How myth and propaganda sustain the Kim dynasty
It’s been almost five years since Kim Jong-un became the leader of North Korea.
By Annabelle Quince for Rear Vision
Kim Jong-un is the third in the Kim dynasty, following his father, Kim Jong-il, and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, before that.
While family dynasties aren’t unique in world history, what’s unusual about the Kims is that they are still in power.
And a look back at the history of these three men helps to explain how they have maintained control of the country for so long.
Kim Il-sung: Guerrilla leader or imposter?
Kim Il-sung, the most respected of the Kim dynasty, is credited with playing a key role in liberating Korea during World War II before he came to power.
The official story is that he single-handedly defeated the Japanese in North Korea. But is that right?
We know that he was born Kim Song-ju, that his parents were anti-Japanese, that he moved to Manchuria as a boy and attended a Chinese language school. After this the story gets a bit hazy.
Bradley Martin, the author of a biography of the Kims, said he believed Kim Il-sung first did fight against the Japanese in Manchuria — but was not involved in liberating North Korea.
“North Koreans today don’t want to acknowledge that he was sitting out the war, and in fact was wearing a Russian uniform and was being trained by the Russians,” he said.
Brian Myers, an analyst of North Korea, said Kim Song-ju assumed the name and identity of the guerrilla leader Kim Il-sung towards the end of the war.
“Kim Il-sung was not the big guerrilla hero, the big anti-Japanese hero he made himself out to be,” Mr Myers said.
“In fact, he assumed the persona of a distinguished guerrilla leader with the name Kim Il-sung. And the real Kim Il-sung died in 1937.”
Mr Myers’s evidence is the Japanese records of the interrogation of hundreds of Korean independence fighters captured in the late 1930s, which show that the Kim Il-sung who led anti-Japanese guerrillas was born in 1901 and was 160cm tall.
“In other words, 10 years older and a good two or three inches shorter than the Kim Il-sung that we all know,” he said.
Kim Il-sung’s rise to power and failed invasion
In October 1945, when the Soviet Union presented their Kim Il-sung to North Korea, people were surprised by how young he was.
“They said, ‘Who was this guy with the Chinese waiter’s haircut? We heard about the great general Kim Il-sung, but this guy looks much too young and callow to be he’,” Mr Myers said.
A huge Soviet propaganda campaign followed to convince the North Korean people that Kim was all he claimed to be.
Kim Il-sung wanted unification of the Korean peninsula and in June 1950 launched an attack across the 38th parallel.
His miscalculation was believing that all his troops needed to do was to conquer Seoul, and the masses would rise against their oppressors. But that didn’t happen.
Even though the invasion failed, North Koreans portray it as a victory, claiming that Kim Il-sung defended North Korea from the American aggressors.
Kim Il-sung’s legacy is as one of the world’s most durable political leaders, leading North Korea from 1948 until his death in 1994.
But unlike other communist leaders whose successors come from within the party, Kim Il-sung chose his son, Kim Jong-il.
Kim Jong-il: A spoiled little monster?
Compared to his father, Kim Jong-il was shorter, with an unprepossessing appearance, and not particularly extroverted, said Mr Myers.
“Early film footage showed him to be so disengaged from what was happening around him,” he said.
Mr Martin said Kim Jong-il was raised as a “totally spoiled little monster, part of a clique of ruling class princelings”.
And while he was not the only potential successor, he was the most ruthless.
“Ruthless is good if you are trying to become a dictator in North Korea,” Mr Martin said.
“This worked for him. His father saw that he was indeed a tough guy, and he also flattered his father because he was such a master of propaganda.”
Kim Jong-il’s came to power just as the Cold War ended and North Korea lost Soviet economic support.
The economy collapsed once they had to start paying for the oil and other goods they had previously received under a credit arrangement.
He also had to deal with a series of floods and droughts, which exacerbated a nationwide famine and the death of a quarter of a million people.
“Kim Jong-il got blamed for the horrible things that happened, including the famine,” Mr Martin said.
“But these arose out of his father’s policies, which he was simply maintaining.”
Kim Jong-un: Educated in Switzerland
When Kim Jong-il died suddenly of a heart attack in 2011, his third son, Kim Jong-un, assumed power.
Mr Myers said they needed to pick somebody from inside his family, because so much of the legitimacy of the state still derived from the myth of Kim Il-sung.
“When you take Kim Il-sung out of the propaganda mythical landscape, there’s really nothing left over,” he said.
“Kim Jong-il did a good job, sure, but the only reason that his takeover had been considered legitimate was because he had been hand-picked by his father.”
So why pick Kim Jong-un?
Kim Jong-nam, the oldest son, was out because he tried to enter Japan on a fake passport to go to Tokyo Disneyland. The second son, Kim Jong-chul, was alleged to have been “a bit odd”.
And so Kim Jong-il settled on Kim Jong-un.
Unlike his father and his grandfather, Kim Jong-un was educated in Switzerland.
“He went there as a schoolboy … he was picking up pop music and basketball,” Mr Martin said.
“We have no indication that he is an educated man in any sense of the word. I don’t think he’s a secret liberal by any means. He is very much the young prince.”
While most dictatorships can transfer power from one generation to the next, it is rare that they survive to a third generation.
So how do they do it? Mr Myers said it was important to remember the Kims’ power was not based on coercion alone.
“When people tell me it’s like 1984 up there, I always remind them that Kim Jong-un knows much less about his citizens than President Obama knows about every single American, including me,” he said.
Mr Myers said that meant it was crucial for Kim Jong-un to inspire his people — which explains why North Korea’s nuclear ambitions are so important, and why the country is so reluctant to give them up.
