LEADER SYMBOLS AND PERSONALITY CULT IN NORTH KOREA: The leader state | By Jae-Cheon Lim
Routledge Advances in Korean Studies, no. 29. New York: Routledge [imprint of Taylor & Francis Group], 2015. x, 139 pp. (Tables, B&W photos.) US$148.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-138-83142-1.
In order to understand North Korea’s political system, one needs to examine the centrality of the leader in that system. In this respect, Jae-Cheon Lim’s book on leader symbols and the personality cult is a valuable study of the enhanced role of the leader in the North Korean polity. Expanding upon his articles on symbolism in Kim Jong Il’s leadership and the cult of Kims, in this work the author examines the character of the “leader state” and elaborates on the genesis of leader symbols and how the state uses them (15).
Lim analyses the emergence and formation of the leadership cult and its symbology and their role in the political succession process in North Korea. The “Ten Principles for the Monolithic Ideological System” were instrumental in rule-setting and monitoring the behaviour of North Koreans in respect to the state’s leadership cult (24). The author reviews linguistic symbols and cult-related activities such as kyosi (teaching and publishing, to include non-linguistic activities in the sphere of art, such as sculpture), pictorial symbols (films, portraiture, etc.), buildings, institutions (such as Kim Il Sung University), national holidays (birthdays of the Kims), and flowers (Kimilsungia and Kimjongilia) (28–38). Lim elaborates on the impact the cult has on political succession in North Korea, with a stress on “bloodline,” and concludes that tenets of Confucian culture, such as loyalty and filial piety toward the leader, combine with the personality cult to reinforce the dynastic characteristic of the North Korean state. He writes: “Having been totally encultured into the ‘leader state,’ the North Korean people appear to accept the dynastic logic behind the North Korean leadership changes” (45–46).
Lim’s book pays special attention to Kim Il Sung’s anti-Japanese struggles as a source of myth and ritual-making, as these are at the core of the revolutionary tradition. The foundation myth concerns Korea’s liberation as a result of Kim Il Sung’s guerilla warfare. The anti-Japanese struggle also generated “sustaining myths,” which contribute to the maintenance of political relations between the North Korean leadership and the people. For example, Mount Paektu—the mythical centre of the anti-Japanese fight—is claimed to be Kim Jong Il’s birthplace, while the assertion of Kim Jong Un’s “bloodline” from the Paektu (Kim) family also serves as a source of legitimacy (52–53). Lim uses two main North Korean texts to assess the myths surrounding Kim Il Sung and the anti-Japanese struggle: With the Century (Kim Il Sung’s memoirs) and the reminiscences of participants in the anti-Japanese guerrilla struggle. The anti-Japanese myths are more persuasive and nurture greater loyalty to the North Korean leadership when they are combined with ritualized activities, including memorials, ceremonies, pilgrimages to key sites, the commemoration of guerrilla battles and campaigns, and the designation of the founding date of Kim Il Sung’s guerilla unit (April 25, 1932) as the foundation day for the Korean People’s Army (68–69). The North Korean state also invoked the “Arduous March”—a reference to Kim Il Sung’s fierce struggles against the Japanese army in 1938–1939—to mobilize the populace and instill it with an “anti-Japanese guerilla spirit” during the economic catastrophe that struck the country in the mid-1990s (73).
Lim describes the creation of the personality cult surrounding the Kim family, built up around the principle of the suryŏng (supreme leader). Naturally, of the three Kim leaders, the images of Kim Il Sung are most important. The suryŏng is the “master image” that defines the other sub-images, such as that of military general, emancipator (socialist construction), great chuch’e thinker, benevolent parent, life-giving authority, institutional founder, and international communist leader (77–78). The cult of Kim Il Sung is also related to images of the sun and stars, which are also connected to Kim Jong Il. The founder’s son is referred as the suryŏng’s loyal “successor” and this is Kim Jong Il’s master image, around which revolve other images, like that of military-first leader (90, 93, 95). The master image of Kim Jong Un is that of “Kim Il Sung incarnate,” an inheritor of both the chuch’e revolution and military-first policy (96). The author argues that images and sentiments North Koreans receive in childhood regarding their leaders are reinforced in later life through state-controlled socialization mechanisms, although the internalization process can vary according to the time period (99).
Finally, the author discusses symbolic leadership by focusing on the symbolism of the leader’s hyŏnji chido (on-the-spot guidance) activities. The characteristics of symbolic leadership that relate to guidance tours are: the use and manipulation of symbols for image-making; the allusive quality of the tours through their ritualization and significance to outsiders; time and spatial disjunction between leader and people (that is, the exact date and time of tours are unknown to the public); and the manipulation of the symbolic functions of the tours through the psychological closeness between leader and people (114–115). In his conclusion, Lim notes the “leader state” is based on “its divine treatment of its leader symbols and the totalizing nature of its leadership cult,” which generates both the leader’s and his successor’s legitimacy. According to the author, the divine leadership cult is a religious aspect of North Korean culture (120–121). While there are grounds for this argument, we need to qualify that religious aspect, as religion is normally associated with belief in a supernatural being or god. But Lim is right to point out that the leadership cult in North Korea will endure in some form and could present an impediment to Korean unification (125).
This study could also have included the institutional aspects in its discussion of the “leader state.” Symbolism and the leadership cult are important cultural aspects of the North Korean system, but institutions are also important to our understanding of the formation and sustainability of that state. Further, this study would have benefited from an analysis of the relationship between myth and reality. The book focuses mostly on the mythological aspect of images and symbols, although the author does touch upon events that lead to the creation of these myths. In this regard, greater historical context would have helped better discern myth and reality. In general, this book presents a convincing study that contributes a great deal to our understanding of the internal workings of the North Korean leadership system.
Avram Agov
Langara College, Vancouver, Canada
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