Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Autobiography of Kim Jong Il

by Michael Malice

the spine cracked with that pleasant sound that we booklovers know so well.

The factionalists were all systematically liquidated after the plenary meeting. Every official in the room, and then every citizen in the country, learned the significance of the events. They fully understood that the cohesion of the Party was centered on the Great Leader. It was time to dye the entire Party in one color: the color of Prime Minister Kim Il Sung’s revolutionary Juche idea. On May 25, 1967 the Great Leader gave a speech outlining Korea’s way forward under a monolithic system of thought. “Establishing a monolithic system is fundamental in building our Party,” he said. “Without a complete monolithic system, we cannot maintain our uniform ideological identity. Nor can we carry out our revolution.”

If there were two or more ideologies in the Party, the Party would disintegrate and become meaningless. A multiparty system would lead to even further disunity. Multiparty systems are often described as “democracy,” when in actuality they are mere camouflage to conceal capitalism’s anti-democratic, anti-people nature. America, for example, spends an entire year holding primaries with the explicit goal of limiting who the people can vote into the presidency—while upholding this process as a function of “freedom” and “democracy”! In

Everyone in Korea would think and act according to the Great Leader’s intentions and only according to the Great Leader’s intentions. There would be no more tolerance for any allegedly “honest” disagreement. The time had come for honest agreement, from everyone in the entire country.

“No, comrade.” I tensed up. “None dead, I take it?” “No,” he laughed. “Of course not.” I smiled. Each soldier of ours was trained to be a match for a hundred foes. The idea of us suffering casualties in these circumstances was absurd. “What about on their side?”

The American press reports were almost comical in their melodrama. Johnson raved and ranted about this “disgrace” that the United States had never been subjected to before. He insisted that Pueblo would be retrieved at any cost. How hilarious that the man who had gotten away with assassinating President Kennedy was now being so easily stymied by the DPRK!

We started with the books. European books belonged in Europe, not in Korea. Any text written by a foreign author was therefore slated for burning. The masses made a very public show of destroying these relics from the past. They couldn’t be more delighted to remove all foreign, contaminating ideas out of their homes. A few volumes were kept in the libraries, available upon request—which grew fewer and fewer. Thanks to the educational work of the Party, people literally knew better than to ask for such dangerous things.

These books were just as rotten as spoiled food, but many times more dangerous. Rather than causing a stomachache, they could ruin a person’s character. Destroying all foreign works wasn’t an example of censorship. It was simply progress.

Maintaining these great advances called for hermetically sealing the nation as much as possible. Any Koreans who had to venture abroad always had family left behind, to ensure their safe and loyal return. Once they came back, they spent months laboring

farms to eliminate any corrupting ideals and to always remember the value of Juche. In addition, most of those who had been educated in other countries were sent off to be reeducated in the enlightenment centers.

I decided that the best way to demonstrate this artistically would be to adapt the relationship between the leader and the people to that of a parent and his children. The more luster I added to

For the first time in history, I discovered the nucleus of any work of art. The basis of a work was what I called the “seed” (chongja). My discovery of the seed gave a shock to the literary theories of the world. It could be said its discovery had the same place in art history that the discovery of fire held in man’s history.

appropriate artistic presentation simply in a few novels. I have a better idea: writing a cycle of historical novels.” “A...cycle?” The writers all looked at one another. This was something which no writer had ever previously thought of. “Let’s have the overall title for the series be ‘Immortal History.’ But each book in the cycle should have its own subtitle according to its own particular message, and they each should be written in chronological order.” The writers were excited to be entrusted with such a great responsibility. They worked so hard for the following several weeks that a couple of them even required extensive medical attention. Finally, however, the manuscripts were delivered to me for my feedback and I read the voluminous books that very night. Fifteen thousand pages later, I was delighted with the first draft. I even visited the writers in the hospital to commend their good beginning. There and then, we proceeded to go over the edits that I had.

knew well that children’s books weren’t very highly regarded in Western culture. There, introducing political themes in such books is regarded as “brainwashing”. How depraved and filthy the West is—especially America—that a “washing” can be used as a term of approbation! It’s no wonder that their children grow up to become degenerates, hooligans and hellions. But even in Korea, nobody had ever considered illustrated books as worthy of being a lasting heritage for posterity. They were usually passed from one child to another and kept in poor condition before being discarded as literal and figurative rubbish. The “illustrators” weren’t regarded as worthy of the term. But I found great value in picture tales. They were a powerful ideological weapon for the young.

IDLE PIG: A DPRK CHILDREN’S STORY

Still, I noticed that his chest was moving up and down. From my medical expertise I knew that meant that he was still with us.

my affection brought the entire family to tears. No one in the world values and loves man as I do. In Korea many anecdotes can be heard about how my love for people miraculously brought them back to life from serious illness or from critical conditions caused by accidents. But in this case my love was not strong enough. With a long breath, we lost the producer minutes after I arrived. It was as if he’d been holding on so that he could see me one last time.

Thanks to the state’s newfound encouragement, no one ever left a performance early again. The audiences enthusiastically applauded the players and always called for encores. It was a wonderful improvement which the history of music had never known before.

put my hands on my hips and stared into the blinding snowstorm. Immediately, the furious blizzard stopped blowing. The clouds gradually moved to one side, revealing a glimmering snowscape warmed by the newly-uncovered sun’s rays. Then, a rainbow appeared in the sky above the entire vista. Jaws dropped one by one, as the members of my entourage witnessed what seemed to be a miracle. To my consternation, they still didn’t understand what was happening. I turned to them, beaming as brightly as the sun itself. “Don’t you see?” I said. “Mt. Paektu has recognized its master!”

“which is the highest mountain in the world?” The Party members glanced at one another before one had the courage to speak. “Everest?” I laughed. “No! It is Mt. Paektu. And why is that? Because a mountain shouldn’t be measured by its altitude, but by the greatness of service it has rendered to history. Mt. Paektu is the highest in the world because it symbolizes how the General crushed the Japanese imperialist enemies. Where could we possibly discover a higher mountain than one which represents General Kim Il Sung’s immortal revolutionary achievements? Mt. Paektu is the highest mountain in the world because the mountain’s height is the height of Korea herself.”

First, the ideological revolution did away with any remaining outmoded ideas and spiritually liberated the people. Next, the technical revolution liberated the people from the fetters of nature and from arduous labor. Finally, the cultural revolution liberated the people from the cultural backwardness characteristic of the former society and made them morally perfect.

At home, the Korean opera scene was also reaching unprecedented levels of achievement. It generally took around three years to create an opera, but my revolutionary method of guidance managed to tremendously cut this time down. While completing one opera, I made preparations for another one—and before that one was completed, I started work on yet another. In this way I’d managed to create five operas in under two years, a fact unprecedented in the world history of music.

“Aren’t you? In the past, whips were used to make people work. But today articles serve the same purpose. This is the might of an ideological campaign. It turns slavery into freedom. Recall how activists used to carry mimeograph machines on their backs during the revolutionary days. Learn from their lesson. You should keenly observe any phenomenon from the political point of view and judge it accordingly. Even when you depict a landscape or write a good travelogue, you must never attach primary importance to the subject itself but subordinate it to the article’s ideological content. Only then can it make a clear statement.” I paused. “And one more thing: keep my name out of the paper. Without fail, articles must hold the President in high esteem, adore him and praise him as the great revolutionary leader.

the night. I often see his car pass out the gate at dawn. That’s why we call his office ‘the light that never goes out.’ It’s no exaggeration to say that his energetic guidance is literally superhuman. It appears as if he doesn’t make distinctions between work and rest, or between day and night. Even the officials who work by his side say that they don’t know when eats, sleeps or uses the facilities.”

The President was then able to make his wish official, declaring me his successor under law. In the DPRK, the process was very different than what it would have been in a Western country. Most Western countries are allegedly governed by constitutions, anachronistic documents from colonial eras that justify bloody expansionism and oppression. As a consequence, thinking all nations are interchangeable and the same, Westerners often foolishly analyze the DPRK’s constitution to demonstrate this or that. But the Juche idea allows for every nation to be governed in its own way. A chopstick is not a flawed fork, but a different form of eating appropriate to a different nation. North Korea isn’t guided by our constitution but by the Ten Great Principles of the Monolithic Ideological System.

knew that an actor can’t prove his skill unless it’s supported

by a high degree of political enthusiasm.

What had been the performance of a lifetime was swiftly becoming a career-ending failure for the entire troupe. I worried that they would all kill themselves when the night was done.

Though I was dividing my focus successfully, the speakers kept pausing whenever I looked away. I kept gesturing for them to proceed, as they weren’t disturbing my work in the slightest. Not only did I perfectly follow every speech, but I often interjected to address problems which the speakers put forward. At times I even praised speakers that didn’t fully deserve it to show that I’d been listening to them.

How could I do so many things at once? I learned from the Great Leader. Just as General Kim Il Sung had created land-shrinking tactics to terrify the Japanese imperialists, I employed time-shrinking to step up the transformation of society. Try as I might, I could never change the fact that one hour consisted of sixty minutes. But what I could change was the quantity and intensity

the enthusiasm that I poured into my work. In Morse code, an ordinary person’s output would be expressed in dots and lines. But my output would be several straight lines covering the same distance. I managed to do the work of ten or even a hundred days’ work in the same period by saving every fraction of a second. By using time in a cubic, three-dimensional way, I carried out brilliant work...

Many a worker was driven mad with pleasure from hearing the accordion—“the people’s instrument”—all throughout the workday.

Knowing that the entire Six-Year Plan was depending on them, the people began to overcome difficulties on their own. An accident caused three Kangson Steel Plant heating furnaces to suspend operations—but I only learned about it after the fact. The furnaces needed to cool before repair work could be done, but the workers refused to halt production any further. They vied with each other to fix the still-hot furnaces. Some became terribly burnt, but they just continued on as if nothing had happened. Soon the furnaces were repaired and production resumed. While many other nations boast of their workers “putting their country first,” it is only in Korea where the masses take that dictum to heart and act accordingly.

Instead of listening to him, the US soldiers pounced with their axes and called in reinforcements. Soon there were four Korean guards against more than forty Americans. These were not very fair odds, since each Korean soldier was a match for one hundred foes. As the Americans launched their axes, they were swiftly disarmed by Korean Taekwondo tactics. The Koreans then threw the axes back, killing two US officers on the spot. The Korean guards then used kicks and chops on the remaining Yankees, inflicting wounds that sent dozens of Americans running upon their heels in a panic.

They actually got much, much worse. The south Korean puppet clique had been in a state of constant crisis due to its fascist ways. Plagued by sociopolitical confusion and defied by the people’s stubborn resistance, the strongmen now had a convenient scapegoat with which to justify their repression. Imperialists always use a threat of invasion as a pretext for every sort of infamy.

“This need not simply apply to storytelling. Take mathematics. In a battle situation, one can’t take out a piece of paper and start doing calculations. But if the textbook examples anticipate this, then our people will be able to give the enemy a good thrashing. ‘If each student shoots five Americans a day, how many can they kill in a month?’ This teaches the arithmetic while instilling an important lesson.”

“Then I want you to accept the Order.” I put my hand over my mouth, and felt my lips quiver as I almost burst in tears. The Order of Kim Il Sung, Korea’s highest honor, had been instituted in March 1972. The Central People’s Committee had decided that I should be the first recipient. When I gently declined, they tried to insist. At that point I rebuked them, rather sternly in fact. They got the message and left the Order unawarded for four years. They tried again in 1976, and then again on occasion of the thirtieth anniversary of the Republic in September 1978. Now President Kim Il Sung himself was urging me to accept.

As far as I could see, the US imperialists only had two options left to them. The first would be to allow for a second “Iran incident,” doing nothing while their ally—in that case, the Shah—was in trouble. This was highly unlikely, as it would mean ceding control of events to the masses. The second would be to oust south Korea’s “Shah” themselves. South Korean “President” Park Chung Hee was so grotesquely unpopular that his removal would appease the people, bringing some modicum of oversight back to the situation. To no surprise, Park Chung Hee was assassinated on October 26, 1979 just as his wife had been five years prior. His murderer? The head of the Korean CIA. Let me repeat that: the President of south Korea was killed by the Director of the Korean Central Intelligence Agency. There is no doubt that this is what happened, it is no secret and there is no ambiguity. Nor is this DPRK “propaganda.” These are the facts recognized by every member of the world community—including the US imperialists themselves. The only thing that is in dispute is the degree of American involvement behind the assassination.

Shortly after the coup, the Americans had no choice but to show their hand and choose sides. Would they side with the military dictatorship, or with the Korean people who they so publicly claimed to protect? On May 18 there came a huge uprising in the city of Kwangju in direct response to the imposition of martial law. Tens of thousands of troops descended upon the city in response. Armed with warplanes, tanks and armored cars, they buried Kwangju in a sea of blood. The atrocities were so horrific that even monsters would have looked away from the scene. The fascist thugs themselves admit to over one hundred deaths during the massacre, though the actual number was over a thousand. Once again, let me be clear: in 1980—nearly a decade before the hostilities in Tiananmen Square—the Americans did the exact same thing in south Korea. They don’t bother to hide it or even deny it. The US imperialists still speak of the Chinese events but never the Korean ones, because China is their rival and south Korea their “ally.” It behooves them to denigrate the former and praise the latter. America’s actions were not those of a nation committed to “justice” or “democracy” or some arbitrary concept of human rights. These were transparently the actions of a nation committed to imperialism. And what did this imperialism mean, in practice? It meant young people being killed in the streets for speaking their minds. It meant civilians being detained and imprisoned indiscriminately, as happened i...

gratification. Now imagine another person, not so attractive and not having any scent whatsoever. But this second person works very hard, regardless of whether anyone notices. Which of these men would you prefer?” “The second, of course.” “That’s precisely right. True beauty lies in working faithfully for one’s country and fellows. ‘Better a good heart than a fair face,’ they say. These two men are like the rose and the cotton flower. Roses contribute nothing of use except their flowers. The cotton flower, on the other hand, is neither fragrant nor ostentatious. The flower bows its head to the ground, as if it were shy and humble—but it leaves behind cotton, which is of huge benefit to the people.”

The Juche idea takes a different starting point from previous philosophies. It maintains that the fundamental question of philosophy concerns man’s position and role in the world, and it argues that “man is the master of everything and decides everything.” That “man is the master of everything” refers to the position which man takes in the world. He makes the world serve him according to his will and isn’t subject to that which surrounds him. That “man decides everything” means that he is a being who is responsible for his destiny and shapes it accordingly.

The Great Leader shook his head. “I’ve always said that the people are my god. But gods are fickle, and they are violent, and they are dangerous.” The parties in power in Romania and other Eastern European nations had never developed into “mother parties.” Rather, over the years they’d degenerated into parties of bureaucrats who wielded and abused their power. Our Party, on the other hand, had been a great mother to the masses, holding beautiful flowers and hopes in her bosom and being their most reliable guide to life. The DPRK probably wasn’t in danger. But I still wanted to make absolutely certain that what was occurring in Eastern Europe would never happen in Korea.

“That’s wonderful,” I said, with a huge smile. General Kim Il Sung truly was the Korean General Washington. Both men were revolutionary generals who led their people to freedom and who were later unanimously voted to be their respective nations’ leaders. It saddened me that the Americans simply couldn’t bring themselves to see the General’s greatness. The Yanks thought that believing in one Great Leader was “absurd” and “crazy”—while themselves claiming that the best minds in history happened to be localized in thirteen minor Atlantic colonies at the end of the eighteenth century.

Times were lean over the coming months, but even I didn’t know quite how lean they were. If I visited a chicken farm, for example, Party officials would collect all the nearby chickens to make it seem as if there were no problems. Grain harvests were supplemented by the addition of small rocks to the sacks, falsely increasing their weight. Soon we were all biting our bread with great care, trying to avoid chipping our teeth on any pebbles that had snuck through.

deliver actual food, so I ordered them to produce “substitute foods”: Corn byproducts were mixed with husks, grass and seafood and then formed into noodles or meal bars. Though they had virtually no nutritional value and could barely be digested, I knew they could at least be used to allay one’s hunger. As did drinking water. As did sucking on one’s fingers.

Then the DPRK was plagued by beasts. First came “the march of the ants.” Starving people traveled in long lines to the mountainsides to look for wild grass or acorns to eat, looking like ants scurrying from their hills. Then there were the “penguins,” vagabonds who wandered the countryside clad in dark, filthy rags on their backs. Yet neither of these “beasts” horrified me as much as the kotchebi, the “little sparrows.” Many children became orphaned during the Arduous March, or were simply abandoned by families who could no longer take care of them. I issued orders to supply our orphanages with what we could, but it still wasn’t enough. There wasn’t sufficient coal to stay warm or sufficient food to feed the children. So these kotchebi hopped around the roads, scratching at the dirt and looking for some small morsel to eat just like the birds which gave them their name. At first the sight of these starving homeless tykes discouraged and depressed the masses. But then the people grew accustomed to them, and finally viewed these kotchebi only as a nuisance. Per my instructions, the authorities eventually rounded them up and took care of them.

Things got so bad that there was no precedent for it. I didn’t know what to do because no nation had ever been in such a bad situation. In 1996 floods came once again—and they were just as crippling, if not more so, then the previous year’s had been. It was as if the heavens themselves wanted me to fail. I needed the masses to believe that their nation was the best, even though they ate very little. They had to see the DPRK as “a poor country of abundance.” But it grew harder and harder for me to tell people with empty dishes that socialism is good. They simply weren’t buying it. They weren’t buying anything. The shelves in the distribution centers were empty, often for months at a time. Everywhere I went, the people cheered louder than ever. Candidly, I was glad that they had the strength to cheer. But I had cut my teeth on the film industry. I revolutionized the world of theatre and opera. I knew bad acting when I saw it—and I saw it aplenty. The cheers were all fake. They were not cheering from the bottom of their hearts. When I was gone, the masses would whisper about me. Soon their grumbling was so loud that even I couldn’t avoid hearing it. They quipped that “water always flows downhill” and said that grass no longer grew wherever I sat on the ground. “Tiger father, dog son.” Some began to call me the “gruel lord.”

I had succeeded in establishing a monolithic ideology in the Party, and here was my consequence: Everyone had one idea and only one idea. No one could think of anything else to say, for even considering such a thing would be evidence of disloyalty. I couldn’t count on anyone else for help. No one in all of Korea had to be as self-reliant as I did.

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.

with the shortage of food, so did we face a shortage of medical supplies. Desperate, I gave orders for the ill to be treated with traditional Koryo medicine instead. We used watermelon and beer to reduce swelling. Animals were hunted for their curative properties. Instead of surgically removing tumors—we had no anesthesia—doctors administered an extract of ginseng and mushrooms. According to tradition, such an extract enhanced a patient’s natural healing ability and changed malignant tumors into benign ones. All these procedures worked exactly as well as one might expect.