The Hidden People of North Korea (9 page)

Kim Speaks Frankly to Loyal Korean Japanese

In April 1988, Kim met with a group of visiting delegates from Japan’s North Korea association, Chongnyon (Japanese: Chosen Soren or Chosoren).
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In the presence of this friendly crowd, Kim spoke frankly, dispensing opinions right and left and saying things he would not want the public to hear (a tape or transcript of the meeting was procured by a Japanese intelligence organization). In his talk, Kim adhered to the North Korean custom of referring to Americans, Japanese, and South Koreans as “bastards” (
nomduri
, “devils” in polite parlance).

On the subject of the United States, he said,

Our People’s Army regards the United States as its sworn enemy but our people [who are] engaged in trade address the Americans with much respect. This is called the principle of “hard inside, soft outside.”

On the North Korean economy, he said,

We continue to ask the World Red Cross for food assistance, because we are in fact short of food; but the main reason is that our seeds have degraded thanks to Suh Kwan-hee’s treachery. … We are replacing them with better seeds but it will take about three years to fully recover. … Suh became a traitor in 1950. [Suh, the DPRK’s agriculture minister, was made a scapegoat and publicly executed.]

Earlier, when foreigners had come on visits, we used to take them only to the best-looking places and best-working places to make them think we are living happily without being envious of other countries. But more recently, we have come to think that now when enemies are scheming to isolate and annihilate this country, the better way of doing things for us is to use a buffer and conduct a “crybaby operation.”

On socialism and capitalism, he said,

Our socialist system is people-centered and we say that we serve the people, but the truth of the matter is that our economic system is not quite like that. In a capitalist society, customers are catered to and their pockets are picked clean in every possible way. The socialist system is ice-cold and indifferent to the customers. In our country, our store workers take the attitude that they don’t care if the customers buy anything or not. Instead of servicing the customers and trying to sell something, they would rather that patrons did not show up so that they won’t have to do anything.

Today, Party cadres and security officers operate outside the law without exception. ... In a capitalist nation, even the prime minister and president are prosecuted if they break the law. We must study how to strengthen our legal system.

On foreign policy, he said,

Now, if you take a look at the United States, Japan, and South Korea, you will notice that they have become weak-kneed and friendly toward us since the point of time when we made “military-first” our forefront policy. Because the American bastards have started approaching us, taking a low posture, the Japanese and South Korean bastards have started to say they are willing to provide us with anything we want. South Korea is the most anxious one of them all.

Kim Addresses an Audience at Kim Il-sung University

In April 1997, the South Korean news magazine
Wolgan Chosun
published the text of a lecture that Kim Jong-il had allegedly delivered the previous December on the fiftieth anniversary of the founding of Kim Il-sung University.
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The lecture was not intended for publication in the North Korean press, so it was not filled with the usual propaganda. Exactly where the lecture was given and who was in the audience is not known, but it sounds very much like Kim. At the time, North Korea was in the depths of the 1995– 1998 famine, most factories had stopped operating, and people were moving from town to town looking for food.

Kim shows an acute awareness of the country’s hardships but offers no practical solutions. He complains that most party officials, including those in the Central Committee, are not working hard. He claims he began assisting Kim Il-sung in the 1960s but that today party officials can give him no assistance because of their incompetence. Kim overlooks the obvious fact that he has been the party leader for the last twenty or thirty years, and if anyone were able to instill spirit and vigor, it should be him.

Then he launches into a defense of his leadership: “At this time when the situation is complicated, I cannot solve all knotty problems, handling practical economic work. … When he was alive, the leader told me not to get involved in economic work. He repeatedly told me that if I got involved in economic work, I would not be able to handle party and army work properly. … Administrative and economic functionaries must take charge of economic work in a responsible manner.”

Kim’s solution to the food problem, for that matter, to all problems, is for the officials to get out of their offices and work with the people, somehow meeting the country’s challenges simply by being on the front lines. He ignores the fact that his years of on-the-spot guidance have not revived the economy.

He demonstrates an amazing faith in the power of propaganda and agitation, recommending that party officials go to the employees and “ask them to produce and to ship more fertilizer, farming goods, and people’s commodities.” With people literally dying in the streets from starvation, he says, “If we tell our people they should eat only 450 grams a day [a starvation diet] and donate the remainder as rice for the army, all of them will willingly comply.”

With excellent foresight, Kim warns that if people become responsible for finding their own food, black market activity will increase and erode support for the party. As it happened, five years later Kim put an end to the ration system and told people to earn their own livings, with exactly the consequences he had predicted.

Kim Jong-il’s Governing Style

Decision Making

We only partially understand how decisions are made at the highest levels of the North Korean government because no close aide to Kim Jong-il is known to have defected. Throughout most of his career, it appears, Kim did not consult with advisors as often as his father did; however, since suffering a stroke in 2008, he has very likely begun relying heavily on other top officials to help him make decisions.
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He intervenes in even the smallest affairs if they come to his attention and engage his interest. On important matters, Kim turns to his subordinates for policy suggestions, telephoning them at any hour of the day or night and encouraging them to discuss and argue among themselves. These subordinates forward their recommendations to Kim, who evaluates them in terms of what is good for national security and what is good for himself.

Kim works late into the night, a practice he says he picked up during the years when he was preparing reports to put on his father’s desk first thing in the morning. Kim Jong-il’s adopted niece, Nam-ok, says he often brought work home, and one of his associates says Kim would sometimes sneak out of late-night parties he was hosting in order to work in his office. It is not known whether Kim engages in a true exchange of ideas or simply solicits opinions and then makes unilateral decisions. Kim’s imperious behavior in public suggests that he uses the latter decision-making process. There is little doubt that once Kim has made a decision, no one can question or contest it. The North Korean political system lacks checks and balances because the legislature and courts must answer to the party, and the party is, first and last, a tool of Kim’s leadership. Even in the era of military-first politics, the top generals seem to have no political agenda and, in any case, live and work under close party surveillance.

Because Kim governs by personal power rather than organizational position, the best way to assess how much political power officials exercise is to look at their personal relationships to Kim. Those closest to him may never appear in public, but they are probably the most powerful people in the regime because they have Kim’s ear and, more importantly, his trust. High-ranking officials who appear at meetings with foreigners are often only front men. A good example is the chairman (also called “president”) of the presidium of the Supreme People’s Assembly. Even though he is the highest official in the government, he probably has less political clout than some party officials. In any case, the SPA is nothing more than a part-time legislature that convenes for a few days each year to ratify the party’s decisions. Likewise, Kim surrounds himself with high-ranking generals who follow him around on inspection tours, thereby demonstrating to the army and to the public that Kim is the man in charge.

Real power resides in what could be called Kim’s inner cabinet. The makeup of this informal cabinet, whose members presumably never convene as a group but instead work with Kim at his office or socialize with him at his parties, has always been the subject of much speculation among foreign analysts. Most of the people who seem to belong to this inner circle are of Kim’s generation or younger; all are presumably loyal to him and believe that their interests coincide with his. Some hold positions of power in the military, others in the party, and others in the government. Many hold multiple positions. Some in the inner circle are members of Kim’s own family, such as his sister and his brother-in-law.

Kim’s personal secretariat, which screens incoming reports and communicates Kim’s instructions, has offices next to his. An Yong-chol, a former officer in the KPA, has written about the secretariat and described the physical layout of Kim’s office, which is in the three-story headquarters of the KWP’s Organization and Guidance Department, the most powerful of the party organizations.
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Formerly housing Kim Il-sung’s office, the building is in a special party compound in downtown Pyongyang, surrounded by tall trees and an eleven-meter-high wall. It is believed that Kim can commute to his office by way of an underground tunnel from one of his Pyongyang houses.

To keep Kim better informed than anyone else, information channels are vertical, not horizontal. Over the years, Kim has developed an extensive reporting system that keeps him apprised of what is happening in all sectors of society, while people in those sectors do not have accurate information about what is happening outside their domains. Officials are expected to transmit information to Kim in a timely fashion, and if he receives that information from another source first, heads may roll. The regime’s principal security organizations—the Ministry of People’s Security (MPS), State Security Department (SSD), and Security Command—have separate communication channels with Kim and often compete among themselves to provide him with information.
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Kim’s spies are everywhere, and people in critical lines of communication, and therefore with the most power, are the most carefully watched. The top elites, such as cabinet ministers, party secretaries, and KPA generals, must account for their comings and goings.

Defectors say that reports sent to Kim are often doctored to make conditions look favorable to the departmental bureaucrats, a phenomenon that characterizes most bureaucracies. Kim is nobody’s fool, but he certainly does not know many things about his country, if only because officials keep bad news from him, just as he kept bad news from reaching his father. A possible case in point is the regime’s decision to end World Food Program (WFP) aid in 2005, even though the WFP estimated that North Korea would continue to experience a serious food shortfall. Three months later, with food already running out, Kim relented and permitted a partial resumption of food aid. A plausible explanation for this fiasco is that Kim’s agriculture officials misinformed him about the size of the 2005 harvest.

Although Kim has a wealth of information about the outside world available to him from foreign media sources and from intelligence provided by North Koreans stationed abroad, he has limited first-hand experience with foreign lands and people. As a teenager he accompanied his father on a trip to Moscow in 1957 and to Eastern Europe in 1959. In 1965 he and his father visited Indonesia, the only time either of the Kims is known to have traveled by air. Since the 1980s Kim Jong-il has made occasional trips to China, and in 2001 and 2002, he visited Russia. In short, he has much less exposure to foreign lands than do many of his officials. The prism through which he views the world may be distorted by the movies he loves to watch, and his officials’ reluctance to be frank with him deprives him of a sounding board for his impressions and opinions. Interestingly, lack of experience has not inhibited his forming opinions about other countries or conducting international relations, as illustrated by the closed-door talk he gave to visiting Chongnyon officials.

For Kim’s style of personal governance to be effective, he must have loyal and dependable followers. To garner this loyalty, he needs funds to reward followers because he is hardly the kind of leader who inspires others through his example or charisma, although some may follow him because they feel that their fate depends on keeping the regime in power or because they respected his late father. On the birthdays of Kim Jong-il and his father and on New Year’s Day, the top twenty thousand or so cadres receive special gifts, such as liquor, clothing, foreign food, and wristwatches.
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People who please him especially, like his former Japanese chef, receive more expensive gifts, including luxury cars. Ordinary party and government officials receive coupons on Kim’s birthday for, say, a bottle of liquor and a carton of fruit. In 2008, local-level officials, depending on local economic conditions, received something like a domestic bottle of liquor, a toothbrush, and a bar of soap, while school children received several pieces of chewing gum, a few rice crackers, and a small pack or two of candy.
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