North Korea - The Country

At Pyongyang's Mansudae Hill, a line of street cleaners who look more like housewives (which, of course, they actually double as), armed with straw brooms, march stooped over like a bad ensemble at Pasadena's DooDah Parade. Like a 17th-century Zamboni machine, they clear what little dust has accumulated on the walkway in front of the Korean Revolution Museum before a giant bronze statue of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. Kim's massive right arm is eternally locked forward in a handshake with the clouds, which was about all he was able to shake hands with during his neurotically xenophobic, despotic and frequently brutal 46 years of rule of a country that may as well be on Mars.

Shaking hands with nothing. The image lingers with you, even after reading the romantic, campy description in the city's official guidebook: "The statue of Kim portrays his sublime figure looking far ahead, with his left hand akimbo and his right raised to indicate the road for the people to advance."

The road to the 38th parallel, no doubt.

The Great Leader departed for the Great Unknown on July 18, 1994, succumbing to illness that he tried vainly to thwart with a combination of meteorology and herbs. Millions of North Koreans have made pilgrimages to the statue and other shrines, openly weeping for a man who they were taught since birth created the dawn of each new day. Literally. It must have come as quite a shock when the sun rose the morning after Kim headed for that great juche in the sky.

Myth and legend shrouded Kim Il Sung. His legendary heroics against the Japanese during World War II, by all historical accounts, never occurred. His greatest victory was a stalemate in the Korean War, at the cost of a half million North Korean lives. He might also claim a victory of sorts in the arrest of more than 20 million people.

North Koreans are taught that Kim was the inventor of everything from centuries-old scientific and physics theories to such modern conveniences as the automobile and the toaster. Some believe he's walked on the moon. By law, every North Korean household must possess at least two portraits of the Great One. Not Gretzky, but of Kim. That's overachievement.

Certainly not overachieving is Kim's son, 59-year-old Kim Jong Il-the Great Leader's "hair" apparent and a Jenny Craig "before" model with a penchant for used Rodney Dangerfield leisure suits, permed Quaddafi-style tresses, lifts in his shoes and a bevy of kidnapped Japanese concubines he's got stashed in a collection of countryside villas. A virtual hermit, the younger Kim makes Howard Hughes look like Monica Lewinsky on a book-signing tour.

After more than four years of grieving for his dead dad, it was expected that Kim Jong Il would finally get some kind of a promotion-say, to president maybe? No way, JosÄ. Instead, on September 5, 1998, Kim Jong Il was named by the Supreme People's Assembly to "the Highest Post of the State." Whatever that is. Now the SPA isn't exactly a grass roots movement in the DPRK-a grass roots movement in North Korea is a group of starving villagers out in the forest foraging for food-but there may be a festering boil somewhere deep in the cavity of the Korean Workers' Party's bottom with this euphemism. Rather than appoint Kim as president, the state's previous highest position, the SPA simply abolished the post altogether.

And they may have had a good reason. Cognac-guzzling Kim Jong Il is both a reported lush and an alleged terrorist. He's been implicated as the mastermind behind a number of terrorist attacks, including a Korean Air jetliner explosion that took 115 lives in 1987. He is believed responsible for North Korea's nuclear program (the bomb part, anyway), as well as the foiled assassination attempt on the South Korean president in Myanmar that instead blew away 17 high-level South Korean officials in 1983.

It is also thought that North Korea's recent binge in amphetamine and opium trafficking to kickstart its moribund economy is being personally directed by The Chubby One.

In April 1997, a cache of 154 pounds of amphetamines with a street value of US$95 million was found on a North Korean freighter in port at Hiroshima, Japan. Dope is grown or manufactured in the DPRK (Democratic People's Republic of Korea) and then smuggled through diplomatic channels to Pyongyang's embassies abroad, where it is then sold to domestic dealers, or by North Korean diplomats themselves on the street level. It's believed that huge quantities of opium go through Russia via North Korean workers commuting to timber projects there. Late in 1998, the Narcotics Suppression boys at Bangkok, Thailand's Don Muang Airport seized 2.5 million tons of ephedrine-a principal ingredient in cheap, garage-lab amphetamines-enroute to Pyongyang from India. The pawns of Pyongyang insisted the chemical was intended for the development of bronchodilators. So we now know that not only are North Koreans starving, but they're all suffering from chronic asthma, as well.

But the mythmaking continues. Kim Jong Il was actually born in Siberia in 1941, but because most North Koreans have never heard of Siberia, Jong Il was reborn in a log cabin near North Korea's famed Mount Paektu beneath two rainbows and a bright, previously undiscovered star (Bambi had to have been close by). He is reputed to have written hundreds of books, all epic masterpieces, and six operas in the course of two years. He can stop rain (but apparently not flooding) and predict the discovery of natural resources (apparently plutonium).

However, the Dear Leader isn't a been-there, done-that type of fellow. He's reportedly been abroad only once, to neighboring China-and that was probably by mistake. No backpacks in this dude's closet. In all likelihood, he's met only a couple of Westerners in his entire life. Trying to get hip in time for his formal ascension to power, Jong practiced his English (and probably his Korean, too) to Star Trek reruns and the Larry King Show.

His face fills the television screens every night, at all times and on every channel. The man who claims "socialism is not administrative and commanding" may have a different relationship with communism than with alcohol. He is reported to spend nearly three-quarters of a million dollars a year on Hennessy cognac, specifically the Paradis line. That's commanding. Yet, he remains the subject of adulation. Normally bright, responsible scholars and educators from North Korea and abroad reduce themselves to writing driveling, soppy odes to this inglorious, silver-spooned papa's boy. Sample this, written by a doctor at Delhi University in India:

Dear leader Kim Jong Il

Friend of masses, savior of

humanity

Increased efforts of yours inspired

the masses

You have awakened them

To build modern DPRK

Brick by brick

Made them independent and masters

of their own destiny

Dear leader Kim Jong Il

A rising star on the horizon

Shown the path of salvation

Of realism

Removed flunkeyism in the face of

Severe odds

Dear leader Kim Jong Il

A versatile personality

I salute you

Removed flunkeyism? Whoa.

The "My Automatic Rifle" Dance

In North Korea, propaganda has become an art form. Perhaps the most entertaining reading we've come across at DP is the "consumer" magazine that comes out of Pyongyang-Korea Today, of the DPRK. There are magnificent book reviews, all on Kim Jong Il's hundreds of books. No room for anything else. And no comments such as "The plot is frayed; the characters develop like a fungus. The author has talent, but should have restricted it to flyer writing for the PTA." Nope, nothing like that. You'd end up in the gulag for a few centuries.

The harshest criticism we spotted was surprisingly scathing, though: "Many of the world's people call Kim Jong Il the giant of our times. This means that he is unique and distinguished in all aspects-wisdom, leadership, ability, personality and achievements." (Korea Today, No. 3, 1992.) The writer was anonymous, fearing for his life if his byline were to be published. There's coverage of some great plays and performing arts shows. One particularly caught our attention, a tear-jerking rendition of the "My Automatic Rifle Dance," performed by two voluptuous (in North Korea, that means fed) actresses prancing about the stage with their AKs.

Korea Today publishes cutting-edge, bohemian poetry that mainstream periodicals wouldn't have the balls to print:

My song, echo all the way home from the trenches.

When I smash the American robbers of happiness,

And I return home with glittering medals on my chest,

All my beloved family will be in my arms.

Cool stuff. Want to subscribe? Write: The Foreign Language Magazines, Pyongyang, DPRK.

For more laughs, write The Korean People's Army Publishing House (Pyongyang, DPRK) for a copy of their enormously popular Panmunjom, a chronicle of North Korea's innumerable military accomplishments. There are some great combat shots, with captions like "U.S. imperialist troops of aggression training South Korean puppet soldiers to become cannon fodder in their aggressive war against the northern half of Korea." Another innocuous shot of a group of soldiers is depicted as, "A U.S. military advisor and the South Korean stooges are on the spot to organize the armed invasion of the northern half of Korea." Another photo shows a 1953 armistice meeting between North Korean and UN officials breaking up, and is appropriately captioned: "The U.S. imperialist troops of aggression hastily leave after their crimes have been exposed at a meeting held at the scene of the crime."

But the DP runner-up in the book goes to a 1976 shot of an American soldier using a chain saw to cut down a tree. The caption: "The U.S. imperialist troops of aggression committed a grave provocation, cutting down a tree."

And the winner? A fuzzy shot of a letter from Secretary of State John Foster Dulles to a South Korean colonel, dated June 20, 1950. The caption reads: "Secret messages exchanged between the south Korean puppets and the U.S. imperialists to invade the north, and Dulles' secret letter instigating the puppets to start a war." It took a magnifying glass, but we read the letter:

The dinner which you gave in our honor last night was something I shall always remember. The setting was really glorious, the company distinguished, the entertainment most interesting to us and last, but not least, the food was delicious. The antique vase (you gave us) will grace Mrs. Dulles' living room in New York and always keep fresh the memory of our visit with you.

For even more knee-slaps, check out the Korean Central News Agency's new web site. DP's favorite headline is "U.S. Stands Alone on Land Mine." Although graphically as creative as a pancake, you're sure to howl at the copy, which continually adulates Kim Jong Il as having "perfectly controlled the complicated situation of the world." Of course, don't expect much on the mess the leader has perfectly controlled in his own back yard, namely four consecutive years of famine that one UN official said could turn into "one of the biggest humanitarian disasters of our lifetime."

Korean Central News Agency

http://www.kcna.co.jp

Despite the famine, which a U.S. congressional report says has killed up to 2 million people since 1995 (the DPRK admitted in May 1999 to a figure closer to 220,000 between 1995 and 1998), and having been dependent on international aid since the same year, the DPRK appears to have enough food to export. Okryukwan, the North's most famous restaurant and known for its naengmyon-cold buckwheat noodles-opened its first branch in Seoul in May 1999. With the ingredients imported from North Korea, Okryukwan has become Seoul's latest hip, up-market eatery.

Regrettably, for most North Koreans, "up-market" is an old lady selling yams by the side of the road in Ji'an, China. But the hundreds, maybe thousands, of North Korean spies planted in the South finally have a decent place to eat.