Dear Leader (3 page)

I attempt some mental arithmetic. How much would this project cost? At that very moment, the General wheels round, catching me off guard, and thunders, ‘You, boy! Are you the one who wrote that poem about the gun barrel?’

I bark my carefully worded response: ‘Yes, General! I am honoured to be in your presence!’

He smirks as he approaches me. ‘Someone wrote it for you, isn’t that right? Don’t even think about lying to me. I’ll have you killed.’

As I begin to panic, Dear Leader bursts into hearty laughter and punches me on the shoulder. ‘It’s a compliment, you silly bugger. You’ve set the standard for the whole
Songun
era.’

I find myself unable to respond, and it doesn’t help that Kim Yong-sun is glaring at me. Before the General takes his seat, Kim Yong-sun finds an opportunity to scold me. ‘You stupid bastard. You should have thanked him. You should have responded by offering to write poems of loyalty even from your grave,’ he hisses into my ear.

When he is done with me, he puts his joyous face back on and rushes to attend to Kim Jong-il. Returning to his own seat, he gently smoothes his hands over his buttocks before they touch the chair, just as a woman does with her dress as she sits down. The other cadres are no less formal. Instead of real people sitting on chairs, it is as if sculptures are set around the room, incapable of movement. Dear Leader’s Maltese puppy is the most active being in the room, whimpering excitedly and pacing around its owner’s feet.

Kim Jong-il seems not to be interested in small talk and the white Maltese puppy holds his attention. The General remains focused on what the dog is doing, what it might be thinking. But every now and then he shouts, ‘Hey, Im Tong-ok!’ or ‘Hey, Chae Chang-guk!’ and the chosen man rushes towards him to be consulted. It makes for a strange scene, in which he holds the puppy in higher esteem than any of his most loyal men.

Ten or fifteen minutes later, a pair of double doors opens. Men in white dinner jackets and red bow ties appear with salvers held high. At the other end of the room technicians are bent double, humbly moving to and fro on the stage, adjusting the microphone and lighting. The band are seated and strike up; the feast is about to begin. I can’t help but feel it’s all a bit of an anti-climax, having expected to hear a sublime new saying or pearl of wisdom from Dear Leader. But as the food and music get under way, I lose myself in the occasion. I become mesmerised.

Every time a new course is brought into the room, the lights in the wall panels change to an eerie new colour. When the vegetable dish comes out, the lights go from a vivid grass-green to light purple; with the meat dish, the lights go from pink to a deep red. It is astonishing to discover that lighting can be part of a meal’s presentation. As for the fish course, the platter it is presented on glitters so spectacularly that I can’t taste the food. Tiny spotlights are set around the big grey serving platter, making the fish scales shimmer.

The wine is slightly tangy. My steward, who like all Kim Jong-il’s staff belongs to the Guards Command and has a military rank, points to a label on the bottle that reads
Baedansul
. He describes its contents as an 80 per cent proof liquor developed by the Foundational Sciences Institute. This is the academic body devoted to the study of Dear Leader’s health, and as such also falls under the Guards Command. Three thousand researchers work there, planning and preparing medicines and dishes specifically designed to extend Kim Jong-il’s longevity. In order to test the effects of different medicines and foods, they operate a testing unit made up of men selected from a nationwide pool that shares his illnesses and physique. I am proud to understand more than most about this important work, as a friend’s older brother works at the Institute.

The climax of our banquet is dessert. I am presented with a glass containing a large scoop of ice cream, over which the steward pours clear liquor. He lights the spirit and the flames dance blue and wild.
As I scoop some of it up with a small spoon, flames rise with it. Kim Yong-sun taps me on the shoulder and advises me, ‘Blow it out first,
then
eat it. Don’t have too much, though. It’s very strong stuff.’ He shares the information boastfully.

I lose myself momentarily in the contradictory sensations of heat and cold in my mouth. Then Kim Jong-il waves me over.

When you visit the house or workplace of a cadre who has had the privilege of attending a banquet hosted by Dear Leader, the wine glass that clinked against his in a toast is always kept in pride of place in a display cabinet. I realise that Dear Leader wants to provide me with such a treasure. The steward, who has been lingering close by for this moment, quickly hands me a large wine glass. Unprepared, I hastily take it over to Kim Jong-il, who fills it with dark red wine, saying, ‘Keep up the good work.’

As I stand bent double at the waist in a deep bow, my eyes cast down, I can see his feet under the tablecloth. He has taken off his shoes. Even the General suffers the curse of sore feet! I had always thought him divine, not even needing to use the toilet. That’s what we were taught at school and that’s what the Party says: our General’s life is a continuous series of blessed miracles, incapable of being matched even by all our mortal lifetimes put together. With this glorious invitation into his circle, I had thought I would enter and partake of a divine dimension in time.

But here I am, looking into his shoes, which have high heels and an inner platform at least six or seven centimetres high. Those shoes have deceived his people. Although his thin, permed hair adds to the illusion of height, Dear Leader can’t be more than one metre sixty without those shoes.

After his earlier majestic commands, the way the General speaks at the table confounds me too. He uses coarse slang. In all the books and lectures quoting his words that I’ve read and heard since my childhood, his words serve not only as examples of perfect usage, but also reveal the truth of our homeland. Dear Leader’s speech is always
elegant, beautiful and, above all, courteous to his people. Yet tonight he muddles subject and predicate. He doesn’t even call anyone Comrade, but addresses cadres as ‘You!’ or ‘Boy!’ It doesn’t make sense.

Towards the end of dessert, the coloured lights dim. A woman appears on stage wearing a Western-style white dress that reveals her shoulders. The band starts to play an instrumental prelude, and she begins to sing a Russian folk song.

As she sings, Kim Jong-il starts to twitch. Although the spotlight is on the woman, the protocol of the occasion dictates that we should focus our attention on him alone. We watch as he draws out a gleaming white handkerchief. I blink, and the cadre sitting next to me reaches for his own handkerchief. Oddly, others also begin to withdraw their handkerchiefs. Then the General bows his head a little and starts dabbing at the corners of his eyes. I cannot believe what I am seeing. Here am I, beholding his tears! What will become of me after witnessing such an intimate thing?

My eyes shut tight in awe and terror.

When I open them, I see the most extraordinary thing I have ever seen in my life. My comrades, who have been beaming with the joy of feasting with Dear Leader, have begun to weep. How did this happen? Can I escape this banquet with my life intact? But before I can think any further, my own eyes feel hot and tears begin to flow down my cheeks. Yes, I must cry. I live my life in loyalty to the General. Loyalty not merely in thought and deed, but loyal obedience from my soul. I must cry, like my comrades. As I repeat these words in my heart,
I must cry, I must cry
, my tears grow hotter, and anguished shouts burst from somewhere deep within me.

Amid my uncontrollable shaking, the song comes to an end. There is no applause, but the room has filled with the sound of wailing. As the lights are slowly turned up, our crying quickly diminishes to whimpers, as if we had practised together in advance.

Wiping my eyes, I glance round, to look at the faces of the cadres around me. They were crying only moments ago, but they are now
watching Dear Leader intently, awaiting instructions for the next act of synchronicity. For the first time in my life, loyal obedience makes me cringe.

On my journey back home, I find myself haunted by a disturbing question. Why did Dear Leader cry? I am aware that North Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department chose to portray him as full of tears after his father Kim Il-sung’s death in 1994, when the state distribution system fell apart all over the country. By early 1995, the rumours that people were starving to death in the provinces were made plausible by what was happening in Pyongyang itself.

When food distribution centres started shutting their doors and the numbers of people absconding from work to find food increased like a virus, the Party slogan ‘If you survive a thousand miles of suffering, there will be ten thousand miles of happiness’ was introduced. The state of food emergency was officially referred to as the ‘Arduous March’ and the population was urged to follow the example set by our General, at the forefront of the struggle.

As evidence, the song ‘The Rice-balls of the General’ was played over and over again on television. The song’s lyrics claimed that Dear Leader was travelling hundreds of miles around the country each day to offer support to his people, all while sustained by just one rice-ball. Before the Arduous March, television broadcasts had only ever shown the smile of our Leader, as he led us towards a Socialist victory. People began to cry spontaneously, uncontrollably and en masse when they saw the tears of our divine Dear Leader for the first time on television.

As I continue on my way homewards, I am profoundly unsettled by my reaction to seeing Kim Jong-il’s tears in the flesh. A distressing thought grips me, and it is hard to shake off: those were not the tears of a compassionate divinity but, rather, of a desperate man.

I WAS LOYAL
and fearless. I didn’t have to live in terror of the consequences of being late for work. Nor did I need to keep my head down like other cadres in an attempt to be invisible at Party meetings, for fear of becoming the next target of criticism. I had immunity, thanks to Dear Leader, who had sanctified me after being moved by a poem I wrote in his honour.

The world might damn North Korea as a ruthless regime that kills its own people, claiming that the system is oppressive and run by physical force. But this is only a partial view of how the country is governed. Throughout his life, Kim Jong-il stressed, ‘I rule through music and literature.’ Despite being the Commander-in-Chief of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Chair of the National Defence Commission, he had no military experience. In fact, he began his career as a creative professional, and his preparation for his succession to power began with his work for the Party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department (PAD).

To express this in the language of ‘dictatorship’ understood by the outside world, Kim Jong-il wielded a double-edged sword: yes, he was a dictator by means of physical control, but he was also a dictator in a more subtle and pervasive sense: through his absolute power over the cultural identity of his people. In a mode characteristic of Socialism, where ideology is more important than material goods, he monopolised the media and the arts as a crucial part of his ambit of absolute power. This is why every single writer in North Korea
produces works according to a chain of command that begins with the Writers’ Union Central Committee of the Party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department.

Anyone who composes a work that has not been assigned to the writer through this chain of command is by definition guilty of treason. All written works in North Korea must be initiated in response to a specific request from the Workers’ Party. Once the writer has handed in his piece, it must then be legally approved before being accepted as a new work. Those writers who produce distinguished works under these standards are of course rewarded. The role of a North Korean writer, in each set task, is to create the best articulation of the assigned idea according to a combination of aesthetic requirements determined in advance and in consultation with the Workers’ Party. It is not the job of a writer to articulate new ideas or to experiment with aesthetics on his or her own whim.

Literature thus plays a central role not only in North Korean arts but also in the social structure of the country. Before 1994, when Supreme Leader Kim Il-sung was alive, the art of the novel was pre-eminently in vogue. Nearly all the top state honours, such as the Kim Il-sung Medal, the Order of Heroic Effort and the title of Kim Il-sung Associate, were swept up by the state’s novelists. The novel provided a perfect narrative format through which writers might expound upon the great deeds of the Supreme Leader.

It also helped that in his last years, Kim Il-sung lived immersed in the world of novels. He took a special interest in works written by novelists belonging to the April 15 Literary Group, a First Class literary institution whose remit is the revolutionary history of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. As is the case with First Class train stations, the term ‘First Class’ is incorporated into the job title of the nation’s professionals who work only on matters directly related to the Kim family. In fact, Kim Il-sung’s own memoir,
With the Century
, was compiled by a group of First Class novelists from the April 15
Literary Group. In elite circles, the memoir was known as one of Kim Il-sung’s favourite books. Once, at a gathering of North Korean cadres who had family connections in Japan, Kim Il-sung described, to the amusement of his guests, how much he enjoyed reading
With the Century
. After his death, and as his son Kim Jong-il’s rule became established in the institutions of the state, the status of novelists changed. Poetry became the literary vogue. This was not due solely to Kim Jong-il’s preference for the form. The phenomenon was reinforced, if not triggered, by a shortage of paper when the North Korean economy collapsed and people scrabbled just to survive. When there wasn’t even enough paper in the country to print school textbooks, not many people could afford to own a hefty revolutionary novel. With poetry, however, the necessary tenets of loyalty to the Kim dynasty could be distilled potently into a single newspaper page. This is why poetry emerged as the dominant literary vehicle through which Kim Jong-il exercised his cultural dictatorship.