Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader

by Martin, Bradley K.

  32. Marcus Noland, “How Bush risks losing Korea,” Financial Times, January 22, 2004.

  33. “Food Ad Will Be Cut In North, Agency Says,” JoongAng Ilbo, January 25, 2004.

  34. Frank, “‘Gigantic Change ” (see chap. 35, n. 15).

  35. Kim Jung Min, “Young People Struggle for Jobs in South Korea’s Weak Economy,” The Wall Street Journal, January 28, 2004, p. B28.

  36. “N. Korea Threatens to Suspend Inter-Korean Tourism,” Asia Pulse, February 5, 2004.

  37. “North Korea Blasts Japan’s Move to Stop Cash Transfers,” Agence France-Presse, January 31, 2004. Japan insisted that the issue be on the agenda along with nuclear weapons in the six-party talks. See Richard Hanson, “Japan, North Korea stumble over abductions,” Asia Times Online, February 16, 2004, http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Japan/FB16Dh01.html.

  38. See Frank, “End of Socialism and a Wedding Gift for the Groom?”

  39. See James Brooke, “Quietly North Korea Opens Markets,” The New York Times, November 19, 2003, p. W1.

  40. Noland, “How Bush risks losing Korea.”

  41. Bill Gertz and Rowan Scarborough, “Notes from the Pentagon: North Korea split,” The Gertz File, August 8, 2003, http://www.gertzfile.com/gertzfile/ ring080803.html. On a trip to Iraq in January 2004 Wolfowitz was quoted as describing Saddam Hussein as being, in terms of evil, “in a class with very few others—Stalin, Hitler, Kim Jong-il” (Thomas E. Ricks, “Wolfowitz Stands His Ground on Iraq,” Washington Post National Weekly Edition, January 12–18, 2004, p. 7).

  42. “There is extensive evidence of a major coup attempt by elements of the VI Corps in 1995, which appears to have been crushed only with some difficulty,” Foreign Service Officer Larry Robinson wrote in a secret cable to Washington from the U.S. Embassy in Seoul in 1998. Leaked to journalist Bill Gertz, the cable is reproduced in Gertz’s book, Betrayal: How the Clinton Administration Undermined American Security (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing, Inc., 1999), pp. 255–264.

  43. Kang Myong-do, pyeongyangeun mangmyeoneul kumgungda (see chap. 13, n. 52).

  44. Philip W. Yun, “North Korea—New Lessons Learned,” The DPRK Briefing Book, Nautilus Institute, http://www.nautilus.org/DPRKBriefingBook/multilateralTalks/ Yun.html.

  45. See Cha and Kang, Nuclear North Korea: A Debate on Engagement Strategies (New York: Columbia University Press, 2003). For other recent takes on the policy issues, see a Brookings Institution study by Michael O’Hanlon and Mike Mochizuki, Crisis on the Korean Peninsula: How to Deal with a Nuclear North Korea (New York: McGraw Hill, 2003); and Gavan McCormack, Target North Korea: Pushing North Korea to the Brink of Nuclear Catastrophe (New York: Nation Books, 2004).

  46. Kelly, “Ensuring a Korean Peninsula.”

  47. Ambassador Li Gun, “Requisites for Resolving the Nuclear Issue,” Center for National Policy, republished by Nautilus Institute, The DPRK Briefing Book, February 6, 2004, http://www.nautilus.org/DPRKBriefingBook/multilateralTalks/ Li-Gun-NukeIssue.pdf

  48. “This administration has made the world less safe because they were unwilling to continue that dialogue,” the senator from Massachusetts said in a televised forum sponsored by CBS. “I would put all the issues of the peninsula on the table, not just the nuclear issue but the economic, the human rights, the deployment of forces,” he said. “I believe that between China, Japan and South Korea and our own interests, and the state of the economy in North Korea and their own interests, there is a deal to be struck.” See “Democrats Press for More-Direct Talks with Korea,” Washington-datelined Agence France-Presse dispatch, March 1, 2004.

  49. North Korea Raises Nuclear Tension,” Seoul-datelined Associated Press dispatch, March 18, 2004. Also see George Gedda, “Newsview: U.S., N. Korea Decide to Wait,” Washington-datelined Associated Press dispatch, March 10, 2004.

  50. Kelly, “Ensuring a Korean Peninsula.”

  51. By way of analogy think of 1945 Japan. The people were so deeply indoctrinated in emperor worship that the U.S. conquerors decided it would be best for Emperor Hirohito to publicly confess his lack of divinity—and then stay on as a stabilizing influence.

  52. John Harwood and Greg Hitt, “Bush and Kerry Frame Contrasts of Race Ahead; As Democrat Adds to Wins, President Defends Policies in Rare TV Appearance,” The Wall Street Journal, February 9, 2004.

  53. Boronchov, “Pyongyang Residents Carry Cellular Phones.”

  54. Vernon Loeb and Peter Slevin, “Overcoming North Korea’s Tyranny of Proximity,” Washington Post, January 20, 2003, p. A16, quoted in Cha and Kang, Nuclear North Korea, p. 6.

  55. An article in March 2003 said that the United States and Asian countries had “begun to accept the idea” of a nuclear-armed North Korea. See Doug Struck and Glenn Kessler, “Foes Giving In To N. Korea’s Nuclear Aims,” Washington Post, March 5, 2003, p. A1. However, in the year that followed the voices of agreement with such a notion seemed muted.

  56. In what Marcus Noland calls the “neo-conservative’s dream” scenario, “the global community puts the squeeze on the Kim Jong-il regime. Aid is cut off. Growth falls to its previous low of minus 6 percent. The inexpertly enacted July 2002 economic policy changes drive inflation up 300 percent, reputedly its rate over the course of the year since the introduction of the reforms. In the international embargo’ scenario, North Korea’s relations with the rest of the world deteriorate precipitously, perhaps under suspicion of exportation of nuclear weapons or materials, and all international trade is cut off Noland’s economic modeling showed that in the “neo-conservative’s dream” scenario, “the likelihood of regime change rises to about a one in seven probability, growing thereafter, and in all probability, Kim Jong-il is out of power before George W. Bush. (Remember, in neo-conservative dreams, George W. Bush is in power until 2008.) In the final scenario, ‘international embargo,’ the likelihood of regime change is over 40 percent in the first year and the Kim Jong-il regime probably collapses within two years” (Noland, Korea after Kim Jong-il, pp. 40–41).

  57. Proposed “North Korean Freedom Act of 2003,” introduced by Senator Sam Brownback for himself and Senator Evan Bayh. Proposed “North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004,” introduced by Representative James Leach.

  58. The Senate bill was drafted by Michael Horowitz of the Hudson Institute, director of the Project for International Religious Liberty and the Project for Civil Justice Reform. See “The North Korea Freedom Act,” Korea Times, February 27, 2004. Leading lobbyists for such legislation included religious leaders.

  59. A statement on human trafficking by State Department spokesman Richard Boucher on September 10, 2003 (see http://www.usembassy.it/file2003_09/alia/ a3091009.htm), said, “Burma, Cuba, Liberia, North Korea and Sudan still meet the Tier 3 standard, because their governments still fail to comply with the minimum standards, and fail to make significant efforts to do so. The President, acting on the recommendations of the Secretary determined that sanctions will be imposed on Burma, Cuba and North Korea. While Liberia and Sudan are also subject to sanctions, the President determined that certain multilateral assistance for these two countries would promote the purposes of the Act or is otherwise in the national interest of the United States. For Sudan, that assistance will be limited to that which may be necessary to implement a peace accord.” Elisabeth Bumiller reported that religious lobbyists Charles W. Colson, the one-time Watergate criminal who found born-again Christianity in prison and went on to head a prison ministries organization, and Richard D. Land, an official of the Southern Baptist Convention, ’were behind President Bush’s broad initiative on human trafficking. See “Evangelicals Sway White House on Human Rights Issues Abroad,” The New York Times, October 26, 2003, p. 1.

  60. See “North Korea,” Human Rights Watch, pp. 12–16, www.hrw.org/asia/dprko-rea.php. Also, “A Human Rights Report on the Trafficking of Persons, Especially Women and Children,” The Protection Project, 2002, pp. 408–409, 209.190.246.239/ver2/cr/nkpdf

  61. David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag
(see chap. 16, n. 4), pp. 65–72.

  62. See Jerrold M. Post, M.D., and Laurita M. Denny, M.A., “Kim Jong-il of North Korea: A Political Psychology Profile,” computer printout. I found some lapses in the research. During the famine, Post and Denny stated without qualification, Kim cut off nearly all of the food supplies going to the country’s four eastern provinces. The citation, however, was to a book whose author had prudently used such qualifying words as “appeared” and “suggests” to acknowledge that the evidence was not all in regarding his hypothesis. Also, the cited pages blame “the regime,” making no mention of Kim as the one who would have taken the action. In the same paragraph of the draft profile appeared a claim that, according to eyewitness testimony, Kim had ordered systematic infanticide in the political prison camps. The citation in that case was to a newspaper article that said nothing at all about whether Kim Jong-il had given the orders. Although the infanticides themselves ’were documented, I knew of no one who claimed to have seen or heard Kim ordering that they be performed.

  63. For example, in his 1996 speech marking the fiftieth anniversary of Kim Il-sung University, Kim Jong-il told of seeing hungry people search for food when he visited a steel mill. He said he had been told that “in other areas the roads, trains and train stations ’were full of such people”—a trend of events he described as “heartbreaking.” To his 1998 visitors from Chongryon in Japan, he complained that the Pyongyang power plant “stops working often and the people of Pyongyang are freezing. I cannot bear watching them suffer like that.” True, he continued to dine gourmet-fashion, like the king he was. True, he left to subordinates the task of doing something about the people’s misery while he focused on the military. But to say that he did not feel any of his people’s pain was a leap beyond what the evidence would justify.

  64. Michael Breen, Kim Jong-il: North Korea’s Dear Leader (Singapore: John Wiley & Sons [Asia] Pte Ltd, 2004), p. xiv. In a chapter entitled “Is Kim Jong-il Evil?” Breen offers his own, nonclinical analysis of Kim’s personality, informed by the author’s long and close association with Koreans. “As offensive as his regime may seem in the modern world, we should not assume that the leader of an undemocratic state is necessarily evil, any more than European kings were evil in the pre-democracy period,” Breen writes. “Kim Jong-il is neither insane nor evil. But he benefits from being at the top of a system which … is both” (pp. 91, 110).

  65. As a longtime, generally harsh critic of the leader and his regime, I could understand the impulse to pile on. Once, while working on this book, I offered to write an article for a magazine. As I tentatively proposed it, the article would answer the question of just how evil Kim Jong-il was by proving that he ranked right down there with Hitler and Saddam Hussein. Luckily the proposal was not accepted. Otherwise, imagine the editors’ reaction some weeks later when I found I had to acknowledge that—bad as Kim Jong-il’s tally was on the evil side of his ledger—my review of what I had learned about him revealed that there was something more to the man.

  66. For the functionaries’ gambits, see Chuck Downs, Over the Line: North Korea’s Negotiating Strategy (Washington, D.C.: The AEI Press, 1999), and Scott Snyder, Negotiating on the Edge: North Korean Negotiating Behavior (Washington, D.C.: United States Institute of Peace Press, 1999).

  67. Cha and Kang, Nuclear North Korea, p. 127.

  68. Quoted in Ambassador Li Gun, “Prerequisites for Resolving the Nuclear Issue,” DPRK Briefing Book-Nautilus Institute, February 6, 2004, http://www.nautilus.org/ DPRKBriefingBook/multilateralTalks /Li-Gun-NukeIssue.pdf.

  69. Bill Gertz, “Kim Wants to Rule All Korea, Defector Warns,” The Washington Times, November 4, 2003.

  37. Sing of Our Leader’s Favors for Thousands of Years.

  1. Albright, Madame Secretary (see chap. 36, n. 3), p. 466.

  2. “DPRK Hails Leader as Partisan’s Son, .Mentions Son-to-Grandson Succession,” U.S. Foreign Broadcast Information Service translation of essay by Song Mi-ran: “Partisan’s Son,” Nodong Shinmun, October 6, 2002, p. 2. Article ID: KPP20021011000026,:document ID: 0h59iwg02ykiwf, insert date: 11/08/ 2002.

  3. Yomiuri, May 4–5, and May 14, 2001; Japan Times, May 4–5, 2001; Chosun Ilbo, May 4, 2001; Asia Times Online, May 5, 2001; The Guardian, May 5, 2001.

  4. “Kaleidoscope” column “A Strange Country,” Chosun Ilbo, May 6, 2001, Internet version in English.

  5. “Kim Jong-nam was Traveling with Wife Shin Jong-hui,” Yonhap, May 15, 2001, FBIS document number FBIS-EAS-2001-0515; Korea Herald, May 9, 2001.

  6. Kang Myong-do in JoongAng Ilbo (see chap. 2, n. 7).

  7. “Will Kim Jong Nam Succeed His Father Kim Jong Il?” Chosun Ilbo Internet edition, January 14, 2001.

  8. Lee Han-yong (pseudonym of Li Il-nam), Heijou 15-gou kantei no nukeana (The secret tunnel of Pyongyang No. 15 residence) (Tokyo: The Massada, 1996). I am grateful to Hideko Takayama for her translation of relevant parts of this book.

  9. Article in Women’s JoongAng 21 summarized in JoongAng Ilbo, Internet version, November 23, 2000. FBIS article i.d. KPP20001124000008; Lee Han-yong, Heijou 15-gou.

  10. Hwang Jang-yop, The Problems of Human Rights in North Korea (3). Seoul: 2000. Translation by Network for North Korean Democracy and Human Rights on the Web at http://nknet.org/en/keys/lastkeys/2002/9/04.php.

  11. Lee Han-yong, Heijou 15-gou.

  12. Ibid.

  13. Bungei Shunju, February 1998. Translation/abstract by Korea Web Weekly, http://www.kimsoft.com/1997/nanok.htm.

  14. Lee Han-yong, Heijou 15-gou; “Song-Yi Telephone Conversation Disclosed,” trans. FBIS, Joongang Ilbo, Feb. 17, 1996, FBIS document i.d. 0dn7jom016u5eq.

  15. Lee Kyo-kwan, “Signs of Kim Jong-nam s Preparations as Kim Jong-il’s Successor Analyzed,” trans. FBIS, Chosun Ilbo Internet version, January 14, 2001, FBIS document i.d. 0g7d33w01s3eel; Bungei Shunju, February 1998; “North Korea’s ‘Crown Prince’ Shown by Japanese TV Organization,” Agence France-Presse, February 15, 1999.

  16. Bungei Shunju, February 1998.

  17. Ibid.

  18. Lee Han-yong, Heijou 15-gou.

  19. Bungei Shunju, February 1998.

  20. JoongAng Ilbo, April 21, 1995, p. 5.

  21. “Kim Jong-il’s Ex-Wife Reportedly Still in DPRK,” Yonhap, .March 30, 1998, FBIS document i.d. 0eqpsm100ruf3v.

  22. “Song-Yi Telephone Conversation Disclosed,” trans. FBIS, Joongang Ilbo, February 17, 1996, FBIS document i.d. 0dn7jom016u5eq.

  23. Korean Broadcasting System KBS-1 radio network, “Defector Shot in Seoul; Police Assume DPRK Retaliation,” 2100 GMT Feb. 15, 1997, FBIS translation document i.d. 0e9s3u002ex9dk

  24. See “Song-Yi Telephone Conversation Disclosed,” trans. FBIS, JoongAng Ilbo, February 17, 1996, FBIS document i.d. 0dn7jom016u5eq.

  25. “Kim Jong-il’s Ex-Wife Reportedly Still in DPRK”

  26. “Kim Jong-il’s Daughter ‘Sol-Song’ Receives Training in Economy,” Chosun Ilbo Internet version, October 18, 2001, FBIS translation document i.d. 0glgev9025f8zh; Yonhap, “Identity of DPRK Leader’s Son Arrested in Japan,” trans. FBIS, May 3, 2001, FBIS document i.d. 0gcyw5101oxg04.

  27. “Son of DPRK’s Kim Jong-il Said to Join Government,” Joongang Ilbo Internet version, FBIS document i.d. 0flin2p01wxvxp; Lee Kyo-kwan, “Kim Jong Nam Being Groomed as Heir Apparent,” Chosun Ilbo Internet version, May 13, 2001, http://English.chosun.com/cgi-bin/printNews?id=200105130135; Lee Kyo-kwan, “Is Kim Jong Nam NKs Heir Apparent?” Chosun Ilbo Internet version, February 26, 2002, http://english.chosun.com/w21data/html/news/200202/200202260259.html.

  28. “Police Step Up Protection for DPRK Defectors After Threats,”Korea Times Internet edition, July 17, 1997, FBIS document i.d. 0edjbsc013cm0b; for the claim that Kim Jong-nam was involved, see Wolgan Choson, February 2001.

  29. See “ROK Paper Interviews Nephew Defector of Song Hye-rim,” trans. FBIS, Dong-A Ilbo, February 14, 1996, FBIS document i.d. 0dmumu702tf940.

  30. Wolgan Choson, February 2001.
<
br />   31. Joongang Ilbo Internet version, FBIS document i.d. 0flin2p01wxvxp.

  32. “Will Kim Jong Nam Succeed His Father Kim Jong Il?” Chosun Ilbo Internet edition, January 14, 2001.

  33. George Wehrfritz and Hideko Takayama, “The Sun Also Surprises,” Newsweek International, May 14, 2001. The magazine cited as its source Lee Young-hwa, a leading critic of Pyongyang among the Korean residents in Japan.

  34. “Will Kim Jong Nam Succeed His Father Kim Jong Il?”

  35. James Brooke, “China Called Likely to Oust 78 North Koreans,” The New York Times, January 22, 2003, p. A5.

  36. See “S. Korea Rejects Report Kim Jong Il in China,” Seoul-datelined Agence France-Presse article, citing JoongAng Ilbo, The Japan Times, May 20, 2001. The Seoul newspaper cited an unnamed South Korean government source.

  37. “DPRK Leader’s Eldest Son Said To Remain in Russia,” Chosun Ilbo Internet Version in English, September 22, 2002, WNC article I.D.: KPP20020924000074.

  38. “Diplomatic Source ‘Confirms’ Kim Chong-il’s Son Vacationed Often in Moscow,” trans. FBIS, Sankei Shimbun, September 15, 2002, FBIS document i.d. 0h2qz7900k8j47.

  39. “NK Leader’s Ex-Wife Died in May” Yonhap dispatch in Korea Times, Internet edition, November 7, 2002, http://www.hankooki.com/kt_nation/200211/

  40. A German diplomat who asked to remain anonymous told me that a photo showed Kim Jong-il in East Germany in 1984 when his father was visiting there and a sudden crisis came up—a flood in North Korea—that evidently required the younger Kim to travel and get his father’s advice or orders. The diplomat said there was no official record of Kim Jong-il’s presence in East Germany ever, so presumably he went under an assumed name.

  41. Article in Women’s Joongang 21 summarized in Joongang Ilbo, Internet version, November 23, 2000. FBIS article i.d. KPP20001124000008, http://wnc. fedworld.gov.

  42. Yomiuri, May 4, 2001; Japan Times, May 5, 2001.

  43. “Kim’s ‘Son’ Tried Japan’s Soaplands,” japantoday.com, July 15, 2002, a summary translation by Mark Schreiber of an article in Shukan Shincho for July 18, 2002.