The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [14]
Kim's version of juche, which emanates from North Korea's militant nationalism, is usually described in shorthand as "self-reliance," but there is much more to it. According to Han S. Park of the University of Georgia, a leading American expert on juche as a philosophical system and state religion, "Juche views Korea as a chosen land, as people are told consistently that world civilization originated from the Korean peninsula." A much-publicized tenet of juche is the peoplecentered view that "man is the master over all things" and creates his own destiny, but according to Park, this humanistic-sounding precept is firmly embedded in and qualified by a collective consciousness guided by a Great Leader-in this case, Kim Il Sung and his successor, Kim Jong 11.
In an explicit analogy to the human body, in juche the Great Leader is the brain that makes decisions and commands action, the Workers Party is the nerve system that mediates and maintains equilibrium between the brain and the body, and the people are the bone and muscle that implement the decisions and channel feedback to the Leader. However bizarre this belief system seems to outsiders, North Koreans are systematically instructed in it and walled off from contrary views. The great unanswered question is how many North Koreans are true believers and how many have their private doubts.
Beyond its sanctification of Kim's decisions, juche was a declaration of political independence from his two communist sponsors. Although it was originally called "a creative application of MarxismLeninism," eventually all reference to Marxist connections was abandoned. The juche philosophy has deep traditionalist roots and great appeal to the Korean antipathy for external domination. In practice, it became synonymous with North Korea's famous autarky.
For a visitor from afar, the most extraordinary thing about the Kim Il Sung era was the unrestrained adoration, bordering on idolatry, built up around the Great Leader, which seemed to reflect a craving for adulation that could never be sated. Kim's photograph, later joined by a separate picture of his son, Kim Jong 11, was on the wall in every home as well as every shop and office. Starting in the 1960s, every North Korean adult wore a badge bearing Kim's likeness on his or her suit, tunic, or dress. Within his country Kim was nearly always referred to as suryong or Great Leader, a term referring to the greatest of the great that Kim reserved for Lenin, Stalin, and Mao before he began applying it to himself in the 1960s.
In the late 1980s, according to one count, there were at least 34,000 monuments to Kim in North Korea, not including benches where he once sat, which were protected with glass coverings, and other memorabilia of his many visits throughout the country. The main square in the capital, the leading university, the highest party school, and many other places and institutions were named for him. During Kim's travels as well as his everyday meetings, an aide followed behind him writing down his every observation, many of which were published in several languages and considered holy writ by North Koreans. In the 1960s, near the beginning of the buildup, a Soviet party official who had experienced the deification and later downfall of Stalin had the temerity to ask Kim directly, "How is it possible there is this cult of personality in your country?" Kim's answer was, "You don't know our country. Our country is used to paying respect to elders-like China and Japan, we live by Confucian culture." It is unlikely that anyone was bold enough to ask this question of him in more recent years.
Kim created an impermeable and absolutist state that many have compared to a religious cult. No dissent from or criticism of Kim Il Sung, his tenets, or his decisions was permitted. Citizens were arrested, and some even sent off to one of the country's extensive gulags, for inadvertently defacing or sitting on a newspaper photograph of the Great Leader or his son and chosen successor. Reports of inhuman treatment, torture,