Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il

by Michael Malice

  “Just like a fault committed by a friend.”

  “Exactly. If a fault—even a trifling one—is left uncriticized, it grows over time. In the end your friend would become as useless as a hollow tree.”

  Soon after, my Children’s Union sub-branch called a general membership meeting and unanimously elected me as chairman. I worked hard to make the organization a disciplined, active and lively one. I wanted our members to be true revolutionaries, boundlessly faithful to the General. Within a few months, a bright and sound atmosphere came to prevail at the school. The entire student body changed into a disciplined yet cheerful and amicable community by engaging in the activities that I’d suggested. But what had the greatest effect were the criticism sessions that I introduced. Week after week, every student stood up and denounced himself and his fellows. The halls became full of the sounds of criticism and self-criticism, which were the sounds of friends expressing their comradely love.

  Though the positive effects of the criticism sessions were apparent— everyone was on their best behavior, knowing they were being watched by everyone else—the CU activists still didn’t quite appreciate the potential that they had. They viewed the sessions as a means to condemn bad behavior and nothing more. This greatly limited their effectiveness, as the activists were forced to discover for themselves. There were two boys in the school whose behavior was the worst out of anybody. The pair simply laughed or rolled their eyes whenever they were brought in for criticism. When I eventually heard about this I knew that something had to be done.

  I discussed the matter with some of the activists who knew the boys casually and then again with those who had led the criticism sessions against them. Then I talked about the matter with the boys’ teacher. No matter who I spoke to, child or adult, the answer was the same: These boys are a real “head ache.” They are hooligans who will never become productive students. That did not sit well with me. If the sub-branch couldn’t help the boys find their way, then it couldn’t very well claim to be a living organization. There had to be some way of guiding them, some way to criticize them effectively so that their behavior would be fixed and improved.

  I spent time trying to figure out how to reach out to the boys but wasn’t really sure what to do. I knew that I wouldn’t have very many opportunities before they were lost to us, just as everyone else predicted. One afternoon I was walking down the hall at school when I heard the sound of glass breaking. I quickly dashed to the room the sound was coming from and opened the door.

  On the wall was painted a large target, and the “head aches” were taking turns launching bottles at it from their slingshots. The entire floor was covered with broken shards, and the wall was marked with indents where the glass had shattered. I was barely able to restrain my indignation at their excessive wantonness, but I knew that I couldn’t address them with anger. “What’s going on here?” I said, as casually as I could.

  “We’re playing with our slingshots,” one replied.

  I noticed that they were balling their fists, ready for a fight. It was precisely what I was going to avoid. “I see that you’re practicing your marksmanship. How many Yankees have you shot? Which one of you is ahead?”

  “We haven’t been keeping score.”

  “Once you start a competition,” I told them, “you must see it through. Let’s go outside, where I can referee. It’s messy in here.”

  “Good idea,” said the second boy. Rather than being aggressive, the pair now seemed embarrassed. They so expected an argument that they never even considered that someone would be encouraging them—especially not the Children’s Union sub-branch chairman!

  The three of us went outside to the playground. I found a board and drew a vicious US imperialist’s wolf-face on it. “How does that look?”

  “It’s hideous,” the first boy said.

  “Ha, ha! Then it’s perfect. You know, if we use bottles, we can only shoot them once. They shatter and then they’re of no use. But if we shoot stones instead, we’ll never wear them out and can use them as much as we like.”

  “That’s a good idea.”

  I helped the boys gather up a few stones, and then explained how the features of each one affected its trajectory and matters like that. The two “head aches” were now like model students, hanging on to my every word. After playing a few matches, I took the two to a bench and sat down between them. “Schoolchildren shouldn’t commit mischief to the classrooms and damage the walls,” I said. “Nor should they spurn the criticism of their comrades. I suggested we go outside and use rocks instead of bottles. Were these bad suggestions?”

  “No,” they admitted.

  “Of course not. Now there’s no damage out here, and you had the same fun and learned something too. So why don’t we go back to the class and clean up that mess together?”

  “I’m sorry,” said the first boy.

  “Me too,” said his friend.

  The three of us went back. Together, we swept up the glass and then plastered up the wall. After my interaction with them, both of the boys went from being a “head ache” to being “head of the class.” I could have spent all day discussing the power of criticism with the CU activists, and they still might not have appreciated it. But none of them could misunderstand how the two boys changed their lives around under my loving guidance. It illustrated my concept that no one was beyond criticism, and that true criticism was based on comradely affection rather than animosity.

  As a consequence of this successful case, criticism sessions became enormously popular at my school. Then, through word of mouth, they spread to other schools—first in Pyongyang, than in all of north Korea. Students felt encouraged, knowing they had a commitment to live up to their fellows’ expectations. They also felt happy to be helping those who needed it to turn their behavior around. Criticism was something that benefited everyone.

  In a small way, my successes as Children’s Union sub-branch chairman were paralleling Korea’s successes on a national level. By 1956, the economy had largely been rehabilitated over the course of the three-year national economic plan. Building the foundation was strenuous but required finite creativity. The possibilities of what a given foundation will support are infinite, however. It was by no means certain what was to be done next. With the conclusion of the three-year plan, the situation inside the DPRK became very complicated. The country was short of materials and funds, and the people’s standard of living was still low.

  There was great debate as to what to do next. Should Korea focus on heavy industry, like building factories? Light industry, as in consumer goods? Trade, or agriculture? It was an extremely intricate question that required an enormous amount of insight and leadership. The consequences of making incorrect decisions would resonate for decades—or might weaken the DPRK to the point that the Americans would take another crack at conquering the nation. Unfortunately but unsurprisingly, the situation was made much more difficult by matters abroad. Though achieving a great victory in the Fatherland Liberation War in 1953, the socialist world also suffered a tremendous loss that year: the death of Joseph Stalin, Premier of the Soviet Union, enemy of fascism and friend of democracy.

  Stalin was a great friend to the Korean people, and he and General Kim Il Sung had an enormous amount of respect for one another. After Stalin’s passing, Nikita Khrushchev took over the command of the Soviet Union and “liberalized” the nation. Very quickly, what became known as “Stalinism” grew out of vogue among the Soviet satellite states. This was not a function of the truth or falsehood behind Stalin’s philosophy. What was true in 1953 surely couldn’t have become completely outdated by 1956. No, these nations were simply following Moscow’s lead in every way.

  In other words, they were corrupted by flunkeyism.

  Flunkeyism is the tendency of a developing nation to worship more powerful countries. Flunkeyists deprecate their own nation and its achievements in the process of venerating other cultures. I was aware of the phenomenon but wasn�
�t too concerned about it in the Korean context. Surely, I thought, a nation with one blood and five thousand years of history had plenty to be proud of.

  As Children’s Union sub-branch chairman, I often frequented the school at night. I always checked to make sure that there weren’t any US imperialists or south Korean puppet spies hiding in our building. One night in 1956, I turned a corner in the hallway when I saw that a light was still on in one of the classrooms.

  It was close to midnight. Something was obviously out of order. I carefully walked up to the class and peeked inside. Instead of a sunken-eyed, hook-nosed Yank, I saw a student with his head drooped over the desk. I quietly walked into the room to see what was going on.

  The boy was sleeping quite peacefully, with a very large, splendid drawing as his “pillow” and his artistic implements spread out all over his desk. Clearly the sleepyhead had been drawing for the student newspaper until very late and was overcome by fatigue. I was pleased that he had the commitment to carry out his assignment far into the night. Glancing at his drawing told me that he was already a technically skillful artist, despite being the same young age that I was. Careful not to disturb him, I leaned over to get a better look at what he had created.

  In dark colors, the boy had drawn a snow-covered steeple and a very old castle wall—the landscape of a foreign capital. I felt like my heart was breaking as I turned to look out the window. Outside, only a few feet away, the nightless, seething life of Pyongyang was astir. Our hero city was rising up out of the ruins, writhing with construction. It was a touching scene that would fill anyone with emotion and excitement. I didn’t understand how this young artist failed to see Pyongyang’s thriving beauty. How could he possibly prefer an antique castle wall that he must have only seen in a photograph?

  At that moment the artist awoke, jumping up to his feet with a start. I put my hand on his shoulder to calm him down. But from the expression on my face he could tell that I—chairman of the Children’s Union sub-branch—was displeased. Nevertheless, he wasn’t clear about what was wrong. “You keep looking at me,” he finally said. “Is something the matter?”

  “Is something the matter?” I repeated. “Is something the matter? Is something the matter with Pyongyang?”

  “Huh?”

  “Look! While you slept, Pyongyang was awake. Just after the war there wasn’t a single undamaged building. Now, three years later, its appearance has totally changed. In a few more years it will be really magnificent. Everyone is striving to make that day come as soon as possible—as you should!”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean drawing is not just a means of demonstrating one’s skill. It should have ideological content and educational value as well. What message does this drawing preach?” I pointed to his work with increasing indignation.

  “I just drew a pretty picture of a castle...” he said quietly.

  I convinced the artist to scrap his work and instead draw Pyongyang’s rising skyline. But what I gained from this interaction was a new perspective on Korea’s national situation. Flunkeyism wasn’t just a political phenomenon, like when an Eastern European nation followed the trends in Moscow. It was much more personal and pervasive—and it had permeated Korea as well. Juche had not yet been established in many areas of social life. People sang foreign songs more than Korean songs. The paintings that hung in restaurants were of foreign landscapes, rather than beautiful Korean landscapes. There was a strong tendency toward imitating anything from advanced countries in disregard of Korean tastes and likes.

  Flunkeyism was making Koreans thoughtlessly eulogize and envy foreign things. It turned them incapable of seeing their own culture’s beauty, even when it was right under their own eyes. This shameful disease, I realized, was brought by Korea’s long-standing poverty and backwardness. The scum that was flunkeyism needed to be obliterated before it could spread. It had the potential to make people unconscious of the greatness of the Korean revolution and the Korean nation. It was a poison paralyzing man’s talent and creativity. When a person takes to flunkeyism he becomes an idiot; when a nation takes to flunkeyism the country is ruined; and when a party takes to flunkeyism it makes a mess of the revolution.

  In fact, it was precisely the revolution that was at stake, for the Third Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea was held in April 1956. There, Prime Minister Kim Il Sung announced the First Five-Year Plan that would begin in the following year. The capitalist approach would have been to develop light industry, accumulating funds so as to construct heavy industry later. Some socialist countries chose another route in similar situations, forcibly constructing heavy industry for a certain period of time before developing light industry. All of Korea waited to see which well-trodden path the Prime Minister would choose.

  Yet Prime Minister Kim Il Sung chose neither.

  His Plan was a new, entirely different path that incorporated the Juche idea. The economic construction course gave priority to heavy industry while simultaneously developing both light industry and agriculture. The course was audacious and unprecedented—and the skepticism was furious and immediate. Khrushchev himself personally denounced the Prime Minister’s ideas: “How could the DPRK carry out such a course with the nation still covered in the debris from the war? It’s impossible!”

  After that, the doubting was everywhere. Many Koreans agreed with the Soviet criticism—simply because it came from the Soviet Union. Others simply remained skeptical that Prime Minister Kim Il Sung could do what he said—even though he had done what he had said for decades. That didn’t seem to matter to the skeptics. After all, they wondered, how many miracles could any one man produce?

  In this context, our teacher told us that there would a lecture about the proposed Five-Year Plan at school. I was very excited and couldn’t wait to hear the lecturer explain why the Plan was such a good idea. The following week, the entire school gathered in our assembly hall to listen to the lecturer’s perspective. After a brief introduction, he got to the meat of his argument. “Korea doesn’t need large machines like trucks, tractors and ships,” he claimed. “Building them requires a huge amount of money and labor power. Korea is a small territory, and we have a lack of food supplies in the short term because we’ve just gone through a war. We can’t construct machine-building factories. If we need machines, we can simply buy them from other countries in exchange for our abundant iron ore, apples or squid. It makes much more sense to trade than to try to manufacture these things for ourselves. Look!” He took out an apple and made a show of throwing it in the trash. “We have so many apples no one cares if I waste one. But our machines are being repaired until they are on their last legs. Let’s barter what we have a surplus in, and import whatever else we need. That way, everybody wins.”

  This wasn’t a lecture at all. It was a direct open attack on the Prime Minister and the Party. The lecturer wanted to maintain the DPRK’s national economy as simply that of a raw-material supplier. I was livid. This reptile of a man spoke with great wit and humor, putting on quite a performance for the audience. I could see that his perspective was gaining ground with the students simply because of his personable air.

  “Are there any questions?” the lecturer finally said.

  I immediately stood up. “I have something to say!” I could see that the other students were intrigued by my serious expression, since I was usually so kind and benevolent.

  “Go ahead,” hissed the snake.

  “As you know, the Prime Minister put forward our Party’s economic course as one giving priority to the development of heavy industry while simultaneously developing light industry and agriculture. Your denial of the necessity of making our own trucks and tractors runs totally counter to his Plan. It doesn’t stand to reason that we should buy foreign machines instead of making them ourselves. How can we ever make Korea a socialist power by using imported machines that we don’t know how to construct? Korea would remain a backward and poor agrarian country forever. How do
you explain this, comrade?”

  The students began to grumble amongst themselves as they realized the implications of what I was saying. If we didn’t need to produce up-to-date machines ourselves, then why should the pupils study modern science and technology? There would be no need for scientists and inventors in Korea; it would be enough to have drivers and repairmen. What would happen if our offers of trade were rejected by other countries? We’d either be ruined or, at the very least, at their mercy.

  Realizing the counterrevolutionary content of the lecture, the pupils glared at the lecturer with rage. The man turned pale as the audience grew increasingly agitated. At his wit’s end, he stood there rubbing his hands as he wondered how to escape this predicament. That’s when I first suspected that someone else was pulling the strings of this puppet. He wasn’t smart enough to be this manipulative.

  “I’m simply explaining one perspective on the issue,” the lecturer said. “Let me do some further research to more fully answer the questions that you’ve asked. Surely we can all agree it’s a complex situation with many sides, each with some validity to them.”

  “No!” I shouted. “I don’t agree! We should only think and act in accordance with the ideas of Prime Minister Kim Il Sung, no matter what the time and what the place! We will need an endless number of machines for construction and production. If we import them, even all our squid as trade might not be enough! What are we to do then? Build more squid? The Prime Minister said that we should first develop industry if we are to stand on our feet. That means making machines with our own efforts. What would happen if we look up to another country and they demanded things that we didn’t have as payment for their machines? They’d look down on us with contempt and would continually raise their prices. We’ll be a poor nation forever. Korea will become rich and strong when we heal our war wounds and make all our products by ourselves, ‘in our way’!”