Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il

by Michael Malice

I was well aware that the US imperialists greatly preferred defeating the DPRK without having to fire a shot, and I was further aware that my conflict with them was just as much about ideas as it was about military might. It’s far easier to destroy a nation with ideology than even with nuclear weapons. The power of a military strike is finite, but an ideology has no limit. After all, it’s not weapons that fight a war. Weapons without human beings are no more than pieces of steel. A fearful army cannot be strong, no matter how advanced its weaponry may be. My soldier-centered view of war was Juche’s man-centered doctrine applied to a military context. That made the KPA fundamentally different from all other armed forces. No other leader on earth put such stress on developing the ideological power of his soldiers as I began to. Giving ideological prominence to the military didn’t mean lowering the status of the masses. Quite the opposite: It provided a guarantee for their position. In the DPRK, the army and the people didn’t have an antagonistic relationship as they did in some other nations. The people were parents to the army and the army were the people’s children. Commanders cherished their soldiers just as much as their real siblings, and soldiers trusted and followed their commanders like their older brothers and sisters. The KPA and the masses were quite literally one family.