[A day after North Korea announced the death of its longtime ruler, Kim Jong-il, televised video and
photographs distributed by the reclusive state on Tuesday showed scenes of mass
hysteria and grief among citizens and soldiers across the capital. The images,
many of them carefully selected by the state Korean Central News Agency,
appeared to be part of an official campaign to build support for Mr. Kim’s
successor, his third son, Kim Jong-un.]
By Choe Sang-Hun And Norimitsu Onishi
 |
Korea Central News Agency, via European Pressphoto Agency
North Koreans visited designated mourning sites in Pyongyang
on Tuesday to pay their respects to Kim Jong-il.
|
SEOUL, South Korea — Among countless mourners at a public square in North Korea, the kneeling middle-aged man in an
off-white windbreaker stands out. The state broadcaster’s camera zooms in as he
wails, rocking back and forth with clenched fists, his grief punctuated by the
white puffs of his breath visible in the cold of the capital, Pyongyang.
The camera lingers a few
seconds too long on this perfect mourner. A couple of rows away, two teenage
boys stand motionless, seemingly uncertain about how to behave. They look
toward the man — perhaps even at the camera beyond him — then briefly away,
before also dropping to their knees to weep.
A day after North Korea announced the death of its longtime ruler, Kim Jong-il, televised video and
photographs distributed by the reclusive state on Tuesday showed scenes of mass
hysteria and grief among citizens and soldiers across the capital. The images,
many of them carefully selected by the state Korean Central News Agency,
appeared to be part of an official campaign to build support for Mr. Kim’s
successor, his third son, Kim Jong-un.
In his first public
appearance since his father’s death, Kim Jong-un visited the mausoleum in
Pyongyang where Kim Jong-il’s body lay in state, covered with a red blanket.
The coffin was surrounded by white chrysanthemums and Kimjongilia, a flower
named after the deceased leader.
Kim Jong-un was
accompanied by a group of senior party and military officials, giving the
outside world a hint about whom he might be relying on as he seeks to
consolidate control over a dynasty that has controlled North Korea since it was
founded by his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, whose death in 1994 led to even
greater outpouring of public mourning.
Contrived as they might
look to Western eyes, the wild expressions of grief at funerals — the
convulsive sobbing, fist pounding and body-shaking bawling — are an accepted
part of Korean Confucian culture, and can be witnessed at the funerals of the
famous and the not famous alike in South Korea. But in the North, the culture
of mourning has been magnified by a cult of personality in which the country’s
leader is considered every North Korean’s father.
As such, the public
expressions of grief are not so much an assessment of Kim Jong-il’s stewardship
over North Korea — his failings have become increasingly known to North Koreans
in recent years, especially to the privileged class of citizens shown in the
videos and photographs released in the past two days. Rather, they are in some
ways, at least, the expected way to mourn the passing of a father; not hewing
to this tradition would invite social or state opprobrium, as the two teenage
boys in the videos seemed to grasp instinctively.
Park Jong-chul, an
analyst at the government-financed Korea Institute for National Unification in
Seoul, said that much of the grief on display in Pyongyang was genuine. Fear
and uncertainty about the North’s future were also behind the flow of emotions,
but some degree of coercion as well.
“Other North Koreans may
be doing it as they think they should or because they are being watched,” Mr.
Park said.
For more than six
decades, the Kim family, starting with Kim Il-sung, ruled the country as if it
were one extended family. People called the Kims “father” and “parent.”
Propaganda murals show North Korean soldiers clinging to the Kims as children
do to their parents. Newlyweds pay homage at the nearest Kim Il-sung statue. As
filial children take religious care of a parent’s tomb in traditional Korean
culture, citizens sweep around the Kim monuments, some each morning.
“So they do really feel
as if the head of the nation has been cut off,” said Brian R. Myers, an expert
on North Korean ideology at Dongseo University in South Korea. “Naturally, that
makes people feel a certain shock or trauma regardless of whether they really
felt a strong personal affection for Kim Jong-il.”
Mr. Myers said a
critical failure in the West’s understanding of North Korea was the tendency to
underestimate the cult of personality and the importance of state loyalty
there. In the North, he said, “nationalism and state loyalty are mutually
reinforcing,” so that even when people are displeased by their country’s
direction, they identify strongly with the state.
Still, Kim Jong-il’s
death has not inspired as much grief as his father’s, analysts said. Under Kim
Jong-il, North Korea’s food shortages worsened. A growing gap in loyalty to the
regime developed “between those with vested interests and living in Pyongyang
and those living in the outlying provinces,” Mr. Park said.
Even North Korean
defectors living in South Korea typically recall Kim Il-sung with affection,
while saying little about Kim Jong-il, or denigrating him. North Korea’s
government has been carefully orchestrating the transition to the grandson, a
figure with an even thinner record of accomplishments.
When Kim Jong-un made
his public debut last year, he was prepared so that he would look just like his
grandfather. He was overweight. He wore his hair slicked back. He clapped his
hands at party meetings and received kowtowing generals older than his father
with a casual gravitas North Koreans identified with his grandfather.
“He was such a spitting
image of his grandfather that when he first appeared on TV, many North Koreans
broke into tears, hailing him as the second coming of Kim Il-sung,” said a
South Korean intelligence official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity
because he was not authorized to speak to the news media.
The campaign continued
Tuesday. At the Pyongyang National Theater, actors and actresses were
photographed crying, effectively instructing the nation how to behave. The
public grief had a goal, as the actors and actresses made clear as they urged
the nation to “turn sadness into strength and courage.”
Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and Norimitsu
Onishi from Tokyo.
U.S. AND SOUTH KOREA CAUTIOUSLY REACH OUT TO NORTH KOREA
[Given the age and inexperience of Kim Jong-un, who is
believed to be in his late 20s, questions persisted over whether he could
consolidate his power or would become the figurehead of a collective leadership
where the military and his uncle would emerge as power brokers. Jang
Song-thaek, 65, the brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il, grew influential under Mr.
Kim’s rule and was often cited as a possible regent for Kim Jong-un.]
By Choe Sang-Hun
The
allies’ desire not to provoke North Korea and to see a stable transition of
power in Pyongyang was underlined on Wednesday when Seoul allowed private
organizations and individuals to send their condolences over the death of Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader whose
death was announced on Monday.
Hours
earlier, the State Department said American officials had met North Korean
diplomats at the United Nations in New York after the announcement to continue
discussions of possible food aid for
the North, which were first held in Beijing last week.
Victoria
Nuland, a spokeswoman of the State Department, said the Beijing talks were
inconclusive. “So we’re going to have to keep talking about this,” she said.
“And given the mourning period, frankly, we don’t think we’ll be able to have
much more clarity and resolve these issues before the new year.”
The
gestures showed that Seoul and Washington, which have expressed sympathy for
the North Korean people but not explicitly for the regime, were signaling their
readiness to engage with the emerging leadership in Pyongyang when it was
ready.
On
Tuesday, South Korea decided not to send a government delegation to Mr. Kim’s
funeral in Pyongyang on Dec. 28 but allowed the families of former President
Kim Dae-jung and the former Hyundai chairman, Chung Mon-hun, to visit. On
Wednesday, it said it would allow private groups and individuals, such as the
foundation named after the late President Roh Moo-hyun, who held a summit with
Mr. Kim in 2007, to send condolences by mail or fax.
South
Korea remains angry over the North’s artillery attack on a South Korean island
and the sinking of a South Korean warship that it also blamed on the North.
Fifty South Koreans were killed in the two incidents last year.
On
Wednesday, defectors from North Korea and human rights activists in South Korea
released giant balloons containing propaganda leaflets into North Korea. The
leaflets denounced the hereditary power transfer in Pyongyang .
Given the
age and inexperience of Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be in his late 20s,
questions persisted over whether he could consolidate his power or would become
the figurehead of a collective leadership where the military and his uncle
would emerge as power brokers. Jang Song-thaek, 65, the brother-in-law of Kim
Jong-il, grew influential under Mr. Kim’s rule and was often cited as a
possible regent for Kim Jong-un.
The first
thing Kim Jong-il did when he unveiled his youngest son as heir last year was
to give him two key military titles: four-star general and vice chairman of the
Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party. But his control on
the hard-line People’s Army, whose influence has grown under his father’s
songun, or “military-first” policy, remains untested. The military was
considered the most resistant to the idea of giving away the North’s nuclear
weapons in return for outside aid.
There was
some apprehension that Kim Jong-un might choose to raise tensions to establish
his leadership credentials with the military, said Cheong Seong-chang, an
analyst at the Sejong Institute in South Korea.
On
Wednesday, North Korean television showed senior military leaders saluting Kim
Jong-un, who received mourners at the Kumsusan mausoleum, where his father lay
in state inside a glass case for public viewing.
The state
television repeatedly broadcast images of senior military leaders pledging
allegiance to Kim Jong-un.
The
South’s National Intelligence Service reported to the National Assembly that
North Korea put its military on heightened alert as the regime moved to
consolidate behind the new leader. Shortly after Mr. Kim’s death was announced
on Monday, North Korean troops were ordered to cancel their field training and
return to the barracks, Won Se-hoon, the head of the intelligence agency, was
quoted as saying by lawmakers.
The order
was given under the name of Kim Jong-un, an indication that he was in control
of the North’s 1.2 million-strong military, the South’s national news agency,
Yonhap, reported on Wednesday, quoting an anonymous government source.
The spy
agency also told the Parliament’s intelligence committee that security has been
tightened in major cities across the country.
The
regime’s hurry to establish the young Kim’s leadership, while the nation was
still grieving over his father’s death, also reflected his vulnerability. Kim
Jong-il himself had been solidly established as successor when his father, the
North’s founding president Kim Il-sung, died in 1994.
“When Kim
Il-sung died, talking about Kim Jong-il’s succession while the country was
gripped in mourning, was considered sacrilegious,” said Choi Jin-wook, an
analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
The
prospect of uncontrollable instability in the North also worries its neighbors.
China, North Korea’s traditional ally, moved quickly to show its support.
Chinese President Hu Jintao went to the North Korean Embassy in Beijing on
Tuesday to express condolences.
On
Wednesday, Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and four other members of the ruling
Communist Party’s Politburo Standing Committee paid their respects at the
embassy.
