The Hidden People of North Korea by Ralph Hassig, Kongdan Oh Page B

but he certainly does not know many things about his country, if only because officials keep bad news from him, just as he kept bad news from reaching his father. A possible case in point is the regime’s decision to end World Food Program (WFP) aid in 2005, even though the WFP estimated that North Korea would continue to experience a serious food shortfall. Three months later, with food already running out, Kim relented and permitted a partial resumption of food aid. A plausible explanation for this fiasco is that Kim’s agriculture officials misinformed him about the size of the 2005 harvest.
    Although Kim has a wealth of information about the outside world available to him from foreign media sources and from intelligence provided by North Koreans stationed abroad, he has limited first-hand experience with foreign lands and people. As a teenager he accompanied his father on a trip to Moscow in 1957 and to Eastern Europe in 1959. In 1965 he and his father visited Indonesia, the only time either of the Kims is known to have traveled by air. Since the 1980s Kim Jong-il has made occasional trips to China, and in 2001 and 2002, he visited Russia. In short, he has much less exposure to foreign lands than do many of his officials. The prism through which he views the world may be distorted by the movies he loves to watch, and his officials’ reluctance to be frank with him deprives him of a sounding board for his impressions and opinions. Interestingly, lack of experience has not inhibited his forming opinions about other countries or conducting international relations, as illustrated by the closed-door talk he gave to visiting Chongnyon officials.
    For Kim’s style of personal governance to be effective, he must have loyal and dependable followers. To garner this loyalty, he needs funds to reward followers because he is hardly the kind of leader who inspires others through his example or charisma, although some may follow him because they feel that their fate depends on keeping the regime in power or because they respected his late father. On the birthdays of Kim Jong-il and his father and on New Year’s Day, the top twenty thousand or so cadres receive special gifts, such as liquor, clothing, foreign food, and wristwatches. 54 People who please him especially, like his former Japanese chef, receive more expensive gifts, including luxury cars. Ordinary party and government officials receive coupons on Kim’s birthday for, say, a bottle of liquor and a carton of fruit. In 2008, local-level officials, depending on local economic conditions, received something like a domestic bottle of liquor, a toothbrush, and a bar of soap, while school children received several pieces of chewing gum, a few rice crackers, and a small pack or two of candy. 55
    Kim’s On-the-Spot Guidance
    In ancient Korea, the king would send out officials, sometimes in disguise, to report on conditions around the kingdom. Unlike the ancient kings, Kim Il-sung liked to conduct inspections personally; according to the North Korean press, Kim made eight thousand “on-the-spot guidance” tours in his lifetime, and Kim Jong-il has continued this tradition. In fact, these carefully arranged visits are practically the only time Kim appears in public. Since the late 1990s, he has made about one hundred public appearances a year, over half of them at military bases. These inspections keep people on their toes and serve a public relations function by suggesting that Kim cares about his people.
    A special unit called the Support for Inspection Unit ( bojangjo ) goes around preparing for these “number one” visits by sprucing up the inspection sites so they will please Kim. 56 People who live in the vicinity undergo new background checks to confirm their political reliability. Those not deemed reliable are cleared from the area or told to stay in their homes on inspection day. People who will come in contact with Kim are given health checks to insure they will not