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.
After the war, General MacArthur concluded that Shintoism and the religious reverence for the Emperor were too deeply ingrained in the Japanese psyche to be summarily uprooted. MacArthur instead coopted the Emperor, subtly established a place of supremacy over him, and forced him to renounce his divinity.
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.
I used to find things like that scattered about on the ground in Songnam – a lower income are just outside of Seoul. This was in the 1997-1998 period.
I brought home a couple of propaganda leaflets myself, both found in the environs of Yonsei University.
Can you scan them?
Sent.
Is it true that North Korea is taught that people in South Korea are all starving beggars who are slaves to Americans and that the Korean war was Started when America invaded North Korea ? Becuase one of my best friends is South Korean and her mother is a first hand witness of the communists invading the south. Her mom was like 10 years old when North Korean soldiers killed her brother and sister when they invaded her village. She sais that the soldiers told them to bow down to communism and her siblings refused and were shot like dogs. It is soo sad that the North Koreans are so brainwashed by the regime. Do any of them wonder why there is only one man in that country with a fat belly (Kim Jong il) ? South Korea is one of the most prosperous nations on Earth, and I know that us Americans will make sure that our friends in the South are protected form those commies. What is more sad is the fact that North Koreans are almost a foot shorter than South Koreans due to years of malnourishment. It is said that many South Koreans cannot understand how one race of people can look so different. They look like dwarfs compared to South Koreans.
Yes to all.
If you can watch the documentaries “Access to Evil” and “Undercover in the Secret State” —- you will see these claims made directly by North Korean government people and North Koreans hiding in China.
Other documentaries probably have similar scenes, but I remember scenes from those two specifically.
You can find both documentaries on emule or some other such P2P sharing site or perhaps through Netflix or some other video rental place.
Thanks usinKorea, I will have to I leave work to downlaod emule though. I have to cross my fingers becuase i’m no computer whizz and mught just make my PC blow up. But I have scene Children of the secret state on youtube and just recently saw footage of Diane Sawyer’s visit to Pyongyang from Oct. 06′ just after the nuke test. The city looked quite clean and the people well fed. I don’t know if the showcase capitol looks the same now though. I have heard that many North Koreans are now seeing that they are not living in paradise due to South Korean dramas being smuggled in form China.
correction: I meant ABC news video ,not youtube.
Access to Evil has an interview with a top NK general who gets angry at the suggestion NK started the war and goes into a tirade. It also has a scene with the kids talking about how much the US wants to destory them and is currently destroying South Koreans.
Undercover in the secret state has interviews with North Koreans in China talking about being astonished at how they were lied to by the NK government and how they found the truth through SK smuggled tapes and so on.
I have been using clips from all these doc at the You Tube account I just set up.
Look for NorthKoreaHR. I’ll be adding more as I get stuff together.
I feel that once the generations who lived under regimes like the USSR or DPRK pass away, there will hopefully be a dismantaling of such regimes (if the DPRK collapses in the near future). A big reason the adulation of tyrannical leaders like Lenin and Stalin come from the mythology assigned to them by nostalgia. Vladimar Putin said in Russia that getting rid of Lenin’s tomb risked insulting older generations that remember the USSR fondly.
Then again there are Neo-Nazi’s even in countries that fought hard against Nazi Germany during WWII or where even persecuted by them. There will always be a lunatic fringe in politics but hopefully the majority of people do not fall for such horrible ideologies.