Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (83 page)

I told Chang that the U.S. Congress was preparing to fund Radio Free Asia, which would likely have a Korean-language service directed to North Koreans. “Of course it would be good! What bad could come of it?” he said. “But there’s a saying in Korea: ‘Listening 100 times is not as good as seeing it once.’ Actual interchange is needed, too.”

When he decided to defect, Chang realized it would not be easy. “The problem was that the North Korean and Russian police worked together. If anyone tried to escape, the Russian authorities would capture him and turn him over to the North Koreans. Many tried, but most were caught and sent back, to death in most cases. One day I read an ad from a Moscow department store saying that South Korean–made goods would be sold there to people with dollars to buy them. I decided to go to Moscow in the hope of meeting some of the South Koreans there. A Russian friend got me a ticket to Moscow. Most escapees don’t have good plans for getting away. They just run for the mountains—it seems to be a Korean instinct. The authorities know that, so they just go to the mountains and recapture the escapees. But the Russian cops didn’t think of looking for me en route to Moscow. Unfortunately, by the time I got to Moscow the August Revolution had broken out there and the South Koreans had all gone back home. So I figured I had to cross the Russian border. My job experience on the railroad helped. I realized that all Eastern European countries except Hungary required a visa. I bribed a railroad worker to let me climb a ladder in the restroom to the roof of the car, where I stayed until the train crossed the border into Hungary. I went to the South Korean embassy.”

Kim Kil-song, when I interviewed him in 1994, appeared to be something of a dandy. He was fussily gotten up in long-oval, gold-framed spectacles, a rectangular gold watch with gold band, starched white shirt, a floral print tie with tie bar, double-breasted brown-checked sports jacket and dark trousers. But on his left hand, in the web between thumb and forefinger, was a tattoo, and after I had heard his story I knew he had not always been a fashion plate.

Kim was born in 1962 in Pyongyang. His father, injured in 1952 while fighting in the Korean War as an officer, had been mustered out in Pyongyang. After recovering from his wounds, the father held management jobs in a porcelain factory which made household crockery. There he met Kim’s mother. The couple married, first living at the factory and later being assigned an apartment. Eventually his mother stopped working at the factory and took a job as a salesperson at a textiles store near their home. His father at that time commuted to work by trolley bus.

In 1964, there was a reassignment in which less “loyal” North Koreans were moved out of the good jobs and out of Pyongyang to menial positions in the provinces. Kim’s father had been a landowner—he had owned an orchard in Northern Hamgyong Province. That was enough to bar the family from the loyal class. They-were sent to Sinuiju, on the Yalu River across from China, where the father worked loading shipments on trucks at a synthetic textile factory. The mother worked in a sporting goods factory, making balls. From then on the family remained in Sinuiju.

Such treatment for a wounded Korean War veteran shocked me a little, and I asked Kim whether it had made his parents bitter. “They blamed their ancestors,” he replied. “Possibly they felt the regime was at fault for their treatment, but they would have had very little chance to express it. Once or twice when times got very hard Mother would express some dissatisfaction with the regime: ‘How could they question our past background?’” By hard times, Kim meant that “housing was terrible,” at least for his family. “We lived in a house that had been damaged in a Korean War bombing raid. Up through 1968, there was no food problem, but then food conditions worsened. We didn’t have enough food. There were few goods in the store. Before that, I remember taking pocket money and going to stores to buy candy. I could see the products on the shelves. But shortages began in 1969. Just in one or two years they ran out of supplies. It happened all over the country. We heard from neighbors who had visited relatives in other provinces. There, too, there were no goods in the stores.”

In his youth, Kim told me, he had been “very faithful to Kim Il-sung. Even though life was hard, I was thankful. Without Kim Il-sung we would be in an even worse situation, I thought. I learned that way of thinking from kindergarten and elementary school. Once in a while, my parents, too, would say, ‘You have to be faithful to Kim Il-sung.’” I asked how he expressed his faithfulness. “In each household there was a portrait of Kim Il-sung,” he said. “If my father brought home some clothes or snacks or a toy for me, instead of thanking Father I would go to the portrait of Kim Il-sung, bow before it and say, ‘Thank you for the wonderful gift. ”

I wanted to know more about the family’s housing. “We lived in the same house until I was in high school,” Kim told me. “Because of the bombing it was leaning, about to fall down, but we couldn’t get any help
from the authorities to fix it because my father was an ordinary worker. He worked at a big factory. Finally though, the factory built a housing complex and we moved to an apartment. That apartment was about eighteen square meters, with two small rooms to house my parents, two brothers, two sisters and myself—altogether seven people. Lots of families of seven people lived in one-room apartments. We considered ourselves very fortunate to have two.” The apartment was unfinished when the family moved in. “There was a little room meant to be a bathroom, but it didn’t have plumbing except for a water faucet. The equipment had been unavailable when the apartments were built. We made a cement tank to store water for bathing. We had to go downstairs to use a communal toilet. Anyhow, in North Korea, except in Pyongyang, when they say, ‘We have housing for you,’ you can’t expect to find it ready to move in. The interior is just the rough concrete structure. You have to finish it yourself, with floor covering, doors, and so on. Usually in Pyongyang you do get a finished apartment, but in the provinces, no.”

Kim told me he had remained loyal to Kim Il-sung throughout a ten-year army enlistment that started in 1979 when he was seventeen. He was stationed in Kaesong, near the border with South Korea, as an artilleryman. “I worked on launchers with thirty separate warheads. I became a sergeant, commanding one launcher and a squad of twelve men attached to it.” I asked what he had been taught about his mission. “While I was in the army, conditions in North Korea worsened,” he replied. “We had about three hours of ideological studies each day, and they taught us to believe that all our difficulties were due to the U.S. Army and the South Korean government. I believed I had to fight. I even wanted to sacrifice my life for the country. They constantly taught us about the superiority of socialism and the greatness of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. I believed socialism was the best. They continually told us stories about South Korea that highlighted the negative aspects of capitalism—the gap between rich and poor, beggars and homeless people living in the streets and under bridges, people getting no education because the South Korean government could not provide equal opportunities to the people. I believed it totally.”

Kim explained that North Koreans believed because they had no alternative sources of information. I asked him about broadcasts from abroad, but he said he had never heard one while he was in North Korea. Well, then, wasn’t there a grapevine, as other defectors had told me? “I’m skeptical about the powers of the grapevine,” Kim replied. “All right, an ethnic Korean living in Yanbian [in China] might have visited South Korea. He might pass the word that South Koreans are wealthy But even if I had heard it, I was so brain-washed I wouldn’t have believed it. And even if I had believed it, I wouldn’t have dared to spread it. But there may be some difference between civilians and soldiers in this regard. I would be pretty sure such rumors
don’t spread in the army even now. But among civilians, rumors of South Korean wealth are spreading and there are some people who are envious of South Koreans’ lives.”

His remark about the military’s resistance to outside information intrigued me and I asked Kim to explain. “During your ten-year hitch in the army you get no leave,” he explained. “There’s no contact with the outside world. No outside information can penetrate. There’s much more ideological study than civilians undergo.” I pressed him on whether there was some way that the United States and South Korea could get through to soldiers despite those circumstances. “It’s very difficult to penetrate the army” he said. But he added that the situation was not entirely hopeless. “Just continue the drops of propaganda leaflets and the propaganda broadcasts through DMZ loudspeakers. Even though they try not to listen, how can they not hear some of those?”

I went back to Kim’s remark that he had been ready to fight and asked him to talk about that. “The North Korean government tells the civilian population that unification will come through peaceful means,” he said. “In the military though, they taught us that reunification would be possible only through forcible measures, so we had to be prepared for war. Then, after reunification, we would restructure South Korea with socialism. They taught us that food shortages are the result of isolation caused by the capitalist societies’ sanctions. Through a-war, we believed, we could come out of that isolation. We believed that through reunification on North Korean terms, if we had South Korea, we would then have enough farmland to cultivate enough food to sustain life.”

That sounded to me a little like Hitler’s concept of
lebensraum.
I asked Kim to try to recreate for me the lectures he had heard in ideological training, in the words of the instructors to the extent he could remember. Here are some of the spiels he remembered: “We have to reunify the peninsula by 1995, even if-we must use force to achieve it. Everyone serving in the army now must be prepared for this war. You must be prepared to sacrifice your life for the country. Capitalism is an evil, a vice. Socialism is the system that works for the people. We military must fight together to enforce a socialist regime. South Korea is a very anti-humanitarian regime. For the sake of Koreans north and south, for the betterment of the whole race, we must ensure the triumph of socialism. Even though South Korea has the U.S. Army to help it, North Korea is prepared. We’re better than the U.S. Army. We’ve been preparing since the Korean War. We have enough men and matériel to fight the war and win. There’s a basic difference between us and the other side. The South Korean and American armies are structured according to the capitalist ideal. Their soldiers fight for money. They aren’t prepared to sacrifice their lives to win the war. North Korean soldiers are prepared to sacrifice our lives. We are not fighting for money but to create an ideal society for the
people. During the Korean War, eighteen countries helped South Korea but we still won. We didn’t have enough matériel then, but now we have what we need. We definitely can win this war.”

Kim interrupted his memories to tell me that North Korean soldiers had no actual knowledge regarding the weaponry facing them, which could help explain their strong confidence of victory. Then he continued recalling the teachings that had been drilled into him in the army: “As soon as we have won the war, we will root out capitalist ideas in the South. We army men, stationed there, will teach the people about socialism, teach them to follow the leadership of the Great Leader Comrade Kim Il-sung. Whoever resists will be killed. Right now the United States is basing nuclear weapons in Okinawa and other places. But there is no need to fear them. We have better arms than the U.S., and we can win. So feel confident, soldiers, and do not fear the nuclear arms of the U.S. If a war is staged in South Korea, that will not be an invasion but a war for justice. Once we are unified, we no longer have to use our money to build up our military might. We can use all our resources for the betterment of the people’s lives. Having the South Korean farmland, with the country united under the leadership of Kim Il-sung, we can produce enough staple food not to be threatened by the Western world’s economic sanctions. As soon as we are reunified, we will all be able to ‘eat rice with beef soup, wear silk clothing and live in houses with tile roofs.’ Right now we don’t have enough food supplies and we must train strenuously. This is because our army is an army for war. As soon as the war is won we will have a better society.”

I asked Kim whether the indoctrinations had changed in any way during his ten years in the army. “The basic objectives remained the same, although there may have been some change in structure,” he replied. “According to political events the structure might change. Right now [October 1994] I’d speculate they’re teaching with reference to the North Korea–U.S. talks— maybe something to the effect that the United States won’t give up what we want so we’ll still have to advance reunification through force. Each year the New Year’s teachings by Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il were emphasized. From 1986, there was more emphasis on getting South Korea’s farmland and eating better: ‘This ordeal is continuing because of South Korea and the United States. We have to defeat their armies and unite the North and South.’”

Kim said he had been subjected to the lectures “right up to July 14, 1988, the day before I was mustered out. In North Korea, we have ‘Strategic Sundays,’ for study, plus three hours of ideological study daily.” He acknowledged that those sessions could become tedious. “Of course, if you hear the same thing over and over, you’ll get bored. But the punishment for drowsing during the lectures is so severe you can’t even think of allowing yourself to doze off. Punishments include from ten hours of continuous ideological
studies to a whole week of them, around the clock, with no sleep. They may hit you, or make you run around the mountains.” But Kim didn’t study just out of fear, he said. “I was enthusiastic because diligence would pay off later. If you want to climb the career ladder, knowing ideology is essential. I wanted to enter a university after my enlistment, and the very first exam to screen applicants is on ideology. At the same time, I was very loyal.”