

  After spending the night at the airport, the travelers were transferred to a detention center for illegal immigrants. (The aliens who normally were confined in the center tended to be poor job-seekers from Southeast and South Asia.) Mean-while Japanese officials wrangled over whether to (a) arrest the man and question him at length while trying to confirm the identities of all the group members, as the police and the Justice Ministry preferred, or (b) simply deport the group, which was the preference of the Foreign Ministry. Radio Moscow had quoted a denial by the North Korean embassy in Moscow that Kim Jong-il’s son had traveled to Japan with a forged passport. Thus it was clear that prolonging the inquiry would irritate Pyongyang. Along with the boy, who was thought to be his son, the man stayed in the facility for male detainees and uncomplainingly ate the regular meals provided. Officials noted the detainee’s “gentlemanly manner.”

  Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, who wanted to avoid t
roubles with Pyongyang, won the argument on May 4 and the government decided to deport the group without charges. “Now that we have saved face for North Korea, there may be some positive reaction from the North,” a government official told the newspaper Yomiuri. The travelers then left the detention center for the airport and a flight to Beijing. The man who said he was Kim Jong-nam thanked immigration officials “for taking care of us.” At various times during his detention he had spoken to his captors in Japanese and in English.3

  Thanks to journalists’ cameras at the airport, the world then got a good look at this possible heir to the North Korean throne. Not as unusual in his appearance as Kim Jong-il, he nevertheless showed in his round face and paunchy body a clear enough family resemblance. (A South Korean newspaper columnist observed that the man walked like Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung.4) There were several skin discolorations—perhaps moles or birthmarks—on his face. On his chin was a light stubble of beard, seen on enough other occasions to suggest that this was intended as a fashion statement. He wore his hair in a crew cut. His spectacles were the oblong metal-framed granny glasses favored by hip young Asians. He was dressed as a tourist, in a black knit shirt under a brown, quilted vest. He wore a gold neck chain and a gold wrist-watch.

  As for the man’s retinue, the child wore jeans; new, white sneakers; and a red, white and blue jacket. (Those were the colors of the North Korean flag.) One of the women, a bit chubby and with a slight double chin, was holding the boy’s hand and seemed to be in charge of him. Her beige leather bag and high-heeled shoes matched and they looked expensive. The other woman was sleeker and wore sunglasses. Her shiny black bag was large enough to hold business papers.

  An immigration official testifying later before a Japanese parliamentary committee identified the matronly looking woman as Kim Jong-nam’s wife, Shin Jong-hui, reportedly a daughter of the president of the North Korean airline, Air Koryo. The official identified the slimmer woman as Yi Kyong-hui, one of Shin’s relatives. News reports said the bags both women carried were of the Louis Vuitton brand while the man’s watch was a diamond-studded Rolex.5

  Kim Jong-nam’s mother was Song Hye-rim, an actress who had made her screen debut in Border Village.6 Kim Jong-il met her in the 1960s, after he started hanging around at the studios, and began living with her. Besides being several years older than Kim Jong-il, Song was already married to another man and had a young daughter. After a divorce, Kim had the husband sent abroad to work. “From what I heard, my aunt was disappointed in her marriage and was quite taken by Kim Jong-il,” her nephew, Li Il-nam, wrote decades later.

  Kim Il-sung had hidden his own extramarital affairs while publicly espousing conventional family values. Kim Jong-il, according to Song’s nephew’s account, worried about the Great Leader’s reaction to the potentially scandalous situation he had gotten himself into. But the young father seems to have welcomed paternity. One story has it that he was so excited to learn that the new baby was a son that he honked his car horn to awaken everyone in the hospital.7 Li told of several instances that suggested Kim Jong-il was a doting father. Once when the child was two or three and dining with his father, he asked, “Papa, is it good?” “Of course,” Kim Jong-il replied. “Everything tastes good when you are around.”

  Kim kept Song Hye-rim and little Jong-nam with him in a palatial mansion, the No. 15 Residence, which was staffed by around 100 servants and 500 bodyguards. (Eight cooks worked there. One had been trained in Japan and specialized in sukiyaki, a favorite of Kim’s.) Song Hye-rim’s mother; her widowed sister, Song Hye-rang; and the sister’s two children, the boy Li Il-nam and a girl, Li Nam-ok, came and went in the household for varying periods. Song Hye-rang and her children all later left North Korea and gave public accounts of their lives in the palace.8

  At home, Kim referred to Song Hye-rim as yobo, "wife, according to her sister, while to others he introduced her in the Korean way as “my son’s mother.” But around 1973, while living with Song Hye-rim and their son Jong-nam, Kim Jong-il got involved with Kim Yong-suk, who would become his recognized wife. (Sister Song Hye-rang has argued that it is a mistake to refer to Hye-rim as a mistress: “Outsiders say Kim Yong-suk is the lawful wife, but it has no other meaning than that she was acknowledged by President Kim Il-sung.”)

  Kim Jong-il deputized his sister to break the news to Song that she would never be able to become his recognized wife and must leave the No. 15 Residence, according to Li Il-nam’s account. The sister, Kim Kyong-hui, would take care of Jong-nam, she told the boy’s mother, while Song herself would be provided for throughout her life. Song was terrified that she was about to have her son taken from her, so she ran away with the boy. But the two were soon found and brought back to No. 15.

  Having grown up motherless, Kim Jong-il was moved by Song’s determination not to leave the child, the nephew related. Kim, whom Li described as “a cultured person and a thinker,” also retained an intellectual bond with the former actress. He reserved mansion number 15 as the home of that family. (Kim had other mansions, of course, and around 1982 he built one designated No. 55 as his new official residence.) But during the decades that remained to her Song was to be hospitalized in Moscow for long periods, treated for ailments that reportedly included depression, nervous exhaustion, diabetes and hypertension.9 Whatever health problems were involved in her move, high-ranking defector Hwang Jang-yop alleged that there was another factor: Kim Jong-il exiled her in an effort to stifle gossip within North Korea about their relationship. “Naturally, rumors started spreading among the North Korean students studying in the USSR,” Hwang wrote. “Kim Jong-il ordered the security commander of the People’s Army to punish the gossipers. The commander interrogated the North Korean students living in Moscow, and executed all the students who simply replied that they knew that Song Hye-rim was living in Moscow.”10

  Like-wise because of concern about gossip, Kim Jong-nam as a boy was isolated in the No. 15 Residence, lacking the relationships with playmates his own age that even his father had known. In partial compensation Kim Jong-il appeared at No. 15 for supper three times a week, emerging as if by magic from a tunnel that connected the residence to his office. When he slept in the mansion, after working late, he liked to creep into his little son’s bed. Kim Jong-il pampered the boy as Kim Il-sung had pampered him. Even after Li had become a student in Moscow, he had to return to Pyongyang each May to join in the annual grand celebration of the new little prince’s birthday. At No. 15 Residence Jong-nam had a playroom full of electronic game machines. On his birthday aides packed the playroom with clothes, shoes, diamond-studded wrist-watches, model guns and other foreign-made goods. “They had a special team to purchase birthday goods for Jong-nam,” Li wrote. Li had a toothache once. The dentist had run out of the gold needed for a top-quality filling. When Jong-nam learned of that he opened his safe and handed his older cousin a 10-kilogram gold bar, telling him to use some of it for his dental work. The safe also contained wads of U.S. bills, Li said.11

  Apparently the boy was denied nothing. Once when he suffered a toothache of his own, he defiantly said that his price for going to the dentist would be a car as big as his father’s. Soon “a dark blue Cadillac was delivered to No. 15,” according to Li. “I used to spend a lot of time with Jong-nam on my summer vacations. We would ride in the Cadillac when we went along on inspection tours.” Jong-nam was permitted to read South Korean books and watch both South Korean and Japanese television. When he was eight, the boy took a liking to one South Korean comedian and ordered the mansion retainers to bring the entertainer to him. Fortunately they did not kidnap the comedian. Instead they searched until they found a North Korean farmer who looked just like him and had the farmer trained in comic routines before presenting him to Jong-nam. The impersonation worked briefly but Jong-nam soon saw through it. “I know this is fake,” he said, leaving for his room.12

  In 1979, the year Jong-nam turned eight, his thirteen-year-old female cousin Li Nam-ok moved into No.
15 Residence to become the boy’s full-time playmate and Kim Jong-il’s “adopted daughter.” In a 1998 interview with the prestigious Japanese monthly Bungei Shunju she offered further details on life in the household, beyond those provided by her older brother Il-nam. (The brother had been only a visitor in the palace. He was usually away— first at a North Korean boarding school and eventually in Moscow, where he continued his studies while living with his ailing aunt Song Hye-rim.) “We did not use dollar bills for wallpaper, but we did have a very comfortable life,” Li Nam-ok said. “Kim Jong-il was a man who loved a comfortable life.”

  Nam-ok’s mother and grandmother, who were Jong-nam’s aunt and grandmother, also moved in. The boy’s aunt became his teacher. The grandmother looked after him for a while, but as he grew older and livelier it was hard for her to keep up. “After that I was by him all the time,” Nam-ok said.

  Otherwise, Jong-nam’s isolation continued. “We sometimes went around the city in a chauffeur-driven Benz, but we were not allowed to get out of the car,” she said. “Attendants always came with us when we went outside.” Still, she thought her cousin had some idea of the reality of the common people’s lives. “We could make guesses by looking at people from a moving car. Besides, there were employees at the official residence and we could hear stories from them. Jong-nam was a very curious person. My view is that he knows a lot.”

  Kim Jong-nam “has a good mind and sense of humor,” Nam-ok said. “He is very energetic. He is a permanent optimist and a pleasant young man who can laugh all day long from morning to evening. He also has an artistic sense like his father’s.” Jong-nam, she added, “was a very early riser and led a well-regulated life. He always found something to do. He liked to draw pictures when young. He watched movies and read many books.” Like his father, Jong-nam loved watching movies and videos for days on end. He “was very much interested in taking videos, too.”