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PYONGYANG
WATCH
The Dear Leader, demystified
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Remember when North Korea was the hermit kingdom, and Kim Jong-il the great
unknown? No one ever saw, let alone met, the Dear Leader - or "party center",
as he was at first mysteriously dubbed even in the Pyongyang press, before
finally being unveiled as his father Kim Il-sung's chosen heir in 1980.
Even after that, Kim kept a low profile. His chubby image is everywhere, but
his voice is still not heard in North Korean media. In particular, apart from
one trip to China in 1983, he never met foreigners.
So the mystery persisted, allowing lurid fantasies to flourish. South Korean
intelligence, in those pre-Sunshine days, eagerly egged the pudding. Kim
Jong-il was portrayed as a debauched incompetent, given to drink and
womanizing. A TV series in similar vein ran in Seoul for several years. Given
this alleged lifestyle, there were also rumors of ill-health and accidents: a
car crash, or falling off a horse.
But then the Dear Leader had a second coming out - to foreigners. In recent
years he has twice been to China; met Russian leader Vladimir Putin three
times; hosted the then US secretary of state Madeleine Albright, and a
high-level European delegation; and more. Above all, just three years ago he
met his Southern counterpart Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang for the first ever
inter-Korean summit meeting.
Most of this was great public relations for the Dear Leader. Clearly no fool -
indeed, quite a wit - he impressed all who met him as well informed about a
wider world he had hardly visited. For a while, Kim Jong-il masks were all the
rage in Seoul. His former negative image was dismissed as Cold War propaganda.
But the wheel keeps turning. Three years on, with hope of detente dashed by a
new nuclear crisis, there is doubt as to the Dear Leader's political judgment,
to say the least. As for his lifestyle, a steady stream of exposes has pretty
much confirmed that the tales of sleaze and indulgence were true all along.
As this column has often argued, this is no surprise. Not only does absolute
power corrupt, but there is no inherent contradiction between public
statesmanship and private sleaze. Just look at what went on sometimes in the
White House, whether under - the word is apt - John F Kennedy or Bill Clinton.
While Kim Jong-il need have no fear of impeachment (more's the pity), he must
be dismayed at the amount of publicity his private life has attracted. Totting
it up, there are now at least half a dozen books by those who claim to have
known the Dear Leader intimately, in various roles. Relatives, bodyguards,
tutors, chefs, and even kidnap victims have all had their say - albeit rarely
in English, thus far.
Kidnap victims? That issue blew up last year, when Kim Jong-il at last
confessed to abducting young Japanese to train his spooks. He blamed this on
rogue elements. Yet in 1978, he personally ordered the kidnapping in Hong Kong
of a top South Korean actress, Choe Eun-hee, and her director ex-husband, Shin
Sang-ok, to improve North Korean films. (Couldn't he just have hired them?)
Jailed and separated at first, they eventually won the Dear Leader's trust
before dramatically escaping in Vienna in 1986.
Naturally, they wrote a book - at least in Korean and Japanese. Some years ago
a Seoul magazine even issued a tape of Kim Jong-il talking, secretly recorded
by Choe. An English translation of the book exists - dated 1987, already - but
for some reason is only now with an agent seeking a publisher. Not to jump the
gun, suffice it to say that this confirms the Dear Leader as, shall we say,
fun-loving. Richly revelatory as it is on more serious matters too, one hopes
this account will soon come out in English.
In a rather different vein are family memoirs by Kim Jong-il's sister-in-law,
Song Hye-rang, which also seem unavailable in English as yet. As I've written
before (see Soap,
sleaze: North Korea's first family, March 2, 2002), these avoid sleaze,
yet paint a bleak picture of palace life. Song's daughter, Li Nam-ok, is also
writing a book that, judging by interviews she has given, may pull some
punches. Mother and daughter are now in the West, but might want to keep a line
to Pyongyang open. Then again, the death last year in Moscow of Song Hye-rang's
sister Song Hye-rim, the mother of Kim Jong-il's elder son Kim Jong-nam, might
loosen their inhibitions.
Also keen to keep in with the Dear Leader is Konstantin Pulikovsky. As
President Putin's representative in the Russian far east, Pulikovsky
accompanied Kim Jong-il on his famous slow train to Moscow two years ago. His
book Orient Express, published last autumn (only in Russian, alas), was
meant to portray Kim's human side. But the accounts of fresh lobster and pretty
female "conductors" caused a furor (see
He scoffs, they scour, January 4).
Ex-members of Kim Jong-il's entourage, in widely differing capacities, have
also got in on the act. Lee Young-kuk, a former bodyguard, painted an
unforgettable picture of "The Supremo in his labyrinth", as Time put it:
tooling around in his pool on a motorized bodyboard, an attractive nurse at his
side.
For ex-party secretary Hwang Jang-yop, who in 1997 became North Korea's most
senior defector ever (see
An enemy of which state?, November 30, 2000), it's Kim's mind rather
than his body that's flabby. As inventor of the juche philosophy
(credited to Kim Il-sung), whose flame he still guards, and personal tutor to
his son, Hwang faults the Dear Leader for straying from the true path, turning
socialism into feudalism. Virtually silenced under Kim Dae-jung so as not to
spoil Sunshine, Hwang may hit the headlines again soon if finally allowed, as
expected, to visit Washington.
A kidnapped film couple, a sister- and niece-in-law, an escort, a bodyguard, a
tutor - and did I say chefs, plural? I did indeed. More in an upcoming
Pyongyang Watch. Meanwhile, a clue: Check out the
pizza on this very site ...
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and
modern Korea, Leeds University, England.
(Copyright 2003 Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact
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