That’s when I heard the gunshot.
Screams emanated through the house. I ran into the hallway, past where everyone was in a panic. Inside President Kim Il Sung’s main office was his most favored secretary, lying on the floor in a sea of blood. The man had taken a revolver and shot himself through the head. It was then that I knew that I myself didn’t have the luxury of mourning. I needed to manage the nation’s grief. The last thing Korea needed was for more people to take their own lives.
“No one say anything!” I yelled. Instantly the house grew quiet, but for the thunder rumbling over and over outside. “We will make an announcement when the time comes. I need someone to call every single member of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee.”
“I will!” volunteered one of the aides.
“Tell them to meet me at the Kumsusan Assembly Hall within the hour. Anyone who is not there will be dealt with in the harshest possible terms, and quote me on that.”
“Yes, comrade.”
“Where is the doctor?”
“Here,” the man said. Following my lead, he too composed himself and immediately took on a professional demeanor.
“Come with me. You can fill me in on the details in the car.” Despite the horrific weather conditions, we managed to get to the assembly room in record time, the doctor telling me all he knew as we sped along. As I stepped inside the room, my eyes immediately turned to President Kim Il Sung’s portrait. His picture on the wall was one that I’d seen every day. It was one that everyone in Korea saw every day. Now it took on a different meaning. Now he was looking down at us from the heavens, powerless to do anything to help us any further. Never would I have believed that the word “powerless” could ever be used in reference to the Great Leader.
One by one, the Party members entered the room, taking off their overcoats and finding their chairs. They all looked over at me in great confusion, wondering what could possibly be so urgent this early in the morning. Were we at war? Had America agreed to unification terms? Was I resigning? And where was the Great Leader?
As I took to the podium, the Party members grasped their armrests with anxiety. How could I be starting the meeting without the President? Such a thing had never occurred in the decades-long history of the WPK. I could tell that some of them suspected what had happened but were hoping that I would tell them otherwise. I held the sides of the podium, ready to explain everything. “The Great Leader...” I began. “The Great Leader, President Kim Il Sung...Last night, the Great Leader, President Kim Il Sung, he...” I literally found myself unable to speak the words. All around me the men on the stage began to burst into tears, clenching their fists tight to try and control themselves. I stepped back, motioning for the doctor to approach.
The doctor stepped up to the podium and let out a long sigh. “Comrades,” he said, “I was one of the physicians attending to the President. He had suffered from a heart disease for a very long time. This morning, at 2 a.m., he passed away.”
Everyone was stunned. They surely recalled the incident a few years back, when an official had asked what would happen when the Great Leader died, earning the man an instant lifetime sentence to the enlightenment centers. Now, this same forbidden thing was being said by the President’s doctor himself in front of everyone, right underneath the Great Leader’s portrait.
One of the Party members leapt to his feet and looked as if he were ready to charge the doctor. “You knew about this? You, his doctor? I’ll kill you myself for this outrage!” Other Party officials stood up and half-heartedly restrained him. They too felt anger that something hadn’t been done, while simultaneously feeling embarrassed that the hallowed assembly room was descending into such violence.
The doctor dropped his head and started crying openly. None of us envied the profound guilt that the man felt, guilt that he would never be able to shake. “The President often had chest pains, but he refused to awaken his aides when they were sleeping. I urged him to summon any of us at the slightest problem. Can anyone in this room imagine being able to rest, knowing that the President was suffering? But for his work, no one in Korea would ever know a peaceful night’s sleep. Yet when I insisted, he just laughed off my concerns and refused to listen.”
The angry Party member slumped back down into his seat. “The Great Leader was a stubborn type,” he said. “That comes with leadership. You’re not the only one, comrade, to try to change his mind. I’ve tried. It would have been easier for me to move Mt. Paektu.”
Now I found the strength to speak. “President Kim Il Sung was in his office, working on a document relating to reunification with his dying breath. Until the very last moment, the Great Leader was working hard for the Party, for the revolution, for the country and for the people. How many other heads of state worked so hard for so long and so thanklessly? We must hold the President in high respect as our leader forever, and do everything as the President has done. He brought Korea back to the center of the world. Korea, whose very existence had been obliterated from the maps. This morning I say that I have no doubt that General Kim Il Sung was the greatest man who ever lived!”
The room burst into applause. “Manse! Manse Chosun!”
“I will make sure,” I continued, “that the instructions left to us by the Great Leader will be carried out. They will be our one and only guideline for hundreds or even thousands of years. For now, comrades, we have the unenviable task of announcing the news to the nation tomorrow. I will be setting the period of condolence from today, July 8, until July 17.”
At that moment, I truly felt like my father’s son. It was from him that I got the strength to get through those next urgent hours. I made decision after decision for those who had lost the capacity to think clearly. As always, working allowed me to take my mind off of the pressure and strain that I was feeling.
That evening, three doctors from the medical team came into my office after performing the autopsy. I looked through the medical report and found their conclusion: “Various treatments were performed immediately, but the heart attack deteriorated and our beloved Great Leader passed away at 2 a.m. on July 8.”
I looked up and glared at the doctors. They stood there quivering, wondering if they would be made to suffer consequences for the greatest possible loss Korea had ever faced. They wanted me to scream at them— but I said nothing. I took my pen and, after their conclusion, wrote in “on account of repeated mental stress.” It was time for these men to forgive themselves, and it was time for Korea to heal.
“The Great Leader walked a life of struggle,” I told them. “He carried a burden which nobody could lessen. President Kim Il Sung had passed away, ultimately, from overwork. It was something that modern medicine could not do anything about.”
At noon the following day, the word went forth throughout Korea and abroad. The world at large broadcast the shocking news in a extraordinary manner, filling the whole planet with sorrow and grief. Stories were told about the many miraculous phenomena that occurred: Birds flew eerily round the statues, chirping loudly, adding to the people’s sorrow. Lake Chon began to boil. A cloud of dragonflies covered the sky. There was so much rain and so many flashes of lightning in Korea that people related it to the President’s death. But none of these things were miracles. The only miracle left in the world would be if the heart of the Great Leader beat again.
People wailed in every corner of the DPRK and in every corner of the earth. All throughout Korea, citizens went to one of the 34,000 statues of the Great Leader and wept bitterly. They beat the ground, they pounded their chests, they pulled their hair—some even fainted in their sadness. These moving scenes were broadcast on every news channel in the world. So extreme was the reaction that some even doubted the sincerity of the mourners—yet I can say with certainty that these were the most honest scenes to ever come out of Korea. The grief in America if their President had died would also be enormous.
Yet President Kim Il Sung wasn’t just “a” President—he
was the only President that the Korean people had ever known. He’d outlived such communist leaders as Premier Stalin and Chairman Mao. He’d outlasted ten American presidents, twenty-one Japanese prime ministers and six south Korean “presidents.” He’d led the Korean people to two enormous victories against foes far larger and more powerful than they. He was truly their father—and even Yankees can understand the pain when one loses one’s father.
Beginning on July 11, the coffin laid in state at the Kumsusan Assembly Hall. For days, crowds of Pyongyang residents thronged deep into the night to the bronze statue on Mansu Hill to express their condolences, as soaked with rain as they were with tears. I often stood there watching them, taking pride in the fact that the Great Leader had educated them into excellence.
In the week after his passing, billions of people worldwide extended their condolences to Korea. They expressed deep sympathy in varied ways. Many countries set condolence periods, hoisting flags at half-mast. The UN Secretary General said that President Kim Il Sung was “a great man who would be long remembered in history.” One expert on world-celebrity deaths said that there was been no prior precedent for such copious tears as were shed over the death of President Kim Il Sung.
I wanted the funeral ceremony to be held in an entirely new fashion, on the highest level and in the Korean style, as befitted a man unlike any other in history. Instead of a gun carriage or an armored car, as was the custom in other countries, I arranged for the coffin to be carried in the same car that President Kim Il Sung had used. Instead of the typical funeral bouquets, I had the car decorated with magnolias, the national flower. And instead of a dirge, I arranged for the immortal revolutionary hymn Song of General Kim Il Sung to be played.
But the most important part was the portrait. I commissioned one to be painted, modeling it after a brightly smiling photograph of the Great Leader. I went to the studio when it was completed, looking at it carefully and then stepping away. I even left and came back three times that day to make sure the effect wasn’t diminished. “You’ve done a great job,” I told the artist, who beamed with pride. “Though how much better it would have been if the portrait had been hung in President Kim Il Sung’s lifetime.” On July 19, the funeral procession drifted through the city of sorrow. All the people of Pyongyang, over two million of them, were clad in black and bore ribbons of white. On July 20, memorial services for President Kim Il Sung were held at central, provincial, city and county levels. As the eldest son I didn’t speak, per Korean tradition. At noon a salute of guns was fired in Pyongyang and provincial cities. Every train, every ship, anything throughout the country that could ring a bell or a siren, rang them for three minutes for the deceased President. There were no foreign delegations welcome at any of these events. The services were only for Koreans, just as the Great Leader would have wanted. But there was one Korean who was missing.
I’d invited the current southern ruler, Kim Young Sam, in hopes that he would come pay his respects. Yet apparently there was no room for decency in the south. Koreans in his region had set up censer stands in attempts to hold memorial services for the departed President, but the thugs in Seoul demonstrated an inhumane attitude toward the Great Leader’s death. They prohibited the people from offering condolences, repressing with brute force anyone who tried.
Kim Young Sam never bothered to come to Pyongyang. Nor did he dispatch an official delegation of condolence. Even though he was a filthy dirtbag, I still would have been welcomed him with open arms. What a missed opportunity for him! If the idiot had made an appearance, he might have been able to become the leader of a unified Korea. Instead, any planned meetings between the two parts of Korea were swiftly cancelled.
For the following one hundred days we mourned the Great Leader’s passing. In most other countries, the death of a head of state leads to political confusion. The new leader immediately begins to make amendments to his predecessor’s policy—sometimes even changing it completely. Such a phenomenon was alien to the DPRK. I already had my guidelines on how to run things, knowing that we wanted to live “in our way”: the way of President Kim Il Sung’s Juche idea.
Soon, however, despite their overwhelming, indescribable grief, tens of thousands of Koreans found time to write letters to the Party Central Committee. Without exception, each and every single one had the same request: for the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il to take the helm of the Party and the state. I tried to ignore these letters, but I couldn’t ignore the sentiment behind them. Finally, a prominent Party dignitary struck up the courage one day to call me and address the issue directly. “Comrade,” he said, “the election of the new President shouldn’t be delayed any longer.”
“Have we finished implementing President Kim Il Sung’s remaining behests?” I snapped.
“No,” he admitted, “we have not.”
“The election of a new President is a time for celebration, both in Korea and elsewhere in the world. It would be immoral to have the people cheering so soon after the Great Leader’s passing, don’t you think?”
“Of course,” he said. Clearly, the man only wanted this desperate national sadness to pass. But the sadness was there for a very real reason, since we’d suffered an irreplaceable loss. I knew that only a long amount of time would be able to end the tragedy.
Though the DPRK was united in our suffering, those abroad only saw division and destruction. The consensus from Western commentators was virtually unanimous: the imminent collapse of the Korean state. They only disagreed as to the form of collapse. My leadership would be unstable. There would be a military coup. The state would break up and disappear. Reforms would render Korea unrecognizable from the Juche era. It would simply be a matter of time before Korea went the way of the Soviet Union. Korea was a small country. How could she possibly stay the course, when the USSR couldn’t? The DPRK wouldn’t have to be defeated by the forces of imperialism. She would destroy herself; all it would take was some patience.
In that vein, on October 20, 1994, President Clinton sent a letter of assurance to “His Excellency Kim Jong Il, Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.” Clinton reiterated the commitments that had been agreed to during President Kim Il Sung’s last days. The DPRK would freeze her graphite-moderated reactor and other relevant facilities so that any nuclear fears would be allayed. As compensation for the consequent loss of energy, the US would provide north Korea with light-water reactors. The Americans would also deliver five hundred thousand tons of heavy oil annually until the first reactor was completed. Soon, Clinton promised, sanctions would be lifted as well.
The lifting of sanctions couldn’t come soon enough.
A modern economy can’t operate without oil. This was especially true for the DPRK, given our climate. Our northern provinces face up to nine months of cold weather every year. Even the southern provinces have a five-month winter. Due to our topography, only 20% of our land is even farmable to begin with. This meant that our agriculture was heavily dependent on industry. We needed to run our factories to produce fertilizer, chemicals and pesticides. Similarly, our agricultural provinces used electrical irrigation to prevent flooding during the rainy season. The sanctions had hurt us enormously with international barter trade. And since we didn’t have much hard currency either, we couldn’t get oil. Without oil, we couldn’t generate electricity. Without electricity, we couldn’t farm. And if we couldn’t farm, we couldn’t eat.
Things seemed temporary at first, like something that I could resolve. True, sometimes the distribution center shelves were bare. I simply decided to reduce the rations that the people were getting until the difficulties tided over—yet the difficulties didn’t tide over. I might have been a great military strategist who was admired throughout the world, but even I couldn’t predict the weather.
Nor could I fight it.
Chapter 17
The Red Death
Westerners often mock the mysterious weather phenomena that attend the Great Leader and myself. When I
visited Panmunjom one day, a dense fog enveloped me, rendering me invisible from the enemy though I was mere feet away. When I visited China, a rainstorm cleared so suddenly that the locals said the weather was recognizing my greatness. When I took a trip to Russia, the sun miraculously came out, earning me the Russian nickname of “the man who brings sunshine.”
These stories are dismissed and denied by foreigners. Yet no one disputes the reports of severe weather that occurred soon after the Great Leader’s death. First, the DPRK was plagued by hailstorms in September 1994. Over one million tons of grain were lost, an enormous amount. This called for making some very difficult decisions, so I met with other Party officials to analyze how best to handle the grim situation.
The men were nervous as we met in the conference room. It was the first time since the Great Leader had passed that they were facing such a crisis, and they wanted to offer solutions and suggestions commensurate with his thinking. “We need to explain to the people what’s happening,” suggested one official. “Then they can better figure out how to feed themselves.”
“How can they figure out how to feed themselves if there’s nothing to feed themselves with?” asked another.
“They can eat less.”
“At a certain point, eating less is not an option.”
“We’re approaching that point,” I said. “But if the Party lets the people solve the food problem themselves, then only the farmers and merchants will prosper. This will give rise to egotism and collapse the social order of our classless society. The Party will then lose its popular base and will experience meltdown as in many Eastern European countries. The US imperialists are already gloating that they’ve drawn up timetables for a three-day, three-month and three-year Korean collapse. If we the Party don’t act now, we’ll prove the Americans right. As most of you know, the leanest times aren’t the winter but the spring, when supplies have been depleted but have not yet been replenished. That’s when we have to plan for.”
Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il Page 28
