Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (171 page)

28.
Selig Harrison’s
Korean Endgame
(see chap. 8, n. 3) provides a thorough account of the diplomacy. As a Georgian I took a certain pride in Carter’s diplomatic suc-cess. I first met him in Decatur, Georgia, in the 1960s when he had lost his first race for governor and was preparing for another. What struck me about him then was his hair, which suggested ambitions beyond our state. “What is a Georgia politician doing wearing a Kennedy hairdo?” I later asked the person who had introduced us.

29.
Hwang,
Problems of Human Rights (2).

29. Without You There Is No Country.

1.
Kim Il Sung,
With the Century
(see chap. 2, n. 2), vol. 1, p. 15.

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

3.
Kim,
With the Century,
vol. 3, pp. 421–422.

4.
Ibid., preface.

5.
A frequent visitor to North Korea who requested confidentiality was my source for this. On the topic of food-supply corruption, wire-service reports in October 1992 quoted an unnamed visitor to North Korea as saying the problem had become so serious as to be the object of a government campaign. Following are excerpts from an Agence France-Press article as printed on page 4 of
Korea Times
for October 14, 1992:

“Tokyo (AFP)—North Korea, allegedly hit by acute food shortages, has launched a campaign against widespread civilian looting and extortion of food by government officials, a recent visitor to Pyongyang said Tuesday.

“The visitor, a specialist on Korean affairs, told the Japanese Kyodo news agency that the Public Security Ministry in Pyongyang had posted notices in residential areas warning against food extortion.

“ ‘Severe punishment will be meted out to persons engaged in the illegal extortion of food,’ the notices were quoted as reading. They also mentioned ‘acts of plundering grain from state and collective warehouses,’ the visitor told Kyodo in Beijing.

“The notices also said that ‘hostile elements who have slipped into the leadership’
’were
committing extortion and that food coupons for rice, oil, flour and noodles
’were
often obtained under false pretenses, according to Kyodo.

“Corrupt officials offer to help citizens obtain spare parts, energy, fuel, metal and cement in exchange for food coupons, the notices said.

“They added that such officials also extorted food under the pretexts of ‘receiving guests, earning foreign currency for the country, providing rations for the military and helping the state budget,’ according to Kyodo.

“Offenders will be treated as anti-socialist elements, arrested and tried while their families will be deported to labor camps, the notices allegedly said.”

6.
Interview
with an ethnic Korean who traveled to North Korea. The sentence for speaking ill of Kim Il-sung or Kim Jong-il was life imprisonment, according to this informant.

7.
See, for example, “NK Bans Contact Wtih Chinese,”
Korea Times,
January 28, 1993, p. 1. The Yonhap news agency report picked up from the Japanese wire service Kyodo quotes a Western source in Pyongyang as saying the ban extended even to reading the Chinese newspaper
People’s Daily.

8.
See Bradley .Martin, “Remaking Kim’s Image,”
Far Eastern Economic Review,
April 15, 1993, and the author’s similar Korean-language article, “Revisionism in Pyongyang,”
Newsweek Hankuk-pan,
April 1, 1993.

9.
As Dae-Sook Suh notes, some of the others
’were
Kim’s seniors and equals
(Kim Il Sung
[see chap. 2, n. 35], pp. 1–54).

10.
Kim,
With the Century,
vol. 3, p. 328.

11.
Kang Myong-do series in
JoongAng Ilbo
(see chap. 2, n. 7). Kang described the economic situation during that period as follows: “Currently the North Korean economy is nearly collapsed, about 70 percent paralyzed. Food shortages have occurred since 1984. That was the year of flooding in South Korea, when the North gave rice to the South from northern reserves. Nineteen eighty-nine was worse, with the youth festival. That’s when the North Korean economy really dived; 20,000 foreigners attended. The government did it all for free. From 1989 to 1993 the harvests
’were
bad. In 1993 there
’were
zero harvests in North and South Hamgyong [and two other] provinces. It was all frozen. Not even one kilogram was produced in those four provinces. Food rations stopped in 1992. Even in Pyongyang there was a three-month suspension of rations. The authorities would go house to house, see if anyone was dying of starvation. If so, they would give them a little food. In rural areas they got dried corn.

“The pears produced in Hwasong, North Hamgyong province, are famous. Prior to 1990, 100 percent
’were
exported to the Soviet Union. In 1990, the Russians refused to import them. North Korea had to turn them into liquor or
animal feed. From 1993, because the food shortage had become so serious, in North Hamgyong the party decided to ration pears instead of grain from August to October. As a result, many died of starvation. In October 1993 in a Chongjin Hospital I saw someone die. Those who got the pears boiled them. If they had any corn left, they would mix it with the pears. When it cooled, the mixture was really hard—almost impossible to digest. One man had indigestion and went to the hospital. They opened him up and found an indigestible lump. The man died during the operation.

“People cooperatively started pillaging state-run farms. So the authorities intensified the guards at farms. There were a lot of clashes between those guards and the people. The Workers’ Party took it as a direct threat to the regime. …

At Kim Chaek Steel Works, all three melting furnaces went out. After that, only one operated. Two remained idle. In 1993, even the one remaining furnace was out. They needed oil and coke from China, but the Chinese supplies were cut. In 1993, Choe Yong-lim, in charge of Kim Chaek Steel, rounded up people to collect coke around the factory area. He got oil from the military. After a month’s delay, they got the furnace working again.

“The electrical power situation is horrible. Pukchang is the biggest power plant, with 8 turbines, of which only two operate now. In Pyongyang’s power plant, only two of six turbines are working. Not all areas of Pyongyang are supplied electricity. In the rural areas, it’s a long time since any power was available.

“Chongjin Chemical Complex, which employed 12,000 workers, has been closed for three years. There is no coal supply to fire the machinery. I estimate only about 30 percent of North Korean factories are operating now.”

12.
Oberdorfer,
The Two Koreas
(see chap. 24, n. 9), pp. 297–299. Andrew S. Nat-sios has more on Kim Il-sung’s belated interest in reform and the rumored clash ?with his son on pp. 165–167 of
The Great North Korean Famine: Famine, Politics, and Foreign Policy
(Washington, D.C: United States Institute of Peace Press, 2001).

13.
Kang’s remarks on the Kim Dal-hyon case are from the 1995 interviews in
JoongAng Ilbo
and my own interview on June 12, 1995. In my interview he gave further details on the personalities involved in the power struggle. “Kim Yong-sun is not a relative of Kim Il-sung’s,” he said. “Kim Jong-u is not a relative of Kim Il-sung’s despite what is said. Kim Jong-u is allied with Kim Guk-tae against Kim Dal-hyon. Kim Jong-u graduated from the People’s Economic University and studied in East Germany. He’s an economic expert and has visited the Middle East for trade—mainly Kuwait. He’s 51 or 52, quite young. He’s opposed to Kim Dal-hyon but the direct rivalry is between Kim Dal-hyon and Kim Guk-tae. Under them, Yi Song-dae is opposed to Kim Jong-u. Yi is now the chairman. Kim Jong-u is not very modest. That’s why he has lots of enemies. Yi Song-dae right now doesn’t have the backing. He’s shrinking back. It’s Kim Jong-u’s world.

“There are some other bright and promising people. Kim Chung-il was a U.N. observer, now is in the propaganda department as vice-head—because Kim Jong-il specifically selected him to become the next foreign minister. He speaks English impeccably so he always interprets when Kim Jong-il meets foreigners. Yi Chol, ambassador to Switzerland, is important because of the bank
accounts. Only the top elite know of those accounts. They are supposed to be for the country but really they are for Kim Jong-il.”

14.
Kim Jong-il, “Abuses of Socialism Are Intolerable,”
Kulloja,
. March 1, 1993, cited in
Korea Times,
. March 5, 1993.

15.
July 11, 1994 (translated by Korean Central News Agency in
Korean News Semi-weekly,
July 12, 1994). The reference to Kim’s leadership of this “20-year struggle” illustrates the escalation effect that sooner or later inflated so many claims advanced by or about Kim, no matter how immodest to begin with. But it would be especially difficult to justify this claim historically, since it has him leading the anti-Japanese struggle from 1925, the year he turned thirteen, all the way up to 1945.

16.
Kenji Fujimoto is the pseudonym of the chef, who published his book
Kim Jong-il’s Chef
in Japanese and Korean. See Yonhap dispatch from Tokyo, “NK Leader’s Obsessed By A-Bombs: Ex-Chef,
” Korea Times,
June 23, 2003.

17.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (3)
(see chap. 9, n. 25).

18.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (I)
(see chap. 2, n. 1).

19.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (2).

20.
Korea Times,
May 12, 1995.

21.
The transcript first appeared in Korean in
Wolgan Choson,
which cited a Japanese intelligence agency concerned with North Korean matters as its source. It was translated into English and posted on
Korea Web Weekly
at http://wwwkimsoft. com/2003/kji-tape.htm.

30. We Will Become Bullets and Bombs.

1.
Kim,
With the Century,
vol. 3 (see chap. 2, n. 2), p. 27.

2.
“On the 50th Anniversary of Kim Il-sung University,” Dec. 7, 1996, speech to party officials reportedly taped by Hwang Jang-yop and taken south when he defected the following year, published in the April 1997 edition of
Wolgan Choson,
extracts translated on
Korea Web Weekly,
http://www.kimsoft.com/korea/ kji-kisu.htm.

3.
On this subject Kim Il-sung wrote, “It is now a matter of course that our People’s Army contains neither those who insist on unprincipled equality and impartiality nor those who dispute their superiors’ orders. The soldiers answer their superiors’ orders only by saying, ‘I understand!’ Our People’s Army is a collective of loyal soldiers who live in a spirit of unity of superiors and subordinates, unity of army and people, a spirit of constant self-reliance and fortitude from the day they take the oath of the military code of conduct to the moment they are discharged from the service. If anyone wants to know our soldiers’ attitude towards democracy, he need only understand their militant slogan, ‘When the Party decides, we do everything.’ If he wants to see the genuine features of unity between superiors and subordinates manifested in the deeds of our soldiers, he need only learn of the last moments of Heroes Kim Kwang Chol and Han Yong Chol, who had sacrificed their lives for the sake of many of their comrades in arms”
(With the Century,
vol. 3, p. 220).

4.
Party organs were introduced into the KPA after Kim Il-sung’s 1959 speech in which he said the biggest problem in the Korean War had been “total lack of political training and revolutionary heroism.” The party organs were needed to give soldiers firm ideas of what they were asked to fight for and reasons why, Kim said (Kiwon Chung, “The North Korean People’s Army and the Party” in Scalapino,
ed.,
North Korea Today
[see chap. 3, n. 11], p. 116). On page 118, citing a 1961 book by Kim Yon-hoe, Chung adds that political commandants’ “responsibilities concentrate on supervising the training and promotion of the soldiers, ensuring their positive devotion to the Party, the preparation of political programmes and materials for use in classes, and supplying pamphlets and newspapers, pictorial exhibitions and films. Promotion for the soldier is almost completely dependent on the recommendation of the political commandants whom the rank-and-file soldiers fear more than the professional military commanders.”

For a detailed description of the military’s General Political Bureau see Joseph S. Bermudez Jr.,
The Armed Forces of North Korea
(London: I. B. Tauris, 2001), pp. 28–33.

31. Neither Land nor People at Peace.

1.
Kang Myong-do testimony in
JoongAng Ilbo,
June 8, 1995.

2.
Hwang Jang-yop,
Problems of Human Rights (3)
(see chap. 9, n. 25).

3.
His remarks appeared in
Chosun Ilbo,
October 12, 1995.

4.
“S. Korean Agent Reports North Has Executed at Least 50 Officials in Purge,” Seoul-datelined dispatch from Agence France-Presse, July 13, 1998.

5.
“The enemy reporters claimed that an army unit mutinied and took over the Hwanghae Steel Mill,” Kim told those visitors. “A Taiwan news organ went so far as to claim that the coup was led by the joint chief of staff. Moon Myong-ja [a Korean-American reporter] heard about the army ‘coup’ and rushed here to find out the truth. Miss Moon found that no such event had occurred. The enemy news organs seem to track every move made by the joint chief of staff. If he is not seen in public for several days, they wonder what he is up to. You comrades have families and know that family life goes through many events. Our joint chief of staff, too, has a family to take care of. The basic problem is that the Japanese and South Korean bastards have dark, shady motives and assume that we have dark, shady motives, too. They see the events here through their colored glasses. Those people from hostile nations who visit us are shocked when they see the real truth here.”