Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il

by Michael Malice

“It gets worse, if anything. The Yankee stench only seems to...spread.” I let out a deep breath. “We still have gas masks. Use those. That should be enough to handle their odor.”

  Now my contact simply seemed to be fighting back tears. “There’s something...else.”

  I couldn’t even begin to imagine what had been going on in that prison to cause him to have such a reaction. “Well,” I said, “tell me what it is and let’s see if we can figure out how to handle it. Get a hold of yourself, man. You’re a Korean!”

  The brave official shook his head and bit his lip. “They’re complaining about the conditions of their captivity.”

  I slammed my fist on my desk. “Everyone in the world knows how we treat our prisoners! I gave very explicit orders that these men be treated exactly the same, no better or no worse. We can’t have the Americans complaining that their captives are being treated poorly!”

  He shook his head quickly. “No, it’s nothing like that! We’ve been giving them the best of care. We even give them fish in turnip juice as a treat so that they could maintain their strength.”

  “Then what could they possibly be complaining about?”

  “...They want to have sex with each other,” he mumbled.

  Surely I misheard him. “What?”

  “They want to have sex with each other. They said that homosexuality is how they fulfill themselves as people. They say that it’s not hurting anyone, so it’s unfair for them to be prevented from doing something that is part of their private life.”

  I became nauseated. The American depravity knew no limits. “Our republic is one where people enjoy lives befitting human beings,” I said. “Even our soil is cleaner than these men—and on this soil none of that sort of activity will be tolerated!”

  The US begrudgingly opened negotiations soon after this unpleasantness. Our policy was called “3A”: acknowledge, apologize and assure. Acknowledge the spying; apologize for it; assure it would never happen again. The US imperialists balked at first. The chairman of the House Armed Services Committee even called for a nuclear attack. “Bomb, bomb, bomb!” he urged—once again demonstrating the value that Americans placed on human life.

  As talks went on, I couldn’t help but pity the negotiators sent by the American side. These men were compelled to behave like hooligans to accomplish the crazy intentions of the war fanatic Johnson. They knew how murderous Johnson could be to his own people. If they wanted to escape from the fate of JFK—by then a putrid corpse already sent to hell—they were compelled to act as their President’s puppets. Because their hands were effectively tied, very little progress was made between the two sides as the months passed.

  I made it a priority to consistently release pictures to the world press to demonstrate how well the spies were being treated. Then, at one point I noticed that the Yank bastards had come up with a conniving trick. They’d begun extending their middle fingers onto the table whenever their photograph was taken. I knew what this meant, and was a bit irritated that these dimwits thought themselves to be clever.

  Out of curiosity as to what they would say, one day I had an official inquire as to what the gesture meant. The spies responded that it was a “Hawaiian good luck sign.” Well, that was that. If the curs wanted to demonstrate how juvenile and reprehensible they were, then that was their affair. The DPRK was a classless society, but this was an entirely new dimension of classlessness.

  If that had been the end of it, I could have ignored them and no harm would have been done. The United States had many nuclear missiles in the south pointed at Pyongyang. What did it matter to me if some fingers were pointed as well? But the Americans—being Americans—had to insist on provocation after provocation.

  At one point the spies wrote what they claimed was their final confession. Included therein was a discussion of their breaching DPRK waters, saying, “penetration however slight is sufficient to complete the act.” The precise wording of this alleged witticism was actually their military’s definition of rape. Then they went on that they “not only desire to paean the Korean People’s Army but also to paean the Government and the people of the DPRK.” They figured that no one on our side knew that this word was pronounced “pee on.” Such was the character of the men of the American military. Once again, I played dumb and said nothing.

  Then came the day that one of my KPA contacts came into my office, bringing a copy of the American magazine Time with him. Before I could ask how he came across this foreign garbage, he flipped it open and showed me that one of our photos was printed inside. Then I read the caption, explaining that the “Hawaiian good luck sign” was actually the biggest, most obscene demonstration of contempt possible.

  The Yanks had forced my hand. I couldn’t play dumb any longer.

  I began to seethe with rage. I had taken these spies and looked after them with the utmost care. I fed and clothed them, and gave them a bed to sleep in at night. They repaid me by humiliating Korea publicly and internationally. I knew how this reflected on the DPRK, and I knew how this reflected on me. But most importantly I knew how this reflected on Prime Minister Kim Il Sung. I wanted to kill the Yank devils on the spot, but knew that I couldn’t.

  “What should we do about this?” the official finally asked.

  I looked up at him and narrowed my eyes. “Send them to hell.” For the next week the spies were subjected to the most concentrated form of terror they’d ever seen or dreamed was possible. They were hurt so badly that they would experience complications from these attacks for the rest of their lives. It was a merciful punishment for those villains who responded to the DPRK’s open hand with a middle finger.

  Then, in December 1968, we had a breakthrough in our negotiations. “I find it hard to believe,” the official told me, “but the Americans have offered a different approach to the solution.”

  “I will take any approach I can,” I said. “Just as long as they follow 3A.” “They’ve agreed to do so. They will acknowledge, apologize and assure what we’ve been asking for.”

  “That’s wonderful.” Then I caught myself. I knew that the shifty Yanks had something else up their sleeve. They always did.

  “I asked them several times to clarify what they were suggesting, because it seemed so bizarre and out of the bounds of all international protocol.”

  “What? What is it?”

  He looked down at his notes and spoke with care. “They will sign a document that follows 3A. However, at the ceremony—simultaneous with signing the document—they want to verbally declare that they disavow its contents and that the acknowledgment is being signed under duress.” It was so absurd that I almost thought it to be a joke. “So in addition to admitting, in writing, that they were spying on us, they want to declare, verbally, that their signature is not worth the paper it’s attached to? They want to demonstrate to the world that they will say and do anything in order to get their way?”

  “Yes, basically.”

  “Are they demanding Pueblo?”

  “No, we dissuaded them of that notion.”

  “Sign the papers,” I said quickly, “and get those filthy spies out of Korea as quickly as possible.”

  On December 23, 1968, the day before Christmas Eve, the Americans readied a statement that fulfilled all of our demands. “The Government of the United States of America shoulders full responsibility,” they wrote, “and solemnly apologizes for the grave acts of espionage against the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea after having intruded into the territorial waters of the DPRK. It gives firm assurance that no US ships will intrude again in future into the territorial waters of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.”

  The document was to be signed by Major General Gilbert H. Woodward. At the ceremony, he looked up to those present before signing the confession-apology. Then he declared that the position of the US government “has been that the ship was not engaged in illegal activities and that there is no convincing evidence that the ship at any time intruded into the
territorial waters claimed by north Korea, and that we could not apologize for actions which we did not believe took place. The document which I am going to sign was prepared by the north Koreans and is at variance with the above position. My signature will not and cannot alter the facts. I will sign the document to free the crew and only to free the crew.”

  After 236 days and twenty-eight rounds of talks, the eighty-two American spies and the rotting body of their compatriot were finally deported from the DPRK at Sachon Bridge, across the military demarcation line. The DPRK hadn’t budged a single inch during the entire conflict, while the Americans were once again brought to their knees by Korea’s superior skills. It was a clear vindication of Kim Il Sung-type tactics and the Mt. Paektu-style art of war. The world community heaped praise upon Korea, the heroic country which had yet again brought disgrace and defeat to the US imperialists.

  As for Pueblo, it was towed to the exact location on the Taedong River where, roughly 100 years prior, my great-great-grandfather and other loyal Pyongyangites had burned and sunk the US aggressor ship General Sherman. There it remains to this day, the only captive US Navy ship in the entire world. As I had promised the Great Leader, the spy ship was turned into a museum for visitors to learn about the depths of American arrogance and villainy. The framed apology letter signed by the defeated Yanks hangs inside along bullet-holes from the ship’s capture.

  For both Prime Minister Kim Il Sung and myself, the Pueblo incident marked a close to nearly two decades of struggle. First we came for the flunkeyists—those who believed in foreign ideas—and we defeated them. Then we came for the dogmatists—those who believed in outdated ideas—and we defeated them. Then we came for the factionalists—those who believed in differing ideas—and we defeated them. Then, finally, the Americans came for us—but we defeated them all the same.

  What the struggle proved was that the Korean masses didn’t need foreign or outdated or differing ideas. We only needed one idea from one person, and that is exactly what we had: the Juche idea of the Great Leader Kim Il Sung. With the defeat of all our enemies, at home and abroad, there would be no more liberal thoughts, no more selfish deeds, no more bourgeois disagreement anywhere in the DPRK. We could finally revolutionize the entire nation along Juche lines without any resistance whatsoever. North Korea was now one nation, under the Great Leader, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all—and there was no one in the entire country, in the entire world, who could do anything to stop us.

  This was paradise.

  Chapter 8

  Planting Seeds

  We started with the books.

  European books belonged in Europe, not in Korea. Any text written by a foreign author was therefore slated for burning. The masses made a very public show of destroying these relics from the past. They couldn’t be more delighted to remove all foreign, contaminating ideas out of their homes. A few volumes were kept in the libraries, available upon request—which grew fewer and fewer. Thanks to the educational work of the Party, people literally knew better than to ask for such dangerous things.

  The books had been thoroughly demonstrated to be outdated and pointless. No one would consider, say, keeping rotting food in their cupboards. These books were just as rotten as spoiled food, but many times more dangerous. Rather than causing a stomachache, they could ruin a person’s character. Destroying all foreign works wasn’t an example of censorship. It was simply progress.

  It wasn’t just my view that the Juche idea had been indisputably proven to be the true and correct course for the DPRK. In the early 1900s, Korea had been a country full of people living in medieval ignorance, weaving in dimly-lit cottages in a centuries-old way. This old Korean society was reduced to an insignificant colony of Japan, and later devastated by the war launched by the US imperialists. The American aggressors had claimed that the DPRK’s postwar rehabilitation couldn’t be completed even in one hundred years—but Prime Minister Kim Il Sung accomplished it in three.

  By the end of the 1960s Korea had advanced yet further. Other nations had taken one or even two centuries to industrialize, but the DPRK had accomplished that feat in a little over a decade. Thanks to techniques such as the Taean work system and the Chollima Work Team Movement, Korea had developed a mighty machine-building industry, a thriving light industry and a strong agricultural base—all world-stunning miracles.

  Further, Korean industrialization had been done “in our way.” In Western countries, automation had increasingly become an element of production operations. The technology was used to assign murderous work quotas based on high-speed photographs of one-hundredth or even one-thousandth of a minute, the workers’ every motion under the control of automatic signal systems. They were reduced to being the machines’ slaves, becoming mentally deranged and crippled for life. Those less fortunate were deprived of jobs overnight and left to roam the street, cursing robots and their inventors. But in Korea, automation was simply a function of easing the workers’ conditions and improving living conditions for all the people.

  Maintaining these great advances called for hermetically sealing the nation as much as possible. Any Koreans who had to venture abroad always had family left behind, to ensure their safe and loyal return. Once they came back, they spent months laboring on farms to eliminate any corrupting ideals and to always remember the value of Juche. In addition, most of those who had been educated in other countries were sent off to be reeducated in the enlightenment centers.

  The last step was the arts. It was no secret that bourgeois art contributed to the degeneration of society, drawing people down into an abyss of corruption by beautifying capitalism’s law of the jungle. It amounted to nothing more than a portrayal of extreme forms of egoism and of glorifying decadent customs. Obviously, any such Western art was eagerly sought out and destroyed.

  But try as I might, I couldn’t completely eliminate the lingering effects of the Kapsan faction on the Korean arts. The ideas were still subtly but firmly rooted in many aspects of culture. What was crucial was the development of art “in our way,” art that would concord with the interests, idea and sentiments of the Korean people. This would take more than merely changing things at the edges. It required nothing less an artistic revolution.

  Understanding all this, the Great Leader called a meeting of the Propaganda and Agitation Department to discuss how best to recreate the Korean arts entirely. “We need to create revolutionary arts for the nation,” he told us. “I am here to solicit your opinions as to how.”

  “I will take on this responsibility!” I announced.

  All eyes in the room turned to look at me. I heard the Party members whispering. The role couldn’t have been any more important, but they’d already seen how I’d handled myself in my Party work. They knew how I’d handled the Kapsan faction. The more they thought about it, the more comfortable and even excited they became about the idea of my taking command.

  “Where would you begin?” asked the Great Leader.

  “I would take on the challenge in two simultaneous directions,” I said. “First, in film. The cinema is a composite art which organically combines a variety of artistic and literary means. Developing the cinema first and propagating its success guarantees all the other domains of art will quickly develop.”

  “And the other direction?”

  “Literature.” I didn’t bother to explain. No one needed to be told how well-read I was.

  Prime Minister Kim Il Sung considered what I was saying and quickly agreed. “I think you’re exactly the comrade who should be handling this,” he decided. With that, all the cadres in the room began to applaud.

  That very day, I gave an enormous amount of thought as to how to proceed. I concluded that my overwhelming goal in rebuilding Juche art would to help the masses see the truth. This would teach them how to think and how to behave justly, until not the slightest discord existed among them. It was therefore crucial that art be presented in a manner which the people were fond of and could easil
y understand—none of this ambiguous Mona Lisa nonsense. Juche art would need to demonstrate that loyalty to the leader was paramount and that being faithful to the leader was at once being faithful to the people.

  I decided that the best way to demonstrate this artistically would be to adapt the relationship between the leader and the people to that of a parent and his children. The more luster I added to Prime Minister Kim Il Sung’s greatness, the more prominent I made it, the deeper the people would adore and respect him. The Great Leader was a brilliant flower, and the masses were the bees that were attracted to him.

  I immediately held a month-long conference with all the working artists of the Party to purge any factionalist ideas that still lingered in the group. I stressed to them how the Prime Minister had repudiated both the flunkeyist doctrine of art-for-art’s sake and the dogmatist tendency to exclusively focus on ideology while ignoring artistry. Week after week, we analyzed various works of art and engaged in criticism and self-criticism. The same criticism sessions that had worked so well in school worked even better in a professional setting.

  Then I decided to revolutionize the two specific fields that I had suggested to the Great Leader. I first began with literature, for the simple reason that I already had so much experience with writing. It was clear that creating a vigorous literary revolution would depend on having a solid organizational plan at the outset. A popular proverb states that “well begun is half done,” meaning the beginning of any given work was the most difficult and most important aspect. Personally, I didn’t think the proverb went far enough. I always felt that a strong beginning signified 100% success and not merely half-done work. If this first revolution went well, the others would follow.

  I called a meeting of all the Party writers one afternoon. As a subject of critical discussion, I brought a popular recent novel to the group. “Look at this book,” I said. “In the story, a widower falls in love with a former concubine. We need books about the type of love that is permeated with Korean morality, not with the greasy love of Western people. How would you change this plot?”