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On the 15th of April, North Korea had lavish celebrations for Kim Il Sung's birthday, officially known as "Day of the Sun". These celebrations can be seen as an embodiment of the personality cult going mad, but one should not think that all this official pomp is completely fake. For many North Koreans the founding father of their state is, indeed, a person worthy of respect. It is not incidental that polls confirm that the late Generalissimo and Sun of the Nation still enjoys much support among his former subjects and even among defectors.
Why do North Koreans tend to love the long-deceased dictator? One can argue that his popularity is based to a large extent on outright lies, misinterpretations, and myths – but does it really matter? After all, the same can be said about many other historical figures that are widely admired across the world.
To start with, Kim Il Sung is seen as an authentic hero of the anti-Japanese resistance, the proud symbol of Korean nationalism. This reputation is much exaggerated, but not completely unfounded.
Kim Il Sung indeed joined the anti-Japanese guerrillas in 1932 and by the late 1930s became a reasonably successful field commander in the wilderness of Manchuria. During his guerilla exploits, Kim Il Sung actually demonstrated remarkable bravery, commitment and a spirit of self-sacrifice. As far as we know, he was respected by his guerrillas as an able and caring commander – even though, admittedly, there were other commanders of equal prominence.
On the other hand, the North Koreans are largely unaware that, contrary to the oft-repeated lies of the official propaganda, the founding father of their state never led an independent Korean guerilla force. He spent all his guerilla career as, first, a soldier of the Chinese communist forces and then, in 1941-45, as a junior officer of the Soviet army.
Of course, the significance of his operations has been grossly exaggerated. The armed Manchurian resistance was heroic and even important politically as one of many symbols of Koreans' willingness to fight, but in purely strategic terms the minor skirmishes in the Manchurian forests were a sideshow and had little if any impact even on the local military operations.
Second, Kim Il Sung is seen by the North Koreans as a person who won the Korean War against mighty America. Nearly all North Koreans buy the official story which holds that the Korean War began in June 1950 as an act of aggression, committed by the South Koreans and the Americans. For a brief while that idea was popular with radical historians in South Korea and the United States, but in the 1990s publication of once top secret Soviet and Chinese documents demonstrated that the war was actually instigated at Kim Il Sung's initiative and reluctantly approved by Stalin and Mao.
However, this is not what the common North Koreans are aware of. For them, the picture is simple: their country was invaded, but Kim Il Sung managed to repel the invasion, so the war ended where it began. For them it looks like a victory (logically enough).
The third and the most important reasons of Kim Il Sung's resilient popularity is, as one should expect, the state of the economy. Actually, his policies were pretty insane and made the collapse of North Korean industries and agriculture merely a question of time. However, the collapse happened only when the old dictator was safely dead, under the watch of his son, Kim Jong Il, who is now blamed by the majority of the North Koreans for the famine and dislocation of the 1990s.
On the contrary, the days of Kim Il Sung are remembered by the North Koreans as the time of stability and modest affluence. Everybody was issued a daily ration – usually, some 700 grams of rice or corn for a working adult, for a token price. The major consumption goods were distributed as well. The officials were probably rich, but their affluence was not easily noticeable, so people also remember Kim Il Sung's decades as the time of material equality.
There are good reasons to expect that this reverence for Kim the First will outlive the Kim Family Regime. The popular myth insists that Kim Il Sung, the wise old man, got (more or less) everything right, but then his son ruined everything. This is not true, but it seems that the founder of the North Korean state will be long seen as, so to say, a "controversial historical personality" and will have his fans.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and teaches at Bookman University in Seoul. Reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
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