The Cleanest Race - B. R. Myers [43]
Such talk is standard. In the Text soldiers and veterans routinely burst into tears at the memory of how their units had to feed the visiting General gruel or millet instead of white rice.21 Artists and illustrators whip up guilt further by depicting Kim on especially arduous stations of his endless national tour: visiting military outposts during a storm or blizzard, or walking up to his trouser-clad knees in a canal.22
But while the regime emphasizes the hardship of Kim’s life, it does not go so far as to depict him as ascetic, for that would imply a lack of Korean spontaneity. He is thus depicted as corpulent and cheerful, albeit not to the same degree of either quality as his father was and is still shown. He too indulges in the occasional cigarette.23 The main visual sign of his self-sacrifice is his drab and unassuming dress. The famous gray parka, which he allegedly designed himself, is as common in the visual arts as in newspaper photographs.24
Just because Kim is exempted from criticism for the nation’s difficulties does not mean that he is denied credit for its successes. The difference to the Kim Il Sung cult is that the General’s leadership in non-military areas is presented mainly as a matter of inspiration by example. To return to the story we have been discussing, the Dear Leader neither visits the mine nor offers its party secretary any advice; much as economic problems pain him, the military comes first. And yet we learn at the end that the mine overcame the crisis when workers resolved to “fight for the General.”25 In similar fashion, athletes and entertainers who have done well overseas invariably ascribe their triumph, just as prominent Koreans once did under Hirohito, to the leader whose love gave them strength and fortitude.26
One might well expect this “military-first” leader to cut a more masculine figure than Kim Il Sung, but he never looks more feminine than in the official portrait of him in a general’s uniform; the artist is clearly intent on counteracting the martial aspect of the clothes themselves. Though Kim is often referred to as “Father General,” reports of his visits to army bases focus on his fussy concern for the troops’ health and comfort. “[He] went round education rooms, bedrooms, mess halls and other places to acquaint himself with everything from the humidity of the bedrooms in the rainy season to the preparation of side-dishes …”27 He is also increasingly referred to as “our parent,” though the fixed epithet Parent Leader is evidently still reserved for Kim Il Sung.28 That is not all: on occasion he is explicitly referred to as a mother, and in martial contexts at that. The following excerpt, which is strikingly reminiscent of the imagery of Japanese wartime propaganda, puts the cult of the “military-first” leader in a nutshell.
Held together not by a mere bond between a leader and his warriors but by the family tie between a mother and her children, who share the same blood and breath, Korea will prosper forever. Let the imperialist enemies come at us with their nuclear weapons, for there is no power on earth that can defeat our strength and love and the power of our belief, which thanks to the blood bond between mother and child create a fortress of single-heartedness. Our Great Mother, General Kim Jong Il!29
An enormous sign held up in a recent parade, footage of which was shown on the television news in 2009 whenever “The Song of General Kim Jong Il” was played, bore the slogan, “We Cannot Live Away From His Breast.”30
This is no empty rhetoric; the masses are reminded with increasing frequency that because the nation cannot survive without the leader who constitutes both its heart and its head, they must be ready to die to defend him. As if the logic were not in itself reminiscent of fascist Japan, the regime makes increasingly bold use of the very same terms—such as “resolve to die” (kyŏlsa) and “human bombs” (yukt’an)—that were so common in imperial Japanese and colonial Korean