Charles River Editors - Kim Il-sung: The Controversial Life and Legacy of North Korea’s First Supreme Leader

Everything is decided by a person's thoughts, and if he is ideologically motivated, there is nothing he cannot do. attributed to Kim Il-sung

Despite the harrowing layers of poverty and oppression that lie at the core of the state's nest of lies, state researchers claim that North Korea is the 2 nd happiest country in the world, falling just behind China. Riots and protests are surprisingly scarce. The locals that tourists and journalists approach, regardless of their status in society, sport the same plastic smile and insist that they are more than content with their lives, made possible only by the glorious Eternal President, Kim Il-sung.

Framed portraits of the fabled Kims, which are displayed in every North Korean home, are expected to be kept in pristine condition. If a fire were to break out in one of these homes, these portraits are to be the fleeing family's first priority. Blind to the needs of the unfed populace, an estimated 34,000 bronze, marble, and plaster statues and busts have been chiseled in the likeness of Kim Il-sung, each staffed by its own set of guards and protected as if it were the living leader. Another 140,000 monuments and structures have been erected to immortalize the revolutionary heroics of the Kim family. Emergency bunkers have even been constructed below ground to house these precious artifacts in the event of a sudden declaration of war.

Above all, what best encapsulates the state's inexplicable idolatry of the seemingly godlike man is the Keumsusan Memorial Palace, aka the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun. The sprawling 3,500,000 square meters (865 acres) of land, formerly the presidential residence and office of Kim Il-sung, has since been converted to a sumptuously lavish mausoleum, preserving the mummified body of Kim Il-sung in an elegant glass coffin. According to Hwang Jang-Yop, the former International Secretary of the North Korean Workers' Party, a dizzying $900 million was poured into the construction of the florid palace. The state could have easily used this sum to purchase enough corn to feed all of North Korea for at least 3 years, or invested in revamping the rest of the cities' failing infrastructure, but even so, the robotic smiles plastered on the North Koreans' faces do not seem to waver.

Mark Scott Johnsons picture of the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun

Rather than hold the despot accountable for the state's hopeless inability to hoist itself out of its abject poverty and miserable living conditions, the state's patriarch is placed on an untouchable pedestal. Kim Il-sung may be long gone, but North Korean life continues to revolve around him. The North Korean calendar, for instance, begins in 1912, the year of the fallen patriarch's birth.

During the Kim Il-sung era, one could only meet the darling leader after being thoroughly briefed on the proper attire, etiquette, and language to use in the presence of the Great Suryeong. All those who wished to be graced with his presence postmortem are primed with equal precision. To begin with, men are required to wear crisp suits complete with matching neckties, whereas women are made to wear conservative black suits or hanboks . Before entering the inner sanctum, one must first enter a wind tunnel that blows even the smallest particle of dust off one's clothes and shoes.

But why is this mere man regarded as such a deity among the North Koreans, and how does this darkly fascinating figure continue to keep an entire nation under his spell?

Kim Il-sung's autobiographies, full of histrionics, paint a clearer picture of this compelling megalomaniac. In the preface of his self-penned story, the Great Leader passes himself off as a common man with humble beginnings. I have never considered my life to be extraordinary, Kim Il-sung wrote. 2 pages later, however, the rambling account goes on to assert that [his] whole life...is the epitome of the history of [his] country and [his] people.

According to ancient folklore, the father of Dangun (legendary patriarch of Gojoseon , the first Korean kingdom) had descended from the heavens, setting foot on the peak that crowned Paektu Mountain, an active volcanic range straddling the China-North Korea border. Regardless of all the contradictory evidence, state-issued biographies insist that the commander of the state, too, was born on the ice-capped mountain. North Koreans have also been programmed to believe that Kim Il-sung, a clairvoyant, mentalist, and messianic liberator rolled into one, was an almighty god that had designed the world millennia ago, making his grand debut as a mortal man in 1912 for the very first time.