Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (165 page)

8.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 62–65.

9.
Ibid., pp. 67–68.

10.
Ibid., pp. 69–70.

11.
The True Story of Kim Jong Il,
p. 49.

12.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 77–117. The memo is quoted on pp. 85–86.

13.
Ibid., p. 118.

14.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (2)
(see chap. 6, n. 104).

15.
Kang Myong-do testimony in
JoongAng Ilbo,
April 12, 1995. Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 16–17, observes, “Busy with state affairs, the father leader could find no special time for the education of his son [Kim Jong-il]; his daily life was in itself the process of bringing up and guiding his son in a revolutionary
’way.”

16.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 168–177.

17.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Testimonies of North Korean Defectors: True Picture of North Korea According to a Former Workers’ Party Secretary
(see chap. 7, n. 15).

18.
See, e.g., Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, p. 203.

19.
Tak Jin, Kim Gang Il and Pak Hong Je,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
vol. I (see chap. 5, n. 15), p. 22. A former high official who knew him told me that according to his recollection Kim Jong-il also enrolled for a second time at Mangyong-dae School after leaving Namsan.

20.
Yun Ki-bon,
The Land of North Korea in My Memory
(Seoul: Kapja Munhwasa, 1973), cited in
The True Story of Kim Jong Il,
pp. 49–58.

21.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 249–250.

22.
JoongAng Ilbo,
January 14 and 28, 1993, quoting Kang Yong-gu, former superintendent of Namsan Junior High School, and Kim Dan, a classmate of Kim Jong-il’s among others who had known him at Namsan and later moved to Russia, cited in
The True Story of Kim Jong Il,
pp. 59–60.

23.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 129, 134–135.

24.
Ibid., pp. 141–147; Tak, Kim and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
pp. 38–39.

25.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp.
7
4–
76.

26.
Ibid., pp. 178–181.

27.
Kang Myong-do testimony in
JoongAng Ilbo,
April 12, 1995.

28.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 184–187.

29.
Ibid., pp. 190–195.

30.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (2).

31.
Ibid.

32.
Ibid.

33.
Tak, Kim and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 50–51.

34.
The True Story of Kim Jong Il,
p. 59.

35.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (2).

36.
People’s Korea
(a Chongryon newspaper in Tokyo), September 16, 1995, quoting a September 1, 1995, dispatch by Pyongyang’s Korean Central News Agency.

37.
Interview with Kim Ji-il, who defected to South Korea in 1990 while pursuing graduate studies in physics in Kharkov, Ukraine.

38.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 298–301.

39.
Adrian Buzo makes the comparison regarding the two older men in
The Guerilla Dynasty: Politics and Leadership in North Korea
(St. Leonards, Australia: Allen & Unwin, 1999), p. 43 and fn. 34.

40.
See Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 261–267.

41.
Ibid., pp. 311–316.

42.
Ibid., pp. 323–326.

43.
See, e.g., the photo facing p. 80 in Tak, Kim and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
vol. I.

44.
Kang Myong-do testimony in
JoongAng Ilbo,
April 12, 1995.

45.
Tak, Kim, and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, p. 90.

46.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 218–223.

47.
Ibid., pp. 317–319.

48.
Among the other officials who lived in the neighborhood
’were
Choe Yong-gon, Kim Il, Kim Dong-kyu, Im Chun-chu, Pak Song-chol, Li Jong-ok, Kim Chang-bong, Chon Mun-sop and Ji Kyong-soo.

49.
Among the young people at Choe Yong-hae’s home that day, I was told, were Choe Young-sook, daughter of Choe Yong-gon; Pak Choon-sik and Pak Choon-hoon, sons of Pak Song-chol; Ji Kwang-jae and Ji Kwang-hwa, children of Ji Kyong-soo; plus the young men’s girlfriends.

50.
“S. Korean Agent Reports North Has Executed at Least 50 Officials in Purge,” Seoul-datelined dispatch from Agence France-Presse.

51.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. I, pp. 331–333.

52.
Ibid., pp. 333–336.

53.
Ibid., pp. 337–340.

54.
Ibid., pp. 341–346.

55.
According to
The True Story of Kim Jong Il,
p. 65, the thesis was published in full in the party theoretical journal,
Kulloja
(Worker), .March 1985 issue.

56.
Kim Kyeh-won, “Bulgarian Envoy Recalls Memories of Kim Jong-il,”
Korea Herald,
January 16, 1991.

12. Growing Pains.

1.
Songbun
is discussed in Armstrong,
The North Korean Revolution
(see chap. 1, n. 8), pp.
71–74;
and in Helen Louise Hunter,
Kim Il-song’s North Korea
(Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1999), chap. 1 ff. The latter book is a declassified Central Intelligence Agency study originally done in the early 1980s.

2.
I interviewed Ahn in August 1996.

13. Take the Lead in World Conjuring.

1.
Kim Jong Il,
Some Problems Arising in the Creation of Masterpieces
(Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1989), p. 4.

2.
Kim Jong-min, quoted by Cho Gap-jae in “Interview of Former High-level Official of DPRK Ministry of Public Security Who Defected to South Korea” (see chap. 6, n. 88).

3.
Tak, Kim and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il
(see chap. 5, n. 15), vol. 1, p. 108.

4.
Kim Myong Chol, “Biography of an Infant Prodigy,”
Far Eastern Economic Review,
March 5, 1982. An informal spokesman for North Korea in Japan, Kim Myong Chol at the time he wrote this article was editor of the pro-Pyongyang Tokyo weekly
People’s Korea.
He had translated Baik Bong’s Kim Il-sung biography into English. He is not to be confused with the ex-bodyguard defector of the same name.

5.
Cho Gap-jae, “Interview of Former High-level Official” (Interviewer paraphrases Kim Jong-min’s remarks:) “Since the 1970s, Kim Jong-il began to prepare all-out to become his father’s successor. As such, his relationships with those surrounding him became rigid. Meetings between him and [Kim Jong-min] also became infrequent.”

6.
See Scalapino and Lee,
Communism in Korea
(see chap. 2, n. 28), pp. 608–612.

7.
Tak, Kim and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
pp. 109–110. The authors continue that Kim Jong-il “thought that establishing a revolutionary view of the leader among Party members was the key to closing the ranks of struggle for the revolution.” Thus, he “developed an original theory on the Juche-oriented view of the leader.”

8.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (1)
(see chap 2, n. 1).

9.
Kang Myong-do testimony in
JoongAng Ilbo,
April 12, 1995.

10.
A memoir credited to a purged North Korean official and published posthumously in Seoul in 1989 said the author in the course of his work in Pyongyang had access to a file of newspaper clippings from the pre-1945 period. In them, the author said, was an account in the leading newspaper
Dong-A Ilbo
of Kim Yong-ju’s capture in 1938. Broken by the authorities, he supposedly signed a pledge of loyalty to the Japanese and went to work for them as an interpreter. Other accounts say Yong-ju worked for U.S. intelligence. For a discussion of all of those accounts see
The True Story of Kim Jong-il,
pp. 67–78. The account cites Ko Bong-ki,
Posthumous Manuscripts
(Seoul: Chunma Printing House, 1989); Lee Yong-sang, “My Friend Kim Yong-ju,”
JoongAng Ilbo
(May 1991); and a book by Lee Myong-yong,
Kim Il-sung Stories.

11.
Lim Un
(Founding of a Dynasty
[see chap. 2, n. 59], p. 258) cites the claim from Kim Yong-ju’s autobiography. “This is obviously dreamy talk,” says Lim.

12.
True Story of Kim Jong Il,
pp. 78–79. The official biographies do not mention Kim Jong-il’s having worked under Kim Guk-tae—or under anyone else except his father, for that matter.

13.
True Story of Kim Jong-il,
pp. 78–80.

14.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. 2 (see chap. 10, n. 43), pp. 22–26.

15.
Ibid., vol. 2, p. 12.

16.
Ibid., vol. 2, pp. 40–42. I use the term “draft-dodger” loosely, to evoke a comparable American situation for Americans of that generation. North Korea did not have the military draft per se, since there was no shortage of willing recruits. Enlistment was considered an honor, and career-enhancing, so most young men who were not members of the very top elite wanted to serve.

17.
True Story of Kim Jong-il,
pp. 78–80; Kong Dan Oh,
Leadership Change
(see chap. 10, n. 32), p. 7.

18.
Tak, Kim and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
vol. 1, pp. 119–120.

19.
Suh,
Kim Il Sung
(see chap. 2, n. 35), p. 223.

20.
See ibid., pp. 128–129. Also note the claim of an unofficial North Korean spokesman in Tokyo that the junior Kim “played a leading role in the watershed ideological and theoretical campaign to
defend the present leadership”
(emphasis added). See Kim Myong Chol, “Biography of an Infant Prodigy.”

21.
“True Picture of North Korea According to a Former Workers’ Party Secretary,” in
Testimonies of North Korean Defectors.

22.
Tak, Kim and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
vol. 1, pp. 121–125.

23.
Suh,
Kim Il Sung,
pp. 228–229. Suh reports, “In his lecture to party cadres on October 11, 1969, Kim Il Sung said that a number of ‘bad fellows’ who had been in charge of ideological work had failed to propagate the party’s great achievements and had not taught young cadres the great successes the people had achieved.”

24.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (1).

25.
Tak, Kim and Pak,
Great Leader Kim Jong Il,
vol. 1, pp. 125–126.

26.
Kim Myong Chol, “Biography of an Infant Prodigy.”

27.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (3)
(see chap. 9, n. 25).

28.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. 2, pp. 16–21.

29.
“True Picture of North Korea.”

30.
Choe In Su,
Kim Jong Il,
vol. 2, pp. 31–35.

31.
In
With the Century,
Kim Il-sung gives an example of his personal involvement in the rewriting of history. The incident involved assessment of an 1884 coup attempted by reformist Kim Ok-gyun against the decrepit Yi Dynasty. Kim Il-sung says that in his own boyhood, “most of my teachers in Korean history regarded Kim Ok-gyun as pro-Japanese … because he had received help from the Japanese in his preparations for the coup.” After assuming power, Kim Il-sung relates, “I told our historians that … assessing him as pro-Japanese simply because he had drawn on the strength of Japan would lead to nihilism …” (vol. 1, pp. 26–27). I cannot help smiling at the image of a platoon of obedient scribes, earnestly jotting down their instructions from the Great Historian.

32.
Baik I (see chap. 4, n. 25), preface.

33.
Ibid., p. 23. Kim backed off a bit from such claims in his later memoirs. Likewise he steered clear of such extravagant tales as Baik Bong’s David-and-Goliath account (vol. 1, p. 145) of a sturdy Kim knocking down with “a single blow” a Chinese policeman’s son named Beanstalk who displayed contempt for Koreans and possessed “Herculean strength.” Yet another story that bit the dust in later versions was Baik’s claim that Kim at the age of sixteen—while still a middle-school pupil himself—established an elementary school in a Manchurian village that he
was trying to organize. “The General”—even as an elementary school pupil Kim rates this rank in Baik’s reverential account—“provided education free of charge for peasant children who had been unable to study because of poverty and conducted classes at night to educate youth and the middle-aged and women. On the basis of such activities, the General then rallied the residents around organizations formed according to each stratum of society, and trained them politically. He gathered them into the Juvenile Corps or the Juvenile Expeditionary Party and youth into the Youth Association (Anti-Imperialist Youth League), women into the Women’s Association and peasants into the Peasants’ Union.” Kim organized the people into a military unit to defend their village, taught .Marxism-Leninism, published a political magazine called
Bolshevik;
in short, Baik related, the adolescent General was “tireless.” And when he was older, was it not Kim Il-sung who had returned to Korea in 1945 as “the greatest hero Korea has ever produced, the Leader of the nation, who had promised a resurrection and a shining victory to the .Mother Earth of Korea”? (Baik II, p. 53).