A Souvenir from Kim Jong Il
My comparison yesterday between North Korean ideology, Nazism, and Stalinism led me to conclude that in terms of intrusive state control and deification of its political leaders, North Korea was the outlier. Speaking of deification, I nearly forgot this:
(Click for full size)
The protector of our race’s destiny, unification [gu-song, possibly N. Korean vernacular]
North and South shall bask together in the glow of General Kim Jong Il’s embrace
We should follow our great general Kim Jong Il eternally!
Our supreme leader Kim Il Sung is the sunshine of our race. April 15th is the greatest holiday of our people
Eternal life to him [in Chinese characters, which I understand to be generally disfavored in the North].
In small letters in the upper right:
4-15, the 87th anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth.
A fellow soldier found this just outside Gate 7 at Yongsan in 1999, supposedly just after we left morning PT formation, and gave it to me instead of putting it in one of the collection boxes, as required by USFK regulation. Although I never found any of these myself, the soldier told me that they were so common at that time that the regulation was widely ignored. When I was stationed at Taegu, officers who lived in the family housing on post at Camp Walker told me that their wives would sometimes find these leaflets in their mailboxes. I guess it was North Korea’s way of letting us know they were around.
One curious fact I noted here: according to no less an authority than KCNA, it’s now Juche 96, and this April 15th, it will be Juche 97. What two significant facts do I take from this? First, that someone was standing there with a stopwatch and a calendar when Kim Il Sung’s parents ground him out on a slow night in July 1910 [correction: 1911]. Second, that I wasn’t in Korea when Juche 87 rolled around, meaning that this thing was printed in 1997, two years before I got my hands on it. [Oops. Forgot to count the Year Zero, which means the leaflet was new in 1998. Thanks to a reader.] I don’t think anyone looking at these images can deny that North Korea’s propaganda imbues its political leaders with supernatural attributes (such as). This mysticism, I think, is what really distinguishes North Korean ideology from Stalinism and Nazism. I think this comparison is more apt:
In 1871, a Ministry of Divinities was formed and Shinto shrines were divided into twelve levels with the Ise Shrine (dedicated to Amaterasu, and thus symbolic of the legitimacy of the Imperial family) at the peak and small sanctuaries of humble towns at the base. The following year, the ministry was replaced with a new Ministry of Religion, charged with leading instruction in “shushin” (moral courses)…. Priests were officially nominated and organized by the state, and they instructed the youth in a form of Shinto theology based on the official history of divinity of Japan’s national origins and its Emperor.
As time went on, Shinto was increasingly used in the advertising of nationalists’ popular sentiments. In 1890, the “Imperial Rescript on Education” was passed, and students were required to ritually recite its oath to “offer yourselves courageously to the State” as well as protect the Imperial family. The practice of Emperor worship was further spread by distributing imperial portraits for esoteric veneration. All of these practices were used to fortify national solidarity through patriotic centralized observance at shrines. This use of Shinto gave to Japanese patriotism a special tint of mysticism and cultural introversion, which became more pronounced as time went on.
Such processes continued to deepen until the Showa period, finally coming to an abrupt halt in August 1945.
Given the reverence some North Korean defectors still feel for Kim Il Sung, as opposed to their contempt for Kim Jong Il, you have to wonder if those grandiose monuments and tombs will remain even after the regime falls, just as Lenin’s tomb remains mostly untouched in Moscow. That’s even more likely if Kim Jong Il’s own military ultimately does him in, because the military will need the power of that official mythology and mysticism to retain its own power.
It’s interesting to me that one of the most persistent, subversive, and devastating rumors circulating in North Korea is the one which accuses Kim Jong Il of killing Kim Il Sung.