The Cleanest Race - B. R. Myers [35]
Note the pointedly androgynous or—more accurately—hermaphroditic designation of “parent.” Kim is referred to primarily as Parent Leader (ŏbŏi suryŏng), though with his maternal side praised far more often than the other.29 Kim Jong Il himself has long described his father’s motherly qualities as key to his success. These qualities manifested themselves “even in his teenage years.”
Like a sensitive and meticulous mother the Leader took it upon himself to know people through and through, and to make them feel better with just one word, so it is only natural that everyone believed in the leader and followed him.30
Artists and writers not only play up the feminine aspects of Kim Il Sung’s appearance—the soft, pale face, the dimpled smile, the expansive bosom—but also show him holding small children or letting them clamber over him. In photographs we see him grinning as schoolgirls pull yearningly on his arms and hands.31 Even in depictions of his guerilla years these qualities are always on display. In one illustration he is tucking children into bed. The title of another, “The Parent Leader General Kim Il Sung Holding the Children of Mt. Ma’an to his Breast,” speaks for itself.32
But even grown Koreans are children at heart, and to be treated accordingly. Here is the first verse from the song “The Leader Came to the Sentry Post”:
The Leader came all the way to the sentry post
And held us affectionately to his bosom
So happy about the warm love he bestowed on us
We buried our faces in his bosom
Ah! He is our parent!
Ah! A son in his embrace
Is happy always, everywhere!33
In one painting Kim smilingly squats down in deep snow, tying a young soldier’s bootlaces; in another he drapes an overcoat over an exhausted cadre who has fallen asleep at his desk.34 In “Worrying About A Warrior’s Health,” the smiling Kim is holding to his chest a young soldier, who like a child has pressed his pink-cheeked face up against the white tunic.35
Though all personality cults stress the people’s love for their leader, the North Korean one differs from its Soviet and Chinese counterparts in stressing individual citizens’ personal yearning to see him or be held in his embrace. “I miss the General” is a constant refrain. The chorus of the plaintive official classic “Where Are You, General I Long For?” runs, “The harder the cold autumn wind blows/ the more I yearn for the warm bosom of the General.”36
The closest Kim Il Sung comes to appearing as a father in more than name is when he is depicted together with Kim Jong Il. The reason is obvious: If the Great Leader were shown mothering his own son, the public might be inclined to conclude that the latter had a privileged upbringing, a notion the regime—as we shall see in the following chapter—is at constant pains to dispel. Paintings often show the older man walking with dignified mien a pace ahead of the younger one, much as one sees real-life fathers and sons walking in South Korean corporations.37 The younger man must of course be shown learning from his father, because the hereditary succession derives its legitimacy in no small part from the claim that he imbibed Juche from the source. But the Text prefers to show him reflecting vaguely on past lessons; this obviates scenes of father-son instruction in which Kim Il Sung might come off as erudite and therefore un-Korean.
Whether the backdrop is the 1950s or the 1980s, the depiction of the Great Leader is basically the same, though he is shown growing fatter with age, and as an elderly if unwrinkled man is often pictured in black-framed glasses