Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (79 page)

Not everyone believed, though. There were cynics like Ko Chung-song, who had been an employee of a district office for preservation of revolutionary historical sites before he defected in June 1993.
⁶
The office was all about ideology, but Ko’s job was about food, fuel and other essentials of life. The day I met him in 1994 Ko wore rimless, rectangular glasses, a nice suit and tie, a gold watch. All in all, he looked like a typical young South Korean bureaucrat or corporate official.

Ko told me that as a young student in North Hwanghae Province, he had “basically believed Kim Il-sung was a god, a savior. In high school I thought my uniform had been given to me by Kim Il-sung. ‘He’s educating me for a good life,’ I believed. So I thought very highly of him. All the education is centered around Kim Il-sung. The first thing you say when you wake up is, ‘Oh, Great Leader Kim Il-sung.’ The first thing you learn to say as a baby is ‘Kim Il-sung.’ So how can you
not
worship him? At the nursery they have a portrait of Kim Il-sung. Before you eat you say ‘Thank thee, thou great Kim Il-sung.’”

In school, “if you don’t get 100 percent on your ideological test you’re
a failure.” All the ideological instruction, combined with “volunteer” labor, left little time to study other subjects or have fun. “I did more labor in my school days than after I entered into society” Ko told me. “Out of a year, four months would be spent laboring. All I can remember is toiling away my days. If I had been paid I would have gotten a lot of money. We would study in the morning and work in the afternoon.”

It was a specific incident after he had finished high school, though, that really sparked Ko’s cynicism. “Once the district party told me: ‘We’d like you to volunteer for a very special, high-level mission.’ I thought it was some kind of re-ward, but after I agreed to volunteer I was told to go to the coal mines. I was a diligent, hard worker, so they took advantage of me. I had believed them, and I felt really betrayed.” It sounded, I told him, very much like the classic ploy of the U.S. Army recruiters whose posters urged young men to see the world and learn a wonderful new profession—-which turned out to involve cleaning latrines and peeling potatoes.

“High blood pressure kept me out of the army,” Ko said. “I asked my brother to get me exempted at the time of the August 8 [1976] axe-killing incident at the Demilitarized Zone.” After falling for the “special mission” bait-and-switch maneuver, Ko said, “I protested for a year, refusing to work in the mines, and then was sent to do forced labor on a farm near Pyongyang.”

I was surprised to hear he had managed to hold out for so long before being punished. “Luckily I had good family connections,” Ko explained. “I got out of the forced farm labor quickly thanks to my uncle. When you’re sent for a job you need a
munkwan
—party permission document. Once you’re sent to forced labor, without strong backup you can’t leave. But my uncle got my
munkwan
changed. I went to work in the Hwangju irrigation office, and then from 1984 to 1987 I worked in Kanggye Military Factory No. 26, which made missiles for anti-submarine warfare, and rockets. It had a false name, ‘Kanggye Tractor Co.’”

But Ko told me he had “still felt rebellious. Lots of my relatives were high officials, and I had attended a specialized school. So until I was betrayed by the government with that ‘special mission’ trick, I’d held high hopes for my career. Now there was forced labor on my record, and that goes against you. I never trusted the authorities again. I was sick of the brain-washing and started listening to South Korean broadcasts.

“In 1987 I went to work for the Kanggye Food Supply Department. The food shortage then was worse than usual. When I arrived things were already in a pitiful state, but in 1989 the situation started getting far worse still. It gets worse and worse each year. To meet North Koreans’ food requirements, about six million tons of rice are needed. But only about four million tons are produced. That means two million tons should be imported. In Kanggye there are 400,000 people. Kanggye is a mountainous area that can’t grow its own rice. We got it all from North Pyongan Province, or it was
imported—say from China. We were always behind in distributions by two months or so. The average worker supposedly is entitled to 700 grams a day. For unemployed people, it’s 300 grams. But the authorities said they needed to store up rice for use in case of war, so we had to take some out of the ration. So the actual supply was about 530 grams. Around 1989 and 1990, while I was there, we were providing about 530 grams.”

That food-supply job, Ko told me, put him where the power was at a time when ordinary people had begun to turn to theft and scavenging to fill their stomachs. “In North Korea right now, food is equivalent to money. In rural areas, if you want to buy things like appliances you have to pay in food instead of money. I never stole, but generally to sustain life in North Korea you have to steal. If you work in a pencil factory you have to steal pencils, which you then trade in the black market for food. I didn’t have to steal because I could fix up the documents to supply me enough food. In North Korea any job having to do with food was a high position. Sons and daughters of high officials liked to work there.”

I told Ko about the youth festival helper who had asked me for $100 to buy goods at the special store selling foreign goods. “To earn $100 a North Korean would have to work 10 years. That guide is probably quite a rich man. One month’s salary is about 60
won,
while $100 equals 7,500
won
or so. You made a wealthy man there.” I asked Ko whether the man might have been instructed by the regime to ask for foreign exchange. “Of course he did it on his own,” Ko replied. “The North Korean government is too proud to make those workers ask Americans for money.” (I pointed out to Ko that the regime was not too proud to make its diplomats smuggle drugs and pass counterfeit bills for hard currency.)

When Ko left the Kanggye Food Supply Department he continued to be involved with food. His new job was supplying food, coal and so on for the forty-five people or so—workers and management—in the Chagang Province Preservation Office for Historical Monuments, in Kanggye city. Chagang province is close to Manchuria—Northeast China—and includes much of the route of Kim Il-sung’s storied boyhood journey for learning. There is, for example, the inn whose keeper back in 1923 gave Kim Il-sung an extra blanket at no charge. The high command during the Korean War was in what later became Chagang Province, and Kim Jong-il spent part of his childhood in Kanggye.

The preservation office was in charge of historical monuments including “slogan trees.” “In the mountains during the struggle against Japanese rule some people peeled back the bark of trees and scratched praise of the ‘great general Kim Il-sung’ in the wood. A couple of those
kuho
(inscribed trees) are authentic, but others later popped up all over North Korea—put there by the authorities. I haven’t personally seen it done, but I’ve seen the evidence of their work. A committee established by the party proclaimed, ‘We’re totally
faithful to Kim Il-sung, so we’ll go to the mountains to find the inscriptions.’ They reported the ones they had ‘found’ and I went to look at them. I could tell they had just cut into the trees a few days before—not decades before. They’re propaganda to make people worship Kim Il-sung.”
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It was a similar story with other “historical” monuments, Ko said. “Kim Jong-il was born in the Soviet Union, but they made a monument on Mount Paektu saying he was born there. In Mangyongdae, Kim Il-sung’s birthplace, you can find markers for the place where Kim studied, the place he played and so on. Well, the authorities have put up the same sort of monuments for Kim Jong-il, in Kanggye. ‘Here’s where he thought about the revolution. This shows why he must be the leader.’ ‘Here’s where he played.’ Actually, Kim Jong-il stayed only three months or so in Kanggye, then went to China with his sister, Kim Kyong-hui. But they still made the monuments. The whole district of Hankye-ri in Kanggye city is one big ‘historical’ monument.”

Ko worked for the historical office from mid-1991 until he defected in June 1993. “From the moment I started working there I felt it was all fake,” he told me. “No one talked about it. You could have your own feelings about it, but you couldn’t openly talk about it. I’m pretty sure a lot of people felt that way but they didn’t dare express it clearly.” As for the reaction of the general public, “In the past, all those historical monuments had great effect,” Ko said. “People went to those places and studied the inscriptions. But now they don’t pay any attention. People started changing two or three years ago [1991 or 1992], expecially in the elite classes. University students got stirred up. With the downfall of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, people were starting to think, ‘Maybe there’s something wrong with communism.’ Also, there was no more aid coming from the Russians. So the economy declined terribly. People today no longer care about ideology— they only care about their survival. People think something is bound to happen in North Korea. That’s what I meant by saying the students got stirred up. Members of the elite believe that North Korea will be influenced by international changes.”

Ko told me he had “felt some of this before starting to work in the monuments office. I began listening to radio—KBS from South Korea, radio from Yanbian, the Radio Moscow Korean-language service. From around 11 P.M. to early morning, you can tune in the KBS social education station well. I started listening in 1985 and began doubting the regime in 1989. The state doesn’t know, but people listen to secretly imported radios.” He had bought his radio, a Sony short-wave model, from a man he met on a business trip. Maybe 5 to 6 percent of the population had radios capable of receiving at least AM—medium wave—transmissions at the time he left, he estimated. He guessed that a third of those with the equipment—perhaps 2 percent of the population—listened to foreign stations.

“My friends and I would even get together to listen to the South Korean broadcasts and debate what we had heard,” Ko said. “Kim Il-sung was saying in his speeches that in order for us to have a lavish life and prosper we must reunify. I wanted to learn the prospects for reunification. On the radio I heard about the downfall of foreign socialism and about the virtual capitalism rampant in China. I wanted to find out the prospects for Korea. I ultimately defected because I came to believe the regime could not survive for long. It’s bound to fall. Everybody believes something is going to happen in a couple of years. When friends get together, they debate how North Korea will change. Someone might say ‘What do you think about the collapse of the USSR? Do you think capitalism or socialism is better? What about Chinese-style, free-market socialism?’ The regime’s propaganda backfires. On North Korean news they show footage of students demonstrating in South Korea. Ordinary people say ‘Oh, society must be very harsh there.’ Educated people think, ‘To have such demonstrations, they must have a very democratic society’ Other issues people talk about in these private discussions include oil. The oil supply that the Soviet Union used to provide is now cut and oil from China drastically reduced. So what is the future of North Korea?”

I asked him what people thought was the answer to that question. “Everybody believes a war will break out sooner or later,” he said. “A hundred percent want war to occur. The food shortage is terrible. Distribution is halted, so people figure they will die of hunger or die in war. They’re even prepared to die in a nuclear war. A hundred percent believe that North Korea would win, so they support war. They were brought up to worship Kim Il-sung. No matter what changes occur, they always worship Kim Il-sung. They’ve been so brain-washed since birth that they’re willing to die for the country.”

So was it the case that the people did not connect Kim’s rule to their problems? “They don’t blame Kim Il-sung, but they do blame Kim Jong-il,” Ko said. “The moment Kim Jong-il came into power the problems started, they think. All North Koreans believe Kim Il-sung is a war hero who brought about the independence of Korea. They worship him. Even though I betrayed North Korea, I still revere Kim Il-sung, think very highly of him. Probably all the defectors here think that way It’s such a closed society.”

Ko had found, he said, that “people in South Korea are not alert enough. I know that Kim Jong-il is brutal enough to start a war. Most people in North Korea believe the reason North and South cannot reunify is that the U.S. military is stationed here. And if the U.S. moves out, they think, reunification is only a matter of time. But removing U.S. troops won’t bring about reunification. Kim Il-sung knows that if free markets and other foreign influences come in, his regime will collapse. I support economic sanctions. But for economic sanctions to work China would have to give up its socialist ideal.

Without that change we can’t have change in North Korea, because the regime has the support of the Chinese.”

I told Ko about Washington’s plans for Radio Free Asia broadcasts in Korean and asked if he thought those could help open the society. “That’s an exciting idea!” he said. “A lot of people listen to the radio so it has a high chance of disrupting the regime. It would be effective. Most North Koreans don’t know what’s happening in North Korea. When I was living there I was waiting for someone to tell me what I should do. No one ever did. On those broadcasts, defectors should talk and persuade their friends in North Korea—let them know we’re alive. Maybe that would inspire them. Put it in terms they can understand. Instead of having someone say that South Korea is experiencing an economic boom, get defectors on the radio to give examples of-what can be bought down here.” As a percentage of the respective average incomes, “the price of a Hyundai Sonata II here, for example, is equivalent to the price of a suit in North Korea.”