Dear Leader (36 page)

‘Perhaps they had a point?’ asked Cho-rin’s uncle.

‘Maybe,’ I said wryly. In order to stem the erosion of the Party’s control that had begun during the years of famine, Kim Jong-il urgently needed to accept South Korean aid and investment. But if the Kim Dae-joong administration bowed to pressure from the opposition party and decided to apply the principle of reciprocity, Kim Jong-il might be forced to refuse the aid and risk even more decentralisation of power.

Acts of military provocation could prevent such a scenario from being realised, because North Korea could use the bargaining chip of offering to cease provocations, as a contingency to be held in reserve. Moreover, not only would our position be strengthened if it did come to give-and-take, but once the Sunshine Policy’s unconditional aid began to flow in, a lurking threat of military confrontation
might even ensure the policy’s longevity. While South Korea had money to offer on its side, which the North really wanted, North Korea would have peace to offer, which the South would need as much, or even more. The underlying logic was simple: South Korea must continue to provide unconditional aid and keep its engagement with the North separate from political issues, or give up its peace again.

‘Wait a moment,’ interrupted Cho-rin. ‘At the very same time North Korea was planning to benefit from the Sunshine Policy, it was prepared to take military action against South Korea? That’s crazy, isn’t it?’

I shrugged. This sort of thinking wasn’t new to me. In early February 1999, Kim Jong-il ordered the UFD to plan our first military provocation against South Korea. At the time, I was staying at the Ui-Am Guesthouse at Director Im’s invitation, completing Kim Jong-il’s poem ‘Spring Rests on the Gun Barrel of the Lord’. The guesthouse was not far from Director Im’s home in Eundok Village, and it served as his control hub for coordinating the Sunshine Exploitation strategy and the strategy of military provocations. With staff from various sections all summoned to the UFD guesthouse to make their contributions, I witnessed its progress at close quarters and over a prolonged period. I can still recall many of the conversations that took place in my presence, such as the following exchange between Policy Director Chae Chang-guk and Director Im:

‘When Hyundai CEO Jung Joo-young met with us last year, we had already made agreements on investment plans. We’re struggling as it is to proceed with reconciliation and negotiations designed to bring South Korean companies on board. How on earth are we supposed to accommodate military provocations with the Sunshine Exploitation strategy?’ Policy Director Chae Chang-guk had asked Director Im, his exasperation clearly visible.

Director Im pursed his thick lips but didn’t respond immediately.
His silence on this occasion was a mark of the sworn obedience of North Korea’s most powerful men, who might command the highest authority, but who for that very reason could not engage in the questioning of an order sanctioned by Kim Jong-il. His gaze rested on Chae Chang-guk, perhaps envious of his subordinate’s freedom to voice a complaint, however trivial.

After a pause, he said, ‘Come now, Chae Chang-guk. Figure it out. You choose the people you need for the job. Give it your best.’

A week after that conversation, the UFD began to crystallise the strategy whereby, on land, North Korea would remain focused on receiving aid and pursuing economic cooperation with the South; but at sea – and only at sea – it would carry out military provocations. This arrangement, which allowed room for both the Sunshine Exploitation strategy and military provocations, was North Korea’s carefully prepared response to South Korea’s Sunshine Policy. To the outside world, we referred to our stance as the
Uriminzokkiri
policy, meaning ‘just between us Koreans’, in order to highlight that we had entered into a new era of ‘goodwill’ with South Korea. Internally, we christened it the Northern Limit Line – NLL – Strategy.

When the UFD presented the strategy to Kim Jong-il, he was extremely pleased.

To support the strategy, the Party newspaper
Rodong Sinmun
published an increasing number of articles suggesting that North Korea’s naval power could be strengthened by means of using the distinctive coastal shape of the Korean peninsula to our advantage. More overt declarations were also made in these pieces, stating how the military border between the Koreas was not restricted to the DMZ, but stretched to the Northern Limit Line at sea.

The First Battle of Yeonpyeong on 15 June 1999 marked the initial main clash in the NLL region. Presented by the North as an act of provocation by the South, it was actually ordered by Kim Jong-il himself, planned by the UFD and executed by the naval command.
The confrontation began with the North’s vessels ramming South Korean ships, and ended with a clear naval defeat for North Korea.

Although South Korea had been unambiguously provoked by the North, the Kim Dae-joong administration played this down and did not escalate the conflict. The UFD had been holding its breath and celebrated this outcome with considerable relief, because we could now proceed further with the NLL Strategy. In fact, encouraged by the patient peace-making efforts of South Korea, the North decided to focus on military provocation as the long-term basis of its foreign policy strategy, which was to be guided by the three-stage framework of Provocation, Marking Position and Maintenance. This would be carried out through the development of nuclear weapons at an international level, and through naval provocations at the inter-Korean level.

There was a specific reason behind the UFD’s decision to choose June 2002, the time of the Seoul World Cup, as the date for the second naval confrontation in the NLL region. Their goal was to move the territorial dispute from the initial stage of Provocation to the second stage of Marking Position by publicising the issue on the international stage. Following the instructions of the UFD, Naval Commander Kim Yoon-sim coordinated the Second Battle of Yeonpyeong, in which gunfire was exchanged and both sides suffered casualties and fatalities. Kim Yoon-sim had been a commander in the West Sea Force before his promotion to Navy Commander in April 2002, succeeding Armed Forces Director Kim Il-chul to the post.

On 1 May 2002, Kim Jong-il broke with his International Labour Day tradition of making on-site inspections of factories. Instead, he went to inspect the naval command post and facilities relating to the Yellow Sea engagement. Photographs published in the 2 May 2002 edition of the
Rodong Sinmun
show military figures standing next to Kim Jong-il. Most of these had taken part in the naval engagement. On
29 June 2002, the day of the World Cup third place play-off between South Korea and Turkey, North Korea began provocations that led to the second major confrontation in the NLL region. The UFD took special precautions to keep the details of the plan hidden, in order to make the clash look like an accidental escalation. The captain of the mission was given his assignment only after being summoned to Kim Yoon-sim’s private office, so as to avoid wiretapping by joint US–South Korean forces.

In December 2003, during the UFD end-of-year meeting in which we explored our agenda for the year ahead, Director Im announced the following in his speech:

‘Our objectives remain clear. The Kaesong Industrial Complex is an important source of foreign-currency earnings. Such developments must be continued, but restricted to the South–North Korean collaboration zones on land. At the same time, we must continue with systematic provocations against South Korea at sea.’

I explained this much to my drinking companions. After completing my escape to the outside world, I would later come to appreciate – from the state of inter-Korean affairs and the South’s perceptions of it – that the UFD’s coordinated response to the Sunshine Policy could not have been a more phenomenal success.

After I had concluded my long response, neither Cho-rin’s uncle nor Cho-rin said anything. I had thought Cho-rin might be uninterested in such details of policy, but she too looked stunned. Her uncle had finished his glass of wine and held it out so that Cho-rin could pour him another, but she was too preoccupied to notice.

‘I thought Kim Jong-il was just a stupid man who didn’t know how to feed his own people,’ she said. ‘I had no idea that North Korea put this much thought into policy-making.’

Cho-rin’s uncle looked up as if she had just intruded into his silent thoughts, then reached for the wine bottle. He poured himself a glass and lit another cigarette. ‘I don’t suppose I will get to meet someone
like you ever again. North Korea is a very interesting place. What does it think of China? Surely North Korea doesn’t have anyone else to lean on?’

It was now past midnight, but I was burning to tell them what relations between North Korea and China were really like.

‘The country Kim Jong-il hates the most is China,’ I said.

Both Cho-rin and her uncle seemed suddenly to sober up.

‘What do you mean? Isn’t North Korea grateful for China’s support? How could Kim Jong-il hate China?’ Cho-rin’s uncle asked.

His surprise, like many other things outsiders find incomprehensible about North Korea, has its roots in the cult of Kim, which goes beyond mere ideology or politics. There is a Korean saying that if you tell a lie one hundred times, even the person who made up the lie will eventually come to believe it. Having consolidated a cult for the North Korean people in which the Leader was omnipotent, Kim Jong-il came to believe himself in his entitlement to absolute authority. But China, more than anyone else, proved to be the thorn in his side.

The US could easily be cast as the embodiment of imperialism and corrupt Capitalism, which allowed North Korea to portray itself as the plucky underdog that dared to remain defiant against a superpower. China, however, which was supposed to be a fellow Socialist nation and on the same side as North Korea, posed endless challenges that undermined Kim Jong-il’s authority. Even in terms of ideology, China was considered a dangerous enemy to the
Juche
ideology of self-reliance, forever tempting the isolated North Korean people with the fruits of reform and openness from over the border.

Above all, the Chinese Communist Party’s pursuit of economic relations with South Korea aroused in Kim Jong-il an acute sense of betrayal. As South Korean corporations entered the market in the three north-eastern provinces of China, the Chinese public began to warm towards South Korea, but their regard for North Korea did
not improve correspondingly. The increasing flow of North Korean refugees into China only made matters worse, and Kim Jong-il issued an internal Party declaration in 1997 stating: ‘The Sino-DPRK border is an ideological border, just like the 38th parallel.’

The 38th parallel is the line on the Korean peninsula which the USSR and US agreed would mark the zones of control between North and South Korea after the end of the Second World War. Through his 1997 statement, Kim Jong-il decreed that the Sino-DPRK border, which separated North Korea’s isolation from China’s openness, was a border of ideological demarcation just as the 38th parallel represented the divide between Communism and Capitalism.

It was at this time that border patrol units along the Sino-DPRK border were promoted from rear guard and given military corps status, to reflect the importance of their work. Operatives whose work had previously focused on the US, South Korea and Japan increasingly transferred their attention to China. Several UFD colleagues who worked through the Jochongryon (Association of Chosun People in Japan) were asked to establish equivalent operations in China. As these cadres had the most extensive experience of collaborating with overseas Koreans, they were to apply their knowledge in a new context. I recalled a conversation with one of them, a former classmate from Kim Il-sung University, who aired his frustrations with me one drunken night at his home.

‘Koreans in Japan are sympathetic and have money to spare, but ethnic Koreans in China are poor scum. All they think about is how to make money through South Koreans, so why would they have anything to do with us? Even if they had information to offer in lieu of money, what would we pay them with? I don’t know if I can keep my earnings up any more.’

As with the UFD, Office 35, which was responsible for overseas intelligence operations, was also asked to turn its focus towards China in earnest. Kim Jong-il feared the intentions of his ally much
more than those of his sworn enemies. While the policy leanings of the US and other Western nations were relatively openly exposed to scrutiny by their press, the extent of China’s knowledge about North Korea was harder to establish. As China’s economy boomed, loyal cadres set up numerous companies as fronts to establish their presence in the three north-eastern provinces.

I knew this background well from my work in the UFD, but the reason behind Kim Jong-il’s visits to China in May 2000 and then again in January 2001 remained a mystery to me. I asked my Kim Il-sung University classmate, who by then was running well-established operations in China, to explain.

‘Birds listen in to private conversations in the daytime, and mice do the same at night.’ He muttered the old saying as he checked that the windows in the room were shut.

Once he was sure we could not be overheard, he began, ‘You remember when our General visited the Chinese Embassy here in Pyongyang, right? On 5 March 2000? He went with the Director of the General Political Bureau Cho Myong-rok, the Military Chief of Staff Kim Young-chun and the PAF Director Kim Il-chul.

‘You know the reason he went to their Embassy? He went to boast to China about a document we’d obtained, regarding China’s current stance on the anti-US/pro-DPRK pact made between China and North Korea in the 1950s. The document includes statements made by some of China’s top cadres, saying that China should delete the clause in the pact that automatically involved its military if war were to break out on the Korean peninsula. There are even statements in there proposing that China should request reparations from Pyongyang for its support during the Korean War. No one in China was notified before our General went to their Embassy in Pyongyang, and our state news agency announced it publicly without telling China first. It was nothing short of a diplomatic insult to China.