Kim's Big Brother cult survives in N. Korea
By Bill Tarrant
KOSONG, North Korea (Reuters): You know you've arrived in Big Brother country as the tourist ferry steams into port and carved into a mountain face visible for miles are the words: "Long Live the Great Politics" of Kim Il-sung.
Seven years after his death, the cult of "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung, North Korea's founding father and the 20th century's longest serving ruler, is alive and well in the communist totalitarian state.
Immigration officials who stamp the special visas of the foreign and South Korean tourists visiting North Korea's Kumgang (Diamond) mountains all wear the prized Kim Il-sung lapel pin, the badge of a true loyalist and devotee.
In their offices, pictures of Kim Il-sung -- named "eternal president" in 1998 by the Supreme People's Assembly -- and his son and successor, Kim Jong-il, hang side by side.
Portraits of Kim the father and son are hung in every home and workplace and for years North Koreans began and ended their day bowing to the images.
The fabled Kumgang mountain range, not far from the Demilitarized Zone that has separated the two Koreas for half a century, is the only place in the North that South Korean tourists are allowed to visit.
Along the carefully guided treks into the snow-streaked mountains are marble slabs describing a hike Kim Il-sung once took with his wife and the wisdom he imparted on those spots.
Similar markers can be seen throughout North Korea.
Carved into boulders and on the sides of slopes are paeans to the Great Leader. It is the only graffiti permitted. A list of do's and don'ts says "writing or drawing on the rocks and trees is not allowed".
Minders are stationed along the trekking routes to enforce the rules and mete out fines for such offenses as spitting, urinating, smoking, collecting wildlife or "carrying forbidden articles or materials".
They are well-dressed and chat amiably with visitors as long as the subject doesn't touch politics or economics. They get visibly disturbed if photographed. That's also not allowed.
The program includes a bus tour that winds past collective farms to a seaside vista at the base of the Kumgang massif.
Barbed wire fences line both sides of the road. And while the villages are prosperous by North Korean standards, they offer a revealing glimpse into North Korea's "Workers Paradise".
One starts to get the feeling of being on a safari park tour. Apparently it is not an uncommon impression.
"Please don't throw food out the window to them," our tour guide, Han Jun-il, interjects as we pass a schoolyard with waving children. "The North Koreans don't like it. They say it makes them feel like they're in a zoo."
North Korea has suffered famine-like conditions since 1995, shortly after Kim Il-sung died of a coronary at 82, and relies on international charities to feed its 22 million people.
The one-story farmhouses are white-washed adobe with cement tiled roofs -- a notable achievement, as thatched roofs are the norm in many parts of rural Asia.
Two or more families share homes with no indoor plumbing. Tin stovepipe chimneys indicate the means of cooking and heating.
The scene is reminiscent of a period film of a century ago -- no billboards, neon and few mechanical implements. Nobody is riding vehicles. We saw only one small tractor after passing a number of hamlets. Even bicycles are scarce. People mostly walk.
Farm animals are also few and far between. We saw only one mangy-looking cow on splayed legs.
Village entrances are dominated by posters and murals of Kim Il-sung, often talking to children.
During his 46 years in power, Kim created a personality cult far exceeding that of Josef Stalin or Mao Zedong. He toured incessantly, offering guidance on every subject imaginable.
He was worshiped as a cult leader in a country that outlawed religion, and established a cradle-to-crave welfare state that aims to provide everybody with a job, housing, food, medical care, education, consumer goods and the clothes on their backs.
"Even George Orwell could not have imagined this world," said a Western diplomat once based there, referring to "1984", a fictional account of a state ruled by an omniscient "Big Brother" and published when Kim ll-sung founded North Korea in 1948.
Almost certainly no North Korean has read the book. According to accounts from defectors, even the educated are unfamiliar with Shakespeare, let alone other great works of Western literature.
Kim Il-sung's 27 volumes of teachings form the core curriculum of the education system.
Ahead of his birth anniversary on April 15, a major holiday known as "Sun Day", the official media have urged the masses "to deeply study and grasp his revolutionary history and live and fight as befitting his soldiers and disciples."
Kim Jong-il has inherited the power if not the popularity of his father, despite the best efforts of the state's propaganda machine, which now refers to him as the "Great Leader".
Kim Jong-il rules as chairman of the National Defense Commission. But official decrees are still signed in the name of the eternal president, South Korean intelligence officials say.
North Korea has the look of a garrison state. Soldiers can be seen standing at the entrance to dirt roads and around villages, peering into tour buses to make sure nobody is snapping pictures.
Taking pictures of North Koreans and their villages -- not to mention anything that might look like a military installation -- is forbidden.
Far more than his father, Kim Jong-il has brought the army to the fore of North Korea life through his "Army First Politics".
Many soldiers appear to be teenagers. Able-bodied men begin eight-year compulsory military service between 16 and 18.
Though last winter was hard and a severe grains shortage is expected again this year, there is no evidence of grinding poverty here. The state has apparently succeeded in giving everybody a minimum subsistence living.
But even Oun Joung-ni, the main village in an area the regime is showcasing, was dark at nightfall, with only an occasional candle seen flickering in a window.
North Korea's chronic energy crisis has left most places without reliable power and the government is trying to negotiate electricity aid from the South.
Their plight elicited little sympathy from some tourists. "We shouldn't give them electricity until Kim Jong-il apologizes," said a 46-year-old office worker in Seoul. "He's a terrorist".
Kim Jong-il is blamed for masterminding the mid-air bombing of a Korean Air jet in 1987 that killed all 115 people aboard and for a 1983 bombing in Myanmar that killed four South Korean cabinet ministers.
He is due to come to Seoul this year to reciprocate last June's groundbreaking summit in Pyongyang with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung.
Yet the South Koreans on this tour seem to wholeheartedly embrace the idea of reunification, even if for reasons that might make the North uncomfortable.
"We have too many people on too little land in the South," said 76-year-old Kim Kyung-il.
Another tourist, Lee Shoon-hee, cited the need to reunite families divided since the 1950-1953 Korean War. About one in seven people in the two Koreas have relatives on the other side of the world's most militarized frontier.
A unified Korea would be less vulnerable in a region where the strategic interests of China, Japan, Russia and the United States are entwined, she said.
"So many families have relatives on the other side that they've never seen ... and secondly, it would maker a bigger and stronger country if the people came together. It needs to be strong because there are bigger countries around it," she said.