No church members or clergy were members of the Kims" ruling Korean Workers" (communist) Party, a clergyman explained, because "we Christians believe in G.o.d." People attending church denied human-rights groups" reports that they suffered discriminatory treatment in economic benefits and legal treatment, but I thought most of those people had a haggard look that suggested their lives had been less than easy. There may have been unconscious irony on that festival Sunday as the congregation opened blue-bound hymnals and sang, in Korean, "We"ve a story to tell to the nations that shall turn their hearts to the right."
Previously only home church services had been possible for the still-faithful remnants of the old church memberships, I was told; Protestants who did not attend the Pongsu Church services still practiced home worship. Among both the Pongsu Church worshippers and a home-worship group I visited on a different Sunday, partic.i.p.ants under forty were rare. Worshippers told me they found it difficult to attract their own children to the faith of their fathers. They did not have to explain the reason. The young ones, after all, had been indoctrinated from shortly after birth, in state nurseries, kindergartens and schools, to worship the Kims. They revered Kim Il-sung as "more than a G.o.d," as a non-Christian student interpreter for one of the foreign visitors to Pongsu Church described the president to me.
In an atmosphere so overwhelmingly hostile to competing religions or other different ideas, it was but a small change to have church buildings- not so much a real shift in domestic policy as a cosmetic ploy to influence public opinion abroad. Several years later, in a similar effort, Kim Il-sung was to receive American evangelist Billy Graham in Pyongyang, after conceding in his memoirs that many Korean Christians of times past "were respectable patriots," like Kim"s benefactor, Sohn Jong-do.10 This attempt to show a tolerant att.i.tude toward Christianity was intended to improve Pyongyang"s standing in the West. North Korea at the time it built the churches was involved once again in a campaign to drive a wedge between Seoul and Washington, in hopes of triggering the withdrawal of the some 40,000 U.S. troops that were still in South Korea.
American Christians remained concerned about the persecution of North Korean Christians. Recall that Protestant missionaries from the United States, especially Presbyterians and Methodists, had led the missionary effort in Korea from the opening of the country in the late nineteenth century. Staying on through the decades until the 1930s, when the j.a.panese occupation made their work impossible, they had pa.s.sed the faith to millions of Koreans-ironically, with even more success in the northern half of the country than in the South. Certainly the Pyongyang regime hoped to influence such groups with the highly publicized church openings.
Over time, of course, even such externally targeted measures could inject a note of unaccustomed pluralism into domestic society. For the time being, though, the average North Korean probably felt little effect. Indeed, one American Protestant who visited Pyongyang in the fall of that same year, 1989, found evidence that religious belief still cut very much against the grain of the Kim regime. Virgil Cooper, a Seoul-based Southern Baptist missionary, attended services at Pongsu Church. He told me he had found the a.s.sociate pastor"s sermon to be suitably "Bible based," but considered it odd that the congregation did not belt out the hymns with the Korean gusto he was familiar with in Seoul. Later, in his hotel, a Christian woman who had seen him at the church approached him. Pointing to the ceiling, she urged him not to talk loudly. Christians remained subject to considerable discrimination and repression, she told him.
The woman Cooper met, a.s.suming she was a sincere believer, may have been an exception even among the churchgoers. According to a high-level defector, former chief ideologist Hw.a.n.g Jang-yop, "all the churches in Pyongyang are fake churches built for show. The monks living in the Buddhist temples are of course fake monks. Genuine believers in North Korea cannot profess their faith; only fake believers are allowed to do so.11 The more immediate question was whether Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il were flexible enough to make far more drastic changes, especially in the economy. The obvious economic policy changes would conflict with the regime"s need to maintain control internally. Stepping up contacts with foreigners via trade and technology transfer would give the people more opportunities to test what they had been taught against other versions of the truth. Solving economic problems would require admitting past mistakes at least implicitly-but Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il were, of course, infallible; any hint of contradicting their past "precious teachings" would weaken their claim to absolute loyalty and obedience. What I saw in 1989 did not give me confidence that major changes would come in timely fashion. In the end, adding up every change that could be detected on that visit produced a list that seemed unimpressive at best and, when compared with the exciting things happening elsewhere in the communist world at the time, downright pitiful.
It was the heyday of Mikhail Gorbachev"s glasnost glasnost and and perestroika perestroika in the Soviet Union, but North Koreans knew little or nothing about Soviet liberalization and restructuring. They did not even know about the popular protests that had been raging next door in China. My guide, a twenty-nine-year-old college English teacher, mentioned that he hoped to go the following September to Beijing to study English and Chinese. I asked him if he knew what had happened at Tiananmen Square. "A little bit" about it was in in the Soviet Union, but North Koreans knew little or nothing about Soviet liberalization and restructuring. They did not even know about the popular protests that had been raging next door in China. My guide, a twenty-nine-year-old college English teacher, mentioned that he hoped to go the following September to Beijing to study English and Chinese. I asked him if he knew what had happened at Tiananmen Square. "A little bit" about it was in Nodong Shinmun, Nodong Shinmun, the party newspaper, he said. When I told him that China"s army had killed thousands of its own young people, he seemed to try to mask a reaction of surprise. "Students?" he asked. Getting his information from the only source available to him, the party-lining North Korean media, he had not even heard the terms the party newspaper, he said. When I told him that China"s army had killed thousands of its own young people, he seemed to try to mask a reaction of surprise. "Students?" he asked. Getting his information from the only source available to him, the party-lining North Korean media, he had not even heard the terms glasnost glasnost and and perestroika perestroika before I taught them to him. Once he understood the meanings, though, he dismissed any need for reform in North Korea. "Our country has no before I taught them to him. Once he understood the meanings, though, he dismissed any need for reform in North Korea. "Our country has no glasnost glasnost or or perestroika," perestroika," he boasted. "Our policy is unchanged for forty years. No one wants to change." he boasted. "Our policy is unchanged for forty years. No one wants to change."
My guide and every other North Korean I met, just as in 1979, constantly praised Kim Il-sung for having built a socialist paradise guaranteeing jobs and food, decent housing, free medical care and education. The difference in 1989 was that they also added references to Kim Jong-il, by then no longer spoken of only in code terms but long since officially proclaimed his father"s successor, the "Dear Leader." A mammoth effort was under way simultaneously to continue building the Kim Il-sung personality cult and to stretch it enough to envelop the junior Kim, who represented the regime"s hope of continuing on without without major change or reform. Not only Kim Jong-il"s name but also his picture and his words were everywhere, and his abilities were described in close to superhuman terms. major change or reform. Not only Kim Jong-il"s name but also his picture and his words were everywhere, and his abilities were described in close to superhuman terms.
This effort was evident during my visit to the Grand People"s Study House, a grandiose pile of masonry billed as the country"s central library and "center of intellectual activity." Predictably, a gigantic chalk-white statue of Kim Il-sung, seated in an easy chair and reading the Workers" Daily, Workers" Daily, dominated the vast lobby. Several rooms of the library were devoted to an exhibit of books published in North Korea. A librarian there, Li Hyung-ran, boasted that more than 1,300 volumes of Kim Il-sung"s works and more than 700 volumes of works by Kim Jong-il had been published. The latter included a fifteen-volume set of Kim Jong-il"s achievements in guiding the country"s literature and art. dominated the vast lobby. Several rooms of the library were devoted to an exhibit of books published in North Korea. A librarian there, Li Hyung-ran, boasted that more than 1,300 volumes of Kim Il-sung"s works and more than 700 volumes of works by Kim Jong-il had been published. The latter included a fifteen-volume set of Kim Jong-il"s achievements in guiding the country"s literature and art.
The shelf for Korean literature in general-novels, poetry, criticism- was considerably smaller than the shelf for the works of Kim Il-sung, and even there it was impossible to escape the main theme. Here, said the librarian, was a historical novel, also in fifteen volumes-a fictionalized account of the deeds of Kim Jong-il. And over here, "these are the ill.u.s.trated fairy tales told by the Great Leader and the Dear Leader," she said. "And this picture alb.u.m ill.u.s.trates the immortal flower Kimjongilia. It was newly cultivated by a j.a.panese gardener"-and named, of course, for the Dear Leader. Over there, finally! A book bearing a different name in the t.i.tle. "This book introduces the n.o.ble life and revolutionary history of Comrade Kim Jong-suk," said Miss Li. "She was the most loyal to the Great Leader, an anti-j.a.panese heroine and a communist revolutionary fighter." Um, wasn"t she Kim Il-sung"s wife? "Yes, you guessed well. And she also was the mother of Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong-il."
As on my earlier visit, adoration of the elder Kim appeared genuine, even when foreigners would consider that it had gone to bizarre extremes. When the Great Leader appeared for an ice-skating show, the entire audience of Koreans leapt to its feet as one person and bellowed "Hooray! Hooray! Hooray!" over and over and over for close to three minutes. When performers or marchers pa.s.sed before Kim"s seat in the May Day Stadium during the festival opening ceremony, they jumped up and down on their toes, their arms raised, palms open toward the leader, in very much the posture of a tiny child asking her father for candy, or a dog begging for a bone.
When I asked my guide about the Kim Il-sung portrait badges that he and every other North Korean "voluntarily" wore on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, he replied, "We want always to have the Great Leader near us. I want to have his portrait on my heart. As you know, the Great Leader liberated the country. He dedicated all his life for the people." The badges, he added, were gifts from "the Dear Leader Kim Jong-il."
My hosts" idea of a museum to show off to visitors was the International Friendship Exhibition, a ma.s.sive, windowless stone structure at Mount Myo-hyang, a resort three hours" ride by train north of Pyongyang. The exhibits consisted solely of gifts from foreigners to the Great and Dear Leaders. "The presents are precious to our country, the pride of our people," an exhibition guide, twenty-five-year-old Chong Sun-hyang, told me. They showed "how much respect the rest of the world has for the Great Leader," she said. Four-ton copper doors embossed with the hybrid flower named Kimilsungia (developed by that same j.a.panese botanist who gave the world the Kimjongilia) swung open noiselessly to admit visitors to a tomblike interior. Inside, the practice was to cover one"s shoes with cloth booties to keep from tracking dirt, then to pad pristinely into the holy-of-holies, where another enormous, eerie, chalk-white limestone statue of the Great Leader seated in an easy chair loomed over a selection of presents from world leaders.
Once a visitor had made his way around that first room, there were only forty-four more rooms to go to complete the tour of gifts to Kim Il-sung-a vase fashioned from a lump of coal, from Poland"s Jaruzelski, for example, and a woven saddle from Libya"s Khadaffi. Then there were eight more rooms full of similar gifts to Kim Jong-il, who was represented by another limestone statue. It seemed African leaders had sent the two Kims enough elephant tusks, carved and un-carved, to justify an all-points bulletin by the World Wildlife Fund. The full tour took four hours, and I was a.s.sured that only a quarter of the gifts on hand were being displayed at the moment.
I could only speculate that, after decades of indoctrination and purges, those North Koreans who remained alive and not in prison had by and large bought into the entire program. "But what if someone wants to say: "I don"t believe in the Great Leader?"" I asked my guide. "You don"t understand," he replied. "All our people believe in the Great Leader. ... There is no one in the country-who doesn"t believe."
No doubt one big reason people could still muster loyalty for the elder Kim despite the economic and other failings of his regime was that in his public and television appearances he came across as an engaging figure. On television during my 1989 visit he was shown striding along with the somewhat shambling gait of an elderly but still reasonably healthy man (perhaps the longevity research had helped-although the camera never showed the grapefruit-sized tumor on the back of his neck). He smiled confidently, taking the inevitable tributes graciously. In his public appearances he spoke in a gravelly, avuncular voice. He seemed very much the politician.
The campaign to transfer to Kim Jong-il his father"s deity status was in full cry at Pyongyang"s Revolutionary Museum of the Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong-il. The museum, which kidnapped movie director Shin and actress Choi had visited during their stay in Pyongyang, consisted of twelve rooms set aside at the younger Kim"s alma mater, Kim Il-sung University. A student guide told me that at age eight the prodigy read Lenin"s "State and Revolution" and wrote a commentary on it. When he was eleven during the Korean War, Kim Jong-il wrote these immortal song lyrics: "Father General, you will build a paradise in this land of heroes who crush the Yankees." When he entered college a few years later, the guide said, practically the first thing the precocious teenager did was to climb a campus hill and there compose and recite a poem that included this line: "Learning the leader"s great idea, I will be the master of the revolution."
The guide sang the 1953 song and requested special care with cameras to make any photos showing the Dear Leader "beautiful." Then she proceeded to point out paintings that showed the cherubic Kim Jong-il of a quarter century before, always at the center of things, striking sagacious and leaderlike poses as fellow members of the cla.s.s of 1964 beamed up at him in evident adoration. Studying alongside Kim Jong-il, said a fellow student"s diary entry that was on exhibit in the museum, was "my pride and honor."
A mural at the West Sea Barrage, a gigantic, recently completed public works project to regulate the water level of a river mouth near the port of Nampo, showed Kim Jong-il in his role as the executor of his father"s will. The Great and Dear Leaders stood together, the younger man"s overcoat flapping heroically in the breeze, his left boot lifted up on a high piece of the machinery. He gestured with his left hand to show his smiling father what he had built. The Dear Leader, in that picture very much the energetic young man of action, wore his trademark jumpsuit with zipper front, while the Great Leader appeared in Western suit with tie, the costume he had adopted as elder statesman.
Without having been either a guerrilla hero or the father of the country, Kim Jong-il needed some basis for legitimacy as the country"s leader-designate. He hoped he had found it in his role as chief commentator and expositor of his father"s juche juche philosophy. "As you know the Great Leader created the philosophy. "As you know the Great Leader created the juche juche idea during the struggle against the j.a.panese imperialists," Kim Ho-sok, director of Haksan Cooperative Farm, told me. "Then the Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong-il developed and enriched the idea during the struggle against the j.a.panese imperialists," Kim Ho-sok, director of Haksan Cooperative Farm, told me. "Then the Dear Leader Comrade Kim Jong-il developed and enriched the juche juche idea." idea."
The succession had been as carefully prepared as could be imagined, and there were no discernible signs of opposition. Still there was reason to suspect the junior Kim might prove unequal to portrayal of the living-G.o.d role he was to inherit. Kim Jong-il"s credentials as a G.o.d-king were sketchy. Among the few foreigners who had met him, some had described him as testy-totally lacking in charm or grace, not to mention the sort of charisma or presence that bespeaks a world-cla.s.s statesman. Indications were that he was well entrenched as the successor, so much propaganda having flowed about his magnificent qualifications that youngsters and perhaps some of the more credulous among their elders might have begun believing it. But it seemed he was no Kim Il-sung. Foreign and South Korean a.n.a.lysts wondered whether, if a major crisis arose after his father"s death and his own accession to the top job, he could weather it.
Although still largely a figure of mystery, Kim Jong-il was well known for having brought North Korea a surface modernity in fashion and popular culture. He had encouraged girls and young women to fix themselves up, wear makeup and look nicer. North Korean women-among the most beautiful in the world to begin with-obviously were taking far more care with their appearance than a decade earlier.
Our hosts invited the foreign news media contingent and some others attending the festival to a banquet held in the Mongnankwan, an immense marble hall decorated with crystal chandeliers and fitted with the latest audio equipment. Young female members of the Pochonbo Electric Band, named for the site of Kim Il-sung"s successful 1937 raid on the j.a.panese, entertained us. The band"s musicians played peppy music, influenced perhaps to some extent by Western rock but more by the j.a.panese and South Korean versions. (I was amused to recall the uncomprehending stares of ten years earlier in response to my mention of rock "n" roll.) Dancers, stunning young women, came out in costumes so skimpy as to suggest we were being treated to a striptease. Then the guests were invited to dance with women from the stage, who had more or less clothed themselves for that duty. I danced with one. (It was only several years later, after I learned of the existence of the Happy Corps, that I was told my dance partner and her entertainer comrades had been corps members.)12 While the rock played by Kim Jong-il"s band members was for us foreigners, I found that the genre was being introduced to Pyongyang"s young people just then by festival visitors from abroad who had brought ca.s.sette tapes of their favorite music with them. I saw youngsters who did not disguise their appreciation of rock music that foreigners were playing in and out of their high-rise lodgings. One young "woman shook her booty to the beat as a parade pa.s.sed by. I thought the loss of musical innocence probably foreshadowed bigger changes in att.i.tude.
Visiting the Korea Feature Film Studio I had a chance to check out the results of the junior Kim"s vaunted efforts to inspire filmmakers to create more appealing works. The outdoor sets maintained at the studio represented a rural village, with thatched huts surrounding the landlord"s grand house; a j.a.panese street in the 1930s; and a Chinese street in the same period-all used in epics about the Great Leader"s struggle against j.a.panese colonialism and landlord greed. A back alley filled with girlie bars depicted what the North called the decadent, exploitive lifestyle of contemporary capitalist South Korea-a staple of the studio"s films promoting reunification on the North"s terms. Studio officials boasted of twenty visits by Kim Il-sung since the studio"s founding in 1947-and 320 by Kim Jong-il. "The Dear Leader, Comrade Kim Jong-il, leads our art and literature to a brilliant future," explained studio spokesman Li Sok-kyu. "He gives precious teachings for good films."
The studio was filming a swashbuckler, set in olden times, featuring a hero who employed swordplay and the Korean martial art of taekwondo to wipe out dozens of enemies at a time in the style of Hong Kong kung fu epics. Apparently the film was aimed more at light entertainment value and box-office appeal than heavy political ideology. It was not difficult to imagine that Kim Jong-il would need all the box-office appeal he could muster to deal with what lay ahead.
TWENTY.
Wherever You Go in My Homeland One day during the 1989 World Festival of Youth and Students, my guide excitedly said I "would be meeting a high official. "The Dear Leader?" I asked. No. The VIP turned out to be Professor Kim Jong-su, who soon arrived and invited me to a folk festival. In a lovely woodland setting, the site of the ancient tomb of a dynastic founder, we watched performances of traditional skills such as spear-throwing and then tucked into a copious picnic feast.
Once again I decided not to bring up the matter of my host"s dual ident.i.ty. In any event, he did not repeat his orphan story this time. Indeed, in the course of our chat, it turned out that Kim Jong-su had a mother, then still living. I mentally noted that interesting fact but said nothing, making allowance for the likelihood that one who had lost only his father might be considered orphaned, particularly in that patriarchal, still Confucian-oriented society.
Kim Jong-su quoted his mother on the extent of improvement in living conditions since the old days, when inferior grains had to be subst.i.tuted for scarce rice. He recalled that, in his own youth in the 1940s and 1950s, times were so hard that a kind of gra.s.s or hay had to be mixed in to make pounded-rice cakes. Recently, he said, his children had been complaining about how bland everything tasted. He had given them some old-fashioned rice cakes with just a little hay in them, he said, and the youngsters had p.r.o.nounced the taste wonderful.
Throughout my visit, North Korean officials had been denying persistent reports of food shortages. Officials acknowledged that rice was rationed, but the figures they gave for rations (700 grams a day for an adult, 500 for a child) seemed adequate a.s.suming they were accurate. The question was what the diet might include beyond the staples (grain and beans, mainly) and kim-chee, the national dish of spicy pickled cabbage, cuc.u.mbers or other vegetables. Foreigners living in Pyongyang said that eggs were available but that meat was a rarity on most North Korean tables. Visitors to the youth festival did not confront any shortage personally-far from it. Our hosts fed us great quant.i.ties of meat, fulfilling the dictates of traditional Korean hospitality even as they sought to persuade us that meat was plentiful in the diet of ordinary Koreans.
At the picnic, country air and an endless supply of the local beer sharpened my appet.i.te, which even normally was large-but as soon as I finished off one plate of roasted meat, another appeared. I was skeptical of Kim Jong-su"s a.s.surances that food had become plentiful, but I did not know at the time just how bad the situation had become. Later, when I learned more, I felt ashamed of having pigged out at Kim"s picnic. The truth was that the food supply was miserably (although not yet disastrously) bad. The regime had come up with special supplies for the festival, but soon North Koreans once again would be eating gra.s.ses out of necessity, not nostalgia, and not mixed in with their rice but instead of rice.1 Even while I was there, a look at North Korea"s agriculture suggested that the country was stuck, dabbling in slight changes to the formula but unwilling or unable to commit wholeheartedly to reforms that would deviate seriously from the original line of Stalin and Kim Il-sung-now, in its basics, the line of Kim Jong-il as well.
That official line contradicted the clear evidence of-what worked best. In small private plots, to take the most readily gauged example, the corn was taller than corn growing in nearby fields that were farmed collectively. Despite such visual proof the authorities publicly continued to denigrate those private plots, and the markets at which their produce was sold, as shameful relics of the bad old pre-socialist days. While other communist countries were experimenting with private enterprise, North Koreans still were allowed to cultivate privately only their patches of dooryard. The proclaimed long-term policy was not to expand that tiny private sector but to phase it out, to collectivize farming even further-in other words, to redouble approaches that long since had pa.s.sed the point of diminishing returns.
Travel outside Pyongyang during my 1989 visit revealed that North Korean farmers were cultivating practically every available square inch of arable soil. Soil appeared generally not particularly good, and in places very poor-red clay or sand, with little or no topsoil cover.2 The land available was used not for pasture or fiber production but overwhelmingly for growing grains and other foods for direct human consumption. I saw few animals. Those I did see, in almost all cases, were not meat or dairy animals but oxen for plowing and pulling carts. The land available was used not for pasture or fiber production but overwhelmingly for growing grains and other foods for direct human consumption. I saw few animals. Those I did see, in almost all cases, were not meat or dairy animals but oxen for plowing and pulling carts.
At Haksan Cooperative Farm north of Pyongyang, rice paddies, green and glistening in early July, filled the lowlands while corn was planted on steeper land. Houses and apartment buildings cl.u.s.tered tightly together on high ground to conserve land. I met farm director Kim Ho-sok, who said he was in charge of 2,600 farmers cultivating 15 million square meters and living in 1,100 households. Kim boasted that harvests had continued to increase in the previous decade,3 but the farm director"s claims conflicted with the picture of North Korean agricultural stagnation that foreign and South Korean a.n.a.lysts were painting. but the farm director"s claims conflicted with the picture of North Korean agricultural stagnation that foreign and South Korean a.n.a.lysts were painting.
Haksan"s dooryard private plots were limited to 66 66 square meters each. Farm officials said free markets were held every ten days where farmers could sell or barter some of the produce of their private plots-but the officials insisted those markets were a dwindling, unwelcome holdover from the bad old days and would not be needed any longer once the country achieved full, pure communism. "Gradually the free market is declining now" said farm director Kim. After all, he explained, "the state supplies the people with the necessities of life." square meters each. Farm officials said free markets were held every ten days where farmers could sell or barter some of the produce of their private plots-but the officials insisted those markets were a dwindling, unwelcome holdover from the bad old days and would not be needed any longer once the country achieved full, pure communism. "Gradually the free market is declining now" said farm director Kim. After all, he explained, "the state supplies the people with the necessities of life."
Reminded that the Soviet Union was emphasizing glasnost glasnost and and perestroika, perestroika, and along with China had been increasing the use of free markets, Kim replied: "We don"t know much about that, but we don"t want to follow their lead. "Openness" and "reform" are for the Russians and Chinese. It"s their style." In theory, at least, farmers collectively owned the so-called cooperative farms such as Haksan, which sold their produce to the state. But cooperative farms were supposed to be converted soon into "state farms." Their land would be owned by the state and the farmers would become salaried employees of the state, director Kim said with evident pride. and along with China had been increasing the use of free markets, Kim replied: "We don"t know much about that, but we don"t want to follow their lead. "Openness" and "reform" are for the Russians and Chinese. It"s their style." In theory, at least, farmers collectively owned the so-called cooperative farms such as Haksan, which sold their produce to the state. But cooperative farms were supposed to be converted soon into "state farms." Their land would be owned by the state and the farmers would become salaried employees of the state, director Kim said with evident pride.
A visit to a farm family"s home ill.u.s.trated both the old-style incentives that were still considered ideologically correct and some financial incentives that the regime scorned but had to tolerate during the "transitional" period. Kim Myong-pok showed off an apartment of three rooms plus kitchen that she said her farming family had occupied since the previous year. Haksan"s farmers were gradually moving out of old fashioned, single-story houses into such newly built, modern apartments, similar to those of city-dwellers. Mrs. Kim explained that her husband had been high on the list to get the new housing because he was a "labor hero." She was watching a j.a.panese Toshiba television set that she said had been donated by the Great Leader to the husband for his labor heroism. Heroes got their special awards based on effort, for going all out.
On the other hand, cash payments to Haksan"s farmers were based on time worked, skill level and unit-wide production. The previous year, Mrs. Kim had made 3,400 won won and her husband 5,200 and her husband 5,200 won, won, she said. The total, 8,600 she said. The total, 8,600 won won for a year, was two or three times as much as a typical urban-dwelling, two-income couple might bring home for factory or white-collar work. Since there was no need for farmers to spend money on housing or on food, Mrs. Kim said, theirs went for home furnishings, or into savings to pay for their children"s weddings, parents" wedding anniversary parties and other foreseeable social obligations. for a year, was two or three times as much as a typical urban-dwelling, two-income couple might bring home for factory or white-collar work. Since there was no need for farmers to spend money on housing or on food, Mrs. Kim said, theirs went for home furnishings, or into savings to pay for their children"s weddings, parents" wedding anniversary parties and other foreseeable social obligations.
North Koreans insisted that financial incentives were pa.s.se, but their actions suggested the opposite. By 1989, reports had reached the outside world of self-seeking behavior among the country"s supposedly puritanical communists. For example, high-ranking officials demanded that underlings bribe them with scarce goods such as color television sets in exchange for promotions.
One diplomat who was stationed in Pyongyang intermittently for years ill.u.s.trated the change that was taking place by citing two identical incidents when his family visited a beach resort and an adventurous child swam out too far, so that the concerned diplomat had to ask a lifeguard to row out and bring the youngster back. The first time that happened, in the mid-1970s, the lifeguard had to be pressed to accept some lollipops as a gesture of thanks. When it happened again more than a decade later (an amazing coincidence, but that"s the diplomat"s story), the lifeguard refused the proffered candies, asking to be re-warded instead in U.S. dollars.
I had a similar experience in 1989 when one of the North Koreans a.s.signed to help foreign newsmen asked me to give him some American currency. He said he wanted dollars to spend for foreign goods that were for sale in the special hard-currency shops established for the youth festival. Some Adidas sports shoes, in particular, seemed to have caught his eye. I reflected at the time that he might have been instructed to ask for money as part of the regime"s efforts to acc.u.mulate foreign exchange. But the amount involved was insignificant, so I leaned toward the explanation that he had made the request on his own initiative and for his personal benefit. This instance of seemingly individualistic behavior reinforced a sense that the regime had given up some of its rigid control, perhaps to a greater degree than planned. And I thought that the authorities had better brace themselves for a sharp rise in consumer expectations, now that Pyongyang residents attending the festival had seen what they were missing.
On the level of official incentives, the regime had paid a bonus of one month"s salary to the country"s workers before the festival opened in recognition of their hard work in a "200-day speed campaign" to meet production and construction goals. In practice, then, the gradual shift was continuing from the old-style "moral" incentives, such as medals for labor heroes, to financial incentives. The latter were officially keyed, to be sure, to group rather than individual performance. Even such relatively mild heresy, however, was not something the regime"s ideology permitted it to take pride in.
Chinese followers of Deng Xiaoping by then had become communist in name only as they pursued economic reforms nakedly intended to unleash the individual"s profit motive, but North Koreans were still required to praise the communist ideal of selfless behavior. "All for one and one for all" was the rule.
The propaganda machine promulgating such beliefs, heavy-handed though it was, still succeeded "well enough that even in 1989 North Koreans were reciting their collectivist catechism smilingly and with evident sincerity. Whatever bourgeois sins they might be tempted to commit, they gave every appearance of believing in-or believing that they ought to believe in-old-fashioned communism, tied closely to the leader cult. Call it brain-washing or education, or credit the art of a host of-well-trained actors; no matter how the authorities had managed to pull it off, a visitor was left with the feeling he had traveled to the center of a great and still-burning faith. Instead of Pyongyang it could have been Teheran.
Again, as in 1979, national beliefs were nowhere more accessible to visitors than in Pyongyang"s theaters, and it was on this trip that I saw one of Kim Jong-il"s "new type" revolutionary operas, The Flower Girl. The Flower Girl. In New York a few days earlier I had seen and been moved by the Broad-way version In New York a few days earlier I had seen and been moved by the Broad-way version of Les Miserables. of Les Miserables. Almost certainly the creators of that hit musical had not seen the North Korean production, and vice versa. Yet the similarities between the two were remarkable. Both were beautifully staged melodramas, evoking with consummate skill that hatred of privilege that was the ideological starting point of both the French Revolution and Kim Il-sung"s regime. The stage version of Almost certainly the creators of that hit musical had not seen the North Korean production, and vice versa. Yet the similarities between the two were remarkable. Both were beautifully staged melodramas, evoking with consummate skill that hatred of privilege that was the ideological starting point of both the French Revolution and Kim Il-sung"s regime. The stage version of The Flower Girl The Flower Girl struck me as world cla.s.s-much better than the 1972 movie version, which itself had been singled out for considerable praise at home and abroad. If what I saw was fairly representative of the genre, Kim Jong-il had much cause for pride. struck me as world cla.s.s-much better than the 1972 movie version, which itself had been singled out for considerable praise at home and abroad. If what I saw was fairly representative of the genre, Kim Jong-il had much cause for pride.
The plot of The Flower Girl The Flower Girl is simple: In the 1920s, cruel landlord-usurers take advantage of a small loan of rice to enslave the family of heroine Ggot-bun. Reduced to going to town to sell flowers in the street in order to buy medicine for her sick mother, she is insulted and molested by j.a.panese colonialists and their Korean henchmen. One moonlit night she is falsely charged with theft. The police whip her as punishment, and she happens to learn that the landlords are about to sell her into bondage. Returning home, she sings about her sad fate: is simple: In the 1920s, cruel landlord-usurers take advantage of a small loan of rice to enslave the family of heroine Ggot-bun. Reduced to going to town to sell flowers in the street in order to buy medicine for her sick mother, she is insulted and molested by j.a.panese colonialists and their Korean henchmen. One moonlit night she is falsely charged with theft. The police whip her as punishment, and she happens to learn that the landlords are about to sell her into bondage. Returning home, she sings about her sad fate: On the petals dewdrops glisten.
Is it there that my tears flow?
The moon is bright but in this dim, Dark world I know not where to go.
One moon shines up in the sky.
But different people gaze upon it.
Some are happy to see the moon, While others grow most melancholy.
(Kim Jong-il, chain-smoking until he got his thoughts in order, is reported to have taken a personal hand in sharpening the lyrics" focus on the different moods in which people would react to the moon, depending on their social station in a pre-revolutionary society full of contradictions.)4 The heroine"s troubles only get worse. After the landlords sell her to a textile mill, they beat her mother to death and blind her sister. In the second act, a show-stopping pangchang show-stopping pangchang sung by an offstage ensemble of-women-the lyrics again reportedly showing Kim Jong-il"s personal revision sung by an offstage ensemble of-women-the lyrics again reportedly showing Kim Jong-il"s personal revision5 -expresses Ggot-bun"s feelings and those of other women of her cla.s.s: -expresses Ggot-bun"s feelings and those of other women of her cla.s.s: Moon, bright moon, you shine sadly.
Do you know how hard our fate is?
We "re a.s.saulted by woe and woe, Ill-treated and humiliated.
At the climax, guerrillas swoop down from the hills to execute the wicked landords and reunite Ggot-bun with her siblings.
At that point in the evening when I saw The Flower Girl, The Flower Girl, if there was a dry eye in the house it certainly did not belong to me. But then came the finale, apparently an even more exciting moment for other theatergoers. The image of a red sun appeared on a backdrop, symbolizing Kim Il-sung (-who claimed to have come up with the story line as a teenaged revolutionary) if there was a dry eye in the house it certainly did not belong to me. But then came the finale, apparently an even more exciting moment for other theatergoers. The image of a red sun appeared on a backdrop, symbolizing Kim Il-sung (-who claimed to have come up with the story line as a teenaged revolutionary)6 and the good life that liberation and his communist regime would bring. Koreans in the audience, all wearing their miniature enameled portraits of Kim on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, stood and cheered for the leader. Finally the curtain fell and the evening"s performance ended. As we turned to leave, my guide explained that the revolution symbolized by that red sun was far from over. "We are continuing until we establish in this land communism, an ideal society," he a.s.serted earnestly. and the good life that liberation and his communist regime would bring. Koreans in the audience, all wearing their miniature enameled portraits of Kim on their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, stood and cheered for the leader. Finally the curtain fell and the evening"s performance ended. As we turned to leave, my guide explained that the revolution symbolized by that red sun was far from over. "We are continuing until we establish in this land communism, an ideal society," he a.s.serted earnestly.
Pyongyang continued to rely on propaganda campaigns to whip its people into a revolutionary frenzy of overproduction. Even given the potency of its propaganda, it was remarkable after so many decades how much the regime had to show (and "show" is the operative word here) for its seemingly anachronistic, circuses-before-bread approach. Carried on at breakneck speed and referred to in borrowed military terminology as "speed battles," its orgies of construction were the sort of exercise of which even the most dedicated ideologues must soon have tired. Yet North Koreans had battled on, out of whatever combination of fear and fervor, so that those visiting for the youth festival found new wonders to behold. In downtown Pyongyang we could see that the basic concrete work had been done on the 105-story hotel structure that was intended to be Asia"s highest building.7 Soldiers had helped build the West Sea Barrage, consisting of a five-mile-wide dam, with ship locks, across the Taedong River where it meets the Yellow Sea. Guides boasted that the construction project had produced 103 "labor heroes." At Sunchon, an hour and a half"s drive north of Pyongyang, a largely military workforce was putting up an enormous complex to produce the indigenous synthetic fiber vinalon.
A major construction goal in 1989 clearly was to try to outdo Seoul"s Olympics, and no effort or expense was spared. Besides stadiums and other venues for the festival"s sports events, North Koreans had built streets lined with high-rise apartment buildings. Those housed festival partic.i.p.ants. After their departure the apartments were to be turned over to citizens. Pyongyang"s skyline soared, and the opening and closing ceremonies for the youth festival proved more elaborate even than the extraordinary shows Seoul had put on for the Olympics.
"We"re in a hurry," Kim Jong-su explained to me. "Everyone"s in a hurry here. Our leader said we are a back-ward country. If the others take one step forward, we must take ten. If they walk, we must run."
Glorification of the leaders was the focus of much of the frenzy of construction. It was impossible to miss Pyongyang"s version of the Arc de Triomph, larger than the Paris original. It had been built in 1982, the year of Kim Il-sung"s seventieth birthday, to commemorate his triumphal return from exile in 1945 to take command of a country he supposedly had liberated from the j.a.panese. Kim Jong-il had overseen the recent monument building, which foreign economists were calling a major drain on the economy.
If in retrospect the gargantuan effort of the 1980s is seen to have been a last hurrah before Pyongyang"s world fell apart in the 1990s, in the process it may have provided history the definitive last word on just how very far a people can be led with propaganda.
Whatever cosmetic touches the regime had employed to inflate its claims of having created a "paradise," and however far behind South Korea-and even China-the country had fallen in reality, North Korea in 1989 still managed an appearance of dynamism that appealed to some people outside its borders.
Third World leaders were impressed with Kim Il-sung"s credentials as an anti-imperialist freedom fighter. Some of them also admired the North"s economic development-or at least appreciated Pyongyang"s foreign aid programs and arms supplies. (Some had adopted personality cults similar to Kim"s. At the youth festival, Iraqi, Afghan, Syrian and Cote d"Ivoire delegates all carried-or, in the last case, wore stamped on their clothing-portraits of their own national leaders.) Naturally, any hint of foreign approval the regime could muster was translated instantly into domestic propaganda. "I recommend to you The Pyongyang Times, The Pyongyang Times," my straight-faced guide said to me when I asked him about reading matter. He referred to a weekly tabloid devoted mainly to chronicling Kim Il-sung"s meetings with and tributes from foreign dignitaries.
The ideology was even proving exportable to South Korea. A virulent Pyongyang fever on campuses had become a severe complicating factor in the South"s quest for stability. Radically inclined South Korean students were attracted to Kim"s teachings of revolutionary egalitarianism, economic self-sufficiency unification zeal and anti-Americanism. His pre-liberation guerrilla opposition to the j.a.panese made him a patriot hero in their eyes. Based on that interest, the Kims appeared still to hope that a resurgence of unrest in the South would lead to a leftist insurrection, reversing the otherwise clear course of history, and pave the way to reunification on Pyongyang"s terms.
Until not long before, after all, the major influences on Koreans in the South as well as the North had been authoritarian. They had lived under the dynastic system of royalty and hereditary n.o.bles backed up with Chinese Confucian thought, and then under the emperor-worshipping j.a.panese colonial regime. The only major difference was that from 1945 South Korea received American influence while North Korea received Soviet and then Chinese communist influence. American-style democracy-was far from transforming South Korean politics completely. The authoritarian tradition held sway among political leaders of all stripes even after a relatively free election in 1987. Thus, it was not unreasonable to imagine, as did many in the North and some in the South, that American influence was just a thin veneer that could be replaced with socialist and communist ideas.
By 1989, the campus atmosphere in the South had become reminiscent of Americans" 1960s slogan, "Don"t trust anyone over thirty." The substantial number of South Korean scholars who had learned enough overseas about communist thinking to reject it were, by the time of their return to teaching posts back home, too old and established to be considered trust-worthy advisers by the student radicals. Outright pro-communist propaganda had some enthusiastic fans. So did some left-leaning foreign scholars" theories that condemned the roles of the American and South Korean governments while going easy on criticism of the Northern regime.
Earlier, the South had banned books on such topics; South Koreans attracted to Marxist ideas while studying abroad were in no position to propagate them publicly after their return home. But a belated grant of democratic freedoms after 1987 had suddenly allowed Southerners to flirt with Marxism and North Korean ideology. After decades without contact with such ideas, perhaps it should not have been surprising that substantial numbers in the South were not inoculated with the skepticism needed to counter the simple if often deceptive appeal of Northern propaganda. The inherent attraction of the new and previously forbidden enhanced the attraction.
With North Koreans themselves practicing pretty much the Stalinism that briefly appealed to leftist Americans in the Depression years of the 1930s, it was almost as if Koreans on both sides of the Demilitarized Zone had traveled back five decades in an intellectual time machine. South Korean officials were at wit"s end trying to cope. American military and diplomatic policymakers, too, were concerned. Some U.S. officials saw the most prolific and influential of the American scholars as a pied piper and went so far as to implore him to go to Seoul and help disabuse student radicals of their distorted notions. He declined.8 A big part of the problem was that South Korean students did not not know the North-still were not permitted to go there without special permission. When their government insisted that the North was a bleak place, they considered what the government had told them previously and, perhaps understandably, decided not to believe it. know the North-still were not permitted to go there without special permission. When their government insisted that the North was a bleak place, they considered what the government had told them previously and, perhaps understandably, decided not to believe it.
The evening I went to see The Flower Girl The Flower Girl the guest of honor swept into the theater just before the curtain rose for the first act, receiving a standing ovation. Im Su-gyong, a beautiful South Korean university student, had defied her government by visiting Pyongyang via a third country to attend the youth festival. She was promoting a pro-unification scheme for a student march from the northern end of the peninsula, across the normally unpa.s.sable Demilitarized Zone and down to the southern tip. Her arrival in Pyongyang created pandemonium. Northerners, evidently genuinely delighted and moved by her visit, mobbed her. In the televised arrival scene, the jostled cameraman was unable to keep his camera still, resulting in a rare bit of spontaneous television. the guest of honor swept into the theater just before the curtain rose for the first act, receiving a standing ovation. Im Su-gyong, a beautiful South Korean university student, had defied her government by visiting Pyongyang via a third country to attend the youth festival. She was promoting a pro-unification scheme for a student march from the northern end of the peninsula, across the normally unpa.s.sable Demilitarized Zone and down to the southern tip. Her arrival in Pyongyang created pandemonium. Northerners, evidently genuinely delighted and moved by her visit, mobbed her. In the televised arrival scene, the jostled cameraman was unable to keep his camera still, resulting in a rare bit of spontaneous television.
Im Su-gyong soon returned to the South, where she was jailed until Christmas Eve of 1992 for violating the National Security Act. That only made her a martyr to the Southern radicals" cause-to the delight of the propaganda authorities in the North. During another visit to Pyongyang three years later, I was taken to an art studio where the main non-Kim subject of the artists turned out to be Im. There were sculptures of her and paintings galore, in a variety of poses, the most dramatic a courtroom scene from her trial in Seoul.
Hw.a.n.g Jang-yop, following his 1997 defection, told of another way the North sought to appeal to the South. Recall Baek Nam-woon, "the father of left-wing scholars," whom Kim Jong-il purged at the end of the 1960s. Although he died in a concentration camp, Hw.a.n.g reported, Baek"s remains were later moved to the Shinmiri Patriotic Martyrs" Cemetery. Hw.a.n.g said the same procedure was followed with others who were popular among South Korean nationalists. "Anyone with some value in maintaining the sympathy of outsiders is buried here, even if he had died at the hands of the North Korean rulers."9 The image of ideological purity that Pyongyang projected appealed to the South Korean radicals" tendency to see issues in black and white. The propaganda mills of Pyongyang never failed to point out that the South still suffered the ignominy of having foreign troops on its soil, "controlling" its armed forces, buying its women, golfing on its prime real estate and disseminating cra.s.s American culture over one of the most desirable of the scarce television channels. (The fact that those troops were there to deter another invasion by the North like the one in 1950 was never mentioned-Northern propaganda still claimed it was the South that had invaded.)10 Pyongyang"s call for immediate reunification-its means for completing the revolution-had a simple appeal compared with the more complex and cautious South Korean policy. Pyongyang presented early reunification as a spiritual as well as a practical imperative for achieving Korea"s destiny as a major nation, free of contaminating foreign influence and able to stand alone, whole, atop the North"s considerable mineral resources-including coal, iron ore, gold and uranium-combined with the South"s arable land and its technological and business prowess. "If our country is reunified it will be rich in food," Haksan Cooperative Farm"s director told me.
In one sequence in the mammoth opening ceremony of the youth festival scores of doves or pigeons representing peace were released inside the stadium. Immediately, there was a multiple-gun salute-twenty-one guns, I suppose, but I did not count-during which the booming noise and the smoke of the explosions drove the already frightened birds into panic so that they veered all over the stadium in apparent efforts to escape. (Shu Chung-shin, the dancer once rejected as a candidate for the okwa okwa on account of her family background, told me when I met her in South Korea several years later that she had been on the field performing during the dove scene.) That incident could have symbolized the ambiguity of North Korea"s reunification policy: On the one hand, Pyongyang continued to insist publicly that it had no interest in unifying the peninsula by force. On the other hand, its enormous military was poised to attack south-ward on short notice. on account of her family background, told me when I met her in South Korea several years later that she had been on the field performing during the dove scene.) That incident could have symbolized the ambiguity of North Korea"s reunification policy: On the one hand, Pyongyang continued to insist publicly that it had no interest in unifying the peninsula by force. On the other hand, its enormous military was poised to attack south-ward on short notice.
Besides its reunification policy, North Korea"s emphasis on economic equality exerted enough pull on some South Korean radicals to overcome the clear fact that South Korea had advanced much farther and faster economically through capitalism. Internally, the North Korean regime"s ideological and economic needs conflicted badly, in the long run tending to box it in. Still, Pyongyang"s leaders could hope to use the appeal of Kim"s ideas to young South Koreans to revolutionize the South and "win the race despite Seoul"s advantages.11 Of course, North Korean propaganda concerning the South was pitched not only to South Koreans but also at least equally to Northerners, and it was intriguing to see how the Northerners reacted. "I am young, so I want to know about the South Korean students" struggle against the U.S. imperialists and the South Korean puppet clique," my guide Pak said to me one night when I took him and our driver to supper. I explained that the demonstrations had tapered off to some extent following the movement"s success in forcing a free presidential election in 1987. A bit later, Pak said: "As you know, the United States provoked the Korean War in 1950." No, I said, it was well established that the North had planned the invasion of the South. Pak laughed and told me that what I had said was just too ridiculous to credit. He did apologize a few minutes later for using the term imperialist imperialist- obviously not the thing to call one"s guest. But it was clear that he and his fellow Northerners had been given a hugely distorted view of South Korea as a uniformly horrible place in need of salvation by the Great Leader, a land where the fruits of capitalist economic development had accrued to the wealthy few. Among North Koreans who were permitted to speak with foreign visitors, even those sophisticated enough to know that the South had the higher average living standard insisted that the North"s system was better because the wealth was shared more evenly.12 (Equality in the North was not quite what the regime and faithful subjects portrayed it as being. It had little to do with the lives of top officials and their families. One ill.u.s.tration could be found on any street or road. Scarce pa.s.senger cars were used mainly to carry big shots, while the ma.s.ses walked, or rode in the backs of trucks or on buses. The pa.s.senger car drivers almost without fail propelled their vehicles at high speed. They clearly operated on the presumption that they were ent.i.tled to the right of-way against pedestrians. Drivers approached intersections without slowing down, scattering pedestrians, who would fall back to avoid being run over. Drivers apparently felt that the importance of their high-ranking pa.s.sengers justified their arrogant behavior. At the entrance to the tomb of the founder of the Koguryo Dynasty, Kim Jong-su pointed out to me an ancient inscription: "Men great or small must dismount before entering here." I asked whether that applied to the Great Leader. Kim Jong-su"s face a.s.sumed a pained look and he replied, "Don"t make such comparisons.") South Korea did have a few thousand radical disciples of Kim Il-sung, problem enough for the authorities in Seoul. But to hear it from North Korean propaganda one would have thought almost the entire Southern population was ready to worship Kim. Since there was virtually no information available to the contrary, people in the North seemed to believe all this. As was often reported abroad, radios available to ordinary citizens really were fixed so that they could receive only government broadcasts. The newspapers purveyed strictly the party line. "According to the newspaper almost all South Koreans respect the Great Leader and want reunification," said my guide, who added that he believed everything he read in the North Korean press.
Of course, the real elite had sources of information much better than the regular North Korean media. Very high-ranking cadre who needed to keep up with the outside world could listen to foreign broadcasts, including South Korean programming and the U.S. government"s Voice of America. A slight but studied relaxation of U.S. antagonism toward the Pyongyang regime had permitted the delegation of North Koreans led by Kim Jong-su to visit Washington shortly before the youth festival. Much as sightseers in Hollywood want to see the studios and the homes of the stars, the North Koreans were keen to visit the offices of the Voice of America--where they expressed puzzlement when told of a U.S. law that prohibited broadcasting VOA programming-within U.S. borders.13 High officials" superior sources of information about how North Korea compared with other countries did not produce any hint of humility in their conversation and p.r.o.nouncements. Rather, one of Pyongyang"s chief objects in permitting some Western journalists to visit for the youth festival was to issue a warning to the United States against continuing what amounted to a policy of letting North Korea stew in its own juices.
Strategists in the United States and South Korea had developed a theory, over the preceding few years, that the balance of power in the Korean peninsula was about to shift. According to that theory, South Korea"s economic growth rate was so much higher than the North"s that it would be a matter of only a few years before the South"s military expenditures--while representing a much smaller percentage of gross national product--would match and exceed those of Pyongyang. When that happened, the theory went, South Korea would be able to field enough of a defensive force of its own to provide a credible deterrent against North Korean attack, without the help of U.S. troops. (Unspoken was the obvious corollary that if the South should develop aggressive intentions toward the North, Seoul would have the force advantage to contemplate carrying them out.) According to the theory, North Korea was desperate to do something to keep the balance from shifting decisively against it. Adding to North Korean frustration were the flight from communist orthodoxy of Pyongyang"s allies, their flirtations with South Korea and pressures on Pyongyang from within to reform its own lagging economy.
Seeing all that, American and South Korean policymakers figured they could deal effectively with the North Korean threat simply by leaving the U.S. troops in place as a deterrent, taking modest steps to ease tensions and allowing time to pa.s.s. Thus, neither Washington nor Seoul seemed to feel any great urgency to push vigorously for negotiated solutions to the standoff in the peninsula. That disturbed North Korean officials. Although they showed no real interest in genuinely negotiating with Seoul, nonetheless they still obviously hoped to play up to the United States sufficiently to get the U.S. troops removed from the South. True, American and North Korean mid-ranking diplomats had begun to meet periodically in Beijing. But this was really little more than another aspect of Washington"s measured, very slight approach to relaxing tensions. Pyongyang-in search of diplomatic, military and economic concessions--wanted higher-level, more frequent contacts to get the talks off dead center. Kim Jong-su complained to me that the Beijing talks were proceeding like a very slow-moving bicycle-in danger of falling down for lack of momentum.
Kim Jong-su let me know that his government had not issued its invitations to American journalists lightly. "You have to understand that it"s difficult to invite Americans here," he said. "Our people are very sensitive about the United States. In America you are maybe not so sensitive about Korea." What seemed to have overcome Pyongyang"s reservations about inviting us was an urgent need to convey a message to Americans and others in the Western alliance. The message: North Korea was a powerful country, a country to be reckoned "with, not only militarily but as a revolutionary society of impressive economic and social achievements, a beacon to the poor and to those oppressed by inequity in South Korea and the Third World.
Although it was tempting to imagine that North Korean leaders had started to believe their own propaganda, there was much more than that to their demand for respect. They meant to leave us with the impression of a country we should take seriously, if for no other reason than the enormous amount of trouble it could cause. Washington must not a.s.sume that the continued presence of U.S. troops in the South, coupled with an American policy of benign neglect of other issues, would solve the Korean problem. Americans should not make the mistake of a.s.suming it was only a matter of time before North Korea would collapse or otherwise decisively lose the race with South Korea. More to the point, we had better realize that Pyongyang simply-would not permit itself to lose without doing something drastic.
There did seem to be some basis for questioning the U.S. policy of deterrence-plus-malign neglect. North Korea still had gold and other mineral resources to barter abroad. Militarily reports had started to appear that Pyongyang might be trying to develop nuclear weapons. Already it was known that the North had the capability to launch another surprise attack with conventional weapons. Add the factors of Pyongyang"s ideological penetration of the South and uncertainty about what would happen after Kim Jong-il"s succession, and the picture of what was yet to come looked a bit less rea.s.suring. Those troubling facts were reason enough to intensify the search for new policy approaches. Arms-control experts, including John W Lewis of the Center for International Security and Arms Control at Stanford, were indeed talking with North and South Korean counterparts about confidence-building measures that could lead to a reduction of the danger of war on the peninsula.
On balance, though, it would have been hard to justify an immediate and drastic shift from the basic watch-and-wait policy-especially a shift to any of the alternatives Pyongyang was pitching. Kim Il-sung had proposed a "confederation" in which the Northern and Southern systems supposedly could thrive separately, with no need for American troops to guard the peace. The catch was that there would be a common army and a common foreign policy-under whose control? The South Koreans understandably were not interested in taking a ch