When it comes to inventing honorifics for North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the communist nation's propagandists know no bounds. From mountain cliffs and village walls to school textbooks and television newscasts, Kim is hailed as the "Great Leader," "Heaven-sent Great General," "Guardian of Our Planet" — 1,200 titles in all, according to North Korea's state radio. He's most commonly known as the "Dear Leader," but among his other sobriquets are "The Illustrious General of All Illustrious Generals," "The Saint of All Saints" and "The Lodestar of the 21st Century."
| The Cream of the National Coffee? The Cheese of the Socialist Workers' Burger? |
It's all part of the personality cult trumpeted by syncophants state propaganda organs to underpin Kim's rule of the globe's most isolated country. Kim has earned other descriptions in the outside world as North Korea fences with the United States and its neighbors over its nuclear weapons program. U.S. Undersecretary of State John R. Bolton called him a "tyrannical dictator," saying Kim keeps "hundreds of thousands of his people locked in prison camps, with millions more locked in abject poverty."
| "Tinhat dictator" is one of my favorites. |
While thousands of people flee North Korea's desperate conditions every year, others remain true believers in Kim. Most have known only the rule of Kim and his father, the totalitarian patriarch Kim Il Sung — the "Great Leader" — who took over from Japanese colonizers after World War II. The son was once dismissed as an eccentric late-night carouser. But he proved a shrewd tactician who quickly solidified power after his father's 1994 death by using perks, nepotism and gulags to command loyalty. Along with inventing grand titles for Kim, the North's propaganda scribes depict him as an expert marksman who loves making movies, composes masterpiece operas and shoots five holes-in-one in a single golf round. Pyongyang's state-run Central Radio said in a November dispatch that many of Kim's 1,200 titles were bestowed by "dignitaries from 160 countries in five continents" who extolled the leader's "extraordinary personality, peerless leadership and immortal feats." The official press eulogizes Kim as "a philosophical giant" with "encyclopedic knowledge," "a master of literature, arts and architecture," "humankind's greatest genius of music," and the "greatest incarnation of human wisdom." They even deify him as "the present-day God."
| They used to say such things about Commodus, too. |
To drive home the message, school children are required to memorize Kim's aphorisms, usually off-the-cuff comments said to contain "all the truths of the world." Examples: "It is not money or an atomic bomb that moves the world, but a great idea," and "A man's height is the height of his thought."
The 62-year-old Kim is about 5-foot-3, and is reported to favor platform shoes, but he stands tall in official portraits against a backdrop of Manchurian blizzards or stormy seas.
| That's probably also the reason for the pompadour... |
Beyond the hype, Kim's official titles are general secretary of the Korean Workers' Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission, which controls the Korean People's Army, the world's fifth-largest at 1.1 million soldiers. But there's one title Kim lacks: He is never called president. When Kim Il Sung died, the younger Kim revised the constitution to leave the presidency "permanently vacant" in deference to his late father. |