Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (162 page)

“Koreans think a maximum leader should be an engineer of the soul, too, but through exemplary behavior instead of by ramming it down your throat. They think a leader should be benevolent instead of brutish. And they think good ideas come from right thought—rectification of the mind—proceeding from the leader down through the masses, who learn the teaching by rote mastery of received wisdom. These Confucian residues melded with Soviet doctrines to make Kim a kind of benevolent Stalin, the fount of ideas, leading to a profound idealism and voluntarism at opposites with the materialism of Marx. The Koreans still refer to artists as engineers of the soul. They still surround Kim with a cult of personality. They still depict him as the source of all good ideas. This aspect of Stalinism stuck like glue in Korea, and if it had not existed in .Moscow, it would have had to be invented in Pyongyang” (Cumings,
Origins
II [see chap. 3, n. 43], pp. 296–297).

30.
Kim, “Building a Socialist Culture.”

31.
Thirty percent of all artistic creations were supposed to deal with revolutionary tradition—meaning “Kim Il-sung s exploits in his struggle against the Japanese and the idolization of Kim and his clan,” according to a South Korean scholar’s analysis. Another 30 percent should deal with war, including the North Korean People’s Army’s heroic struggle in the Korean War. That left 40 percent divided between socialist development of the country and unification of the peninsula (Lee Han-gu, “The State of Literature and Arts in North Korea,”
Vantage Point
[December 1983]: pp. 4–5).

32.
The regime’s “folklorists” employed a similar procedure to appropriate surface elements of the Korean folklore tradition. But when South Korean folklorists met their Northern counterparts to compare notes at a time of tentative detente in the 1970s the Southerners
’were
“confused and dismayed,” one of them wrote later (Kim Yol-gyoo, “A Survey of the Character of North Korean Folklore,”
Vantage Point
[.March 1988]: pp. 5–10). “A glance through the papers and other materials prepared and published by north Korean students of folklore disappointed us in the south beyond measure. It was not so much a feeling of despair as a sense of betrayal that gripped us. The folklore as presented by the north Korean publications was anything but folklore.” Even the nursery rhymes glorified Kim Il-sung. For example, “in the course of an instruction trip, Kim Il-sung happened to see a group of children who were learning their lessons, while singing songs. Kim made some comments on the spot, and the contents of the comments were instantly woven into the lyrics of the song. It became an ‘instruction song.’ A north Korean folklorist proudly mentioned the episode in his published paper.”

The sense of betrayal reflected a feeling that something binding the two halves of the peninsula together had been tossed out in the North. “Koreans used to sing the time-honored song ‘Oh, the moon, oh the moon, the bright moon,’ perform the traditional mask dance, and play
yut.
As long as they enjoy these activities together, the division of the country into the south and north might come to an end. We felt as if Koreans in both parts of the land would share the same feelings of family ties when they kneel before the altar of ancestor worship at the tomb of their forefathers. Such feelings must turn out to be true. When a glance at the materials from north Korea made it known to us that such an expectation was a mere illusion we were confused and dismayed. As far as I felt, the north Korean folklore was a folklore alien to me. Part of it had a veneer redolent of its sameness of our folklore heritage, but the substance was totally different from that of ours.” The South Korean folklorist was horrified to find poems and tales preoccupied with “labor efficiency, animosity aimed at struggle and blind devotion to the cult of personality of Kim Il-sung.”

This tendency, he added, “is not limited to the study of folklore in north Korea. Such pretended and deliberate reliance on the authority of the Leader is prevalent in all papers and publications in all disciplines and artistic pursuits. For instance, the so-called
Outline History of Korean Literature
devotes two chapters to commentaries on some poems attributed to the mother and father of Kim Il-sung.” The folklorist said he had watched a documentary film on the life of ethnic Koreans living around Tashkent in what was then Soviet Central Asia (Tashkent now is the capital of independent Uzbekistan). “The cultural distance between them and us is far smaller than that between north Koreans and south Koreans as far as current folklore is concerned,” he concluded sadly.

33.
Baik II, p. 582.

34.
The health worker as prototype of the “new man” continued as a main theme. In a September 22, 1994, broadcast that I heard, a Radio Pyongyang narrator told of a hospital patient in a Pyongyang neurological ward who, at visiting time, received no visitors. One day at visiting hour, however, an old woman appeared with chicken and soup, which she urged him to eat to ensure a quick recovery. He asked who she was, but she refused to identify herself, saying that the whole country was one family with Kim Jong-il as the father. After further inquiries she revealed that she was the wife of the doctor who was treating the lonely patient. As is typical of such propaganda stories, her name was not mentioned— but Kim Jong-il’s name was repeatedly brought into the narrative.

35.
“Almost everyone had diarrhea. Some suffered from scurvy, others from pneumonia and hepatitis. Scratches became infected, and the infections spread. … Dale Rigby developed a rash over 90 percent of his body. The skin above his waist peeled off; ugly sores formed on his legs. The North Korean doctor wouldn’t let him disrobe; the sight might ‘embarrass’ the nurse. He prescribed a mud-pack. Rigby’s condition worsened. The doctor gave him a liquid ointment. That didn’t help, either. Bill Scarborough’s feet began to swell. The doctor tried acupuncture. He stuck four needles in one foot and three in the other.

“ ‘Doc’ Baldridge asked for permission to treat his ailing shipmates. The North Koreans produced a medical dictionary and told him to prove that he was a corpsman. They interrogated him at length about his personal life: Why had he married a Japanese? Then they told him he couldn’t help; he couldn’t even offer advice” (Armbrister,
Matter of Accountability
[see chap. 7, n. 29], p. 291).

36.
This is one area in which official figures, at least, show North Korean superiority over South Korea—which boasted only a quarter that ratio of physicians to population (.6 doctors per 1,000 people in the South in 1982 versus 2.4 in North Korea). In hospital beds per 1,000 people, North Korea similarly showed a huge lead over the South: 12 to 1.6 (Kim,
Two Koreas in Development,
p. 90).

37.
“Kim Il-sung believes that South Korea is a colony of both the United States and Japan. Even if South Korea does possess technology, that is only dependent technology, not technology obtained through nationalist development. When it comes to foreign debts, Kim insists that North Korea, if it desired to, would borrow as much money as it likes, as well. However, when I finally arrived in South Korea and saw for myself, I felt that Kim’s claims were erroneous” (Kim Jong-min quoted in Cho, “Interview of Former High-Level Official of DPRK Ministry of Public Security Who Defected to South Korea” [see chap. 6, n. 88]).

38.
As did the Chinese.

39.
I was pleased with my escapade that afternoon, but later found that my friend Mike “Buck” Tharp, then Tokyo bureau chief of
The Wall Street Journal,
had one-upped me. Tharp had brought jogging shorts and shoes to Pyongyang, and he told his handlers that it was his custom to run every morning for his health. They were welcome to come along, he told them blandly. The first day, a hardy handler tried to keep up with the fleet-footed Tharp. After that, they let him have his run unescorted.

Besides breaking free from our handlers for an unfettered look around, the other major fantasy of every correspondent visiting Pyongyang was to land an interview with the Great Leader himself. The late John Wallach, then
foreign editor of Hearst Newspapers, trumped the rest of us with his ingenuity in pursuing that goal. Wallach while at the theater paid attention to the large baskets of flowers that symbolized respect for Kim Il-sung. He cleverly went to the hotel florist and ordered one to be delivered to Kim. He definitely pushed the right button, as this proved to be a gesture that Kim would not ignore. Wallach was taken to a guest house and permitted to greet Kim briefly. The president thanked the reporter for the flowers and immediately turned him over to foreign policy chief Kim Yong-nam for an interview similar to the one I had. Wallach had exchanged only a few words with Kim Il-sung, but being able to write that he had been in the presence of the big guy certainly dressed up his story. (-My consolation was being first in print with the story of Kim Yong-nam’s proposal.)

40.
Chung explains, “Per capita income by itself provides no direct measure of how well off the North Korean populace is economically, as it conceals the distribution of income and the portions of national output expended in capital formation and defense”
(North Korean Economy,
p. 150).

41.
In 1970, for example, vice-premier Kim Il complained of poor quality and variety of consumer goods (ibid., p. 150).

“[A Japanese study by Fujio Goto calculated that] personal consumption accounted for an extraordinarily low share of North Korean [gross domestic product] in the late 1950s: less than 35 percent of GDP on what economists call an ‘adjusted factor cost basis.’ Just to put that figure in perspective: it would have been over twenty points lower than corresponding estimates for the Soviet Union for the same period” (Nicholas Eberstadt, in Edwin J. Feulner Jr., ed., “Orwell’s Nightmare: Human Rights in North Korea,” The Heritage Lectures No. 394 [Washington, D.C.: The Heritage Foundation, 1992]). A South Korean scholar calculated that the state budget of North Korea accounted for 70 percent of gross national product, high even for a communist country. He attributed much of this to the emphasis on investment in arms buildup (Cha Byong-gwon, “Financial Structure of North Korea,”
Vantage Point
[January 1979]: p. 2).

42.
“Kim Il Sung’s New Year .Message,”
Vantage Point
(January 1979): p. 20.

43.
“Each work-team operates on its own independent accounting system whose balance sheet indicates the team’s performance and supplies the yardstick for material reward and preferential treatment by the Communist Party. Incentives for over-fulfillment of state production plans in farm, livestock and sericulture output are given up to 40 per cent of excess production in the form of products or cash or grain; penalties for failure to fulfill the plans are imposed in terms of products or cash or grain between 10 and 20 per cent of the deficit production. The head of an agricultural work-team receives an additional reward of 10–20 per cent of the reward given to him as a team member if his team has overfulfilled its production plan.

“In the case of agricultural products, the incentives and penalties are applied to the individual work-teams. If a work-team grows more than one crop, it will receive rewards for those crops whose output has surpassed the assigned production plan; but the work-team must pay a penalty on the other crops whose output falls short of the production target. The penalties for deficit output of products of all types are added to the cooperatives’ collective income.

“A work-team must fulfill not only monthly production plans but also daily and ten-day production plans. Specific measures concerning production plan implementation are taken by the Party as a result of analysis of so-called ‘production rhythm assurance.’ Thus, a work-team must always maintain its ‘rhythm’ of production performance or pace of work, under the slogan, ‘Let us produce more with existing labour and facilities’” (Kuark, “North Korea’s Agricultural Development” [see chap. 6, n. 41], pp. 86–87).

Another writer observes, “The Communist regime has set ‘the egoism and individualism’ harbored by the people as the target of attack—a scheme designed to reform the character of the north Koreans. … There is a limit to the efficiency of symbolic compensation such as medals. Therefore, the Pyongyang regime now gives material rewards as well. North Korea, however, is very scrupulous in presenting awards in kind as ‘material awards are likely to have a bad influence on the people. Therefore, material impetus and political and moral impetus should be mixed properly’” (Choe Hong-gi, “Mobilization System and Labor Efficiency”
Vantage Point
[January 1979]: p. 13).

44.
Kang Myong-do’s interview testimony in
JoongAng Ilbo
(see chap. 2, n. 7).

45.
As one analyst said, “Insofar as the rates of growth are concerned the so-called law of equal cheating’ may be applied with caution. Theoretically, to the extent that the proportion of falsification, omission, grossness, errors, and the like remains stable,
rates
of growth would not be affected. … Omission, rather than falsification, tends to be the communist means of concealing any unfavorable development” (Chung,
North Korean Economy,
p. 174). Chung adds that “North Korean economic data must be scrutinized carefully for their reliability. Although they seem more or less internally consistent, North Korea presents them in an ambiguous manner or withholds them in times of poor economic performance. Physical data tend to be more reliable than those made available only in index numbers. … By and large, North Korean data are usable if handled with extreme care and investigated carefully” (pp. 176–177).

Another analyst notes that “official statistical information on the economy has become scarcer since the mid-60s and almost non-existent in the 70s (apart from relative indices, which are hard to interpret)” (Foster-Carter, “Development and Self Reliance,” pp. 71–72).