North Korea Cancels Christmas?

Christmas as  North Koreans have  known it for decades has been the nativity of Kim Il Sung, the dead god-king, eternal president, founder of the state, and  father of Kim Jong Il.   His conception marked The Year Zero on North Korea’s juche calendar.   He  is idolized in statues; in portraits in every home, office, and classroom; and on the money.  Citizens must wear his likeness on pins that they can be punished for losing, and which  sometimes indicate the wearer’s social status.   Kim Il Sung  is in every sense  the secular theocracy’s God and Savior.   One persistent rumor even  holds  that Pyongyang’s notorious 65-foot bronze statue of Kim Il Sung was coated in gold leaf until Deng Xiaopeng expressed his disgust, and the North Koreans reverted, in shame,  to bronze. 

So what do you suppose this could mean?

North Korea has turned its annual spring art festival marking the birthday of the country’s founding leader Kim Il-sung into an biennial event, a report said Sunday, with defectors describing the change as a reflection of worsening economic hardships.   The “April Spring Friendship Art Festival” and a national event will be held once every two years beginning this year, the Choson Sinbo, a pro-Pyongyang daily in Japan, said Sunday in its Web edition.  [Yonhap]

According to this AFP report, Kim Il Sung’s birthday is  “the biggest holiday in North Korea.”  That’s certainly been true since 1982.  Yonhap gives some background on how the birthday has been celebrated in the past:

With the exception of 1983, North Korea has invited prominent foreign musicians and art groups to the festival each year. Air fares, accommodations as well as prize money have been covered by the North’s Culture Ministry. Programs usually included hymns in honor of Kim.

Last year, the prominent British opera singer Suzannah Clarke and the popular U.S. gospel music group Casting Crowns performed in the festival. South Korean pop singer Kim Yon-ja performed in 2001 and 2002.  [Id.]

Not prominent enough for me to have ever heard of them ….

Yonhap’s source, the  pro-Pyongyang Chosun Shinbo, leaves much to be clarified:  whether the celebration will be cancelled or severely scaled back (scaled back, I suspect); whether the  downsizing  begins this year or next (this year, I infer); or whether  the fact that  “[o]verseas Korean groups” will be invited to future celebrations means that  persons of non-Korean ethnicity won’t be.

Defectors seem to agree that this is being done for financial reasons.  One says: “Since it’s difficult to reduce the size of annual performances for praising Kim Il-sung, the North probably intends to replace part of the April festival with a domestic one.”   Foreign correspondents view this development as another sign  of a sharp  economic  decline.  They may be right, and they may be only partially right.  We recently heard unconfirmed reports that the regime can’t feed elite residents of Pyongyang, much less the people in the countryside.   But as one who openly wants to see the end of Kim Jong Il’s rule, I try hardest to be cautious when one of the conclusions is one I ardently want to believe.

Could there be other explanations?  Although the expense of the celebrations and the regime’s dire financial condition is almost certainly a factor, there could be.

For one thing,  the financial issue  isn’t an entirely new development.  The regime  turns out  to have had misgivings about the cost of celebrating the birthdays of two gods in one year ever since Kim   Il Sung died in 1994.  Although  “The Day of the Sun” was only established as a holiday in 1997, as Kim  Jong Il sought to borrow his father’s  legitimacy as he consolidated his power, the regime  actually began celebrating Kim Il Sung’s birthday  back in 1982.

In 1997, as the Great Famine raged in the countryside and high-level defector  Hwang Jang Yop hid in the South Korean Embassy in Beijing, Kim Jong Il scaled down his own birthday celebration.  In those days, the younger Kim was still consolidating his own power, and he probably needed to borrow his father’s legitimacy and demonstrate his filial piety.

By  2001, Kim Jong Il began to  de-emphasize his father’s birthday, also reportedly for financial reasons.  In 2005, restaurants in Pyongyang were still able to  celebrate Kim Il Sung’s birthday with  feasts of pheasant and venison for a privileged few; others could see plays or puppet shows or enjoy modest extra rations.  Last year’s celebrations consisted of “[t]housands of performers clad in colorful costumes danc[ing] across a stadium in the capital,” although Kim Jong Il did not attend.  The 2006 celebration consisted of similar content.

Kim Jong Il’s own birthday celebration went ahead as scheduled last month:

Kim’s birthday is one of the most celebrated holidays in North Korea, along with the birthday of his late father and national founder Kim Il Sung. Pyongyang was abuzz with commemorative events such as a massive outdoor dancing party and a music concert, according to the North’s state media.  [….]

In Pyongyang, North Korean TV, seen in Seoul, showed, thousands of people in suits and colorful traditional dress performing synchronized folk dances at the capital city’s main square to songs lauding the leader.

It also showed military officers holding a commemorative gathering earlier this week at Kim’s purported birthplace at Mount Paekdu, the highest peak on the Korean peninsula, with colorful fireworks exploding in the night sky.  [AP, via IHT]

That’s pretty much  a standard-issue birthday celebration for a North Korean Tenno, although the conspicuous emphasis this year was on loyalty to Kim Jong Il.  So this year’s change could, in part, signify a further step toward elevating Kim Jong Il’s deification at his father’s expense.  In better financial times, it might even  be a sign that Kim Jong Il had consolidated his power. 

Even if this is mostly for financial reasons, it may be the end state of  a more gradual process that started in 2001. 

On the other  hand, those things would not explain why the regime also  cancelled  most  last year’s Arirang Festival, which was originally  scheduled to run from August to October, notwithstanding  last year’s  floods.  While some recovery time wouldn’t be unexpected, the regime is good at controlling foreign visitors’ itineraries, and in any event, the regime was ready to receive Roh Moo Hyun and his press entourage by October 2nd.  It will be interesting to see if the regime cancels this year’s festival, too.  (I wonder what the refund policy must be.)

Or, this really could be another sign of the apocalypse, and our agonizingly blurry factual context is the key to answering this.  If it really is true that the regime can’t even  feed people in Pyongyang, it  must realize  that (a) its urgent priority is feeding its elite, (b) it’s not advisable to remind hungry people  that  at least they were eating when  Kim Il Sung was alive, and (c) if things have taken a turn for the worse, it’s probably better to have as few foreign reporters, entertainers, and roadies around to witness it.

If things are as bad as recent supports suggest, expect the North Koreans to clamp down on foreign visitors.  This news doesn’t necessarily  prove the point, but it certainly isn’t inconsistent with it.

See also:   DPRK Forum and the North Korea Monitor.