The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History by Don Oberdorfer, Robert Carlin Read Free Book Online Page A

Marxism-Leninism,” eventually all reference to Marxist connections was abandoned. The juche philosophy has deep traditionalist roots and great appeal to the Korean antipathy for external domination. In practice, it became synonymous with North Korea’s famous autarky.
    For a visitor from afar, the most extraordinary thing about the Kim Il Sung era was the unrestrained adoration, bordering on idolatry, built up around the Great Leader, which seemed to reflect a craving for adulation that could never be sated. Kim’s photograph, later joined by a separate picture of his son Kim Jong Il, was on the wall in every home as well as every shop and office. Starting in the 1960s, at the son’s order, every North Korean adult wore a badge bearing the senior Kim’s likeness on his or her suit, tunic, or dress.
    Within his country Kim was nearly always referred to as suryong , or Great Leader, a term referring to the greatest of the great that Kim reserved for Lenin, Stalin, and Mao before he began applying it to himself in the 1960s.
    In the late 1980s, according to one count, there were at least thirty-four thousand monuments to Kim in North Korea, not including benches where he once sat, which were protected with glass coverings, and other memorabilia of his many visits throughout the country. The main square in the capital, the leading university, the highest party school, and many other places and institutions were named for him. During Kim’s travels as well as his everyday meetings, an aide followed behind him, writing down his every observation, many of which were published in several languages and considered holy writ by North Koreans. In the 1960s, near the beginning of the buildup, a Soviet party official who had experienced the deification and later downfall of Stalin had the temerity to ask Kim directly, “How is it possible there is this cult of personality in your country?” Kim’s answer was, “You don’t know our country. Our country is used to paying respect to elders—like China and Japan, we live by Confucian culture.” It is unlikely that anyone was bold enough to ask this question of him in later years.
    Kim created an impermeable and absolutist state that many have compared to a religious cult. No dissent from or criticism of Kim Il Sung, his tenets, or his decisions was permitted. Citizens were arrested, and some even sent off to one of the country’s extensive gulags, for inadvertently defacing or sitting on a newspaper photograph of the Great Leader or his son and chosen successor. Reports of inhuman treatment, torture, and public execution for failure to conform with Kimism were rife. Prison camps were established in remote areas containing as many as 150,000 people, many of whom were held in ghastly, inhuman conditions with little chance of ever being released.
    Kim’s biographer Dae-Sook Suh of the University of Hawaii wrote that Kim became “a ruler who wields more power than the notorious monarchs of the old Korean kingdom,” building a state that practices “a peculiar brand of oriental despotism” rather than communism. “There was no such thing as a conversation with Kim Il Sung,” said a prominent South Korean who was Kim’s guest on numerous occasions. “If he spoke to a North Korean, that person stood up, in effect at attention, to receive instructions or orders.” With his personal guests who were important to him or his state, Kim was a stickler for detail. While in Pyongyang, “he would call me every day,” said this South Korean, always asking, “How are you feeling? Is everything all right?”
    In a revealing speech in the 1970s, Kim told government officials that “whatever I am doing, I cannot rest easy unless I have the whole situation at my fingertips.” As the restless and energetic leader of a small country, Kim telephoned the chief of the general staff every night for a report on the military situation and the foreign minister for a report on diplomatic