|
Kim the petulant
strikes out
By Tatiana Gabroussenko
Asia Times, Dec. 16, 2013
When extolling
the deeds of North Korea's Great and Dear Leaders, North Korean propaganda likes
to emphasize the lessons that the Kims have allegedly taught to the world. I
find myself in the rare situation of being in full agreement with North Korean
propagandists.
Indeed, the current behavior of Supreme Leader Marshal
teaches at least two lessons to parents all over the world, and these lessons
are particularly precious for fathers of future dictators.
The first
lesson: do not allow your children to play computer games too much lest they
dangerously lose touch with reality. Read them some history books instead, with
narrations about how
revolutions are normally started and finished being
especially valuable: French, Russian, or Romanian - anything will do.
The second lesson: until your children are fully grown up, do not send
them too far away from home lest they get some silly ideas into their heads and
act according to such ideas after they return.
The behavior of young
North Korean leader has already raised many eyebrows. It suffices to mention his
marriage to Ri Sol-ju, a girl with a bohemian past, or his strange affection for
Dennis Rodman, an eccentric athlete who did not bother to take off his cap in
front of the Leader. However, the current downfall of Jang Song-thaek was
jaw-dropping even by these standards.
This author still wants to believe
that behind the theatrics that surrounds this event might lie some cold-headed
Machiavellian scheme, some cunning, larger-than-life plot of the young Supreme
Leader who might be worthy of his manipulative grandfather. If, however, things
are just as they appear - the erratic act of a teenager's riot against an
annoying adult - I am forced to admit that we have just witnessed pure,
undiluted political stupidity. Such an act could be committed only by a person
whose life experiences are limited, nervous system is unstable and survival
instincts are dead.
Only such a person would not appreciate such rare
assets in an impoverished and secluded nation over which he had inherited
absolute power as political stability (a product of meticulous, conscientious
decades-long efforts of his predecessors).
Kim Il-sung, who started his
political career as a Soviet puppet, at first emulated Soviet Stalinist patterns
of treating regime enemies, with its indispensable show trials, publicized
purges and fervent rhetoric of ongoing class struggle. However, Kim the First
turned away from the Soviet model quite soon into his reign. From the early
1960s, Kim Il-sung began to emphasize ethnocentric themes and ideas, rather than
Leninist class struggle. This culminated in the regime's new Juche idea,
which began to emerge at this time.
Juche postulates inseparable unity
of all North Koreans in the face of external challenges. North Korean literature
and the arts of Kim Il-sung's era presented the DPRK as a "people's paradise"
inhabited by equally virtuous people, sons and daughters of the "Fatherly
Leader" and "Mother Party." All the enemies, be it "Seoul puppets" or "American
beasts", were placed outside the borders of this "paradise".
This
rhetoric directly influenced Kim Il-sung's political practice, he used to follow
the golden rule of traditional parenthood: mothers and fathers should never
quarrel in front of the children. When Kim Il-sung removed somebody from his
entourage, he did so without excessive fuss.
Kim the Second followed the
same line. By placing political stability at the top of his political agenda,
Kim Jong-il managed to survive the famine of the 1990s. The North Korean
leadership had no choice but to recognize the fact that their country faced huge
economic problems in order to get foreign help. However, the DPRK's domestic
propaganda put all the blame for economic failures on external factors (mostly,
American sanctions and disastrous floods), not on some scapegoats among North
Korean politicians, let alone the leader himself. Even when Kim Jong-il chose to
execute his Party secretary for agriculture, his execution was announced only to
the chosen few.
To describe the events of the late 1990s, North Korean
propaganda invented poetic euphemisms, the period was dubbed the "arduous
march", this alluded to the march of Kim Il-sung's guerillas in 1938 in
Manchuria, which bore the similar name. The whole nation was summoned to tighten
their belts and stay closer to the Dear Leader; the latter was said to be
sharing in the hardships of his subjects and allegedly ate only acorn jelly for
lunch.
Any mistakes by local cadres if mentioned in the context of the
"arduous march" were referred to sympathetically, as the results of misplaced
goodwill and lack of experience. While he was a less skillful politician than
his father, Kim Jong-il was still smart enough to understand that a chain of
accusations aimed at his high-positioned subordinates (when kept secret) are
easily reversible. Sanctioned and ignited hatred of the populace could create an
uncontrollable situation and be turned against him, so it was safer not to let
this genie out of bottle.
All sorts of media in the DPRK have been
efficiently mobilized for promoting the idea of classless paradise; strictly
controlled professional propagandists have been working on fostering the
necessary public mood . North Korean propaganda specialists, indeed, deserve
their extra bowl of rice and a slice of pork: as foreign surveys of refugees
demonstrate, up until today the vast majority of the North Korean populace tends
to believe in the major postulates of North Korean propaganda. Those few North
Koreans who might harbor some doubts have no channels through which they could
even hint to at their frustrations (in public).
While the North Korean
elite used to be the major benefactor from this state of affairs, I dare to
suggest that regular North Koreans got their share of advantages too. Mentally
they lived in a harmonious space: rarely is ideology as appealing to popular
sentiments as the North Korean picture of a paradise inhabited by thoroughly
good people. Confucian traditions and low social mobility both contributed to
the fatalistic ease with which many North Koreans continue to accept the concept
of "upper water and low water", the innate inequality of different social strata
and the notion that everyone in society should mind their own business and do
what is expected of them.
And their "business" they indeed minded. Since
the mid-1990s, after their state socialist economy collapsed, North Koreans have
been busy constructing a market economy - as if obeying state propaganda, which
summoned people to solve their problems "relying on their own strength". This
crawling marketization, which Kim Jong-il's government grudgingly tolerated,
made it possible for the economic situation to improve in recent years.
The state and people in the DPRK have come to a kind of unspoken
consensus, a social contract according to which they would live parallel but
mutually beneficial existences. The state is obliged to provide people with
basic medical services, protection and education under the facade of socialism,
and at the same time close its eyes to the new sprouts of capitalism; the people
in exchange fed the country through their unofficial businesses and do not
meddle in politics.
This unspoken social contract had one important
consequence. The dirty and painful job of shattering the last remnants of state
socialism and introducing capitalism in the DPRK was done not by state elite or
group of reformers, but happened quite naturally, at the hands of normal people,
local "activists" of the black market. This situation was the opposite to that
in post-Perestroika Russia. In Russia, the unpopular duty of demolishing of
state socialism's bloated but popular system of welfare provision and full
employment had to be done by the post-Soviet state. This made the new elite the
object of popular hatred.
Thus, the country that Kim Jong-eun has
inherited, for all its deficiencies, has some advantages. People who happen to
be his subjects are patient, hard-working, adaptable and responsible, accustomed
to challenges and are ready for innovations and market reforms. They have one
specific requirement, however: they are used to working in a politically stable
environment.
Not accidentally, the idea of political stability was
essential for the legitimization of Kim Jong-eun. He is after all a politician
of dubious credentials who, unlike his father, was barely known to North Koreans
before being announced as their new leader. Kim Jong-eun was introduced as his
resurrected grandfather, "Kim Il-sung of today".
As the disgrace of Jang
Song-thaek demonstrates, Kim Jong-eun barely recognizes the value of political
stability. Even if his conflict with high-positioned party cadres is indeed of
an ideological nature and Jang was a hindrance to his new course and therefore
had to be demoted, it is difficult to understand how washing dirty linen in
public helps in olving this ideological conflict.
Public humiliation of
a dignified aged politician who also happens to be Kim Jong-eun's close
relative, loud accusations of a distinguished party grandee womanizing and
gambling (the accusations which demonstrate a rather mediocre flight of fantasy
of their inventors), strike at the very foundation upon which North Korean
society is built. It makes a ready scenario for civil war that, when the time
comes, could easily swallow up the young leader.
The most important
thing is that this public scandal is apparently incongruent with the reform
course that the new leader had seemed to support up to now. Part of the
accusations against Jang Song-thaek are aimed at China, so far the only loyal
sponsor of the DPRK. These accusations are therefore potentially very damaging
to vital economic ties with Beijing.
A return to the age of public
executions and mass trials in the style of mid-1950s may terrify Kim Jong-eun's
real or imagined adversaries; yet, it would hardly help to release the creative
energies, initiative and entrepreneurial spirit of North Korea's common people.
It is the latter which is all too necessary for improving the life of this
impoverished and unlucky country.
Tatiana Gabroussenko is a
professor of North Korean studies at Korea University. Her book Soldiers on
the Cultural Front: Developments in the early history of North Korean literature
and literary policy was selected for the
Choice magazine list of Outstanding Academic Titles of 2012.
(Copyright
2013 Asia Times online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us
about sales, syndication and republishing.)
|