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The last two years have been marked by sudden disappearances of many North Korean dignitaries and, especially, generals. Yi Young-ho, the de-facto commander of the North Korean military, is one of many people who suffered such a fate recently. They are almost certainly "purged," but what does this exactly mean?
Once upon a time, in the Soviet Union under Stalin, everybody knew what it meant if a dignitary suddenly disappeared.
One could be pretty sure that the unlucky ambassador or general was soon to admit his lifelong connections with German (or Japanese, or French) intelligence as well as his involvement in a multitude of assassination/poisoning plots. One would then expect that all references to this particular dignitary would be deleted from official publications. There was no way back, with just a few exceptions; none of the fallen dignitaries was seen again in the Soviet Union.
This is not the case in North Korea. A number of times, dignitaries have disappeared only to reappear on the public stage years later. These people were rumored to spend these mysterious years doing some "re-educational labor" in remote mines or collective farms, but their lives were obviously spared.
Even Chang Seong-taek, currently believed to be the top adviser of the young dictator, disappeared from the political scene in the past. He was not seen from 2004 to 2006 and, if rumors are to be believed, he spent this time somewhere in the remote countryside, meditating over his political shortcomings.
This is by no means an isolated incident. But in the recent decade, we have seen the posthumous revival of some North Korean dignitaries who had been purged in the 1950s and 1960s.
The first of these posthumously forgiven people is Choe Seung-hee, founder of Korea's modern dance tradition and arguably Korea's first world famous celebrity. In spite of her strong and sincere pro-Japanese sympathies in the colonial era, in 1946 she fled to the North.
For a brief time, Choe enjoyed royal treatment in North Korea. She was given many opportunities to perform and teach, while her husband became a high level literary bureaucrat.
But in the late 1950s, many intellectuals of South Korean origin were purged and around this time both Choe and her husband An Mak disappeared. North Korean artists and writers were told officially that the couple was discovered to be "reactionaries."
Until the mid-1990s Choe and An were non-persons. But from the mid-1990s, their names began to appear in North Korean publications, with no references to them ever being purged. And as a sign of their complete forgiveness, their tombs (possibly fake) appeared at the Taesongsan Memorial Cemetery.
Another person who would suffer a similar fate was Han Seol-ya. Once the literary czar in North Korea, like Choe, he was a pro-Japanese collaborator and in the 1940s changed sides. Through his luck with Kim Il-sung he became the boss of the new North Korean state's literary bureaucracy. But in 1962 he was purged. All his books were withdrawn from libraries and destroyed, and according to unconfirmed rumors, he spent the last years of his life doing hard labor in the countryside to be forgiven only a few months before his death in the late 1960s.
Nonetheless, in the early 1990s, favorable references to Han began to appear in North Korean publications. Now he is considered to be one of the founding fathers of North Korean literature.
Another interesting case of revival was the fate of Kim Mu-chong, who is better known under his nom de guerre Mu Chong. He spent most of his life in China where he made a remarkable career in Chinese Communist military forces. By the late 1940s, he was the chief commander of the PLA artillery.
During the Korean War, Mu Chong would become one of the North Korean army's top commanders. However, by the end of the war, Kim Il-sung in need of scapegoats for the humiliating defeats in 1950, purged Mu Chong. Nothing was subsequently heard of him. But in the early 1990s, visitors to Pyongyang discovered his tomb at the same cemetery.
What is behind these pardons? Frankly, we do not have a satisfactory explanation and will perhaps have to wait until North Korean archives become accessible to researchers ― and this might be a long wait. But one thing should be remembered: in North Korea purge does not necessarily mean death.
Prof. Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
