Dear Leader (6 page)

‘Quiet, please. We will now begin our meeting to discuss the literary work of the United Front Department that will be published to commemorate the Supreme Leader’s immortal life on 8 July. I have already asked Comrade Kim Kyong-min to call his poem “An Ode to the Smiling Sun”. In any event, we must stick to the “Smiling Sun” motif.’

As Director Im said, the only way to eulogise the Supreme Leader’s immortal life was through the motif of the ‘Smiling Sun’. The Workers’ Party had conducted propaganda activities focused on Kim Il-sung and his successor, Kim Jong-il, for over half a century. In the context of this tradition, ‘Smiling Sun’ was a relatively new motif. It had first been seen at the funeral of Kim Il-sung in 1994.

Usually, funeral portraits showed the deceased wearing a sombre expression. However, declaring that ‘The Supreme Leader is alive and with us forever’, Kim Jong-il ordered that the standard funeral portrait of his father be exchanged for one of him smiling. From then on, the Supreme Leader was referred to as a ‘Sun’ whose immortal life was a ‘smile’.

On 8 July 1997, exactly three years after Kim Il-sung’s death, the Central Party Committee, Central Military Committee, National Defence Commission, Central People’s Committee and Parliamentary Committee issued a joint declaration that Kim Il-sung’s birthday was to be inaugurated as the ‘Sun Festival’. At the same time, it was declared that our calendar was to be changed. Kim Il-sung’s birthday,
15 April 1912, was set as the first year of the new
Juche
calendar,
Juche
being the state-ratified philosophy of North Korea based on the principle of self-reliance. The year ad 2000 became
Juche
89.

‘Now, Comrade Kim Kyong-min will expound on this theme.’

Only after someone tapped me on the arm did I realise that everyone was waiting for me to rise and speak. I leapt to my feet. ‘Although the title of this work refers to the “Smiling Sun”, I would like the poem to make a literary allusion to tears.’

I could hear murmuring around me.

‘If you examine the “Smiling Sun” works produced until now by the Party or military, they refer to the Supreme Leader’s smile predominantly in the context of our achievements,’ I explained. ‘For example, the Supreme Leader smiles from the height of his immortality because he is satisfied with the great virtue and legacy politics of our General’s rule, or as he peers down with pleasure at our unique kind of Socialism, which remains steadfast despite threats and pressure from imperialistic forces. In my view, it is time for the United Front Department to steer towards satisfying our audience’s literary sensibilities, and to move beyond agitating their political fervour.’

‘That’s all very well, but how will you satisfy their literary sensibilities?’ Director Im asked curtly.

‘This is what I propose to say: when I traced the history of the “Smiling Sun”, I discovered that our Supreme Leader was surrounded by tears from early childhood. Embarking on his life in this manner, the Supreme Leader triumphed over individual suffering and anguish and dedicated his entire life to his people and homeland by smiling. In other words, our Supreme Leader lived for his people and not for himself. This progression will lead to the following conclusion: “All the tears that were to have been shed by his people, our Supreme Leader took on himself alone to shed. What smiles he had, he gave them all so that his people might smile.” By juxtaposing his tears and
his smiling, the “Smiling Sun” will appear to shine more brightly. This also allows for the Smiling Sun to be ascribed with the following poetic qualities: “When the Supreme Leader gave the people his gift of smiling, it manifested as his Love; when he sowed his gift on our lands, it manifested as rays of the Sun; and as he left his gift for history, it manifested as Immortal Life.”’

As soon as I finished speaking, Director Im leapt out of his chair. His excitement could not be contained and he smacked the desk several times. He exclaimed, ‘That’s it! If this goes according to plan, the General will no doubt be moved to tears, as will the rest of the nation. The Propaganda and Agitation Department and the General Political Bureau are no match for us. Let me assure you, the United Front Department will come out ahead if we go through with this. This is real poetry! Comrades, what are your thoughts?’

With the powerful head of the United Front Department showing such enthusiasm for my proposal, it was no wonder that praise and wonder erupted from the rest of the room too. One man confessed how difficult it had been for him to hold back tears as he listened to me speak, and began to clap his hands.

Suddenly, Supervisor Park Chul stood up, wearing a severe expression in stark contrast to the others in the room. He was my immediate superior, as the head of Office 101, Section 5. ‘Comrade Director Im,’ he said, ‘although the proposal is laudable in its literary potential, I believe that a reference to our Supreme Leader shedding tears is highly problematic.’

The room was silent.

Supervisor Park Chul continued, ‘Kim Chul, one of our nation’s three canonical poets, employed the word “dew” to refer euphemistically to the Leader’s tears. For this mistake, he was banished to the countryside for ten years.’

‘What do you mean? Of course we can make a reference to tears. Don’t you remember how our General shed tears at our Supreme
Leader’s funeral ceremony? And it was even broadcast all over the world! On top of that, I’m sure I’ve seen references to our Supreme Leader’s tears when he was moved by the novels he read.’ As Director Im retorted with annoyance, other cadres nodded enthusiastically.

Park Chul spoke again. ‘The novel is a descriptive genre, but poetry is a lyric genre. Poetry is to do with human emotions, not with human psychology. To refer so explicitly to tears in a poem would promote “pessimism on the part of the individual”. Besides, in verse, you can only have tears of loyalty. Yet Comrade Kyong-min proposes not only to refer to the tears of an individual, but of our Supreme Leader himself. Heaven forbid! If we are accused of promoting “pessimism on the part of our Supreme Leader”, each one of us will have to face the consequences.’

No one said a word, perhaps at the terrifying mention of ‘consequences’. One man shut his notepad, as if to acknowledge that the meeting was over.

I rose again to speak. ‘Of course you are right to say that tears of loyalty, which must be shed by an individual, are the only tears permitted in poetry. But the poetic work in discussion here is to be composed in the genre of epic. Epic poetry is a narrative genre, just like the novel. Moreover, the focus of the work is not on our Supreme Leader shedding tears, but on how he has continuously exercised restraint and held them back. It is due to this forbearance that his tears were made manifest as Love, Sunshine and Immortal Life. Therefore, I do not see a problem.’

Supervisor Park, visibly annoyed that an employee of his should speak out in defiance, refused to change his stance. ‘Referring to our Supreme Leader’s tears once or twice? There’s nothing wrong with that. But you’re talking about an epic poem, whose length will require repeated references to our Supreme Leader’s tears. Have you ever seen such a thing in any of our nation’s poems? Right now, as our nation pulls through this time of famine and bad harvests, the Party
slogan is “The journey is hard but let us go forth in laughter”. And you propose to write a poem about our Supreme Leader shedding tears?’

At these words, even the cadre who had earlier been close to tears upon hearing my proposal nodded in agreement. Everyone now looked to Director Im. Pushing at the table with both hands, he stood up and spoke gravely. ‘This is the plan. Starting from today, Comrade Kyong-min will put all other duties aside for six months and compose an epic poem according to his proposal. But he will make sure to avoid excessive references to our Supreme Leader’s tears. At the United Front Department, you have assumed a South Korean identity and this allows you some leeway. We’re not restricted by Writers’ Union rules and don’t have to go through their censorship or approval process. We just have to judge among ourselves at the UFD as best we can. The current proposal is excellent in terms of its literary merit. Let’s make this work.’

Director Im dismissed everyone from the meeting but asked me to stay behind. The two of us were alone in the room.

‘Don’t pay any attention to what Supervisor Park says,’ he told me. ‘I’m sure he’s jealous. What achievements can he boast of? You have six months of hard work ahead of you. You should take a week off. Go and recharge yourself. Where would you like to go?’

I told him I wanted to visit my hometown. After meeting the General, I had been thinking a lot about my friends back home. It was glorious enough to have been admitted to the UFD, but I had even become one of the Admitted. How much everyone would admire me! I said that revisiting my place of birth would help me equip myself emotionally for the task ahead. Im Tong-ok granted my request without hesitation.

I PHONED MY
childhood friend Young-nam from Pyongyang Station. We had been best friends in nursery school, where we were in the same class, and we had remained inseparable all the way to the end of primary school.

‘You’re meeting me at the station, right?’

‘In your wildest dreams!’ His response was as predictable as ever, and I burst into laughter.

Young-nam’s nickname was ‘Jappo’ – short for Japanese expatriate. Like me, he had been born in Sariwon in North Korea, but all the kids called him Jappo because his parents were immigrants from Osaka in Japan. They had arrived in Sariwon in the 1960s, as part of the repatriation of Koreans from Japan referred to as the ‘Great Movement of the Korean People’. At the time, in a bid to promote the North over the South as the homeland of a unified Korea, Kim Il-sung welcomed into North Korea around 100,000 ethnic Koreans who had been living in Japan.

After the Korean War, the circumstances of the Cold War made North Korea a more attractive choice in terms of its economic superiority, and this enabled Kim Il-sung to pursue a policy of embracing expatriates. Using these immigrants as evidence of people choosing Socialism over Capitalism, the North Korean state fervidly referred to them in propaganda campaigns. On the surface, it looked as if Kim Il-sung was gaining significantly from a propaganda policy based on an embracing celebration of Korean ethnicity. In reality, however, the arrival of the immigrants caused unexpected
ripples in North Korean society. Actually, it was what they brought with them that had the greatest impact. The Japanese products that the immigrants brought with them were regarded as wondrous goods from the outside world, never before seen by ordinary North Koreans. Until then, they had believed that any product of Kim Il-sung’s Socialism must be the best in the world, but now they were exposed to the state of progress in Japan. The immigrants settled all over North Korea, according to their wishes or ancestral connections, and an unofficial new slogan was seized on nationwide: ‘Capitalism may be rotten to the core, but they do make good products!’ Almost instantaneously, North Korea became caught up in a fever of all things ‘made in Japan’.

It became a fad for North Koreans to pick up labels or packaging thrown out by the ‘Jappos’ and display them in their homes like treasure. The immigrants naturally came to be regarded as a privileged class through their enjoyment of Japanese products, and they were soon firmly entrenched in the comfortable middle class of North Korean society.

They were admired not only because of the products they possessed, but also because of their Japanese cultural traits. Whether it was their characteristic forms of greeting, language, manners or even their eating habits, their way of life was considered sophisticated and prosperous. In contrast, the official reward of higher status in return for loyal service seemed not as exciting. Increasingly, those who did not have family outside the country to send in Japanese products tried to emulate the Jappos at least in cultural terms.

Children were all too sensitive to this trend, complaining to their parents that none of their older relatives had had the foresight to run away and settle in Japan. The North Korean state had built the legitimacy of Kim Il-sung on the basis of his credentials as an anti-Japanese resistance fighter, and so it was a great irony that his immigration movement caused ordinary North Koreans to admire
Japan. Korea had been freed from the ignominy of colonial servitude under the Japanese, but now it had been ‘colonised’ again by the Japanese or, more specifically, the Jochongryon, the organisation run by the UFD that represents people of Korean origin in Japan. In effect, the Japan taboo reinforced by means of institutional communalism had begun to fade away from the public consciousness.

To North Koreans, for whom even ordinary clothes were a uniform dictated by the state, the notion of a private car for individual use was inconceivable. Nevertheless, this very privilege was freely given to the Jappos, whose private cars, speeding along empty roads in Pyongyang, were more than just a mode of transport in the eyes of North Koreans. They introduced the dangerous suggestion that one might control the speed of one’s journey, instead of goose-stepping in line to the whistle of the state. In this way, the presence of these immigrants offered a daring invitation to flout the traditional framework of loyalty.

The North Korean state’s jealousy eventually led to oppression of the Jappos. The immigrants, who had experience and memories of living in a Capitalist society, were assigned to the ‘wavering’ class, reserved for those whose ideas were perceived to be a risk to the state. Their career prospects were severely restricted. Kim Jong-il even legally prohibited Jappos from driving white cars. The reason for this seemed petty: it was because white cars were the same colour as the background of Japan’s national flag. In Party lectures, cadres alleged that Japan only exported white cars to the world, yet within their own nation they were fixated on red cars; and the reason for this was that they wanted to paint their national flag on the world map as a symbol of their central position in the world. It was clearly a warning from above that a Jappo could not be trusted in the same way as a Korean.