The
first lady, North Korean
style Tatiana Gabroussenko
The first exercises of Kim Jong-eun's
image-making have left Western spectators with an
impression that they can expect little
entertainment from North Korea in the near future.
Yet another Kim sits on the North Korean
throne with a haircut as esthetically unpleasing
and a face as rounded as that of his forefathers,
dressed in baggy suits with no shirts and ties, as if
borrowed from a deep, dusty
corner of his father's wardrobe. Just another Kim
posing for photographs with his soldiers, climbing
military equipment and horse-riding exactly like
his grandfather did for official portraits. The
tightness with which wrinkled generals grasped the
elbows of the nervously grinning 27-year-old heir
during his first photos in Rodong Sinmun newspaper
seemed to cry out that the young fellow was in
dire need of support in his newfound role.
Popcorn should be put aside: North Korean
policymakers indeed intend to follow the
self-proposed course: "Kim Jong-eun is the Kim
Il-sung of today, Kim Jong-eun is the Kim Jong-il
of today."
However, recent developments
have proved that surprises can be found even in a
dull place like North Korea. Although the
no-nonsense octogenarians in military uniform are
still hovering around the "Young Marshal", a few
months ago their gothic presence was disturbed by
the fluttering of a pleasant-looking young lady,
Kim Jong-eun's wife Ri Sol-ju.
The way she
behaves seems radically unconventional. Instead of
mastering the preparation of some particularly
fragrant variety of kimchee deep inside her
kitchen like a traditional ajumma (married
woman) would, or devastating European boutiques
like the regular wife of a regular Oriental
dictator, Ri follows her husband to every
political destination. She smiles broadly for
cameras, wears provocatively short skirts and
puzzles foreign analysts desperately attempting to
conjure up a meaning to all these new changes.
The opinions of foreign observers have so
far been divided. For those oriented toward a
darker view of the situation, Ri's imposing
presence serves as yet another testimony of
inadequacy of the country's new leadership,
alongside the recent appearance of a dancing
Mickey Mouse on the central stage of Pyongyang.
Nobody around the young dictator, they lament, can
point to the fact that the attire of his wife is
highly inappropriate: showing off a designer
handbag worth several annual salaries of a regular
North Korean worker begs for dangerous parallels
of Ri Sol-ju with Marie Antoinette.
Positive thinkers, on the contrary, tend
to interpret Ri Sol-ju's sociability as a sign of
progressiveness of the new North Korean
leadership. After all, the Soviet perestroika was
also heralded by the emergence of Raisa
Gorbachova, who bravely broke out of the line of
figureless spouses of Soviet politburo members.
Back in the late 1980s, Raisa's Westernized manner
and susceptibility to the latest Parisian trends
were foresightedly connected with her husband's
urges for reforms and democratization. By analogy,
the young North Korean leader, whose wife's
energetic public stance so refreshingly reflects
Western standards of a first lady, can hardly be a
stubborn conservative.
For all their
seeming reasonability, I find both assessments of
the situation doubtful; both overtly extrapolate
Western experience on the North Korean political
situation. If we consider the phenomenon of Ri
Sol-ju through the prism of North Korean political
practice, the conclusions must be different from
both the current streams of thought. Rather than
challenging the North Korean political Olympus, Ri
Sol-ju so far seems to fit the domestic
interpretation of a first lady quite well.
North Korean standards of the first
lady While in a Western democratic country
a luxury handbag in the hands of a politician
might stir uncomfortable public discussions about
sketchy tax declarations, the same accessory would
be hardly even noticed in such stratified and
media-scarce part of the world as North Korea. The
general public and the media in such a country are
rarely able to recognize accessory brands at a
glance or distinguish between an indigenous and a
made-in-China Dior. Luckily for their inner peace,
North Koreans do not yet have yellow press that
would harass them with the subject.
Moreover, even if such information were to
surface, a regular North Korean would hardly toss
in bed, enwrapped by thoughts of how much the wife
of the Leader spends on her attire. Those who are
brought up within the caste-like sonbun
system tend to approach such issues
philosophically, as a part of the natural order of
things. After all, there are "the upper and the
lower waters", and those who belong to the "upper
waters" are entitled to better consumer goods. In
fact, putting aside the details of brand names or
cost, Ri's overall attire blends perfectly with
that of other upper-crust North Korean ladies, and
by no means outshines them or is different in
style.
At the same time, North Koreans
have their own strict national requirements as to
the image of the first lady. Contrary to some
Western perceptions, these requirements do not
presuppose a Confucian seclusion of the leader's
wife in the women's part of the house.
The
public invisibility of Kim Jong-il's spouse, which
gave reason for such misconceptions in the first
place, was purely a result of his peculiar family
situation with a chain of wives, extramarital
affairs and unclear heirs rather than a
constructed attitude. In reality, the burden of
social responsibilities the Leader's wife is
intended to carry in North Korea is much heavier
than those of a president's wife in the Western
world.
This North Korean standard has been
set by the figure of First Lady "No 1" - Kim
Jong-suk, Kim Il-sung's wife and Kim Jong-il's
mother. In contemporary North Korea, both the
official status and popular reputation of Kim
Jong-suk are extremely high.
Kim Jong-suk,
once a humble cook in a guerrilla camp in
Manchuria, died at age 32 of childbirth
complications after spending only four years as
the first lady of the Democratic People's Republic
of Korea. Nevertheless, she is gratefully
remembered as a warm-hearted, perpetually smiling
and giving personality who was dearly loved by her
husband, relatives and friends and cherished even
by those who encountered her by accident.
Yakov Novichenko, a Soviet officer, was
among the latter group. In 1946 Yakov saved Kim
Il-sung from assassination by catching a hand
grenade thrown by members of a right-wing
terrorist group, and lost his arm when the grenade
exploded. Yakov recalls Kim Jong-suk as the first
person who visited him in hospital to express her
gratitude, and bring him personally home-cooked
food.
Kim Il-sung's memoirs in which he
describes his early years of marriage with Kim
Jong-suk, their life and their fight together in a
guerrilla camp in Manchuria are permeated with
examples of her extraordinary devotion. For
instance, he recollects how during battles his
wife would crawl to him and their comrades under
enemy fire and put boiled potatoes in their
pockets, despite being starved herself. In the
winter taiga, where there was no possibility of
lighting a fire for security reasons, Kim Jong-suk
is said to have washed her husband's clothes in
icy-cold water and then dried them with her body
heat, even though it made her shake with cold for
hours afterward.
For all their years
together, Kim Il-sung would wear woolen socks that
Kim Jong-suk, being busy during the daytime,
knitted for him at night. Even in the Manchurian
taiga, she managed to get wool and knit socks for
her husband, while she never cared to obtain such
socks for herself. Believing in an old
superstition that bullets could not reach a person
through silken wool, Kim Jong-suk quilted a jacket
for Kim Il-sung with this wool and insisted that
he wear it during battles. He writes with regret
at having never asked his wife where she had
obtained expensive silk in the taiga.
Some episodes of these memoirs might
perplex a reader accustomed to traditions of
Western gallantry in regards to the "weaker sex".
Kim Il-sung casually refers to his wife's
endeavors to protect him with her body during
combat. Indeed, in official paintings, she is
customarily portrayed during battles as standing
in the front line, aiming her pistol at the enemy
and sheltering Kim Il-sung with her body. The Sun
of the Nation does not appear too embarrassed to
hide behind his wife's back.
Such scenes
invoke clear parallels with traditional Korean
patterns of a devoted wife, such as an old folk
story of a lady who died protecting her genteel
husband from a tiger attack. However, the
traditional origins of Kim Jong-suk's behavior are
not recognized. In official discourse, her
constant self-sacrifice is rather interpreted as
an expression of care about the precious body of
the Marshal and respect to his revolutionary
credentials.
Visual and textual propaganda
customarily depicts Kim Jong-suk as standing
behind her husband's shoulder during politically
significant moments, such as writing the national
anthem, or even personally fulfilling his
important political orders. This could be
large-scale events such as supervising a school
for children of "revolutionary martyrs", or less
impressive chores such as cultivating the back
yard of the Kim residence into a vegetable patch
in response to the Leader's nationwide order "not
to leave even an inch of our land untilled".
The underlying message of all these images
is that the wife of the North Korean leader is
expected to be his right hand and his most loyal
assistant, whose primary role is to show to the
nation how the leader's orders should be
implemented.
Will Ri Sol-ju become the
"Kim Jong-suk of today"?
If we consider Ri
Sol-ju through the prism of Kim Jong-suk's
official and non-official image, Ri's constant
presence alongside the Young General and standing
behind his shoulder during his many "on-the-spot
guidance" moments would look neither too
innovative nor too intruding. The same could be
said about Ri's ever-present smile. This manner
may look odd against the solemn background of the
elderly generals, yet it evokes clear parallels
with the beaming attitude of Kim Jong-suk. It can
be safely stated that Ri's external manners
correlate quite well with the North Korean model
of the first lady - to the extent that even her
haircut reminds one of Kim Jong-suk's in her
guerrilla days.
The question arises,
however, as to whether Ri will be able to fill
this familiar frame with content that would appeal
to the nation and solidify her husband's career,
not ruin it. The latter case was sufficiently
presented by Raisa Gorbachova, whose presumptuous
public stance was starkly incongruent with Russian
tradition and who for that reason became one of
the major gravediggers for the reputation of her
husband in Russia. While it is too early to make
the final verdict in regard to Ri Sol-ju, some
events demonstrate that the young wife of Kim
Jong-eun may be a good addition to the Family.
For example, during one of the recent
visits of Kim Jong-eun to the new homes of
workers' families, Ri Sol-ju's public behavior
could be deemed impeccable. She softly followed
her husband, one step behind him and carrying bags
with presents for the workers while he was
empty-handed. During conversation with their
hosts, Ri was involved and sociable with no tint
of arrogance; she cheerfully chatted with children
and smiled warmheartedly to everyone. What is
more, at the end of the visit Ri helped the
hostess clear the table and then moved to the
kitchen to wash dishes.
Kim Jong-suk would
surely do the same. Gorbachova would not.
Tatiana Gabroussenko obtained
her PhD in East Asian Studies at the Australian
National University. Her latest book, Soldiers
on the Cultural Front: Developments in the early
history of North Korean literature and literary
policy was selected for the Choice magazine
list of Outstanding Academic Titles of 2012.
Tatiana is an Adjunct Lecturer of the University
of New South Wales and is currently teaching North
Korean culture at Korea University, Seoul.
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