Despotism's furthest shore

National Review, Nov 29, 2004 by John Derbyshire

Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, by Bradley K. Martin (Thomas Dunne, 880 pp., $29.95)

WHEN the North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung died in 1994 and his son Kim Jong Il took over leadership of the country, I thought, in common with most observers, that the Communist regime was done for. Kim Sr., though he had originally been installed by Stalin as a tool of Soviet policy, had had a genuine background as a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese in Manchuria and Korea before and during WWII. Odious as was the system he created from 1945 on, Kim was a man of character and hard experience. Of accomplishments, too--some of them surprising. He served as organist in a Christian church during his youth, for example; and when American troops entered Pyongyang in October 1950, they found a church organ in Kim's command bunker. Kim Jr., by contrast, had had no military experience and displayed nothing to indicate any depths of character beyond a fondness for movies. He was, according to one of the many defectors interviewed by Bradley Martin for this book, known in his nation's government and military circles as a person who "sleeps in the afternoon, parties at night, and has affairs with actresses." I imagined the hard-faced Leninists of Pyongyang muttering the Korean equivalent of "Hyperion to a satyr," and moving swiftly to depose the baby-faced Kim Jr.

To the contrary, Kim Jong Il was a clever, ruthless, and politically adroit operator, who had spent the previous 30 years maneuvering to consolidate his position as heir. Kim Il Sung's last days, in fact, put one in mind not so much of Hamlet as of Lear, with the younger Kim greedily relieving his father of (as he no doubt expressed it at the time) all the irksome burdens of office. One of Martin's defectors, a former captain in State Security, reports that Kim Sr. died of apoplexy after phoning his son to urge priority for civilian over military expenditures. Jong Il had brushed aside this suggestion with: "Relax, enjoy your old age. We'll take care of it."

These are among the many fascinating insights offered in Martin's comprehensive survey of the Kims and the nation they created. Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader is a rich and rewarding book that anyone interested in this strange Leninist vestige should read. The sensational extravagance of the leadership; the dreadful sufferings of the common people; the ludicrous personality cults thrown up by both Kims; Kim Jong Il's need for nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles (his possession of the latter is certain, of the former highly probable); the systematic destruction of normal life and language in North Korea--all this is laid out here for inspection. If I may be permitted a book reviewer's cliche: I couldn't put it down.

That is in spite of the fact that this is, in many ways, an unsatisfactory book. It is too long--713 pages of main text plus a further 133 pages of endnotes. The material is not well organized, and occasionally repeats itself. Much of it has the look of warmed-over newspaper journalism. (Which much of it is bound actually to be--in a book of this sort, written by a journalist. Still, there are ways to make the fact less obvious.)

The author also has an annoying left-liberal tic he cannot altogether suppress. For instance, he quotes Kim Il Sung's remark of circa 1970 that "in our country, everyone knows how to fire a gun and carries a gun with him." In a tagged endnote Martin adds mischievously: "It is interesting to consider the idea of arming all citizens of a totalitarian state in the light of the libertarian argument often heard in the United States that citizens' right to bear arms prevents government tyranny." Well, no, it is not interesting so to consider, since neither Kim Il Sung nor any other Communist despot ever had the least intention of acknowledging anything remotely like the right to bear arms that our Constitution affirms--nor any other right, either. And in fact, Martin later quotes a high-level defector as saying: "Soldiers in Pyongyang normally were not supplied live ammunition, presumably for fear they would mount a coup." So much for the Kims' Second Amendment enthusiasms.

Again, in an endnote comparing Kim Il Sung with Ho Chi Minh, the author can barely contain his enthusiasm for the latter: "Ho Chi Minh did not purge his colleagues ... he was a man of 'goodness and simplicity.'" Martin seems here to be quoting David Halberstam's 1971 biography of Ho. In William Duiker's more authoritative 2000 biography (reviewed in these pages, Oct. 23, 2000) we hear kindly old Uncle Ho saying things like: "All those who do not follow the line that I have set out will be smashed." He meant it, too; and though by no means the most egregious specimen of Leninist mass-murderer, Ho could purge with the best of them.

Yet not even a leftist, Vietnam-addled American journalist of Bradley Martin's stripe can fail to grasp the essential nature of the North Korean regime after 30 years of observing it. Martin is anyway on the rightward side of the opinion spectrum in the narrow little world of Kim-ology. His book includes several quotes from the appalling Bruce Cumings, who has argued, for example, that Kang Chol-hwan's book The Aquariums of Pyongyang, a hair-raising account of Kang's ten years in a North Korean labor camp, proves that the regime isn't so bad, since after all Kang survived to write the book!