Back to personality cult
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By Andrei Lankov
Talk of coming change in North Korea, so loud and audible as recently as August and September, has all but disappeared in the past two months.
Signs of the said change have seemingly disappeared as well. For the time being then, it seems that North Korea has returned to its tried and tested track, and is doing its best to follow the course charted by the late Marshall (posthumously promoted to Generalissimo) Kim Jong-il.
One of the decades-old North Korean official notions is the principle that the country is always blessed with a great leader, a man with few parallels in recorded human history. Every North Korean leader is supposed to be a genius. This was the way Kim Il-sung was presented in the 1960s and ’70s, and it was also how his son was portrayed when he ascended to the leadership of the country. Now, the new young leader naturally enough finds himself being portrayed with similar attributes.
The Kim Jong-un personality cult began in 2010 when the North Koreans were told for the first time that a new genius of leadership had emerged in their lucky country.
The glorification campaign was initially slow, but it has intensified quite rapidly in recent two months. In mid-November 2012, the North Korean media reported that a book had been published about the greatness of Kim Jong-un. From the book, the lucky North Korean reader is privileged to learn that Marshall Kim Jong Un, in his primary school years, was a remarkable shot, and also an outstanding car driver (quite an illustrious 7-year-old indeed, especially seeing as it seems the car was no pedal-driven toy).
At the same tender age, Kim was able to impress all with his deep understanding and mature judgement in matters of politics and military strategy. It was also reported that Kim Jong-un, while attending Kim Il-sung Military University, slept merely six hours a day, dedicating the rest of his time to his studies. It is also reported that at the age of 16, would-be Marshal Kim produced a great theoretical treaties (well, this is not that surprising: if North Korean official propaganda is to be believed, his grandfather became supreme leader of the communist underground of all of Korea at the age of 14).
Kim Jong-un also recently appeared as a character in a novel which deals with the great exploits of his father ― the recently published novel in the ``Immortal Leadership” series. It seems that the entire episode was added to the novel at the last moment, but this hardly makes a difference. The episode is set in 2002, when Marshall Kim was probably younger than 20. But he is nonetheless presented as a brilliant strategist and commander, whose wisdom is enough to outsmart the cunning conspiracies of the US imperialists who are as crazy about invading North Korea as usual.
One can easily make fun out of all this, but once one stops laughing they might warrant a more serious look. To start with, these statements are very much in line with the cultural traditions of East Asian politics. In the countries of East Asia, it was expected that leaders should show their genius at a young age. Therefore, the biographies of leaders of China, Vietnam and Korea would routinely begin with descriptions of their childhood genius.
What is more important however is the image of Marshall Kim which North Korean propaganda wants to project. This is clearly the image of a great warrior, a boy blessed with all kinds of martial talents. The picture of Kim which emerges from these writings is not the chubby graduate of a very expensive Swiss private school, but rather a fighter and warrior.
North Korean official propaganda does not mention Kim Jong-un’s foreign education, even though his schooling might make him by far the best educated ruler of the Kim family. North Koreans are not supposed to feel pride, and foreign connections cannot possibly reported, and Kim’s alleged intellectual achievements, while certainly important, clearly serve as the subtext for a master narrative of Kim as a great warrior. To further underline this narrative, the North Korean media frequently shows Kim Jung-un in military locales, he was recently shown for example riding a fine white horse, being followed by aging and overweight generals.
This means that the ``military-first policy” is for the time being, alive and well. Militarism and its associated virtues of self-sacrifice, obedience, discipline etc. remain the core values espoused by the state. This may change in due course, but right now, these stories about the martial skills do not bode well for those who hope for change. After a seemingly somewhat half-baked attempt to begin a process of change, it seems that things have reverted back to the way they were, for the time being at least.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg,
Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin
University in Seoul. You can reach him at
anlankov@yahoo.com.