In late August of 1945, Stalin and the Soviet Union appointed Kim Il-sung to lead the new
occupation government in the northern part of the Korean Peninsula after the Japanese
surrender.
Stalin probably would have preferred a Soviet Korean to run things.
But those people had little familiarity with the Korean nation and Kim came highly recommended
by his fellow guerrillas.
Over time, Kim Il-sung would purge his enemies, remove any challenge to his power, and center
society completely around him.
In this video, we look at how the Democratic People's Republic of Korea constructed a cult
of personality around its founding father and his family.
In
September 1945, Kim was presented to the public as a "hero of the Korean people".
His first ever appearance in the official newspaper of the Workers' Party of Korea - the
Rodong Sinmun - refers to him as simply "Commander Kim Il-sung".
Stalin on the other hand is referred to as "the Generalissimo, the Supreme Guide of the
weak and small nations in the whole world!"
It is a lofty term, and surprising to see in light of what would happen afterwards.
In December 1945, the Soviets appointed him the Chief Secretary of the Northern Bureau
of the Communist Party.
Prior to this, it had not been certain whether the man would be able to stay in power.
But now Kim's position as the leader of the emerging DPRK proto-state was assured.
All political regimes feature the individual praise of their rulers.
Just the nature of the beast.
But mere praise does not make a cult.
What defines a cult is that its leader is widely worshipped and venerated - usually
in a coordinated fashion.
This veneration goes far beyond mere praise.
And is a phenomenon in which it does not matter whether the followers are being sincere or
genuine in their worship.
The term "cult of personality" of course dates to Nikita Khrushchev's four hour long secret
speech in 1956.
The speech would have large repercussions in the Soviet world, and we will revisit it
later.
In the December 1945 issue of the Rodong, an article appeared titled "The Brilliant
History of Comrade Kim Il-sung's Struggle".
It hailed Kim's achievements as a guerrilla.
A few weeks later, Kim would have the opportunity to address the nation in January 1, 1946 - his
first New Year Address.
A tradition he carried until his death in 1994.
In May 1946, the Rodong printed a list of propaganda slogans.
And in here, two significant changes.
First was that Stalin received a demotion.
He went from the Generalissimo and Supreme Guide to "friend of the Korean people".
"Commander Kim Il-sung" on the other hand became "Chairman Kim Il-sung - the Great Leader
of the Korean Nation".
October 1946, the country's first university opened and it was named after him: Kim Il-sung
University.
The university would be the country's first institution to be named after the growing
leader.
In September of 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was formally proclaimed
and the Soviet army withdrew from the Korean peninsula.
The DPRK's founding comes a month after the establishment of the Republic of Korea down
south.
I want to take another pause here to discuss cult building activities.
Historically, leadership cults have emerged in states showing three distinct categories
of behavior.
First is the centralized production of praise and propaganda.
State power is directly leveraged to produce fawning content about the leader, while preventing
unauthorized works from circulating.
Omnipresent praise of the leader's charisma and capabilities are often placed in public
areas.
Second is loyalty-signaling, or the creation of a common knowledge that those who publicly
recognize the leader and his exceptional qualities will be rewarded.
And on the other side of the coin, those who fail to get in line will be punished.
For instance, those people wearing the Mao badge during the Cultural Revolution.
Or memorize quotes from the Little Red Book.
These rewards and punishments need not be material.
Sometimes people might be simply seeking to avoid social disapproval from their peer group.
But physical harassment or worse are not uncommon.
The third ingredient would be the use of cult objects and rituals.
Cult objects do not represent the leader per se, but signify some connection to them.
For instance during the Chinese Cultural Revolution, people started carrying mangos.
Pictures of mangos were being put on commercial products.
And so on.
The mangos are not a literal symbol of Mao - but rather convey his exceptional qualities
or status.
Rituals of worship are a way to intensify the emotions of the people so to build strong
attachments to both the leader and the cult object.
They are encouraged by the state and its regime elites to build upon communal identity and
over time create a shared language between the people.
Kim's star was on the rise.
But the Soviets held ultimate authority in North Korea throughout the late 1940s.
And they styled the country after their own.
A centralized government with local level branches and the facade of a multi-party system.
For instance, the Korean Democratic Party.
Nominally non-communist, it was in reality allied with the ruling WPK and led by Choe
Yong-gon, 1st Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army and secret WPK member.
The North Korean economy would be an orthodox, centrally planned one with the goal of suppressing
markets.
The state owned every business and provided every job.
And in 1946 the country seized land from its former owners and redistributed it to the
people.
The goal was to craft a Stalinist "little USSR" that remains in the Soviet sphere of
influence.
Thus the Soviets implemented the Kim Il-sung cult for the DPRK because the Soviets had
a cult of their own at the time - the one they had for Stalin.
The Soviets followed a similar playbook for other countries they occupied after World
War II: East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Poland, and so on.
In 1950, Kim Il-sung and the North Koreans invaded South Korea and started the Korean
War.
Initial success soon gave way to an UN counterattack and then starting in 1951 a long stalemate
on the 38th parallel.
Domestically, this situation was not good for Kim.
He started the whole war after all and now it was going terribly.
At this point, Kim began purging his political enemies for their supposed mismanagement of
the war effort in a likely effort to deflect blame.
In 1951, Kim purged Ho Kai-i, a Soviet Korean.
Ho and Kim disagreed over the future direction of the Workers Party.
Ho wanted one more in line with the Soviet Party - in that it should be run by elites.
Kim on the other hand preferred a mass line party more like China's.
The purge of the Soviet Koreans - and the Soviet Union's general aloofness throughout
the Korean War - were the first signs of separation between the two countries.
And it further centralized Kim's personal power in the DPRK.
In February 1956, Soviet leader Khrushchev delivers his famous Secret Speech at the 20th
Congress of the CPSU.
The subsequent De-Stalinization trend leads to a general "thaw" across the world’s socialist
countries.
Several Stalinist governments in Eastern Europe - for instance, Poland and Bulgaria - fell
and were replaced with more liberal ones.
These changes were not welcome in North Korea.
The Kim Il-sung cult - like as I mentioned - is modeled on Stalin's.
Kim told the Soviet embassy that he would implement its recommendations.
But the Rudong deleted the Speech's comments on the cult of personality.
Kim received a dressing down in Moscow from Khrushchev for his continued Stalinist style
of rule.
It opened the door for two factions of DPRK communists - backed by the Soviet Union and
the PRC - to challenge his grip on power in a situation called the "August Incident".
Kim used the secret police to track and eventually purge the reformists.
Rather severely, actually.
The purges would continue for years, with the last big wave in 1960.
Several faction members had to flee the country, crossing the Yalu River into China.
Ultimately, this solidified Kim Il-sung's grip over his country.
Only 75 of the 527 members of the WPK Central Committee survived the purges.
Kim and his guerrilla faction emerged with the greatest share with 68% of the central
committee seats.
However, the whole kerfuffle also meant that his personality cult had to lay low for a
little while.
Throughout this time and the early 1960s, official newspapers referred to Kim by his
job title: the Premier.
The cult certainly still existed.
Foreigners there can feel it.
And Kim still received praise, especially during his birthday celebration, when they
referred to him as the "Esteemed comrade".
However, cult-building activities - you might say - were at a minimum.
In 1955, Kim Il-sung gave a speech introducing his ideology Juche, which roughly means "master
of one's own self".
I am not really going to go too heavy into this, but the ideology's overarching principle
is self-reliance.
The ideology soon developed into one where the DPRK strove to achieve independence in
politics, self-sustenance in economics, and self-defense in military.
To achieve this, the nation must come together under the guidance of a leader who is at the
center of society.
Thus, loyalty to that leader is number one.
The North Korean government by now was honing its system for cementing that leader into
the center of society.
The government began circulating new messages amongst the North Korean diaspora living in
Japan.
Pyongyang-aligned Koreans there published history books about Kim's childhood and his
guerrilla activities against the Japanese.
Their newspapers started referring to him as the Esteemed Leader and other lofty titles.
Remember what I said about the three activities of cult-building.
The North Korean diaspora in Japan would see the first of those activities - the centralized
production of praise and propaganda.
In 1967, Kim Il-sung wiped away the last remaining dissonant elements within his party and country.
Within his guerrilla faction, a number of his former comrades still remembered him as
merely "Commander Kim Il-sung" rather than as a living God.
They resisted his cult and led by Pak Kum-chol, a fellow guerrilla and the country's second
most powerful politician, they would attempt a final overthrow.
This group was known as the Kapsan Faction, and Kim Il-sung soon became aware of it.
And on May 25th, 1967 he gave a speech attacking the faction - calling for a "monolithic ideological
system" centered only on him.
The faction was purged.
And now there would be nothing left to hold back the cult of personality growing around
Kim Il-sung and his family.
It truly was a turning point in the country's history.
Kim's son Kim Jong-il had a significant role to play in the cult's intensification.
Up until the May 25th speech in 1967, the regime's leading successor was presumed to
be Kim Il-sung's little brother Kim Yong-ju.
Kim Yong-ju recently died actually in December 2021 at the age of 101!
What a life!
Anyway, the little brother - said to be more of a classical Marxist - lost out in a power
struggle.
Kim Il-sung appointed his 26-year old son to carry out the instructions he gave at the
meeting.
The younger Kim, well aware that he shouldn’t mess this up, went all in.
In 1967, the Rodong sinmun ramped up its use of the word "suryong" or "leader" over a hundred-fold
from the previous year.
The state once more started referring to Kim Il-sung as the Esteemed Leader, and added
new titles like "Ever-Victorious Steel Commander" and of course, the "Great Leader".
In other words, the centralized production of excessively flattering praise and propaganda.
Notably, the Party dictated that all North Koreans had to wear a Kim Il-sung badge on
their clothing.
In other words, the creation of loyalty-signaling efforts.
Kim Il-sung's birthday on April 15th became a national holiday, the most important day
of the year, the Day of the Sun.
On this day, the nation holds massive military parades, exhibitions, and athletic competitions.
North Koreans start laying commemorative wreaths and floral baskets at thousands of Kim Il-sung
statues.
Children receive candy and cookies at ceremonies in school.
After which, they bow in front of Kim portraits and say "Thank you".
In other words, rituals and cult objects.
This is not a comprehensive review of all of North Korea's cult building activities.
I left out the massive golden Kim Il-sung statue.
But you get the point.
Kim eventually expanded this cult of personality beyond himself to his entire family.
And it has been used as a mechanism for succession - a challenge for any authoritarian dictatorship.
While a couple modern regimes have gone from a founder to their children, very few have
managed to transition from the second generation to a third.
That it succeeded shows just how much the family cult has been institutionalized within
the North Korean political system.
Kim's descendants are now said to possess a sacred bloodline, and the country’s entire
political system revolves around it.
It will be difficult to build a new system without that line being present in some way.