Dear Leader (20 page)

As the Cultural Revolution got under way in China, during which time Mao’s wife and first lady, Jiang Qing, held great sway, there was a parallel development in North Korea. Kim Sung-ae, as first lady, gained considerable authority at this time, with North Korea’s political elite lining up behind her as if she were a North Korean mirror of Jiang Qing. Because Kim Sung-ae’s son Kim Pyong-il – and not her stepson Kim Jong-il – was being prepared for succession by Kim Il-sung’s associates, Kim Jong-il now found himself in a situation where his father’s supporters had turned into his political enemies. To this day, the mere mention of Kim Pyong-il’s role in events leading to Kim Jong-il’s succession remains a blasphemously taboo subject in North Korea.

Although North Korea states officially that Kim Jong-il began his career in the Party’s Organisation and Guidance Department, this is not the case. It’s a deliberate distortion to provide a fitting start to the career of the future Dear Leader. At this stage, with North Korea’s power elite firmly behind Kim Sung-ae, and with even Kim Il-sung’s younger brother Kim Yong-ju pitted against him, Kim Jong-il had been placed well away from the centres of power, relegated to a post in the Propaganda and Agitation Department.

Kim Jong-il did not show signs of turning against his father at that time. In fact, in his work in the PAD, he contributed to the cultification of Kim Il-sung and the glorification of the anti-Japanese activities of his father’s guerrilla comrades. His activities were so expansive that a monthly magazine called
Recollections of the Anti-Japanese Fighters
, established under his direction, came to be considered as compulsory reading nationwide. Many statues of Kim Il-sung and anti-Japanese fighters appeared during this time too. Ultimately, Kim Jong-il’s early years in the PAD provided him with
a crucial set of cultural and ideological tools that he would grow to depend on when he eventually came to rule through his dictatorship of the mind.

Even by the end of the 1960s, Kim Il-sung had not yet been established as a godhead. At the end of 1968, Minister of National Security Kim Chang-bong attempted an armed coup against Kim Il-sung. In January 1969, after Kim Il-sung had officially purged Kim Chang-bong and his faction, he appointed General Choi Hyon as a replacement. In gratitude, Choi Hyun pledged loyalty to the absolute rule of the Supreme Leader. But he was a strict conservative who believed in the hereditary transfer of power through an elder son, and it was he who secured for Kim Jong-il a place in the OGD through a closed Party meeting in the summer of 1969. In turn, Kim Jong-il kept Choi Hyon’s son, Choi Ryong-hae, as his right-hand man for the rest of his life.

Kim Sung-ae’s factional power, however, was not to be easily overcome. Her elder brother Kim Kwang-hop was the Vice Prime Minister, and enjoyed the support of Kim Il-sung’s younger brother, Kim Yong-ju. Among themselves, Kim Il-sung’s own supporters openly referred to his son Kim Pyong-il as the successor to the Supreme Leader.

However, Kim Jong-il found a way of ridding himself of these forces in the Three Great Revolutionary Goals, which imitated the structure of the Red Guards of China’s Cultural Revolution. While China’s Red Guards aimed to eliminate Capitalist and revisionist elements, the three revolutionary goals for North Korea were ideology, industry and culture. In the manner of the Red Guards, units made up of youths about to finish their education were set up all over the country to implement the Three Revolutionary Goals. Their main enemy was the ‘abuse of power and corruption of provincial bureaucrats’. As Central Party cadres with ties to regional forces were eliminated one by one, Kim Jong-il’s power grew centrally, as well as through building on solid regional support.

His father Kim Il-sung’s authority at this time was channelled through the government, which had ruling powers. In this climate, Kim Jong-il was seen as no great threat to the power of his father and his supporters because he was merely an employee of the Workers’ Party, which was just one of many bureaucratic institutions. Apart from Choi Hyun, no other minister even considered him as a potential successor to Kim Il-sung. But as Kim Jong-il’s power base was the Workers’ Party, it was the only means at his command to expand his influence and confront the government. He found the pivot he needed in the philosophy of
Juche
.

Juche
was based on a focus on the person, and as such was a humanist philosophy. Kim Jong-il oversaw a change to this philosophy, according to which a person now had to be part of an institution to progress, and those who were brought into such an institution could triumph only under the excellent guidance of a Supreme Leader (
Suryong
).
Juche
thus became a ‘
Suryong
-ist’ ideology centred not on the individual person, but on one individual alone: his father, Kim Il-sung. (The original author of
Juche
, Hwang Jang-yop, who was the Party’s international secretary, eventually fled from the creation he had spawned to seek exile in South Korea in 1997.)

By 1973, ‘Kimilsungism’, which asserted that the Supreme Leader guided the Party and the Party led the people, had become the omnipotent weapon of the Party. It was from this time that Kimilsungism became the people’s ideology, and loyal obedience to the cult of Kim became the moral conscience of every Party member. Anyone seen to be challenging this moral conscience, in however slight a way, would be sent with three generations of his or her family to a gulag where the family line would come to an end. It was also during this time that surveillance institutions, formerly under the remit of the Ministry of Social Security, were given independence in the form of the newly created Ministry of State Security, which reported directly to the OGD.

Kim Jong-il elevated the authority of the OGD and PAD, which
were his bases of power, by emphasising society’s need for the Party’s organisation, guidance and propaganda if Kimilsungism was to be realised. In this way, he found a means to accommodate the cultification of Kim Il-sung within his Party-based powers, or rather, have the abstract cultification of the Supreme Leader
support
his own Party-based powers.

When Jiang Qing was purged in China in 1976, her fall reflected badly on her North Korean ‘mirror’, Kim Sung-ae, who became isolated and fell from favour. After his stepmother Kim Sung-ae lost her position as head of the Women’s Committee and her key to outside relations, Kim Jong-il’s position was strengthened.

To consolidate the Party’s claim to ‘upholding’ the Supreme Leader’s guidance, powers to appoint personnel were removed from the government, and Kim Jong-il’s political enemies were vigilantly watched under the pretext of ideological surveillance by the OGD’s section for Party guidance. The North Korean state, previously founded on the twin powers of the Workers’ Party and the government, came to be entirely dependent on the Party. By Kim Jong-il’s time, the Party had replaced all the functions of government, which had become no more than a hollow shell and a historical remnant.

But why did Kim Il-sung stand by and do nothing about his son’s consolidation of Party-based power? The answer is: because he saw only the cultification of himself, as did the outside world. Kim Jong-il’s consolidation of Party power was clothed in a moral upholding of ‘Kimilsungism’ and advertised itself through the language and ideology of the Supreme Leader’s legacy. But while Kim Jong-il appeared to remain loyal to his father on the surface and in public perception, behind the scenes he was steadily reducing old guard powers, preparing the system for the time when one man – he himself – would have absolute and concentrated power to determine the future of North Korea.

In the beginning, it started innocently enough with the replacement
of direct proposals to Kim Il-sung with cassette recordings, under the pretext of lightening his father’s duties. The recording of proposals on tape effectively routed all proposals for Kim Il-sung’s ratification through Kim Jong-il, who controlled the technology. Eventually, every single proposal was routed through the OGD, so that only the selected and redacted ones would be sent up for Kim Il-sung’s approval. By 1980, Kim Jong-il had already completed a system whereby all real powers were vested in one man, himself, as the OGD Party Secretary, while on the surface authority appeared to rest with Kim Il-sung as the Supreme Leader.

Kim Jong-il consolidated his absolute Party-based power through the OGD by monopolising five spheres of influence.

The first was the OGD’s exclusive right to allocate positions of departmental director level and above in the core institutions. Also, in the military, generals in the key regiments were directly appointed by the OGD.

The second was the OGD’s absolute right to ‘Party guidance’, which allowed it to intervene in every administrative task carried out at any level. It did this by strictly monitoring regional and departmental Party Secretaries, and through a network of isolated cell-like structures. The result was that its military arm could summon any of North Korea’s highest-ranking generals to grovel and be humiliated, while its foreign affairs arm exercised the same authority over cadres who maintained contact with the outside world, such as diplomats or businessmen.

The third was the OGD’s absolute surveillance powers, which allowed it to monitor, purge or banish any cadre. The structure of this section was extremely compartmentalised yet centralised, designed to uphold and facilitate Kim Jong-il’s rule by terror. North Korea’s secret police, the Ministry of State Security, reported directly to this section of the OGD.

The fourth was the Department’s absolute right to ratify and sanction policies. All institutions in North Korea had to route
their proposals through the OGD’s reporting section in order to be authorised by Kim Jong-il before they became valid.

The fifth was the OGD’s responsibility for the protection of and catering for Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. This meant overseeing
all
concerns pertaining to the Kims, as well as the procurement of luxury goods and operation of the Guards Command.

Somewhat ironically, the source materials for the process of this meticulous consolidation of power are preserved in the Party’s History and Literature Institute, categorised under the factional fighting that occurred in the process of hereditary succession.

In the course of my research for the
Annals of the Kim Dynasty
, any questions that I had were answered efficiently by employees at the Institute. They were very helpful, often going out of their way to send me additional and related supporting materials. But even in this archive, which was supposed to contain all the secrets of North Korean history, there existed no single document that summed up the fierce rivalry which existed between the factions of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. Although we reached our conclusion reluctantly, the overwhelming evidence that demonstrated the enmity and power struggles between the son and the father (including documents showing how father and son had announced directly opposing policies at the same time) left us with no alternative. We had to concede that, while Kim Jong-il’s legitimacy might have been based on hereditary succession from father to son in terms of the official narrative, in reality it had involved usurpation by the son of the father. Kim Jong-il had consolidated power by wresting it
away from
his father instead of receiving it
from
him.

I became terrified by the knowledge that Dear Leader was neither compassionate nor divine, and had acquired his power by acts of terror, betrayal and revenge. Once, while drinking tea with one of
the writers in our group whom I trusted most, I made a confession. ‘I want out,’ I said. ‘The secrets are too much for me to bear. I don’t think I can ever have a free conscience again, knowing the truths behind the lies.’

He replied, ‘Don’t be stupid. There’s no way you can stop now. The best you can do is to keep it all shut inside you, and don’t mention anything to the others, okay?’

To my great relief, I was released from completing the full duration of my duty to the
Annals
when the order came from Director Im to compose the UFD’s epic poem for the year 2000 as a tribute to Kim Jong-il. But although I returned to my familiar bed in my family home, I didn’t feel I’d returned to a familiar world. I knew my past as a secret historian of Kim Jong-il would haunt me forever, like a watching shadow of suspicion. What frightened me more than anything was that I had forbidden knowledge about the Leader, and I would never be free of it.

The most troubling aspect for me at the time was Kim Jong-il’s merciless rule by purging, which did not spare members of his own family. As soon as Kim Jong-il had consolidated his power, he used the ‘side-branch’ notion to designate members of his family as the side-branches of a tree that must be pruned for it to grow tall and strong. To begin with, his uncle Kim Yong-ju and stepmother Kim Sung-ae were placed under house arrest; and in 1981 he ordered that the children of Kim Il-sung’s supporters should not be accepted into the Central Party. This became fixed as an internal regulation in the OGD.

Kim Il-sung’s associates began to disappear one by one, and those who remained grew increasingly disgruntled by the fact that their children were being relegated to provincial postings, dead-end government positions or military ranks outside the power structure of the Party. The disaffected supporters of Kim Il-sung confronted the issue by going as a group to the Mount Keumsu assembly hall
(also known as the Palace of the Supreme Leader) on 15 April 1982, Kim Il-sung’s birthday, to discuss the issue with the Supreme Leader himself.

By this time, however, Kim Il-sung was merely a figurehead. All power in the state had been meticulously routed to Kim Jong-il through the OGD’s tentacled reach, with positions of real authority occupied by Kim Jong-il’s classmates from Kim Il-sung University. Kim Jong-il’s power over the Supreme Leader himself was absolute: Kim Il-sung had to request permission from the Party’s OGD before he could meet up with any of his supporters or old comrades. His own powers were restricted to those that would continue to make him appear powerful to North Koreans and outsiders alike, such as on-site inspections and diplomatic authority. Even Section 1 of the Guards Command, the personal bodyguards of Kim Il-sung, now answered directly to the Party’s OGD. In this way, a leader who had once received close protection from a loyal cohort of guards lived out his last days under the close surveillance of a cohort loyal to Kim Jong-il.