Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (102 page)

To the extent that Kim Jong-il during that period had an interest in economic reform, it seems to have been fleeting, not very profound and offset to a considerable extent by conservative impulses and his determination to seal the military’s support for his succession. In March 1993, probably to back his claims to being the chief priest of his father’s ideology, he warned in a twenty-two-page thesis against private ownership and other “abuses of socialism.” Those he blamed for the collapse of socialist systems abroad.
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Even at that late date, then, he was demonstrably unprepared to make major changes in the system.

There is little reason to believe that even the senior Kim’s newfound enthusiasm for change went much beyond emphasizing food and consumer goods more, heavy industry less. But rumors had it that a disagreement between father and son contributed to the father’s death.

I spoke with Oh Young-nam, a former captain in State Security who defected to the South. His family home in Pyongyang was across the street from the elite’s social hub, the Koryo Hotel, a location that signified to me the family’s considerable prominence. He mentioned, without naming, a powerful relative who had died. (I had heard that a relative of Marshal O Jin-u had defected, but Oh Young-nam refused to answer when I asked if that might
be the connection.) Oh Young-nam gave me an account of Kim’s last days that he said was pieced together from what he had heard from other members of the elite—especially sons and daughters of very high officials, whom he named for me.

“The more Kim Jong-il took power, the more Kim Il-sung regretted it,” Oh said. “Kim Jong-il is very dogmatic. Kim Jong-il divided the bodyguard service into two separate forces. Force One was for Kim Il-sung and Force Two was for Kim Jong-il. That was a threat; Kim Il-sung was regretting it. But when he met Jimmy Carter, he was jubilant. He believed Korea would reunify under [a confederation plan allowing for] two systems. He told Lee Yong-u, the head of transport and former head of the surveillance department, that they should relink the North-South railroad in Pyonggun so he could go for negotiations.

“Kim Il-sung was at Mount Myohyang and Kim Jong-il was at Samjiyon pond at a resort for high ranking people such as Lee Jong-ok, Pak Song-chol and Choe Gwang. Kim Il-sung was so jubilant regarding reunification. He said in meetings of heads of ministries that he would de-emphasize defense and emphasize improving the lives of average civilians. He ordered that more electricity be delivered to people. But [during a meeting] he had a phone conversation with Kim Jong-il, who said, ‘Relax, enjoy your old age. We’ll take care of it.’ Kim Il-sung was really angry. He couldn’t continue the meeting. He went back to his office and told Chong Il-shim, a woman who was helping him with his memoirs, ‘I am very angry at this moment. I want to emphasize civilian life. With the negotiations with the United States, I hope aid “will be given to North Hamgyong.’ He was too angry. He asked his chief secretary to leave him for one hour.

“The chief secretary after two hours entered the office. Kim Il-sung had dropped off the bed, face first on the floor. The chief secretary raised him up, got the phlegm out of his mouth and asked for the main doctor. But Kim Jong-il had fired that doctor, saying he was too old. Only a young doctor was there. They arranged for two helicopters to come, but the one carrying emergency equipment crashed. The medical team couldn’t help Kim Il-sung and he died. When Kim Jong-il heard it, he said, ‘Do not announce it to anyone else. Restrict the movements of State Security, Public Security and the People’s Army’ [Here Oh named his sources for this detail, but I choose to omit those names.] Because Kim Il-sung died in such a way his chief secretary, whose name I don’t recall, shot himself in the head.

“The media showed North Koreans weeping in front of the statue of Kim Il-sung. That only lasted three days. Kim Jong-il was astonished that people wept only three days. Kim Il-sung had been in power so long. Kim Jong-il realized he would be the leader and the people would worship him. But what would happen when he got weak? So he made every organization send a certain number of people to weep each day in front of the Kim Il-sung
statue. They were not allowed to drink alcohol during mourning. Everyone who was in the mansion at Mount Myohyang when Kim Il-sung died “was under great scrutiny. Those who were there included Kang Jong-hyon, a great grandchild of Kim Il-sung’s mother; Kang Jong-ho, from the Kang clan; a son of Choe Jung-nam, who heads the North Korea trade office in Guangzhou. All high-ranking sons and daughters considered Kim Jong-il to have been at fault. The day that Kim Il-sung’s body was transported from Mount Myohyang, all soldiers were confined to barracks or recalled. They didn’t want any movement. The next day O Jin-u went to the presidential palace in Pyongyang and was disappointed to find that the doorknob was rusty and the chandeliers’ light bulbs were out. Maintenance was poor. How could Kim Jong-il treat his father that way?

“Most of this account was from sons and daughters of high officials. It’s well known in Pyongyang right now.”

On July 8,
1994,
Radio Pyongyang issued a grave announcement: “The Great Heart stopped beating.” Kim Il-sung had been “a great national hero who regained the sovereignty and dignity of the country”
Nodong Shinmun
said in an editorial. Kim had “triumphantly led the twenty-year-long rigorous anti-Japanese revolutionary struggle and put an end to the distress-torn history of the nation and brought a new spring of liberation to our people. This was an undying feat that marked a new turning point in the history of our nation spanning 5,000 years.”
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Japanese analyst Katsumi Sato watched the changing lists of the funeral committee for clues that might bear on the rumors—already rife—that Kim Il-sung had been arguing with his son when he died. Name order in North Korea traditionally indicated status. First lady Kim Song-ae started off as number 104 on the committee. Eventually she became number seven. Kim Song-ae had spoken with Carter during his visit. Also, Sato said, Kim Il-sung had told the visiting widow of a former Japanese prime minister, when she stopped over in Pyongyang, that his good health was thanks to Song-ae’s son Pyong-il: “He’s been helping me lately.” Sato thought a real power struggle had been afoot at the end. He watched the televised funeral rally as Kim Jong-il whispered in O Jin-u’s ear. O ignored him “as if he were a child,” said Sato, who suspected the old marshal was angry because Kim Jong-il had “caused” his father’s death.

As at the party congress fourteen years earlier at which his succession had been made formal, Kim Jong-il appeared pale and sick when he attended the televised funeral event. Slack-jawed and dazed-looking, he could have been mistaken for the corpse. He was reported to have fasted for four days. His appearance also gave rise to intense speculation about the state of his health, although some analysts suspected he was just trying to look as
bad as possible to project deep grief. (We now know about his fall from horseback the previous autumn. He may have been showing still the effects of that accident.) In a book published in 2003, a Japanese who claimed to have worked as Kim Jong-il’s chef said the Dear Leader after his father’s death confined himself to his room for long periods. One of Kim’s wives, Ko Yong-hui, found him keeping a pistol next to him once, and asked him what he was thinking about, the chef-wrote.
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A New Year’s 1995 editorial that ran in the newspapers of the party, army and League of Socialist Working Youth referred to Kim Jong-il as “Great Leader of our party and people,” “our Fatherly Leader” and “Supreme Commander of our revolutionary armed forces.” If Kim Jong-il was ever going to do anything radical on his own, it might have seemed that now was his time. In the event, however, he had his father made president in perpetuity and kept the country in official mourning for three years.

As Hwang Jang-yop recalled, “The entire country was swept up in a flood of tears. Most of the mourners were crying because they had been brain-washed by Kim Il-sung’s personality cult, but there was also the fact that anything other than mourning was not allowed. The party conducted surveys to see who displayed the most grief, and made this an important criterion in assessing party members’ loyalty. Patients who remained in hospitals and people who drank and made merry even after hearing news of their leader’s death were all singled out for punishment. In the Juche Science Institute, which I was supervising, Professor Hong Seung-hoon, the director of economic research, was demoted for remaining dry-eyed and busy repairing his bicycle. This incident eventually took its toll on Dr. Hong’s health and led to his death.”
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After Kim’s death, Hwang said, “there was a debate on whether the party should continue publishing his memoirs. I firmly stated my opinion that the party should stop publishing the memoirs. I pointed out that quite a few people already questioned the integrity of the memoirs published so far because they were too intriguing to be true. So if the memoirs continued to be published even after Kim Il-sung’s death, people would lose their faith in even the volumes that had been published while he was alive. I also had another reason in mind. It was all right to stretch the truth about the partisan struggle before liberation, since no one would take issue with that. But exaggerating about the post-liberation period, which is public knowledge, was a different matter. I was afraid it might cause problems in diplomatic relations.

“Kim Il-sung’s partisan warfare was carried out under the guidance ofthe Chinese Communist Party, but the struggle in Northeast China [Manchuria] was not a significant part of the communist struggle in China as a whole. Furthermore, Kim Il-sung’s partisan struggle was but a small part
of the struggle in Northeast China. So the Chinese could turn a blind eye to the North Korean leaders’ exaggeration of Kim Il-sung’s feats, since his struggle was a drop in the bucket compared with the struggles of the Chinese Communist Party led by Mao. However, the Chinese people would react differently if the historical facts that were being distorted occurred after the liberation. That was what I was afraid of. Overzealous officials ignored my advice and submitted the sequel to Kim Il-sung’s memoirs for Kim Jong-il’s approval. The memoirs are still being published, long after the death of Kim Il-sung.”
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“By handing over the reins to his son, Kim Il-sung committed a total and irrevocable mistake,” Hwang Jang-yop wrote. “And his final mistake was sucking up to the power acquired by his son, thereby losing everything he once had. If Kim Il-sung had ruled only until the end of the 1960s and died then, he would have gone down in history as a hero of the armed struggle against Japanese colonialism and a capable leader of North Korea. But by handing over the government to his son, he walked down the same dishonorable path as Kim Jong-il, smearing the honorable first half of his political career. The mess in Kim Il-sung’s life was made not so much by himself but by Kim Jong-il. The most serious defect in the lives of the two Kims is the hereditary passing down of power. Who is the one more at fault in this matter? Most people say that it is Kim Il-sung, but I believe that more than half the blame lies with Kim Jong-il.“
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Former North Korean diplomat Ko Young-hwan said he had been very surprised when he went to South Korea because “many professionals thought there would be political turmoil and Kim Jong-il couldn’t succeed. I didn’t think that way There’s a big problem with his credibility, but I still think he’ll rule for a period of time. His supporters are filling the highest official ranks, military and ciivilian, including economic officials. But he’s going to collapse anyway because government officials believe he’s only half the man his father is. That will bring him down. People around him think Kim Jong-il has a bad character and leads an extravagant life. He seems to put too much emphasis on unimportant issues. He doesn’t have much interest in what’s happening inside North Korea. He’s not very interested in the economic crisis, the people’s welfare or educational change. He’s only interested in issues that can be seen, or that he can be acclaimed for. He’s not interested in the big picture. He’s interested in movie-making, operas, little gestures like sending a bus to a school or putting up buildings for a school.”

So, I asked Ko, is Kim Jong-il basically a fool? He agreed with that characterization but I wanted a more nuanced estimate from him so I asked
whether Kim wasn’t bright in a way. “As far as I can see, I don’t agree,” Ko replied. “He has some talent in culture and arts. He can tell when the violinist hits the wrong note. But regarding the economy and statecraft he’s a fool. The technocrats don’t expect much from him in those areas, but at least they wish he’d show in the field of technology some of the zeal he displays toward art and culture. If he did that, maybe he could be seen as a better leader, but there’s no chance of it now.”

Former President Carter had arranged for then South Korean President Kim Young-sam to meet Kim Il-sung, and plans for the summit were being made when Kim Il-sung died. Pyongyang hoped that Kim Young-sam would attend the funeral. But communism was a personal issue for Kim Young-sam. North Korean agents, as we saw in chapter 6, had killed his mother in the family home on Koje Island in 1960. After his election in 1992, he had gone to the island and reported to his dead mother on his achievement, offering the election certificate before her grave.
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As North Korea retreated into mourning Kim Young-sam buckled to domestic pressures, insulting the dead leader’s successor son by refusing to send a delegation to mourn the “war criminal.” In a taped April 25, 1998, conversation in Pyongyang with visiting Japanese-Korean officials of Chongryon, Kim Jong-il cited the incident and called Kim Young-sam “a filthy dirt-bag.”