Kim Country: Hard Times in North Korea
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Gavan McCormack
Kim Country:
Hard Times in North Korea
With the Cold War having run its course, the cement in which the Korean
‘problem’ was embedded for nearly half a century cracks and the Cold War
supports upon which the system of confrontation rested begin to crumble.
Witnesses long intimidated, isolated or silenced by the many walls of the
Cold War system find their voice and relate new details illuminating the
path traversed by the Korean states since their establishment. North Korea
is paradoxical. In the late twentieth century it remains somewhat like central
Africa on the eve of Western colonial conquest in the mid-nineteenth cen-
tury—beyond the ‘pale’ of civilization, closed, threatening, idolatrous; yet, at
the same time it is also, on the surface at least, an urban, educated society, a
‘modern industrial state’. By 1992 the regime in Pyongyang rested uneasily
on ramparts of history and ideology which were increasingly eroded by the
flow of evidence that washes around and beneath them, subverting and
destabilizing as surely as any enemy siege. It is hard to think of any historical
parallel for a regime which rests its claims to legitimacy on evidence so
21demonstrably false and distorted, a regime which declares, in effect:
‘The earth is flat’.*
This article looks at the implications of recently available evidence for
understanding the ‘roots’ of North Korea, the process of state
formation, the economy, and the problem of characterization of the
regime. It makes use in particular of materials and information about
North Korea which became available in Japan during 1991–2, when
the level of Japanese interest in its still unrecognized neighbour
reached an intense pitch. Japan’s ‘information society’ began to focus
on North Korea to such an extent that books about it became best-
sellers—as they certainly could not anywhere else in the world—and
weekly and monthly magazines vied for the latest scoops, whether
about the early career of Kim Il Sung or the present realities of the
regime he heads.1 Japanese scholarly analysis, which at its best drew
freely upon documentary and oral evidence from Russia, China and
Korea, also set new standards of insight into the historical and
contemporary realities.2
I. Father, Son and State
Kim’s Rise to 1945
The foundation myths of North Korea are both false and true, but the
insistence on the palpably false has made the whole seem improbable.
However, despite persistent South Korean attempts to represent Kim
Il Sung as an imposter quite different from the 1930s anti-Japanese
guerrilla hero Kim Il Sung, the truth has been confirmed in recent
years by Chinese, Russian and Korean witnesses and by materials in
those languages. The fabrications of the North Korean propaganda
machine, such as the organization by the fourteen year old schoolboy
Kim Il Sung of the ‘Down With Imperialism Union’ (said to be
‘Korea’s first Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization’) in 1926,3
or his founding in 1934 of the Korean People’s Revolutionary Army,
are actually much less interesting than the real career of Kim Il Sung
as a youth, which has now been pieced together in remarkable detail
from Chinese sources.4
Chinese evidence on the formative years of the Manchurian guerrilla
struggle, recently surveyed by Wada, shows that Kim Il Sung (b. Kim
Song-Ju, 1912) was a real guerrilla leader. He was not the preeminent
* Earlier versions of this paper were delivered to the First Pacific Basin Conference on
Korean Studies, held in Honolulu in August 1992, and to a seminar at the Australian
National University in September 1992. I am grateful to many friends and colleagues
for their helpful critical response on those occasions. In revision for publication, I am
particularly grateful for critical comments and advice to Richard Tanter (of Kyoto
Seika University) and to Jon Halliday.
1
‘ “Kita Chōsen no genjitsu” shuppan aitsugu’ (Continuing flow of publications on
‘North Korean reality’), Asahi shinbun, 28 December 1991.
2
See especially Wada Haruki, Kin Nissei to Manshū kōnichi sensō (Kim Il Sung and the
Manchurian resistance war against Japan), Heibonsha, 1992.
3
Wada, p. 53.
4
Ibid., passim.
22figure but certainly one well-known and with a good record, who
joined the Chinese Communist Party in 1931, and who was described
in a December 1935 report to the Comintern as ‘trusted and respected’
both among the men and by the command of the guerrilla anti-
Japanese units.5 He was also hated (and feared) by the Japanese,
known to them on their October 1940 ‘wanted’ list as ‘the tiger’ (tora),
while other guerrilla leaders were known as ‘bear’, ‘lion’, ‘bull’, ‘roe
deer’, ‘cat’, ‘horse’.6
In the sense that he belonged to a Chinese unit in a Chinese force,
however, Kim Il Sung was a Chinese guerrilla, not a member (much
less leader) of any ‘Korean People’s Revolutionary Army’ such as he is
held by Pyongyang to have formed in 1934. Even in June 1937, when
he led his unit across the border in a widely-reported raid on Japanese
positions in the Korean town of Pochonbo, he was operating as part
of the North-Eastern Anti-Japanese United Army (although many
members of the unit were Korean).7 In 1991, Chinese sources even
revealed that Kim was the author of a 1942 ‘Unit History’, written at
the behest of his Chinese superiors after his retreat to the Soviet
Union in 1940, covering the history of his unit, the First Route Army
of the Anti-Japanese United Army.8 Kim’s authorship, although his
name was excised by party authorities in Beijing when this document-
ary compilation was first published in 1987, was later confirmed by
Chinese scholars, who note that their archives also hold (and presum-
ably in due course will release) ‘about 130’ other documents authored
by the Chinese guerrilla Kim.9 Direct reference to Kim Il Sung by
name in Chinese scholarly studies of the anti-Japanese resistance
movement of the 1930s began in 1991.10
When he reached the age of 80 in 1992 there was therefore no longer
any doubt that the Kim Il Sung who led the Pochonbo raid in 1937,
and who annihilated the Japanese ‘Maeda Unit’ in February 1940
(killing 120 of its 145 men),11 was the same man who was president of
North Korea in 1992. South Korean propaganda on these matters no
longer had any credibility. However, late in 1940 Kim retreated to the
Soviet Union, where he came under Soviet command. He was a
captain in the Red Army 88th Special Brigade for the remainder of
the war until he returned to Korea, after the brief fighting ended, on a
5 Wada, p. 140.
6 Ibid., p. 306.
7 On Pochonbo, ibid., pp. 185 ff.
8 ‘Kanglian diyi lujun lueshi’ (Brief History of the First Anti-Japanese United Army),
in Zhongguo gongchandang lishi ziliao cungshu, ed., Dongbei kangri lianjun ziliao
(Materials on the history of the North-Eastern Anti-Japanese Army, 2 vols, Beijing
1987, vol 2, pp. 665–679. (The history of the 3rd and 7th Route Armies of this force
were also written by Koreans who later played prominent roles in North Korea, Kim
Chaek and Chae Yong-Gun respectively. See ibid, pp. 680–709, 710–27.) The revela-
tion of the authorship of these materials was made in various Japanese sources in 1991;
see Wada, p. 126, and also Kim Chan-Jon, Paruchisan banka (Lament for the Partisans);
Ochanomizu shobo, 1992, pp. 84–9.
9
Kim Chan-Jon, p. 89.
10
Dongbei kangri lianjun douzheng shi (History of the struggle of the North-Eastern Anti-
Japanese United Army), Beijing, Renmin chubanshe 1991.
11
Wada, p. 273.
23Soviet ship, the Pugacheff, which landed him at Wonsan on 19 September 1945.12 North Korean propaganda, which represents Kim as commanding a Korean revolutionary force in the 1930s, and in the early 1940s maintaining active resistance from a mountain base in the north of the country until August 1945—when he is said to have played a leading role in the armed liberation of the country—is also untenable.13 The emergence of Kim Il Sung as the leader of North Korea after September 1945 may be seen as the product of domestic and foreign factors. Soviet influence was decisive, but Kim was also the choice for leader of both the Korean and Chinese guerrillas, and he had the priceless intangible asset of a nation-wide reputation as resistance fighter and patriot. Pochonbo may not have been much of a battle, but its political significance has perhaps been under-estimated (because exaggerated by Pyongyang). Kim’s leadership arose from three main sources: (1) Other, better-known or older Korean guerrillas such as Kim Chaek and Choe Yong-Gun trusted him and chose him as their leader.14 (2) Chinese, Soviet and Korean anti-Japanese forces at the Khabarovsk camp in the Soviet Union reached a common view in appointing Kim leader of the ‘Korean Task-force’ (Chaoxian gong- zuotuan) detachment sent in September 1945 to spearhead the process of takeover from Japan.15 (3) The Soviet 25th Army forces in Pyong- yang chose Kim rather than the local (Christian nationalist) Pyong- yang leader Cho Man-Shik in the autumn of 1945. The kisaeng dinner party which occurred during this process of decision was captured in a memorable photograph by (Soviet) Major Gregory Mekler,16 as was the Pyongyang mass meeting of 14 October which was also organized, orchestrated (and photographed) by Mekler. This was followed by a secret visit to Moscow in August 1946 during which Stalin personally interviewed Kim and the Southern Communist leader, Pak Hon- Yong, and confirmed the preference for Kim. Kim Il Sung consolidated power in Pyongyang by presenting himself as the faithful instrument of Soviet policy. His appearance at the 14 October Pyongyang mass meeting was under slogans of gratitude for the Soviet role in liberating Korea, and it was common for him at this time to be fulsome in praise of Stalin, the Red Army and the Soviet Union generally.18 The strident nationalist tone he adopted later, and the pure, but in many respects false, revolutionary record that was 12 Ibid., p. 342. (He reached Pyongyang on 22 September.) 13 The official ‘story’ of Kim Il Sung has been told in a massive North Korean hagiographic literature. For a standard biography in English: Baik Bong, Kim Il Sung, 3 vols, Beirut, Dar Al-Talia, 1973. 14 Wada, pp. 330 ff. 15 Ibid., p. 338. 16 30 September 1945, at Hwa-bang restaurant, Pyongyang. Reproduced in various places, including Sapio, 23 April 1992, pp. 14–5. 17 ‘Stalin ga Kim Il Sung o mensetsu tesuto’ (Stalin’s interview test for Kim Il Sung), This is Yomiuri, February 1992, pp. 84–7. (This is the Japanese translation of the Korean text in Chungang ilbo of interviews with General Lebedev and Major (later Colonel) Mekler. 18 The 1990 NHK Japanese documentary on the Korean War reproduced some rare February 1949 film footage of Kim Il Sung in Moscow speaking in this vein. 24
constructed for him, presumably reflect a sense of insecurity and
embarrassment over the internationalist roots and complex loyalties
of Kim’s early career.
The paternity of the reform programme undertaken in 1946—includ-
ing land reform, emancipation of women, the transfer to public
ownership of former Japanese assets—remains disputed. While there
is evidence to suggest that Stalin ordered aid to ‘anti-Japanese groups
and democratic parties’ but not the introduction of the Soviet
system,19 and while it has been thought that the ‘People’s Commit-
tees’ enjoyed a considerable degree of power and autonomy,20 the
former occupying General, Lebedev, recently stated that the pro-
gramme was in accord with instructions from Stalin.21 In any case,
however, there was a revolutionary dynamic at work in North Korean
society and the policies adopted seemed to accord well with it.
Kim, Stalin, and the Korean War
This is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of the origins
and character of the Korean War. Although both sides have alleged
that they were attacked on the morning of 25 June 1950, three things
remain clear about the ensuing hostilities. First, the failures of the
post-1945 settlement and the UN intervention to come to grips with
the force of Korean nationalism made a violent attempt at their
resolution likely, if not inevitable. Second, of the regimes which
confronted each other, one preserved intact the central features of the
Japanese-created colonial state and the organs on which that state had
rested, while the other was created by forces which had struggled for
decades against Japan and which gave substance to deeply-felt
demands for social and economic reform. Third, wherever the attack
was launched from and by whichever outside party the weapons were
supplied, it was initially a civil conflict, whose outcome was swiftly
settled. Massive external intervention then prolonged and massively
intensified it.
This said, however, the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the
1980s, and the negotiation of normalized (and warm) relations by
both Russia and China with South Korea, have meant that new
materials have become available on this matter too (and more are
bound to follow). They show, first of all, the closeness of the contact
between Kim Il Sung and Stalin in the period leading up to the
outbreak of war in June 1950.22
19 Wada Haruki, ‘Soren no Chōsen seisaku, sen kyūhyaku yon-jū-go nen hachi-gatsu
—jū-gatsu’ (Soviet policy on Korea: August to October 1945), Shakaikagaku kenkyū, 33,
4, November 1981, pp. 91–147, at pp. 124 and 128.
20 Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol 1, Liberation and the Emergence of
Separate Regimes, 1945–1947, Princeton, 1981, p. 393; Yi Kyong-min, ‘Kita Chōsen ni
okeru 8.15’ (August 15 in North Korea), part 1, Sapporo University, Keizei to keiei, no 1,
June 1991, pp. 41–63.
21
This is Yomiuri, February 1992.
22
For a fuller consideration of these matters see my (forthcoming) chapter on the
Korean war in Gavan McCormack and Stewart Lone, Korea Since 1850, Longman-
Cheshire, 1993.
25The major evidence on this had been the account given by Khrush- chev in the early 1970s, which told of Kim’s having persuaded Stalin to agree to an invasion of the South, but which had seemed slightly implausible so long as visits to Moscow by Kim Il Sung subsequent to February 1949 could not be confirmed, and because Khrushchev was speaking about events in which he had not himself been directly involved.23 It has now been established, however, that Kim made a second visit to Moscow in February 1950.24 A ‘Korean People’s Army Preemptive Strike Plan’ was then apparently approved by Stalin.25 Furthermore, in a secret telegraphic exchange between the two men in the same month, unearthed from the files of the old Soviet Defence Ministry in April 1992, Kim requested equipment for the existing Korean People’s Army’s seven infantry divisions, plus another three (new) divisions. Stalin replied approving the request ‘so long as success is completely guaranteed’.26 Substantial deliveries of Soviet weapons and equipment, enough to supply three newly established divisions and including tanks, arrived in April 1950 by sea and road (from Vladivostok).27 It is possible that a third visit to Moscow was made by Kim in April 1950, after completion of detailed plans for the war.28 The Soviet abstention from the crucial Security Council vote in June 1950, which might have been seen as indicative of Soviet ignorance of any impending move in Korea, looks increasingly like a carefully deliberated stance, in accordance with a decision made by Stalin himself. This decision, together with that to withdraw most of the Soviet military advisers in North Korea (leaving only about 120 of them compared to the 500 Americans in the South), might have been taken deliberately in order to appear to be distancing the Soviet Union from North Korea, thereby diverting suspicion and, by not pleading the Pyongyang case in the UN, reducing the risk of escalation to world war.29 Stalin seems to have been privy to what happened on 25 June, but backing Kim Il Sung’s initiatives rather than urging him on, and cautious and subtle in the way he 23 Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, Boston 1971. The most thorough, scepti- cal, account of the Khrushchev material is John Merrill, ‘Khrurhchev Remembers’, Journal of Korean Studies, vol 3, 1981, pp. 481–91. 24 Kobayashi Keiji, ‘Who started the Korean war?’, in Kim Chullbaum, ed., The Truth about the Korean war—Testimony 40 Years Later, Seoul 1991, pp. 3–15, at p. 3. 25 Yonhap (Moscow) quoting Dr Gavriil Korotkov of Russian Defence Ministry’s Institute for Military History, ‘North’s Preemptive Strike Plan in Korean War Unveiled’, The Korea Times, 30 August 1992. 26 Odagawa Masaru, ‘Nanshin e no shien yōsei’ (Support for the move south), Asahi shinbun, 4 April 1992. 27 Aeba Takanori and NHK shusaihan, Chōsen sensō (The Korean war), Tokyo, NHK, 1990, pp. 94–5. 28 The taped Khrushchev material is extremely vague on this ‘third visit’, but there is Chinese confirmation of a Kim visit to Beijing in April, while en route back from what might have been such a meeting: Wada Haruki, ‘Chōsen sensō ni tsuite kangaeru— atarashii shiryō ni yoru kentō’ (Thinking about the Korean war—based on study of recent materials), Shisō, no 795, September 1990, pp. 6–29, at p. 14. 29 Gromyko insisted the decision was taken by Stalin in person (Memoirs, quoted in Wada, ‘Chōsen sensō . . . ’ cit, p. 17). Michael Kapitsa, formerly Vice-Minister of Foreign Affairs, makes the same point in NHK, cit, p. 92. 26
went about it, not bumbling and incompetent as some of his officials
thought.30
Recent evidence also confirms the authenticity of North Korean
‘attack orders’ long published in South Korean sources but impos-
sible to clear of the suspicion of forgery.31 The likelihood that Pyong-
yang did indeed plan and initiate the attack in June 1950 (although
rather hurriedly) strengthened when documents, apparently authen-
tic, were found among the mass of material captured by the United
Nations forces in Pyongyang late in 1950 but held unread in the US for
many years, which indicated that written orders for the attack were
delivered to North Korean units on 17 June, and preparations com-
pleted by 23 June for the attack launched on the night of 24 June.32
There is no reference in these materials to maintaining readiness
against any possible attack from the South. It may even be that the
original text of these orders was in Russian, as South Korea has long
claimed, since a former North Korean officer, Chu [Ju] Yon-Bok, has
testified that he personally translated the orders handed him by
(Soviet) Colonel Tolkin relating to engineer detachments, after which
he saw the originals burned.33
Such materials do not mean that the question ‘Who started the
Korean War?’ is thereby settled, although the various revelations are
undoubtedly embarrassing for Pyongyang and mean that much of its
official ‘story’ on this important matter too is a fabrication. The issues
are complex. The machinations on the US-South Korea side are also
slowly coming to light, and it is clear that both sides were in mid-1950
preparing for war, planning for it, and striving to get the maximum
support from their respective ‘patron’. Indeed the only hypothesis
which fits all the known evidence is the unlikely one that both actually
chose the same day to launch an assault (albeit on a small scale in the
case of the South). Yet despite the new evidence unfrozen by the end
of the Cold War, the catastrophic results of superpower intervention
in a civil conflict remain paramount.
Consolidation of Power
Kim Il Sung built a centralized party of iron discipline and gradually
purged one after another of the factions other than his own until he
was in unquestioned control and absolute loyalty to him the touchstone
of political purity. Challenged from its inception by the need to cope
with internal division and external threat, his regime gave priority
to the mechanisms of social control. The population was classified
into categories of reliability and subjected to intense campaigns of
30 For a different view, see Bruce Cumings, The Origins of the Korean War, vol 2, The
Roaring of the Cataract, 1947–1950, Princeton 1990, pp. 636–7.
31 For a sceptical discussion of the materials published by Seoul, see Cumings, ibid.,
pp. 588–93.
32 Wada, ‘Chōsen sensō ni tsuite . . . ’, pp. 9–11, detailing these documents, which are
analysed in an article by the Korean scholar, Bang Sun-Ju, in the Hannim University
journal, Asea Munhwa, in 1986.
33 Chu Yongbok, ‘I Translated Attack Orders Composed in Russian’, in Kim Chull-
baum, ed., The Truth about the Korean War, Seoul 1991, pp. 115–30.
27ideological moulding and mobilization; a fine mesh of surveillance was woven over all, and severe sanctions reserved for the deviant.34 Until the death of Stalin in March 1953 the elevation of Kim was somewhat constrained by the existence of one acknowledged to be his ‘Leader’. After Stalin’s death that constraint was removed and the denunciation of those being purged was accompanied by panegryics to the fount of true wisdom, to whom the term Suryong or ‘Great Leader’ was thereafter unambiguously applied. ‘The absolute position of the leader in history’ came to be described as a ‘unique, profound idea’,35 although no attempt was made to distinguish how, if at all, such a claim differed from those advanced in other cultures, and at other times, by absolute monarchs, or leaders such as the Führer in Nazi Germany, the Duce in fascist Italy, or the Shah in Iran. Despite the harsh reality of dictatorship, Kim’s authority as ruler was represented as legitimate because it stemmed from his virtue and benevolence, reinforced by attribution to him of the role of ‘father’ of the nation. A considerable effort was devoted to representing him as both just ruler and loving father. Under his rule, the structures and organizations of North Korean civil society, enfeebled by long Japanese colonial rule, were reduced to insignificance. Since all initiative and decision-making was reserved to him, his embrace was suffocating. The paradox of equating absolute subserv- ience—such that people ‘will think and act the way the party wants them to, anytime and anywhere’—with absolute freedom of the people as ‘masters of the revolution’ was enshrined as the state ideology under the name of ‘Chuche’ (or Juche’). It became a para- doxical term which meant both independence (of other countries) and dependence (of everyone on the Leader).36 The objects of the cult included not only Kim himself, but also his mother, father, grandfather, great-grandfather, former wife, and, above all, his son, Kim Jong Il (b. 1942): in short, a pure revolutionary blood line. The stress on ‘the blood vein for the continuation of the revolution’ became a common theme in North Korean propaganda. The Question of Succession From the early 1970s, Kim Jong Il gradually assumed a central role in Pyongyang. Though he had made no contribution whatever to public affairs in his country, and indeed was unknown among the people, he 34 For a detailed discussion of the mechanisms involved in the early decades, see Robert A. Scalapino and Chong-Sik Lee, Communism in Korea, 2 vols, University of California Press 1972, vol 2, The Society, pp. 818ff (‘The Public Security System’). 35 Speeches by Li Jong Ryong, President of Kumsong Political University, and U Dal Ho, Director of the Kim Il Sung Party Academy, Pyongyang, March 1982, in People’s Korea, 17 April 1982, p. 5. 36 For a discussion of Chuche (or Juche), see Chong-Sik Lee, Korean Workers Party: A Short History, Stanford, California 1978, pp. 96–7. Comings says of it: ‘The more one seeks to understand Juche, the more the meaning recedes. It is a state of mind, and one that is unavailable to the non-Korean.’ (The Two Koreas, New York, The Foreign Policy Association, 1984, p. 56). 28
was first given positions in the Party’s organization and propaganda
departments with his identity concealed under the code term ‘Party
Centre’, and then in 1980 named as semi-official ‘heir designate’ to his
father, with the title ‘Dear and Beloved Leader’ or simply ‘Dear
Leader’. With positions as secretary of the Central Committee, mem-
ber of the State Secretariat and the Military Commission, the three
wings of state power, he became second only to his father.37 In
August 1984 he was officially confirmed as successor.
Yet after nearly twenty years, the process of installing Kim Jong Il as
successor remained incomplete and uncertain, although he was
appointed supreme commander of the army in December 1991
(despite the plain terms of Article 93 of the Constitution which vests
such power in the country’s president) and upon his fiftieth birthday
in February 1992 the North Korean media began to refer to him as the
country’s ‘Dear Father’, while Kim Il Sung became the country’s
‘grand-father’. In April 1992 Kim Il Sung became Taewonsu (General-
issimo or Grand Marshal) and Kim Jong Il (who had not held any
previous military appointment) Wonsu (Marshal), titles that put the
father on a nominal par with Stalin, Mussolini, and Hirohito; for the
son it could be only a matter of time before the prefix Tae would
attach to him too.38 The major responsibility for the construction of
monuments to his father and family and the rebuilding of the city of
Pyongyang is attributed to him. He is said also to have taken a strong
interest in culture, especially theatre and film.
The most intimate personal portrait of Kim Jong Il is that painted by
the South Korean film director and his actress wife, Shin Sang-Ok and
Choe U-Ni, who were abducted in 1978 and made to cooperate with
him. The subsequent revelations published by Shin and Choe after
their escape in 1986, are a valuable, if unflattering, insight into the
mind of the ‘Young Leader’.39 The man they came to know was a
pampered young aristocrat, accustomed to luxurious living in a chain
of villas throughout the country equipped with saunas and elaborate
video facilities, and with a complex about his shortness (153 centi-
metres) of stature that made him wear high heeled boots and refer to
himself (laughingly to Mme Choe) as ‘like a long thick turd’.40 His
collection comprised 1,500 videos from around the world, mostly
‘pirate’ versions collected by North Korean diplomatic missions. A
senior North Korean diplomat who defected in 1991 reported that one
task of the country’s diplomatic missions was ‘to procure for Kim
Jong Il supplies of Hennessy cognac in France, crabs in Norway,
37 Lee, p. 281.
38 Chon Pu-Ok, ‘Sedai kōtai chikazuku Kin Nissei taisei no zento to Kin Shōjitsu no
shirarezaru sunao’ (The future of Kim Il Sung as generational change approaches and
the unknown face of Kim Jong Il), Seikai, April 1992, pp. 42–5.
39
Choe U-Ni and Shin Sang-Ok, Yami kara no kodama (Echoes from the Darkness),
Tokyo, 2 vols, 1988–9. This source may be regarded as somewhat controversial, since
its authors still live (apparently) in a CIA ‘safe house’ in the United States. However,
there is no doubt that the authors were for a number of years in a uniquely close
position to Kim Jong Il, and for that reason their evidence is unique. My reading of the
two volumes inclines me to accept their truthfulness.
40
Ibid., vol 1, p. 40.
29Black Sea caviar and even the livers of blue sharks fished off the Angolan coast.’41 Apart from the grandiloquence of his artistic, architectural and culin- ary tastes, and his fondness for mobilization campaigns, there was little original or profound in his thought, and almost no trace of Marxism. Characteristic instead was the emphasis on unity, the role of the leader, and the need for greater effort. He was as much his father’s son in the dullness of his prose as in his dedication to the elevation of the family. His message, that ‘individualism’ had to be overcome, since ‘collectivism is the fundamental demand of human beings’,42 and that socialism required ‘unified guidance and control in the political, economic, cultural and all other domains of social life’,43 ran counter to a very strong historical current at the beginning of the 1990s, even when compared to North Korea’s last ally, China under Deng Xiao-Ping. The protracted process of nearly twenty years of transfer of power from father to son, rather than achieving the stability it was suppos- edly designed to ensure, seems instead to have radically disrupted state and economy. Loyalty to Kim Jong Il opens the way to power and privilege, but must be constantly renewed by acts of self-denigration and pledges of fealty. Thus Shin Sang-Ok’s film production company, which in the 1980s worked directly under Kim Jong Il’s sponsorship, received from him a 1986 New Year present consisting of fifty roe deer, four hundred pheasants, two hundred geese and two hundred cases of Japanese tangerines, which was the occasion for weeping, dancing, celebration and, most importantly, renewal of loyalty pledges.44 The grant of huge (thirty to fifty per cent) wage and allow- ance increases to the country’s workers, pensioners and students on the occasion of Kim Jong Il’s 50th birthday in 1992 was prompted by similar considerations.45 Less than a year passed after these huge increases in wages and pensions before the adoption of currency reforms which were reported to have meant an effective devaluation of about 70 per cent.46 The transition through the eventual passing of the Great Leader, despite the long preparation, may not pass smoothly. One deep- rooted tradition from Korean history is that offierce court intrigue and intra-family struggle over succession. Kim Jong Il is the son of Kim Il Sung’s former wife, while there is also another son, Kim 41 Ko Yong-hwan, quoted in Francis Deron, ‘China’s dilemma as North Korea holds out the begging bowl’, Le Monde, 9 October 1991. The most detailed statement from Ko is in Fan Min-Gi, Kin Nissei chōsho (Kim Il Sung file), Kōbunsha, 1992, pp. 250–303. 42 From Nodong shinmun, 27 August 1991, quoted in Shirai Hisaya, ‘Shinka towareru “Kin Shōjitsu taisei” ’ (The real worth of the ‘Kim Jong Il system’ under question), Asahi jānaru, 27 September 1991, p. 80. 43 Kim Jong Il, speech of 3 January 1992, in Korea and World Affairs, Spring 1992, pp. 132–5. 44 Choe and Shin, vol 2, p. 279. 45 ‘Zen rōdōsha no chingin “50 % age” no nerai to genjitsu’ (The objective of the “50 per cent rise” for all workers and the reality), Shūkan bunshun, 27 February 1992, pp. 136–9. 46 News Review (Seoul), 3 October 1992. 30
Pyong Il (b. 1954), born of his present wife. Pyong Il has a strong back-
ground in the North Korean military and foreign affairs: service in
the military was followed by service as military attache in Yugoslavia
(1981–3), a Pyongyang Defence Ministry Post (1984–8), ambassador to
Hungary for a short period in 1988 and then ambassador to Bulgaria
from December 1988. What little is known about him suggests that
Pyong Il might be more ‘balanced’ in temperament than his half-
brother, more open-minded, and with an objective awareness of the
state of the world tempered by having himself watched the collapse of
Communism in Eastern Europe. His training and long military
service has given him a solid base in the North Korean military, while
his elder brother the Marshal has apparently never worn a uniform to
which he was entitled by training or expertise. One of the ‘optimistic’
scenarios for change in North Korea would be for a gradual move to
a ‘constitutional monarchy’ under his tutelage.
II. Economic Record
The truth of the economic record has also become clearer in recent
years, although, as in other areas, the more that is known the blacker
the outlook becomes. Assessment is complicated by the fact that the
government publishes only selected figures, often those designed to
impress rather than inform, and North Korean sources rarely refer to
foreign aid, which particularly in the early decades was very substan-
tial.48 For the ‘Plan’ to have any chance of functioning depends on
the development of a reliable, scientific structure of information
gathering and the elimination (or minimization) of arbitrary inter-
ventions; in this sense, the ‘Cult’ and the ‘Plan’ are at odds, and it has
evidently been difficult to protect the latter from the frenzied excesses
and arbitrary interventions of the former. There must be doubt, as a
result, as to whether even the regime itself now has access to real eco-
nomic data.
Independent reports have been produced from time to time by bodies
such as the United States CIA, the United Nations or the semi-official
Japanese research organization, JETRO (Japan External Trade Organ-
ization), but even their findings (discussed below) are problematic.
Some good scholarly work was also done on the materials available,
but none of it was able to foresee the depth of the crisis to which the
economy plunged at the end of the 1980s. The annual reports com-
piled by the well-informed Japanese specialists at JETRO may be the
best regular systematic survey of the material.49 It is notable also that
figures from South Korean sources are now commonly consistent with
the best independent reports. The strains imposed by the collapse of
(former) East Germany on (former) West Germany hold sobering
47 See Yu Yon-Ok, ‘Ibo kyōdai no kattō—Kin Shōjitsu to Kin Heiichi’ (Dissension
between brothers of different mothers—Kim Jong Il and Kim Pyong Il), in Fan Min-
Gi, pp. 216–34.
48
Jon Halliday, ‘The North Korean Model: Gaps and Questions’, World Development,
vol 9, no 9/10, 1981, p. 895.
49
Nihon bōeki shinkōkai (Japan External Trade Organization or JETRO), Kita Chōsen no
keizai to bōeki no tenbō (Outlook for North Korea’s economy and trade), Tokyo, annual,
listed hereafter as JETRO, with the year.
31lessons for bureaucrats and politicians in Seoul, and the ideological element in their reports on North Korea has diminished as unifica- tion becomes a real and serious prospect.50 So far as agriculture is concerned, the regime in Pyongyang claimed that, despite the harshness of the climate and the difficulty of the terrain, less than twenty per cent of which was suitable for agricul- ture, output rose by an annual average of ten per cent during the 1950s and 6.3 per cent during the 1960s. In the 1970s North Korea began to export rice. By 1979 it was claiming world record figures for rice yield per hectare. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) accepted that North Korea was indeed number one in the world in terms of its yield of rice per hectare between 1979 and 1990, being ahead of other major rice producers such as Japan and South Korea (or smaller, but very efficient producers such as Australia) in all years. It was held to be more than three times as efficient as Thailand and significantly better than the United States. In 1990 it produced an average of 8,209 kilograms per hectare, for an estimated gross crop of 5.5 million tons.51 In terms of calory intake too, North Korea was reported to have performed better for its people than South Korea throughout the decade of the 1980s, although in 1991 FAO revised its figures, giving a (marginal) statistical superiority to South Korea.52 Enormous efforts were devoted throughout the eighties to civil engineering projects designed to increase agricultural (and fishery) productivity. Yet despite these reported successes the fact is that food shortages, rationing and hardship were widely reported. Unusually severe natural conditions may have played some part in causing this, and it is known that North Korea was for long exporting a significant proportion of its rice (to earn foreign exchange), while importing cheaper grains for domestic consumption.53 It is difficult to under- stand how the country recognized by the FAO as the world’s most efficient rice producer should in 1990 have found it necessary to begin importing rice (3,000 tons from South Korea, with one million tons to come over the next two to three years),54 and why food rationing could still be necessary, as was reliably reported. Shortages were so severe in 1991–2 that people were reportedly reduced to two meals a day.55 Conditions in Pyongyang were described by the Pravda corres- pondent as worse than in Moscow.56 Not only was food rationed— and the proportion of rice to other, coarse grains such as millet, 50 The head of Seoul’s Research Institute for National Unification, Byoung Yong Lee, advised the president on 24 November 1992 that a Korean Commonwealth could be accomplished before the end of the century. RINU Newsletter, December 1992, vol 1, no 4, p. 2. 51 FAO, Yearbook—Production, vol 44, 1990, Rome 1991, table 17, p. 73. 52 Ibid., 1990, table 106, pp. 290–1. Revised figures in the 1991 volume at p. 238. 53 One estimate was that as much as half of the rice harvest might be exported. Adrian Buzo, ‘Agricultural Malaise’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 7 May 1987. 54 Various reports in Far Eastern Economic Review, 22 August and 10 October 1991. 55 JETRO, 1991, p. 20. 56 Nicholas Kristof, ‘In North Korea, Food is Scanty but Hatred of Regime is Plenti- ful’, International Herald Tribune, 19 February 1992. 32
reduced to thirty to forty per cent (much less outside Pyongyang)—
but it was increasingly available only on the black market. Meat
ration was restricted to five days in the year which were national
holidays, such as the birthdays of the leaders. Protein deficiency was
becoming a widespread problem.57 The possibility of a catastrophic
decline in grain output in 1990, perhaps to a mere 2.9 million tons,
was strong,58 food riots were reported in June and July 1991,59 and
early indications in 1992 were that grain production was likely to meet
only half requirements.60
Kim Il Sung promised as early as 1962 that once the 1963 targets were
met the working people of the country would be able to ‘lead a rich
life, living in tile-roofed houses, having rice and meat, and wearing
fine clothes’. In 1970 he claimed that the food problem ‘has been
solved completely’. Similar claims have been made from time to time.
The reiteration of the claim, however, points to the continuing
importance of the problem, rather than its successful resolution.61
Ominously, it was repeated in January 1992 as a ‘long-cherished
desire’ of the people and a ‘goal . . . in socialist construction’ that
people should be able to ‘eat rice and meat soup regularly, wear silk
clothes and live in a house with a tiled roof’.62 In this area, as in
nearly every other, hard information was at a premium. It is possible
that North Korea might have done as its close ally, Romania did
under the Ceausescu family rule: fake the harvest figures63 and
deliberately export food (to pay off debts) regardless of the
consequences to the people’s livelihood.64
So far as industrial output is concerned, the CIA’s 1978 assessment
was that, as of early 1976, the North Korean economy was out-
producing the South in per capita terms in almost every sector.65
Even the official Seoul figures concede that per capita GNP in the
North was greater than that in the South up until 1975.66 The planned
growth rates for the 1980s, if achieved, would have put North Korea’s
industrial output by 1990 on a par with that of the advanced countries
57 JETRO, 1991, pp. 163–4; Shūkan bunshun, cit, at p. 138.
58 Far Eastern Economic Review, 26 March 1992. FAO did recognize a substantial drop in
gross rice production in 1990, from 6.4 million tons in 1989 (FAO, 1990, pp. 118–9) to
5.5 million in 1990, but either figure seems hard to square with other evidence.
59 Articles by Chon Pu-Ok and Shiozuka Tamotsu, Seikai, April 1992, pp. 29–49.
60 ‘North Korea Produces Half of Grain Demand’, Korea News Review, 7 November
1992, p. 22.
61 Scalapino and Lee, pp. 616, 655.
62 Kim Il Sung’s New Year Address, quoted in Pyongyang Times, January 1992, no. 1.
63 Rice output was apparently calculated on the basis of the number of bags counted.
Because of the imperative of meeting plan ‘norms’, these were often stuffed with straw
and waste materials. Actual rice output might be as low as 765,000 tons. (Yi U-Hong,
Donzoko no kyōwakoku: Kita Chōsen fusaku no kōzō (Bottom Depths Republic: The struc-
ture of North Korean crop failure), Tokyo Aki shobo 1989, p. 144.
64
John Sweeney, The Life and Evil Times of Nicolae Ceausescu, London 1991, pp. 130, 160,
etc.
65
US Central Intelligence Agency, National Foreign Assessment Center, Korea; The
Economic Race Between the North and the South (ER 78–100008), Washington, D.C., 1978.
66
Byung Chul Koh, ‘The Inter-Korean Agreements of 1972 and 1992: A Comparative
Assessment’, Korea and World Affairs, vol xvi, no. 3, Fall 1992, p. 465.
33of Western Europe and Japan at the end of the 1970s.67 Whether they were in fact achieved, however, is another matter.68 By the end of the decade, the problem had become even more serious. There were no wholly reliable statistics, but the best estimates (from the JETRO analysts) were that industrial output might have grown at an average of about 6.3 per cent between 1985 and 1990, a very respectable figure indeed, although crucial sectors like electric power were in 1988 still below what had been claimed for them in 1984,69 and wastage was thought to be at a high level. No increase had even been claimed in agricultural output since 1984.70 However the growth rate for the economy seems to have dropped from around two per cent in 1989 to minus 3.7 per cent in. 1990 and minus 5.2 per cent in 1991, making those the worst years since 1953.71 Although the official target for the third Seven-Year Plan (1987–93) was for an average annual growth rate of ten per cent,72 there was serious trouble in most sectors of the economy. Plan targets were, in effect, shelved.73 There was increasing reason to think that the North Korean economic locomotive in the 1980s ran very low on steam and headed up some ill-chosen tracks. The reliance on frenzied, Stakhanovite-style product- ivity campaigns (the ‘speed of the eighties’) brought ever diminishing returns. The people grew tired; the machines began to wear out; ‘top- down’ planning methods failed to develop mechanisms of flexibility and (consumer) feed-back. Why? It is now clear, first, that the much-trumpeted ‘self-reliance’ of the North Korean development model concealed a high degree of reliance on Soviet aid. Most of the major industrial installations were built with Soviet technical assistance and financed by Soviet credit (little if any of which was ever repaid).74 The Soviet collapse and termination of ‘friendship’ prices for oil produced a profound shock. Second, the constant drain of scarce resources into military-related industries over such a long period enfeebled the non-military sector and reduced its capacity to meet basic social needs,75 even though it 67 JETRO, 1981, passim. 68 JETRO, 1991, p. 19. 69 JETRO, 1990, pp. 26, 35. 70 Ibid., p. 26. 71 Bank of Korea estimates, Korea News Review, 22 August 1992, p. 15. 72 Far Eastern Economic Review Yearbook 1991, Hong Kong 1991, p. 6, and Shim Jae Hoon, ‘The Inevitable Burden’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 22 August 1991, pp. 21–3. 73 ‘Kita Chōsen keizai ibara no michi’ (The thorny path of the North Korean econ- omy), Nihon keizai shinbun, 2 December 1991. For the South Korean National Unifica- tion Board’s estimates of North Korea’s achievements, measured against the 1978–84 and 1987–93 plans, in electric power, coal, steel, cement and textiles, see Far Eastern Economic Review, 26 March 1992. 74 As of 1982, Soviet assistance was reckoned to be involved in the output of 63 per cent of North Korea’s electrical energy, 33 per cent of steel, 38 per cent of rolled fer- rous products, 5o per cent of oil products, 20 per cent of fabrics, and 42 per cent of iron ore, as well as being heavily involved in much of the country’s infrastructural projects. (V. Andreyev and V. Osipov, ‘USSR-DPRK: Mutually Beneficial Cooperation’, Far Eastern Affairs, April 1983, pp. 12–26 at p. 20.) 75 Chung says, however, that the defence proportion of total spending fluctuated greatly, from 3.7 per cent in 1959 to about 19 per cent between 1960 and 1966, 30 per cent between 1967 and 1971, 17 per cent in 1972, gradually declining to about 12 per cent 34
might have produced some positive economic effect as a burgeoning
weapons export sector accounted for up to one third of exports in the
1980s, worth about $4 billion between 1981 and 1988.76 But third, and
perhaps most important, the megalomania of the leadership cult
imposed serious strains on the economy. The cult was expensive. For
decades a substantial industry was devoted exclusively to the produc-
tion and promotion of hagiography devoted to Kim Il Sung in all the
main languages of the world, and this process intensified during the
1980s. The landscape was littered with monuments, as many as
50,000 of them by one estimate,77 often in marble or granite. Promi-
nent among them were the Museum of the Korean Revolution (with
95 halls, 4.5 kilometres of exhibits showing the life and achievements
of the leader and his family), museums and statues built in various
locations to both parents of Kim Il Sung and sundry other relatives,
the museum built in the mountains of the North-East to house the
28,000 items presented to Kim Il Sung by foreign leaders from 146
countries (including items such as a large double bed),78 the twenty
five metre bronze statue to him, the one hundred and seventy metre
Chuche Tower, and the sixty metre high Arch of Triumph, built (on
the occasion of Kim Il Sung’s seventieth birthday in 1982) of 25,000
blocks of white granite, symbolizing the days lived by Kim up to his
seventieth birthday, and slightly larger in scale than the one in Paris.
The 105 storey (3,000 room) Yukyong hotel had by 1992 been under
construction in Pyongyang so long that its concrete facade was
reported to be crumbling although completion was still not in sight,
with the elevator system and toilets still to be installed.79 The various
facilities prepared to house the 13th World Festival of Youth and
Students in July 1989 are estimated to have cost hundreds of millions
(if not billions) of dollars.80 Although designed to rival the successful
Seoul Olympics of the previous year, they attracted little world atten-
tion save for astonishment at the lavish ‘mass games’ in which up to
50,000 people were mobilized in giant pantomines designed to spell
out revolutionary scenes or messages of loyalty and love for the Great
Leader.81 In April 1992 the eightieth birthday celebration for the Great
75 (cont.)
by the late 1980’s. (Joseph Sang-heon Chung, The North Korean Economy: Structure and
Development, Stanford, Hoover Institution Press, 1974, and, for the 1980s, ‘Economy of
North Korea’, The Far East and Australasia 1990, London, 1989, pp. 538–43, at p. 543.)
South Korean sources in 1990, however, estimated North Korean military spending at
40 per cent of GNP. (Quoted in Shūkan Bunshun, 27 February 1992, p. 137.)
76 Murakami Kaoru, ‘Donzoko keizai ni ochita Kita Chōsen wa misairu de gaika o
kasegu ka’ (Is North Korea’s bottom depths economy raising foreign capital by selling
missiles?), Seikai, April 1992, p. 34–37; see also Tamaki, pp. 72–3.
77 Chon Pu-Ok, in Seikai, April 1992, p. 42.
78 Yun Hak-Jun, ‘Naze waga dōhō—zainichi Chōsenjin wa kyōgaku kenkin o kyōsei
sareru no ka’ (Why are our North Korean compatriots forced to contribute huge sums
of money?), Sapio, 9 April 1992, pp. 19–20.
79
Asian Wall Street Journal, 13 May 1992.
80
Far Eastern Economic Review, Asia 1990 Yearbook, Hong Kong 1990, p. 152. The
Japanese scholar, Tamaki Motoi, gives the figure of ‘a nominal $4.7 billion’. See
JETRO, 1991, p. 118.
81
Sekikawa Natsuo, ‘Kūkyō naru shinden’ (Empty Shrine), Bart, vol 1, no 11, 11
November 1991, pp. 26–7.
35Leader cost an estimated $1 billion,82 and on this occasion 100,000 people were mobilized for the celebratory mass games.83 In short, North Korea, and especially its capital, was turned into a land of monuments, filled with the temples and shrines of the state ortho- doxy. As in ancient Egypt of the Pharaohs, all resources were dedi- cated to the glorification of the leader. The entire nation was caught up in the throes of a mass quasi-religious movement. Visitors to Pyongyang described the city as an elaborate film set, or a Disneyland. Even nature seemed to play its role as the Great Leader had only to cast his line into the Daedong River to hook a remarkable 48 kilo- gram fish.84 The primary call on public resources became the susten- ance and promotion of the political system, and the satisfaction of Kim Il Sung’s apparently ‘insatiable craving for recognition and deference’.85 Even roads, such as the new Pyongyang-Kaesong Express- way which opened in April 1992, served no obvious economic pur- pose, and Western journalists reported seeing only four vehicles, two of them driving on the wrong side of the road, when they travelled on it.86 Both state and society were gradually drained and exhausted by the priorities of the cult. By the end of the eighties, few economists had any good to say of the North’s version of autonomous development. What had been known as ‘socialism’ was in retreat and Pyongyang itself was trying hard to re-link itself to the economies of the capitalist world. The best estimates were that in 1990 per capita GNP in the North was about one sixth of the South’s ($1,038 to $6,498),87 which would mean that there had been virtually no growth at all for a full decade. If Russian sources (who had good reason to be well informed since they knew the country well and were owed a lot of money by it) were right, the estimates of the North’s per capita GNP had to be further slashed, to a mere $400, about one fourteenth of that of the South. Industry was reckoned by the same sources to be operating at only fifty per cent capacity (perhaps as little as thirty to forty per cent according to South Korean sources),88 due to problems of supply of raw materials and transportation, electric power supply89 and the decline of industrial plant.90 Where 2.18 million tonnes of oil had been imported from the Soviet Union and China in 1987, Russian estimates for 1992 had this cut in half (while prices had doubled), and the Russian supply had 82 Mainichi shinbun, 23 April 1992 (quoting South Korean sources). 83 For remarkable photographs (by Imaedo Kōichi) of these ‘Games’, see Bart, May 1992, pp. 20–25. 84 Interview with Kim Il Sung, Asahi shinbun, 2 April 1992. 85 Suh, p. 319. 86 Hans Vriem, ‘Road to Nowhere’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 30 April 1992, p. 22. There are no private autos in North Korea, where the major fleet is made up of the state’s 6,000-odd Mercedes-Benz (ibid.). 87 Bank of Korea estimate, Korea News Review, 22 August 1992, p. 15. 88 Louise Do Rosario, ‘Passing the Hat’, Far Eastern Economic Review, 10 October 1991, p. 75. 89 70 to 80 per cent of power generated was being lost in transmission along cables long ago planted underground as a security measure. (Seikai, April 1992, p. 25.) 90 Asia 1991 Yearbook, p. 141. 36
almost dried up completely.91 In the summer of 1992, it was reported
that not a ship moved in Wonsan harbour, that smoke was rising
from less than half the chimney stacks around Pyongyang, that large
scale army manoeuvres had ceased altogether, while air force pilots
were reduced to four hours practice per year (take off and landing,
but no combat).92
The huge and widening economic gap between North and South
contrasts sharply with the situation in the two Germanies on the eve
of their unification, when the per capita GNP of the two sides was
thought to be close ($12,000 in the West to $10,000 in the East in
1987);93 East Germany’s figure for 1989 ($9,679 according to the
CIA)94 was about double that for South Korea at the same time. While
these estimates may have overstated the international competitiveness
of the East German economy, the fact remains that a large scale trade
between the two Germanies, for which there is no Korean counter-
part, did testify to the industrial capacity of the East.
III. Society: Conformity and Dissent
The Kim Il Sung regime undoubtedly transformed North Korean
society. Education, child-care, health and housing levels apparently
rose dramatically, through the early decades of the regime in partic-
ular, unemployment was apparently unknown, taxation had been
‘eliminated’, and material living standards, by developing world stan-
dards, were by the late 1980s relatively high.
However, these same points might also be expressed in negative form.
Education may have achieved high rates of literacy and numeracy and
a broad diffusion of some sorts of technical skills, but was subordin-
ated to a state indoctrination which was pervasive and intensive, and
commenced shortly after birth. In a country where labour was in short
supply, women were mobilized into factories and farms, while also
being encouraged to maintain high rates of reproduction and denied
access to birth control or abortion. Political, bureaucratic and mili-
tary power, however, was almost exclusively male. Employment
assignation, food rationing, and travel constraints all helped maintain
surveillance and control. Taxation is one, but by no means the only,
means by which states appropriate to themselves the surplus
produced by the labour of citizens; the North Korean state used other,
91 Taoka Shinji, ‘Shinkoku na sekiyū fusoku de gun mo min mo dai setsuyakurei’
(Drastic civil and military economies ordered due to serious oil shortage), Aera, 29
December 1992 to 5 January 1993, p. 21.
92 Ibid, quoting US military sources and (on Wonsan and the chimney stacks),
William Taylor, head of the International Strategic Problems Institute, Washington.
Taylor visited Pyongyang in both February and June 1992, on the latter occasion
having a two hour meeting with Kim Il Sung.
93
Maekawa Keishi, ‘Berurin no kabe wa hōkai shitemo nao takaku atsushiku 38
dosen no kabe’ (38th Parallel Wall still high and thick despite collapse of the Berlin
Wall), Asahi Jānaru, 9 February 1990, pp. 26–30, at p. 28.
94
‘Eastern Europe: Long Road Ahead to Economic Well-being,’ CIA Report to Sub-
committee on Technology and National Security of the Joint Economic Committee of
Congress, 16 May 1990 (cited in James Petras, ‘East Germany: Conquest, Pillage and
Disintegration’, Journal of Contemporary Asia, vol 22, no 3, 1992, p. 340).
37equally effective means. The privileges enjoyed by cadres, and the
sybaritic lifestyle of the leadership, refuted in practice the egalitarian-
ism proclaimed in principle. The physical shape of ordinary people
contrasted with that of the privileged as ‘bananas’ to ‘apples’,95 and
the extravagance of the Kim family in the early 1990s bore the same
sharp contrast to the privations of the people as had been revealed
after the collapse in 1989 of the regimes of Eastern Europe.
Since institutions outside of party and state control were not allowed,
there was no refuge for independent, private or critical thought. The
claim of ‘monolithicity’ was not an empty one. This was a regime
which monitored the virginity and sex life of its women citizens by
periodic compulsory physical examinations conducted in work places
and on changes of residence.96 Foreign travel was not possible for
ordinary people; indeed they were not free even to travel to other
cities without permits and there were no inter-city buses.
The rise of Kim Jong Il was accomplished at great cost. The tele-
phones of even his closest associates are said to be tapped;97 lateral
information flows within the government and bureaucracy are delib-
erately constrained so that only the central leadership—the ‘Leader’—
is all-knowing; and throughout the society initiative and energy are
sapped by the primacy accorded to surveillance and control.
The reverse side of the extraordinary public cult of the Leader and his
family and the orthodoxy they represented was the suppression of
non-conformity and dissidence. Yet deviant thoughts occurred, and
were punished. On what scale they occurred, and with what severity
they were punished, information was less readily available. Independ-
ent sources such as Amnesty International believed there might be
widespread repression. South Korean sources published details of a
network of camps within which dissidents were said to be held,
apparently under conditions of extreme privation.98 There were
thought to be as many as 100,000 persons, including 23,000 Koreans
who had emigrated from Japan at the end of the 1950s, held in these
camps.99 In 1992, two defectors from North to South Korea for the
first time gave personal testimony about the regime of the camp they
had escaped, and raised the estimates of total inmates to 200,000 in
twelve camps spread over a total of 1,500 square kilometres, or 1.23
per cent of North Korea’s land area. They spoke of a work-day of 14
to 15 hours on a daily diet of 550 grams of corn, frequent beatings, and
a regimen so harsh that few prisoners survived beyond the age of
forty.100
95 Chung Ik-Woo, ‘ “Kenkō no tame ni ichinichi nishoku” “beruto ha hikishimeyo”
dai undō no hisan’ (The misery of the big movement to ‘have two meals a day for
one’s health’ and to ‘tighten one’s belt’), Sapio, 9 April 1992, p. 24–25.
96
Choe and Shin, vol 2, p. 268.
97
According to Ko Yon-Fan, op. cit.
98
Concentration Camps in North Korea, Seoul, March 1982. See also New York Times, 11
April 1982.
99
‘Korea—History’, The Far East and Australasia 1990, London 1989, p. 534.
100
Kim Sang-Woo, ‘200,000 Detained at 12 North Korean Labor Camps’, Korea News
Review, 24 October 1992, p. 8; Chan Myon Su, ‘Kin Nissei fushi to Chōsen sōren ni
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