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BOOK
REVIEW
The Kims' North
Korea
Under the Loving Care of the
Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim
Dynasty by Bradley K Martin
Reviewed by Yoel Sano
As
speculation mounts that North Korea is about to
conduct its first nuclear-weapons test, there has
seldom been a greater urgency to know about the
country and its leaders, the late Great Leader Kim
Il-sung and his son and chosen successor, Dear
Leader Kim Jong-il. Luckily, Bradley Martin's
Under The Loving  Care Of The Fatherly
Leader: North Korea And The Kim Dynasty,
provides most of the answers.
The two Kims
are the only leaders North Korea has ever known
since its establishment as a separate state from
the South in September 1948. Not only that, but
perhaps no leader anywhere in human history has so
thoroughly dominated a country as either of the
Kims has. As such, Martin's book is as much a
biography of North Korea as it is of the two Kims.
The author successfully combines history, society,
travel writing and political analysis in a way
that makes it totally readable, despite its 800
pages. While Martin's level of detail will please
experienced Pyongyang watchers, the book is
nonetheless accessible to even those not
acquainted with this Byzantine field.
Writing accurately about North Korea is
always a formidable challenge, given the country's
isolation from the rest of the world, the
totalitarian nature of the regime and its
all-powerful propaganda machine, and the fact that
enemies of the country have disseminated
disinformation over the years. Yet, through a
combination of exhaustive research (with 100 pages
of end-notes), countless interviews with defectors
and other senior officials, and four visits to the
communist state over a 25-year period, Martin has
penned what must be the most comprehensive
single-volume English-language book ever written
on North Korea. (Arguably, the only competitor is
the two-volume Communism in Korea by Robert
A Scalapino and Chong-sik Lee, written in 1972.)
To his credit, Martin is as objective as
can be, given the constraints he faces. As such,
he seeks to avoid deliberately or unnecessarily
demonizing the two Kims merely for the sake of it,
as some anti-Kim writers have done, either out of
hatred or for the purposes of sensationalism. For
example, Martin acknowledges that from the 1950s
to the 1970s, the North Korean economy grew
rapidly, bringing about considerable benefits to
the population, such as a higher gross domestic
product (GDP) per capita, life expectancy and
literacy levels. Indeed, it was only in 1976 that
South Korea's GDP per capita overtook the North's.
Nonetheless, Martin's book cannot help but paint a
bleak and even horrific picture of life in North
Korea, and indeed, the system formed by the Kims,
father and son.
Nightmare
world
Most of these bleak stories are
relayed through lengthy interviews with defectors.
And herein lies a danger: until recently, Northern
defectors had been encouraged by South Korea's
intelligence services to portray their homeland in
the worst possible light. However, Martin
discusses the merits and difficulties of using
defector testimony in his end-notes. The scope of
defectors is broad, ranging from ordinary citizens
to engineers, junior members of the elite and
armed forces, prison guards and former
intelligence agents. One rare weakness in this
book, however, is that most of these interviews
were conducted in the early 1990s, and it is not
clear why Martin has not interviewed more recent
defectors, given that the number has swelled over
the past few years.
Nonetheless, from
reading these defectors' tales, as relayed
verbatim in Martin's book, it is hard not to
conclude that North Korea is ruled by one very
nasty regime. The country's extreme bleakness
stems from the sheer economic hardships faced by
the population - especially from the 1970s onwards
- and the depth of the regime's efforts to control
its people. On the economic front, long-term
malnutrition and mass starvation from the 1990s
onwards has taken a heavy physical toll on the
population as a whole. In fact, even before the
agricultural crisis of the 1990s, North Koreans
were hardly well-off.
However, it is the
political repression that is most striking to the
reader. As a measure of North Korea's
totalitarianism, one North Korean defector who
studied in the Soviet Union during the last months
of Konstantin Chernenko's presidency (1984-85) and
the early pre-perestroika days of Mikhail
Gorbachev described his arrival in the Soviet
Union thus: "I saw a wave of individualism. People
all dressed differently. Party members weren't
forced to attend every single meeting but could
skip some. I like the way the system worked: if
you had money, you could buy, unlike the ration
system in North Korea."
This man was one
of the lucky few North Koreans who saw the outside
world. The regime has had a virtual monopoly on
information, meaning North Korean citizens only
hear what they are told. All radios are soldered
to be permanently tuned to state channels. Anyone
suspected of disloyalty - even in a light-hearted
manner, through careless jokes about the
leadership - may be subject to re-education, along
with family members, who are guilty by
association. Even those most keen on serving the
regime have been prevented from promotion if a
relative, past or present, is suspected of
disloyalty. Criteria for disloyalty are
surprisingly broad, and include historical ties
with South Korea before the peninsula's division
or with Japan, Pyongyang's No 2 enemy after the
United States. Worst off, politically and
physically, are the hundreds of thousands who have
been sent to North Korea's concentration camps,
dotted around the country. Martin's description of
North Korea's gulag system, through defector
testimony, is one of the hardest-hitting aspects
of his book.
A 'Catholic state in the
Middle Ages'
At the center of this
totalitarian world are Kim Il-sung and Kim
Jong-il, who, along with the country's
juche (self-reliance) ideology, have been
likened by some observers to the Holy Trinity of
Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Perhaps this is less
surprising when one considers that Kim Il-sung was
born into a Christian background, on April 15,
1912 (the same day the Titanic sunk, Kim's critics
like to point out), barely two years into Japan's
brutal 35-year occupation of the Korean peninsula
(1910-45). At the time, Martin notes, Pyongyang
had become something of a "Jerusalem" of the Far
East, because of the large presence of Christians
converted by American missionaries in earlier
years. In fact, a large number of Korean
nationalists fighting for independence from
Imperial Japan were Christians. While Kim later
played down his Christian background, aspects of
the religion - albeit extreme - do seem to have
had an impact on his life and style of governance.
Although Kim Il-sung's early life and
career as an anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter have
been documented by previous authors, Martin
nonetheless handles this area with considerable
skill, given the mythology that has come to
surround Kim. For example, Martin compares what
previous historians have uncovered with Kim's own
memoirs, written later in his life when he was
(slightly) more objective. The author also
explains Kim's motivations for invading South
Korea in 1950, an action driven by ideology and
nationalism, but also because of the complementary
nature of the mountainous North's mineral
resources and industrial base with the South's
agricultural productivity. After the war ended in
stalemate with about 3 million Koreans dead, Kim
never abandoned his dream of reuniting the
peninsula, either peacefully or by force - if not
in conventional combat then through agitation and
subversion in the South.
The author also
chronicles the succession saga to pass the
leadership onto Kim Jong-il with remarkable
detail, often supported by defector testimony.
Essentially, although the notion of hereditary
succession was anathema to the communist system
Kim Il-sung created, the de-Stalinization of the
Soviet Union under leader Nikita Khrushchev from
1956 persuaded Kim that the only way to preserve
his historical legacy was through the succession
of his eldest son, Kim Jong-il. Opponents of this
plan were gradually purged, while those
sympathetic to the idea were elevated to high
office. Relatives from the wider Kim family were
also appointed to key positions, as were the sons
and daughters of Kim Il-sung's guerrilla comrades.
By the 1970s, at which point Kim Il-sung was
actively maneuvering his son for the succession,
the Kim family and its allies had come to resemble
the nobility (yangban) of Korea in the
Middle Ages, living a life of secluded luxury in
an otherwise poor country.
The existence
of the yangban class in North Korea is one
of the more interesting aspects of the evolution
of the communist state. From reading Martin's book
it becomes apparent that more than being a modern
socialist state, North Korea is, and has been, run
along the lines of a quasi-medieval kingdom
organized through a bizarre mish-mash of Stalinist
communism, ultra-nationalism and xenophobia,
hyper-elitism of the ruling class, and Confucian
principles of filial piety and obedience to rulers
taken to the extreme. The irony of course is that
Kim Il-sung in his younger years had denounced
Confucianism and feudalism in the harshest terms,
regarding the two as major obstacles to building a
modern state.
With the Kims at the apex of
a quasi-theocracy, one European diplomat's
description of North Korea as being akin to a
Catholic state of the Middle Ages, in which 90% of
the population believes in the regime and its
teachings, is less surprising. In this context, it
is also unsurprising that many defectors who
Martin spoke to still revere and respect Kim
Il-sung, instead attributing the country's more
recent hardships to Kim Jong-il.
Reverence
for the late Great Leader has not been passed onto
his son, Kim Jong-il, despite North Korea's
propaganda machine working at full force. By all
accounts, Kim Jong-il grew up lonely after the
death of his younger brother Shura in 1948 and his
mother, Kim Jong-suk, who died in childbirth in
1949. Kim Il-sung was often too busy with state
matters to look after Jong-il, leading the latter
to adopt a love-hate relationship with his father.
Kim Jong-il also resented his stepmother, Kim
Song-ae, and her sons, especially the eldest, Kim
Pyong-il. In fact, Pyong-il came to be a possible
rival for the top leadership to Jong-il.
Kim Jong-il instead appeared more
interested in opera and filmmaking. Martin
recounts how Kim essentially took over North
Korean cinema - and, consequently, had affairs
with many of the country's leading actresses. One
of them, Sung Hye-rim, gave birth to Kim Jong-il's
eldest son and one-time heir-apparent, Kim
Jong-nam.
Gangs, goons, and
girls
While much of the above has been well
documented over the years, Martin's book ties
these stories together in a single volume -
something that very few, if any, Western authors
have yet done. He also breaks quite a lot of new
ground or expands considerably on existing ground
for Pyongyang watchers. Chief among hitherto
little-discussed topics are analyses of the
existence of fighting youth gangs among the elite
in the 1970s, gender and sexual relations among
North Koreans, the growth of prostitution in the
country as the economy fell further into disrepair
in recent years, and perhaps most intriguingly,
the issue of Kim Il-sung's "unacknowledged"
children through illicit affairs.
Regarding the gangs, one defector recounts
how sons of the elite often formed gangs organized
through their fathers' status and fought against
gangs of lower-ranked officials' sons. The gang
phenomenon was introduced by returnees from Japan,
and while the notion of gang fights may not sound
unusual per se, the fact that this was an elite
phenomenon and that it happened in a country where
there was strict control over all forms of
behavior is significant. Eventually, from the
mid-1970s, the regime cracked down on gangs when
it came to fear they were being manipulated by
South Korean intelligence agents to sow discord in
the regime. However, it is interesting to
speculate that gangs and mafias could return in
full force, should the regime collapse or its
authority fade.
Martin's coverage of women
and gender relations in North Korea is also worth
noting. Although Kim Il-sung appears to have been
at least in part a feminist, in that he sought to
bring women's education up to scratch and elevate
their status by involving them in the workforce,
he nonetheless possessed a virtual harem of young
women selected purely for the purposes of
entertaining him and Kim Jong-il. Kim Il-sung's
interest in young women was not just for pleasure,
but for rejuvenating himself through absorbing a
young virgin's ki, or life-force, during
sex. As such, it was extremely difficult being an
attractive teenage girl in North Korea, lest the
authorities (schools, in practice) recommend her
to recruiters of the so-called "happy corps"
(entertainers), or "satisfaction corps" (sexual
services). Remarkably, parents were often happy
for their daughters to be selected for these
corps, for it would confer on them enhanced
status, and therefore money. Pleasure girls
retired from the corps at 22, after which they
were often married off to other members of the
elite. The two Kims' easy-going sex lives were in
sharp contrast to the stricter social mores of
North Korea's conservative society, yet another
example of the leaders not practicing what they
preached.
The next succession saga and
the future
As a result of the existence of
Kim Il-sung's "harem" and his ladies' man
reputation, Martin believes the late Great Leader
fathered a number of unacknowledged children. One
of these may be Kim Jong-su, a seemingly junior
official who Martin met on several of his trips
and who officially served in North Korea's
cultural affairs department, but who may in fact
be a high-ranking member of the intelligence
service. Another is Kim Hyon-nam, whose existence
was first reported by Japan's Jiji press in August
2002. That report stated that Hyon-nam was a son
of Kim Jong-il, but Martin reckons that Hyon-nam
is in fact the senior Kim Il-sung's son by a
nurse. Earlier this year, international news
agencies reported that yet another illegitimate
son of Kim Il-sung, Kim Jang-hyun, had been
involved in an assassination attempt against
Jong-il's oldest son, Kim Jong-nam. If infighting
within the Kim dynasty continues, there might be a
greater chance of the regime imploding than
previously recognized.
For the next
succession from Kim Jong-il, Martin sees Jong-il's
daughter Kim Sol-song as the best-suited candidate
among his offspring (most speculation has focused
on Kim's younger sons). Sol-song, an economist by
training, has reportedly accompanied her father on
many of his tours around North Korea and is said
to enjoy her father's trust. With Kim Jong-il
increasingly focused on economic reforms, having
Sol-song at the helm may offer the regime its best
chance of reform - if there is even a chance at
all, that is. Here Martin also provides a good
overview of North Korea's tentative economic
reforms, which were launched in July 2002, and
their possible consequences.
One
surprising aspect about Martin's speculation on
the future is that despite having seen North Korea
for himself and having heard so many terrible
tales from defectors, he still remains cautiously
optimistic that Kim Jong-il may emerge as a
reformer. Kim may even choose to become a
constitutional ruler, using the Swedish or Thai
monarchies as examples, if his mention of these
two royal systems in conversations with the
visiting former US secretary of state, Madeleine
Albright, is to be believed.
Indeed, in a
best-case scenario, Martin hopes that after
receiving a high-ranking US official, possibly US
President George W Bush himself, emulating Richard
Nixon's 1972 visit to China, Kim Jong-il gathers
his security chiefs together and demands that the
regime tears down its concentration camps.
Unfortunately, the author may be far too
optimistic on this front, and he admits that this
is something of a fantasy trip.
Reform
or apocalypse?
Nonetheless, dialogue is
still better than no dialogue, given that the
stakes are getting ever higher. While conventional
wisdom holds that the US is unlikely to attack
North Korea, in view of Pyongyang's massive
retaliatory capabilities against South Korea and
Japan, it is nonetheless discomforting that many
defectors interviewed by Martin describe how North
Koreans actually want war. So dire has the
economic situation become, and so intense is the
anti-US propaganda, that the population would
prefer death and destruction in a patriotic war to
the monotony of daily life and slow death by
starvation. These testimonies are over a decade
old, and it is impossible to know whether they
still stand, but if true, they suggest that there
is very little chance that South Korean and US
troops will be welcomed as liberators if they ever
occupy North Korea, post-regime collapse.
Furthermore, some defectors say that younger
Korean People's Army officers are even more
hardline than the older revolutionary generation,
who are passing from the scene. Kim Jong-il
himself was quoted by one defector as telling his
father and defense minister that he would "destroy
the world" if North Korea lost a new war on the
peninsula. With North Korea already reckoned to
possess around eight nuclear bombs, no-one can
afford not to take the country and Kim Jong-il
seriously.
Overall, Bradley Martin has
written a truly remarkable book, one that should
be read by anyone even remotely interested in
North Korea, or more broadly, communist history,
totalitarianism and political repression,
human-rights abuses, and the ability of human
beings to survive under some of the grimmest
economic and political conditions ever seen. The
topic often makes uneasy reading. Yet it is
essential reading to understand where North Korea
and the Kims have come from, and where they may be
going.
Under the Loving Care of the
Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim
Dynasty by Bradley K Martin. Thomas Dunne
Books, 2004. ISBN: 0312322216 (hardcover). Price:
US$33.84, 868 pages.
Yoel Sano
has worked for publishing houses in London,
providing political and economic analysis, and has
been following events in Northeast Asia for many
years.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times
Online Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
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