They were unsure of what to say. “It’s a very commendable drawing of the Great Leader,” one of them eventually muttered.
“This isn’t a drawing of the Great Leader. Look at those smaller shapes by his feet.”
“They look like people.”
“They are people,” I grinned. “As I said, this is not a drawing of the Great Leader. It is a drawing of a statue of the Great Leader: A statue six stories high, taller than many buildings!”
As soon as we returned to Pyongyang, I orchestrated the building of an awe-inspiring bronze statue in the middle of the city, with an enormous mural of Mt. Paektu as the backdrop. As planned, the state was unveiled to the world on Prime Minister Kim Il Sung’s sixtieth birthday. The statue radiated the General’s greatness, safeguarded his high prestige and preserved his image to posterity as the benevolent father of the people. Even though the statue was gargantuan in scale, it was tiny when compared to the Great Leader’s accomplishments and how much the Korean people owed to him.
The statue instantly became the central focal point of all of Pyongyang and of Korea herself. Even now, everyone who visits the DPRK bows before it and lays down flowers as an offering. Couples getting married visit the statue to pay their respects. Because of all this activity, some Western “scholars” deduced a religious element to bowing down in front of this giant metal icon. What an absurdity! This was no idol created out of superstition, as in a religion; the statue was made out of bronze. Saying that Prime Minister Kim Il Sung had been “sent from heaven” was metaphorical. It simply meant that he was a perfect human being and the most excellent, ideal man that anyone could think of. Finally, no one claimed that the Great Leader was some mysterious supernatural absolute being governing Korea. Unlike the god of some religion, the Prime Minister was very real.
That night, after the birthday celebration had passed, the Great Leader took me back to Mansu Hill where the statue was. The glow of sunset had settled over the hill as the statue shined in its footlights. The statue’s enormous arm stretched out to demonstrate the glory of Pyongyang, its stare gazing off into a prosperous future. In the distance I could see the Party flag strongly fluttering over the Party Central Committee building’s roof. The two of us stood there for a moment, remembering days past and hopeful of those still to come.
“Time is like a flowing stream,” sighed the Prime Minister. “It’s been almost half a century since we lifted the red flag of revolution on the shores of the Songhua River.”
“I made a similar observation this morning,” I told him. “Time is something very easy to spend but very difficult to spare.”
“It’s true, it’s true,” he nodded.
Silence. Something else was in the air, I could tell. “You seem to be perturbed.”
“I’m sixty years old today. I can’t help but look back at my life and my deeds. Yes, there were many, but that wasn’t simply due to any particular skills or talents that I might have. Since I’ve been a young boy, my motto has remained the same: The people are my god.”
“Yes,” I smiled, “you’ve said that many times.”
“Because it’s true!” he exclaimed. “The masses were a great university who taught me the truth of revolution. They were the benevolent mothers who raised me. All my life, I’ve worked very hard to become their honest son. Yes, I delivered them from the fate of colonial slavery and am now building a people’s paradise. But I’m still a failure.”
I couldn’t help but burst out with a laugh. “We stand at the foot of your six-story statue, and you call yourself a failure?”
“But I am a failure. You know, this morning I watched some wild geese fly past my window. I couldn’t help but realize how tragic the situation of the Korean people has been for nearly two decades. These birds can go as they please. Yet on our peninsula, countless separated families are shedding tears, dying to see their parents or spouses or children. But they can’t, simply because the supreme task of Korean reunification still lies before us. All of the misfortunes befalling the Korean people are caused by the US imperialists’ illegal occupation of the south.”
I gently placed my hand on his shoulder. “There is another Juche motto that you coined: ‘Man is the master of everything and decides everything.’ The struggle for reunification is difficult, but it’s a task for man—and there is nothing that cannot be done by man.”
The Great Leader sighed, shaking his head. “I met a young soldier today. Do you know what he told me? His mother is on her deathbed, and she gave him a dress shirt. She made him promise to give it to his older brother if he ever managed to return home from the south. If his brother ever returned home. Not when. If. Instead of Korean families eating, drinking and laughing together, they’re poised on the demarcation line—the death line—with the latest weapons pointed at the hearts of their fellow countrymen. I’m not young any longer by any account. The thought of dying with my homeland divided is something that I can’t bear.”
“But how can we negotiate with the Park Chung Hee regime? He’s a monster. He combines the ferocity of Tojo with the barbarity of Hitler and the craftiness of a murderer.”
Prime Minister Kim Il Sung stopped and stared me right in the face. “‘President’ Park is all those things you said and more, a puppet of the US imperialists and their appointed strongman. He might be a devil but he is still a Korean devil. And if I have to go to hell to shake hands with the devil in order to bring reunification to Korea, then I’ll do so in a heartbeat! I’ll join with anyone, either in the south or overseas, as long as they desire reunification.”
I paused, considering what he’d said. “The US imperialists and their puppets will do whatever they can to make sure that Korea remains divided forever.”
“Yes,” he agreed, “there are different ideologies, ideals and systems in the north and the south. But reunification isn’t a fight between communists and capitalists. Defining the conflict in that way will never end the national division. This is a fight between independence and worshipping foreign powers, a battle of patriotism against treachery. The nation’s desire for reunification is strong enough to transcend all these things. It’s a matter of joining national patriotic forces together and expelling the foreign aggressor forces. The Americans could never hope to defeat a unified Korean nation. That’s why they’re so desperate to keep both halves apart.”
I had given the Prime Minister the wrong gift. He didn’t want another testament to his greatness as much as he wanted a unified Korea—something which Mt. Paektu symbolized like nothing else did. I thought about how to accomplish this, and came up with a plan. There had been contact made between the north and south Korean Red Cross organizations the year prior. I called up our men who’d been involved and gave them instructions to try and extend talks. Just like that, communications were extended between the Korean government and the “government” in south Korea.
In early May, mere weeks after the Great Leader’s birthday, Seoul’s KCIA Director visited Pyongyang. Our side reciprocated at the end of the month. “Make sure that you take a congenial and conciliatory tone,” I told our diplomats. “Taking steps toward reunification is the Great Leader’s most sincere wish.” By all accounts the discussions turned warm and familial. But most importantly, they were productive—tremendously so.
On July 4, 1972 Pyongyang and Seoul simultaneously issued the North-South Joint Statement, laying out three principles for future engagements between the two halves of Korea. The announcement made the entire nation seethe with excitement. So many had decided that reunification would never happen that the news was quite a shock to Koreans everywhere. Now, for the first time since the post-war truce, a genuine step had been taken to achieving that most important of goals.
THREE AGREED-UPON PRINCIPLES FOR REUNIFICATION
1) Reunification must be achieved with no reliance on external forces or interference. It must be achieved internally.
2) Reunification must be achieved peacefully without the use of
military forces against the other side.
3) Both parties must promote national unity as a united people over any differences of our ideological and political systems.
It only took the White House one day to try to quench the fire for reunification burning in the hearts of Koreans everywhere. “Even if a north-south dialogue were to be held,” declared the Americans, “the modernization of south Korea would be promoted and there would be no cuts in the US armed forces stationed there.”
The puppetmasters had pulled their strings. As an immediate consequence, the south Korean puppets did as puppets were wont to do— namely, whatever it was that their masters desired. “Now we are shifting from confrontation without dialogue to confrontation coupled with dialogue,” they said, immediately pulling back from the historic agreement. Once again, it was painfully obvious that the only things standing in the way of reunification, the cherished desire of the entire Korean nation, were the imperialist aggressors and the traitors in Seoul.
The Great Leader tried to play off the developments as if they were a temporary setback. “I’ve had many retreats in my career,” he quipped. “All of them paved the path to eventual victory.” But despite his good-natured benevolence, I could tell that this hadn’t been a glancing wound. The US imperialists had hit him where it hurt, and they had hit him hard.
Finding solace in his work, Prime Minister Kim Il Sung redoubled his efforts to further the lot of the popular masses. At the beginning of 1973 he launched the three-revolution team movement, seeking to remake the DPRK in three ways. First, the ideological revolution did away with any remaining outmoded ideas and spiritually liberated the people. Next, the technical revolution liberated the people from the fetters of nature and from arduous labor. Finally, the cultural revolution liberated the people from the cultural backwardness characteristic of the former society and made them morally perfect.
At the same time, I took my boyhood idea of criticism sessions and introduced them throughout the DPRK. Everyone in the entire nation was already a member of some group or another, this being the basis of their “organizational life.” Once a week, each group got together and every member therein read from a diary of the errors they had made in the days prior. Then, the other members of the group stood up and criticized their colleagues for defects in behavior that they had observed. By this measure everyone in the entire nation was accountable to everyone else—a practice that has continued until this day.
But as powerful as all these changes were, they didn’t bring Korea any closer to reunification.
I had hoped that news from abroad might bring the Prime Minister some solace. Korean art was increasingly a source of veneration throughout the world. My film The Flower Girl won both a special prize and a special medal at the 18th Karlovy Vary International Film Festival in Czechoslovakia, an unprecedented event in the festival’s history. The festival jurors were supposed to maintain an air of objectivity, but even they were caught clapping their hands because the film had moved them so much. None of the films from various other countries had received such an extraordinary response.
At home, the Korean opera scene was also reaching unprecedented levels of achievement. It generally took around three years to create an opera, but my revolutionary method of guidance managed to tremendously cut this time down. While completing one opera, I made preparations for another one—and before that one was completed, I started work on yet another. In this way I’d managed to create five operas in under two years, a fact unprecedented in the world history of music.
The revolutionary operas spoke of the people’s epic struggles, their journey from the dark past of oppression to the present-day Korean paradise, as helpless victims became fighters and heroes. They were moved to laughter and then to tears, feeling their own story told through the players. Art theatres throughout Koreas were packed to capacity as new operas were staged one after another.
THE FIVE SEA-OF-BLOOD TYPE REVOLUTIONARY OPERAS
Sea of Blood: See above.
The Flower Girl: A young lady acquires revolutionary consciousness after going through hardships due to a vicious landlord.
A True Daughter of the Party: A woman fighter devotes her life without hesitation to the Party, the General and the revolution during the Fatherland Liberation War.
Tell the Story, Forest!: The arduous struggle of a revolutionary who worked in an enemy ruling institution during the days of anti-Japanese struggle.
The Song of Kumgang Mountain: The dramatic reunion of a revolutionary and his daughter after liberation.
I’m sure that the Great Leader saw most if not all of these productions. But as a true revolutionary, he was far more interested in future accomplishments than in reliving past glories. The more I thought about how I could deliver what it was that he wanted, the fewer ideas I had. Unfortunately, reunification was perhaps the one area where my ideas were lacking. In April 1973 I took what I learned from filmmaking and published On the Art of the Cinema. The book was an encyclopedic masterwork that systematized my philosophy of art and literature. I dealt comprehensively with various theories concerning artistic creation and expounded on significant theoretical problems regarding its development. Besides my seed-theory, I also gave integrated answers to all questions regarding directing, acting, filming, music, fine art and makeup.
In the north, the people were following my cue and proclaiming their veneration of the Great Leader with greater frequency and visibility. For one, the Prime Minister was now declared President of the DPRK. Delegates to the WPK’s Fifth Congress pinned portrait-badges of General Kim Il Sung to their lapels, a habit that soon extended to every single person in north Korea. The people began to hang his framed portrait in their homes, setting aside one wall solely for his picture. These signs of admiration and love remain the universal norm in the DPRK to this day.
But rather than making progress, the risk of Korea’s permanent division was growing every day. The south Korean fascists had declared martial law on October 17, 1972. Any patriots who called for reunification were either repressed or simply slaughtered wholesale by the Park Chung Hee regime. Then, in June 1973, the butchers of Seoul committed themselves to a “two Korea” policy, urging simultaneous UN membership of north and south Korea and thereby enshrining national division forever. The traitors even began to whisper that the homogeneous Korean people were becoming heterogeneous. This was twaddle—but it was dangerous twaddle.
President Kim Il Sung denounced these moves, delivering his historic speech Let Us Prevent National Division and Unify the Fatherland on June 23, 1973. I did what I could to further the President’s vision, sending appeals to south Korean people in political parties and mass organizations, as well as to overseas compatriots and their groups. But my calls were largely met with silence.
Undeterred, I decided to proceed in such a way that the south Korean rulers couldn’t interfere. In late 1973—thanks in part to my work—the UN General Assembly adopted a resolution on immediate dissolving the UN Commission for the Unification and Rehabilitation of Korea, a major imperialist tool for interfering in Korean affairs. I also made a point of setting up the DPRK Mission to the UN in New York, the heart of the imperialists den. This allowed north Korea to turn the UN into a theatre of struggle, resulting in greater worldwide support on behalf of reunification. Yes, all this was progress. But it was all progress at a glacial pace.
I shared the Great Leader’s concerns. I wanted Korean reunification every bit as urgently as he did. But I was much younger than he. I had the luxury of time, and he didn’t. It was maddening how little could be done internationally, when I was doing so much on the domestic front.
In fact, my fame was spreading among the masses with every passing day as a consequence of all my revolutionary efforts. Rumors circulated that the most vexing of issues could be resolved easily under my guidance. Audiences touted the revolutionary operas and films as proof of my brilliant intelligence. All agreed that I was a true leader of the human
mind, one who had broken up virgin soil and built a flower garden of art.
Because of all this talk, many people eagerly wanted to see me for themselves. It wasn’t a difficult thing to do. I was always among the masses. I met many new people every single day—but I was so modest and so friendly that they often failed to recognize me. It always amused to speak with someone, knowing that they were unaware of who I was.
My reputation began to snowball. Soon the newspapers began to cover my activities. It felt like my picture was in the paper every single day. Though I was flattered I still felt the coverage to be a bit inappropriate; they should have been focusing on President Kim Il Sung’s revolutionary activities instead. Finally, after one particularly effusive article, I decided to visit the newspaper offices to offer some strongly-needed guidance.
I met with the entire team and was pleased to see that they were all prepared to take notes, as real journalists should. “I myself have written a great deal,” I told them, “and from my own experience I know that writing is most difficult. Therefore, those who treat, assign and write articles can be called heroes.”
They were stunned. Throughout all generations, probably nobody had ever thought that writers would be called heroes. “We’re not heroes,” one editor croaked.
“Aren’t you? In the past, whips were used to make people work. But today articles serve the same purpose. This is the might of an ideological campaign. It turns slavery into freedom. Recall how activists used to carry mimeograph machines on their backs during the revolutionary days. Learn from their lesson. You should keenly observe any phenomenon from the political point of view and judge it accordingly. Even when you depict a landscape or write a good travelogue, you must never attach primary importance to the subject itself but subordinate it to the article’s ideological content. Only then can it make a clear statement.” I paused. “And one more thing: keep my name out of the paper. Without fail, articles must hold the President in high esteem, adore him and praise him as the great revolutionary leader. But if after that there’s space for an item about myself, devote it instead to some exemplary fact about the masses.”
Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il Page 17
