All Monsters Must Die (6 page)

IN HIS FINAL
years, Kim Il-sung was plagued by a tumour the size of an orange on the side of his neck. Among the malnourished, these tumours — calcium deposits — aren't uncommon. In North Korea they are called
hok
. Doctors didn't dare operate on the leader because the growth was too close to his spinal cord and brain. But all photography of that side of him was forbidden, and on official occasions his bodyguards arranged themselves so as to block its view.

In a Swedish national radio documentary by Lovisa Lamm, the Swedish diplomat Lars Bergqvist describes how he briefly met Kim Il-sung in the 1980s. He talks about how he couldn't take his eyes off the enormous tumour, “which was also covered in hair.”

After the meeting, he said to the North Korean chief of protocol: “It's very interesting to meet Kim Il-sung, but that was a terrible growth he had. Shouldn't it be removed?”

“Which growth?” the functionary replied. “No, he doesn't have a tumour, it doesn't exist.”

Bergqvist understood that the thing was unmentionable and wrapped up the conversation. “All right then, let's leave it at that.”

The tumour could have been seen as a mark of nobility, proof of the simple roots that Kim Il-sung transcended. But not at that size. It ruined all that was inviting — those defined eyebrows and the symmetry of his peach-like cheeks.

As a parental figure, Kim Il-sung is a synthesis of mother and father in the eyes of his citizens. The Korean word “
oboi
” (parent), which is most often used about the leader, is just a compound of the words “
ob
” (mother) and “
oi
” (father). In the large mosaics and cult imagery depicting the leader, his wife is seldom by his side. Mother/Father Kim Il-sung doesn't need a woman, and all the citizens in the country are his children. In
TV
interviews at schools and orphanages, the children call Kim Il-sung “Father.” In
Korea and Its Futures
, Roy Richard Grinker describes a South Korean television spot in which a young North Korean boy is snacking on sweets. A Japanese journalist asks who gave him the candy, and the boy replies: “From the Great Leader, my father.”

There are many stories, most of them from the
KCNA
, about how during a catastrophe the first things regular North Korean citizens rescue are portraits of the leader. After the floods that plagued the country in 1997, the
KCNA
reported: “When the water drained away in the areas that were hit, people were found buried in the clay and sand. Clutched to their chests were portraits carefully wrapped in plastic.”

WE ARE ENCOURAGED
to buy a bouquet of cloth flowers that some uniformed women are selling. They are the only people around. Then we are lined up and asked to bow before the statue, and a representative of the group approaches the pedestal and lays down the flowers. We are slightly embarrassed when we bow, but none of us protest. We're being incorporated into North Korea's choreography.

After a short walk in the afternoon sun by the mirror-like Lake Samji, where we see small squirrels scurrying in the balsam poplars, we notice that the bouquet we bought and placed at the foot of the statue is being offered for sale again. But we don't see any new customers.

* * *

BACK ON THE
bus, Mr. Song tries to explain to us what Juche means and how the unique ideology gives the country direction, but it's all very abstract and we aren't any the wiser. In English, the word is sometimes translated as “self-reliance.” The Juche ideology is often described as a mix of Stalinism and Confucianism, but above all of isolationism and archaistic, pan-Korean nationalism. Juche can also be seen as part of a Holy Trinity where Kim Il-sung is the Father, Kim Jong-il is the Son, and Juche is the Holy Ghost. Since Kim Il-sung launched the term, this “truth of truths,” as it is written on the Tower of the Juche Idea in Pyongyang, has taken hold in all imaginable areas of North Korean society. Its huge influence is most likely connected to the permanent state of emergency that the country is in — answering a need for security that has deep historical roots and was dramatically realized during the Korean War.

The American bombardment of North Korea during the Korean War was an inexorable, drawn-out war crime. Almost everything was a legitimate target: all means of communication, roads, bridges, and all productive entities — every factory, rice field, city, and village. The Americans deployed napalm and experimented with biological warfare by using insects that spread anthrax and bubonic plague. North Koreans grew accustomed to living in constant fear of bombing and spent their lives underground, where they built homes, schools, hospitals, and factories. With Hiroshima and Nagasaki fresh in their minds, they were convinced that one of the planes would be carrying a nuclear bomb.

To endure and then overcome those circumstances was something of a miracle. According to North Korean mythology it was thanks to the resourcefulness of one single man — Kim Il-sung, the Great Leader — that the country emerged victorious from the war. Using his exploits as a leitmotif, the Juche idea of taking control of your circumstances — taking care of yourself and being suspicious of the world around you — took root.

ONE FACET OF
this concept of self-reliance is usually traced back to Korea's historical practice of isolation. During the latter part of the Joseon dynasty (1392–1897), the West referred to Korea as the “Hermit Kingdom,” a term that has since been assimilated in South Korea and used in the country's own historical accounts. Korea was a nation cloaked in myth. As the story goes, the kingdom didn't even take in castaways; instead, they were held in the harbours only to be deported as quickly as possible. Others weren't allowed to leave the country at all. In 1653 Hendrick Hamel, the first Westerner ever to write about Korea, landed there after his vessel, which belonged to the Dutch East India Company, was shipwrecked near Jeju Island. The thirty-six survivors weren't allowed to leave the country because it was feared that they would reveal the secret of the kingdom's existence to the rest of the world. After thirteen years, Hamel and seven other crew members managed to escape.

Whereas Japan allowed some of its harbours to be forced open for trade in the 1850s, following violent threats by the Americans, Korea's response to the same tactic was to sink the American naval fleet and kill the crew. This incident, as well as the self-containment that dominated the Joseon period, has been highlighted in the retelling of the story of Korea, pushing other, equally valid variations into the shadows. Accounts of Korean history could just as well focus on the generous immigration laws during the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392) or when Korea acted as a safe haven for refugees from Manchuria and China at the end of the Second World War.

Historically, the primary frame of reference for Korea has been China, which for periods of time it was linked to as a vassal state. The Japanese colonial period from 1910–1945 is actually just a historical parenthesis. Still, one cannot deny that parts of North Korea have been unusually isolated. It's possible that certain areas have never been seen by Westerners and, with the exception of the odd Japanese colonial functionary, never by another foreigner in modern times.

AT A MEETING
in May 2006 between the South and North Korean militaries, the South's representative mentioned that it was normal for South Korean farmers to marry foreign women from Vietnam, the Philippines, and Mongolia. In the countryside at the time, the population was declining. With more efficient farming methods reducing the number of agricultural workers needed, and new generations of women moving away from rural areas to receive an education, many farmers found it difficult to find a Korean partner. And the educated Korean women were also struggling to find a suitable match — a popular topic of discussion in the South Korean media, along with the extremely low birth rate.

The North Korean representative interrupted his colleague: “Our nation has always considered its pure lineage to be of great importance. I am concerned that our singularity will disappear.”

The South Korean answered that the number of foreigners “was a mere drop of ink in the Han River” — the Han being the river that cuts through Seoul.

The serviceman from the North replied: “Not even one drop of ink must be allowed to fall into the Han River.”

The North Korean leaders took advantage of the conformist tradition in Korea and used pictures and stories to create the national myth of a “child race” — natural, clean, impulsive, guided by a lovable leader. To a great extent, the myths and attitudes of Japanese fascism were adopted more than those of Confucianism and Communism. The colour white was adopted as a symbol of purity: the white uniforms, the white snow, the white horses.

In contrast to many other analysts, B. R. Myers dismissed the idea of Confucianism's presence in North Korea. The proof is in the synthesis of mother and father in the figure of the leader. To elevate the mother in this way goes totally against Confucian traditions, which teach that a mother is subordinate even to her sons. In
The Cleanest Race
, Myers even rejects referring to North Korea as a “hard-line Stalinist state” because the racial theorizing that dominates the country can't be equated to Communist ideology, which emphasizes internationalism. During the Cold War, North Korea was the black sheep in the Communist community because of its unusual interpretation of Communism. In the end it was only China that really accepted North Korea, and this was for the pragmatic reason of wanting to maintain the status quo of their fragile relationship.

Myers calls Juche Thought a “sham doctrine” and gives a number of reasons for its introduction. Like all leaders and prophets sent by the divine, Kim Il-sung needed his own ideology — no less would do for a man put on such a high pedestal. Most likely because the dynastic structure of North Korean society was difficult to reconcile with Marxism, there was also an ideological need to create distance from the Communist body of thought and maybe an even greater need to obscure the country's actual system of belief — the nationalist race doctrine that has characterized North Korea since its founding.

Analysts agree that Hwang Jang-yop, a philosophy teacher at Kim Il-sung University, was the architect of Juche Thought. Hwang was Kim Jong-il's philosophy teacher but fell out of favour with the leadership in the 1980s. On a trip back from Japan in 1997, he escaped to Beijing and thus became the highest-level party functionary to have defected from North Korea. He later settled in South Korea and devoted himself to criticizing Kim Jong-il's feudal regime, even testifiying about the violence and famine in North Korea.

Myers says that the Juche texts are self-consciously jumbled and that they resemble “a college student trying to both stretch a term paper to a respectable length and to discourage anyone from reading it through.” The texts have a special function: to be harmless, impenetrable, and abrasive all at once. Still, it seems like Hwang Jang-yop truly believed in Juche Thought, however dubious it seemed. While under constant threat of assassination by agents from the North Korean secret police, he accused Kim Jong-il of having betrayed and corrupted Juche ideology. He recommended a rock-solid policy of ostracization against the North, saying it would lead to the collapse of the country, and suggested that he himself would be ready to take over as the leader of an interim government should such a time come.

Privately, Hwang Jang-yop suffered greatly. His wife, whom he left in North Korea, committed suicide; one daughter died under mysterious circumstances, and his other children ended up in work camps.

IN
THE CLEANEST
RACE
, B. R. Myers emphasizes that Juche Thought gave North Korean suspicion and self-­reliance a loose ideological framework — and that it essentially must be viewed as a racist teaching built on notions of blood mysticism. The North Korean race doctrine may be extreme, but the idea of pure blood is strong throughout the peninsula. Even in the South, mixing blood is still seen by many as shameful and threatening. In fact South Korea cultivates the notion of being the most genetically homogenous country in the world, disregarding the “genetic influx” from China, Japan, and Okinawa. Such great weight has been placed on this idea of blood that South Korean citizens have not been allowed to do military service if they have a non-Korean parent. Their anomalous skin colour would make it hard for such soldiers to “mix with their Korean colleagues in the barracks,” said a representative from the Ministry of Defence in an article in the
Korea Times.

In Korea, the question of blood ties is linked to the violence the country experienced during the Japanese colonization that lasted until the end of the Second World War. The Japanese army had a comprehensive system for forcefully recruiting “comfort women,” which was the term used for “sex slaves.”

Choi Eun-hee's parents tried to marry her off very young so she wouldn't be “recruited” as a sex slave. She was a tomboy at heart but was considered very beautiful and was, like so many other women, at risk. Her grandmother said, with a note of incantation: “You are a little girl with long eyelashes. The kind that sleeps a lot.”

Madame's own solution was to find work at a theatre as a teenager — work that was considered as lowly as a shaman's, circus artist's, or
gisaeng
's (geisha's), but that protected her from sexual slavery. The reason was, of course, not only to avoid becoming a comfort woman, but because she was drawn to the theatre. To everyone's surprise — she was a shy girl — she was a natural actor. Her father was opposed to it and tried to lock her up at home. But her will was too strong. She escaped to the stage.

UNSURPRISINGLY, RESEARCHERS AREN'T
in agreement about the statistics, but from a Korean perspective the Imperial Japanese Army forcefully recruited around 200,000 Korean women as sex slaves. The issue is still incredibly charged, and those who want to approach it in South Korea must do so with great care. In 2004, the
TV
star Lee Seung-yeon had a hit with Kim Ki-duk's film
3-Iron
. Like so many other television stars, she decided to crown her career with a pin-up calendar featuring pictures of her, scantily clad, in exotic environs. The
PR
company that was brought on board booked a photographer who took a few promotional shots of Lee posing as a “comfort woman” on the Palau islands in the Pacific Ocean (Palau was one of the places where sex slaves were taken during the Second World War). The photographs were presented at a press conference and the reaction in South Korea was huge. After angry protests broke out, Lee went to visit an old-age home for former sex slaves, where she begged for mercy on bare knees. The head of the
PR
firm had his head shaved in front of the media, an action of regret and submission. But the public wasn't satisfied until the photographer had burned the negatives on a public square in Seoul.