It was raining in Seoul on Monday. Our hotel lobby was chock-a-block as a large group of domestic tourists from Busan was waiting for their tour bus, and trying to save themselves from getting wet. They were excited to hear that Indians are keen to know about the Korean peace process, but they themselves were not so keen on talking about the summit.
"You talk about it, and it could get jinxed," said an elderly lady. But her niece intervened, “The Kims are the jinx.” A significant number of South Koreans want peace and reconciliation with the North, but they seem to be totally opposed to the Kim dynasty. But for North Korea, the Kims mean everything.
The most important holiday in North Korea falls on April 15. It is the birth anniversary of its founding father Kim Il-sung. The Kim family cult is one of the fundamental driving forces behind the regime. His marble and granite statues — estimates vary from 500 to 50,000 — are found across the country. North Korean dynastic rule is an exception in the communist world. The Castro family has finally relinquished power in Cuba. Even Lenin, Stalin or Mao could not or did not groom successors from their own families. The Kims, however, are going strong into the third generation.
Kim Il-sung was born in a Christian peasant family near Pyongyang when Korea was under Japanese occupation. And, as North Korean propagandists remind you without fail, the day of his birth — April 15, 1912— was the day Titanic sank in the Northern Atlantic, a symbolic sinking of western imperialism.
As his family moved to Manchuria to escape Japanese oppression, Kim Il-sung attended Chinese schools. He joined the communist party, fighting guerrilla wars against the Japanese. In 1940, he moved to Soviet Union. With Stalin’s approval, Kim Il-sung took over as the leader of North Korea in September 1948. He centralised and nationalised everything in North Korea — from economy to education, from trade to agriculture — everything was controlled, owned and dictated by the state. Factories were set up with support from the Soviet Union and China; industrial production improved and the North was a bigger economic power than the South till the early 1970s.
But the country's growth came at the cost of individual freedom and rights. Flow of information is tightly monitored and restricted. Citizens are graded on the basis of their loyalty to the regime. Those who did not support him were banished to concentration camps.
Kim Il-sung defended his policies and explained those by proposing a new philosophy called Juche. It stresses on self-reliance and avoiding all external influences. And, it requires North Koreans to keep their leaders and the state before the interests and identities of individuals. The country even has a Juche calendar, which starts with 1912, the year of Kim Il-sung's birth. So, when he died in 1994, it was Juche 83.
Kim Jong-il
While Kim Il-sung was a charismatic leader who could mesmerise North Koreans with his speeches and his legacy as an anti-imperialist fighter, his son, Kim Jong-il, lacked charisma as well as revolutionary credentials. So, the propaganda machinery worked overtime to make him special.
While Russian records suggest that he was born on February 16, 1941, in a remote Siberian fishing village called Vyatskoye, where his father was commanding an anti-imperialist battalion, his official biography lists his birthday as a year later, and at the Baekdusan Secret Camp in the Sobaeksu Valley. Baekdu is a sacred mountain for the Koreans, where they believe the ancient Korean nation was born. So, by his birth there, Kim Jong-il is considered to be the chosen one, the heir to the Great Leader.
His tenure as a leader, however, was a disaster although he consolidated North Korea’s nuclear weapon plans. A year after he took over, in 1995, there were reports that the frogs in the country disappeared. Later, it was revealed that they were eaten by hungry villagers as there was nothing left for them to eat. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and in the absence of any help from China, North Korea witnessed a massive famine, in which nearly 20 lakh people, especially those living in the villages, perished. Even such a man-made disaster did not loosen the Kim family’s grip on North Korea.
However, more than a politician, Kim Jong-il was a successful filmmaker and he seemed more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it giving speeches and addressing crowds. He converted many of his father's revolutionary operas into cinematic blockbusters.
Kim Jong-il tried to improve ties with South Korea and hosted two inter-Korean summits in 2000 and 2007. He also cooperated with the six party peace talks organised by China. The 2007 summit, coupled with South Korea’s Sunshine Policy, gave great impetus to the peace process. Kim Jong-il, however, suffered a stroke in 2008, and thereafter, his main mission was to ensure the succession of his son Kim Jong-un. So, peace process took a back seat as North Korea displayed a muscular policy with nuclear and missile testing. Kim Jong-il died of a massive heart attack on December 17, 2011, after which his son, Kim Jong-un took over.
Kim Jong-un
Kim Jong-un is the third and youngest son of Kim Jong-il, and the second-born son of Kim II’s second mistress, Ko Young Hee. Unlike his father and grandfather, he received western education in Switzerland, where his mother was secretly being treated for breast cancer. One of the things that worked to Kim Jong-un’s advantage is that he looks a lot like his grandfather. In 2010, when his pictures were first made public, most Koreans were surprised to see the striking resemblance. And, Koreans believe that a boy tends to be more like his grandfather than like his own father. It has added to his acceptability.
After his succession was confirmed, Kim Jong-un was groomed to look more like his grandfather. He put on weight and some reports say he weighs around 100 kg, and already shows signs of heart problems, and diabetes. He is a chain smoker and prefers North Korean cigarettes, unlike his father, who smoked Marlboros. He also loves his drinks. After he took over, he ordered a series of executions, sometimes for trivial reasons such as half–hearted clapping or for sleeping during a meeting. He has also removed, replaced or killed most of his potential challengers, including his uncle and mentor Jang Song-thaek.
He has carried out four of North Korea’s six nuclear tests, and has tested nearly 90 ballistic missiles, three times more than his father and grandfather combined. Meanwhile, he has relaxed stringent state control over economic activities, allowing private enterprises to thrive. But the latest sanctions seem to have hit North Korea hard. It is the combination of these two factors — the guarantee of a nuclear weapons system and the economic crisis triggered by the latest round of stringent sanctions — which seems to have persuaded Kim Jong-un to step up to the negotiation table on April 27. It is a rare chance for peace, but the two Koreas have gone down that road twice in the past, but without much success.
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