The audience erupted into cheers. The lecturer muttered some hasty excuse into the microphone and fled the scene like the coward that he was. Then we all went out into the hall, where I clearly explained the Party’s course for building an independent national economy. I addressed every single question until all the students were convinced of what they should have been convinced all along: to trust in the Prime Minister.
In fact, skeptics like the lecturer were few and far between. The overwhelming majority of Koreans still had faith that Prime Minister Kim Il Sung always had the answer to the problems facing Korea. Unlike the lecturer, they did not have to talk out of both sides of their mouth about it. They wrote letters and told their neighbors, and in fact they often put on shows as well. Though I had been disheartened to hear the lecture, I immediately put it out of mind when I learned that the Korean People’s Army Song and Dance Ensemble had composed a show to honor the Prime Minister.
As a consequence of winning the Fatherland Liberation War, General Kim Il Sung had received a promotion to Marshal. Accordingly The Cantata to Marshal Kim Il Sung would be performed at a Pyongyang theatre. I was fortunate enough to be able to attend the premiere a mere week after the tainted lecture. As I took my seat, I couldn’t help but smile at all the Korean people in the audience dressed in their finest clothes. I also couldn’t help but notice that the Marshal hadn’t been able to attend. This was the unfortunate consequence of his constant planning of future construction.
I was literally on the edge of my seat as I watched the Marshal’s life recreated on stage. The fact that I had a personal connection to many of the events depicted made it that much more special. I wiped away a tear when the actress playing my beloved mother first took to the stage. The scenes of the days of anti-Japanese struggle and of the Fatherland Liberation War were very moving, and affected every single member of the audience. I was so impressed by the performance that I was shocked to hear the men in the seats behind me whispering to one another. At first I ignored them, but then their sarcastic comments became truly intolerable.
At one point the performers sang, “This morning dawns over the forests of Mt. Paektu.”
“The day dawns over the East Sea in Korea,” one of the wiseacres said, “not over Mt. Paektu. Don’t they know anything about the laws of nature?”
I turned my head to my side to get a look at who was being so boorish and disrespectful. I was shocked beyond words. The men were not street hooligans, but members of the Ministry of National Defense. Worse, I recognized them as being fairly high-ranking. I turned back toward the stage so that they couldn’t see that I’d noticed them.
“What kind of a song is this?” whined the second man. “It’s as long as a clothesline.”
“Where did they find that actor?” the first said. “He’s pretty like a woman! Have they never seen Kim Il Sung in the flesh? He looks like a fat delivery boy from my neighborhood Chinese-food stall.”
“Have you seen the growth on the back of his head? I think his neck’s pregnant.”
I was furious to hear these foul-mouthed people. It was literally the angriest I had ever been in my life. After a while I willed myself to calm down. And though it may sound absurd, those horrid men ended up saving Korea.
The fact that they spoke so disrespectfully regarding the Marshal was a testament to their low family background. But the fact that they did it openly and publicly told me that something deeper was happening. These men didn’t know who was seated around them, and they made little effort to modulate their voices. That told me that they were used to being around others who shared those same views, that same lack of respect. Among civilians this would be one thing, but among the military? Among members of the Ministry of Defense? Clearly, the flunkeyists weren’t just isolated, random members of the Korean nation.
They were an organized force.
The flunkeyists’ plan immediately became apparent to me. The Plenary Meeting of the Party Central Committee would be held later in the year. Several flunkeyists had already publicly called for an alleged “road to socialism,” some even going so far as to demand that Soviet power be established in Korea. Others, willfully ignorant of the nightmare south of the 38th parallel, argued for a “road to bourgeois democracy” in the American style. Still others wanted to take orders from Chairman Mao (whom I greatly admired as a leader for his own, the Chinese, people).
Each of these factions were represented in the Party. And each of these factions, by themselves, were an irritant at the very worst, a nuisance to be considered and immediately dismissed. But if they teamed up together, then all sorts of carnage could ensue. They might even have the ability to oust the Prime Minister from office. At the very least there would be problems between Korea and our strongest allies, the Soviet Union and China.
These varied flunkeyists had been unknown men, but the Prime Minister had welcomed them into the Party out of respect. I knew that he’d expected that they’d repay his trust and generosity with sincerity. He thought that their loyalty would be to Korea alone once they were given leading posts. But his benevolence and kindness was being met with arrogance. The overbearing attitude of these flunkeyists led them to view their own internationalist perspectives as superior to that of Juche. They weren’t putting Korea first—and they were apparently intent on putting Marshal Kim Il Sung last.
I couldn’t wait to tell the Marshal what I feared was happening. After the performance I went straight home. It honestly felt like the Prime Minister’s life was in danger at that very moment. When I came upon him in his study, he immediately dismissed the officials that were with him and gave me his full attention. “I must speak to you about an urgent matter,” I said.
He cocked his head and looked at me, concerned more for my anxiousness than for himself. “You’re here about the flunkeyists.”
I felt dizzy. He had said it so casually that I couldn’t believe it. “You know?” Then I caught myself. Of course he knew.
“I want you to put yourself in my shoes,” he told me. “I want you to think about what actions you would take, as if you were the one leading the Republic. We’ll discuss it tomorrow, under the warm Korean sun.”
With a nod and not another word, I left and went to my room. I could barely sleep all night, wondering how to best handle the situation. No matter how I looked at the matter, my choices seemed obvious.
Early the next morning the Prime Minister and I went for a stroll in the garden. From the pleasant breeze and the bright sun, one would never suspect all the conspiring that was going on. “The enemy is pouncing on us from all directions,” Marshal Kim Il Sung said. He spoke with a sigh of resignation, hurt that these machinations were necessary. He so wanted Korean unity—not to mention reunification—that I think the matter struck him to his core. He always thought of Korea as one, and these men were doing everything they could to further divide our nation and our people.
“You can handle it,” I said. “You’ve handled much worse.”
“So if you were responsible for the country, what would you do?” He looked at me for my answer. This was not early morning small talk. The Prime Minister had no time for those types of frivolities anyway.
“I’d give them annihilation in return for their challenge.”
He looked away, shaking his head a bit, recalling decades of fighting— and hoping the fighting would soon be over. “That’s the only way to handle them,” he grunted. “That’s the grave lesson that I’ve learned through my thirty years of revolutionary struggle. You’ve already grasped the truth of the revolution. I’m very glad to see it’s already part of your character.”
“So what are you going to do?”
He looked directly into the sun, and didn’t blink even for a moment. “I will fight them with the greatest tactics at my disposal: the tactics of Juche.” His campaign was as immediate as it was subtle. In May of 1956, a new system was implemented. Now, Koreans needed permission from their Party superiors before meeting with f
oreigners. This was presented as an approach to minimize spying for hostile nations. The flunkeyists in powerful positions regarded the permissions as a mere formality. They were always visiting with the Russians and the Chinese, the only foreigners legally granted the privilege of living in the DPRK at the time. This wasn’t about them, they figured.
But it was—for now there was a clear paper trail identifying who the traitors were.
Next, the Marshal closed the College of Foreign Languages. Then he forbade the teaching of Russian to third- and fourth-year college students. These provocative actions, assaults on the foreign ideas that the flunkeyists held in such high regard, only served to embolden the flunkeyists. The harder the Prime Minister pushed, the more persuasive, reasonable and logical the flunkeyists believed their perspective to be. To make sure they could make their voices heard, the Prime Minister took another unprecedented step: he left Korea.
From June 1 to July 19, Marshal Kim Il Sung visited nine different European countries. The flunkeyists couldn’t very well complain to their overseas masters while the Marshal was in their homes as their guest. But without his powerful presence in Korea, the flunkeyists discarded their need for discretion and grew ever bolder in their moves and actions. This boldness without repercussion gave them the illusion that they were powerful.
When Prime Minister Kim Il Sung came back to Korea, he didn’t let on that he suspected what had been going on. He knew that the flunkeyists would make their move at the Central Committee plenum. It was the only possible venue to make an attempt to oust him from the leadership position. He repeatedly rescheduled the plenum with little notice. The flunkeyists took this as a sign of mismanagement. In actuality, it was his way to ensure they couldn’t set their trap.
Finally, on the evening of August 29, 1956, the plenum was called for the following day. The Prime Minister had carefully arranged where everyone sat, placing them like markers on a battle plan. At the plenum, every traitor would literally be surrounded by Marshal Kim Il Sung’s most trusted comrades—and they didn’t even realize it.
At the plenum, all the flunkeyists were instantly outshouted by those seated around them whenever they rose up to speak. The Marshal’s supporters yelled. They taunted. The flunkeyists’ hands shook as they tried to read what they’d prepared to say, but a more hostile audience couldn’t be imagined. Perhaps some in the room would have swayed by the flunkeyist scum under calmer conditions. But when the ditherers heard how loudly and enthusiastically the Marshal’s allies yelled, they knew enough to join in as well. The flunkeyists had been conspiring against Prime Minister Kim Il Sung for months or even years—and it was all over for them in mere hours.
Such was the power of the Marshal’s Juche tactics.
The public executions began immediately after the plenum. The Party put up posters throughout Pyongyang, announcing the wonderful events. I attended each and every one of them, and from the size of the crowds it seemed as if everybody in the city was there as well. Entire families made a day of it, with the youngsters even missing school. As the class enemies met their fates, the crowd erupted in huge cheers. The applause was so loud it was as if the people were competing to see who could make the most noise. After the villains were sent to their just graves, the children ran forward to grab any spent rifle cartridges or bullet casings to keep as souvenirs. It was like a small public holiday, with everyone happy to watch these dangerous villains flushed from their midst.
A few weeks after the plenum, I went to visit Marshal Kim Il Sung in his office. I knew that he must have felt a great deal of relief to have vanquished his foes so thoroughly. To my great surprise, he was pacing back and forth. “You seem to be under tremendous strain,” I said. “Please, take a rest and consider your health. The flunkeyists have been defeated, and foreign influences are in the process of being purged from Korea.”
The Marshal squeezed his eyes shut and let out a deep breath. “Yes, they’ve been driven from power. But how many Koreans shared their ideas? How many share them still? Our foes aren’t like us. They aren’t honest and forthright with their views. When we say we will do something, we do it—often to the shock of the world at large. But there is an entire hostile class still out there in Korea.”
He was right, as always. Simply removing a few key figures from positions of power couldn’t remove a hateful philosophy from the entire nation. “So what are you going to do?” I asked.
“No compromises can be made,” he mused, “with the members of the hostile class that opposes socialism. It’ll be necessary to determine if an individual is an enemy element or a member of our class.”
“How? There are millions of people in Korea.”
“How indeed.”
The Marshal and I discussed the matter at length over the following days. There was simply no easy way to determine a given individual’s reliability. But, indeed, there still was one way. It would be a very long and very difficult way, but it was the only way to eliminate foreign influences from Juche Korea. It took months of planning, but finally the Marshal instituted his final solution to the problem of the hostile elements.
In 1958, Prime Minister Kim Il Sung announced “Intensive Guidance by the Central Party.” Every Korean—every single one—was put through a series of background checks. Not one, not two, but eight such checks were held in total. Everything was taken into account—family origin, political activity, expressions of loyalty—and families were rated accordingly, down to the second cousins. The background checks the Party performed were so thorough that having a relative in south Korea or a landlord for a grandparent was enough to designate a given person was unreliable.
Then, everyone was declared to be a member of either the “core,” “wavering” or “hostile” classes in a classification known as songbun. Traitors begat traitors, and loyal workers taught their children to be loyal as well. It was an excellent tool to determine who could join the Party, the KPA or even simply go on to university. The songbun system was nothing like a caste system. Instead, it was a determination of an individual’s sociopolitical standing due to the circumstances of their heredity—the complete opposite of a caste.
To make sure that everyone still felt a part of Juche Korea, Marshal Kim Il Sung made sure that no one was told what their songbun was. Members of the core class was already loyal and motivated, by definition—and the hostile class didn’t need public humiliation. They would be judged by their actions, and had the ability to improve their songbun through faithfully serving the Marshal and the Party.
Korea was not China. Koreans were not Russians, nor was the DPRK a Soviet “satellite.” After the liquidation of the flunkeyists, no one could deny these facts. In their wildest dreams, neither Premier Stalin nor Chairman Mao—as great as they were—had ever had the depth of vision to implement a system of justice quite like this. It was just one more standard by which Korea might not have been the most powerful nation but was still the best.
When a nation is under assault from a plague, the first step is to localize the disease to make sure that it doesn’t spread. Thus came the Marshal’s Decree No. 149. According to this decree, hostile-class members were forbidden from residing by the border or the coastlines. They couldn’t live within 50 kilometers of Pyongyang or Kaesong, or within 20 kilometers of any other major city. As part of the songbun classification process, hundreds of thousands of Koreans were moved to the mountainous north, quarantined from the rest of the population.
The worst of the hostiles were sent to the new “enlightenment centers,” where they were concentrated in camps and allowed to work their way back into the nation’s good graces. They did not deserve this mercy, of course. If they had their way, the Marshal would have been removed from office—and Korea destroyed as a consequence. These were not death camps at all. True, some chose to die in the camps while continuing their disloyalty. But Prime Minister Kim Il Sung recognized the ability of labor to reshaping the minds of the unreliable. Some were released from these c
amps after many years of hard work.
They were the ones who had learned to love the Marshal.
Chapter 5
Defeating Dogmatism
In Korea there is a legend about Chollima, the winged horse that moves at the terrific speed of one thousand ri a day. The Marshal’s Five-Year Plan grew the DPRK’s economy so quickly that it inaugurated what became known as the Chollima Movement. The Chollima Movement succeeded far beyond anything the rest of the world expected from Korea. Even the US imperialists had to admit that the north far outpaced the south—an agrarian backwater—during this period.
Industrialization and automation were the words of the day. Korean workers produced steel and they produced pig iron and they produced trucks, bulldozers, water pumps and electric locomotives. Of course there were many difficulties along the way. The first tractor manufactured in Korea ran perfectly—but only in reverse. The Korean people had to advance ten steps when others took one, and had to advance one hundred or even one thousand steps when others took ten. In the end, seven years after the devastating Fatherland Liberation War, the nation was transforming from a rural country into a socialist industrial-agricultural state.
As Korea’s economy marched with the speed of Chollima, the minds of the people sped to catch up with the Marshal’s wisdom. The Korean people were increasingly infused with the Juche idea every single day. Selfishness was on the wane, and collectivism was on the ascension. When someone was sick, neighbors brought him food. Parents looked after neighborhood children, unasked. In one very famous incident, a family was terribly burned in a fire—so people gathered in front of the local hospital to offer their skin for grafts.
Thankfully this period was one of hard work for me, but the stresses were entirely self-imposed. There were no bombs dropping, no wars, no family deaths—just my studies and my books and my organizational life. Unable to rest satisfied with the contents of my textbooks, I was far ahead of the curriculum of every subject. Once again, I always put forward the most questions in my class. Because of my insatiable desire for knowledge about the history, culture and economic life of the whole world, my teachers often had to consult various reference books published at home and abroad to find answers for me.
Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il Page 9
