Kim Jong-un (Kim3) is in the news again. This time, the news is not about nukes, missiles, or purging. On April 8, 2021, he addressed ten thousand WPK (the Workers’ Party of Korea) Cell Secretaries who had been summoned from all over North Korea.
He made a startling remark to the Party’s elite class, alluding to the need to tighten their belts because the nation was facing economic hardship.
As a measure to overcome the hardship, he informed the Party leadership, “I have decided to adopt the harshest ‘arduous march’ policies for the Cell Secretaries of the entire Party—starting with the Party Central Committee to all the Party organizations—in an effort to lessen even just a little the pains our people have suffered. Up to now, they have entrusted and followed our Party as their own mother and safeguarded our Party for decades, notwithstanding their relentless pain and suffering. The [arduous march] is for maximizing the people’s welfare benefits, their material, and cultural needs….”
No doubt that Kim3’s sudden decree made an impact on the ten thousand party elites, even shocked them. The cell secretaries represent the nucleus of the executives that control the Party members numbering about 3 million, one-seventh of the population.
The cell secretaries would remember the last time they heard “arduous march,” the words that Kim3’s father, Kim Jong-il (Kim2), had used in his New Years’ message in 1996. Kim3 was almost twelve years old then, living the life of a prince just getting interested in basketball, according to Kenji Fujimoto, the Kim royal family’s chef. Kim3 and his older brother Jong-chul would bring together their palace staff, Kim2’s entertainment crew, and their guardsmen and play basketball games in the palace gym. As such, Kim3 has never experienced anything arduous, completely unaware of what the words mean.
On the other hand, the cell secretaries had seen deaths all around them from the early 1990s and on, as the unthinkable famine took its toll. Hwang Jang-yop, the former International Secretariat and mentor to Kim1 and Kim2, defected to South Korea in 1997 to tell the world about the famine that had claimed 3 million lives. These deaths mounted as the food distribution system failed. All the while, the Party leadership was telling the people not to worry, just wait. Good people across North Korea stood by patiently, but the food never came. Those who waited for the Party to rescue them died waiting. Those who survived consumed boiled tree bark and wild vegetation. Others scattered in search of food, and many died at railroad stations and in train cars. Mr. Hwang had told me about his conversations with various railroad station managers whose main task was clearing out corpses daily.
The cell secretaries knew too well about the horror the arduous march had wrought during the Kim2 era, and now, they were hearing the same words out of Kim3’s mouth. This time, Kim3 was saying that the Party leaders should take the brunt of the hardship. It was as if Kim3 was aware that the Party was responsible for failing the people last time and that history was about to repeat itself.
In another speech, Kim3 implored the cell secretaries to do their duty to rid the anti-socialism syndrome spreading among the masses, especially the youth. He said, “You must remember that if the Party cell is too weak, the anti-socialism, non-socialist phenomena will prosper and destroy our revolutionary stronghold. You must not compromise or yield from our [revolutionary] struggle one bit.”
Given these speeches, I would be baffled if I were a cell secretary sitting in the Party convention hall. What does the Supreme Leader want me to do? He says that the second coming of famine is upon us, and I should do everything to keep people from starving, even to sacrifice my own share of food. And at the same time, I should do everything to purge anti-socialism syndrome now spreading across the country. Is that about right?
Well, the cell secretaries may have applauded Kim3’s speech with all their might, as often seen on the television screen, but one asks do they really understand what he wants? They are no fools. If they don’t applaud Kim3 like there was no tomorrow, there would be no tomorrow for them. As they applauded and cheered for Kim3, I am quite sure that they were thinking about their own hide and their families, never mind an anti-socialism syndrome. They wouldn’t care less about that. Their own survival would come first, no matter what.
The overriding question for the cell secretaries is—how will they share the food they don’t have? Following the famine in the 1990s, when people finally figured out that the Party had no resource or the will to resume the food distribution system for areas other than Pyongyang, they took matters into their own hands. They created jangmadang (marketplace) to buy, sell, and trade goods necessary for their daily survival. The marketplace prospered over the years, and reports of famine dropped off the radar.
To understand better the marketplace economic implications, here is a comprehensive description of jangmadang by Sang T. Choe (2015). The Party authorities tried to disband the market a number of times, even as they collected rental fees for the stalls. The jangmadang remained intact, and North Korea cannot survive without the market system today.
Come June 2020, a disturbing story went around concerning the Party’s failure to provide food ration in Pyongyang three months in a row. This story foreshadowed serious troubles ahead. The Pyongyang citizens had enjoyed preferential treatment all along, and their demise meant a far worse condition for the rest of the country. At the same time, shelves in the officially sanctioned markets grew empty because of the Covid lockdown.
People had to find a way to survive. They created a “grasshopper market,” an impromptu marketplace on streets near the official jangmadang. They call it grasshopper because it jumps around at a moment’s notice at early hours from 4 to 8 AM. The vendors managed to avoid the officials and their fees, enabling them to lower their prices to the delight of their customers.
The Party officials did not leave the grasshopper market alone. The Party deemed the new market illegal and proceeded to put a stop to it. The market police rousted the grasshopper marketeers, harassed them, and confiscated their goods.
According to a recent report by DailyNK, “The desperate vendors reportedly laid down on the police station floor and begged the officers to ‘make it possible for us to make a living,’ further saying that ‘If you take all our goods away and prohibit us from selling them without giving us an alternative, how are we supposed to survive?’” The market police said that they were following the Party’s orders to purge the grasshopper market.
Back to Kim3’s speech, if Kim3 was really worried about the second coming of the arduous march, he should have told the cell secretaries to help the people who are trying to make ends meet on their own, rather than busting them. His speech indicates that he is aware of the Party’s incompetence in terms of enhancing people’s welfare. Actually, Kim3 has blamed the cabinet officials for the economic failure earlier in February, stating, “The Cabinet failed to play a leading role in mapping out plans of key economic fields and almost mechanically brought together the numbers drafted by the ministries.”
I reckon he allowed KCNA, his official news agency, to report the dire situation to shift the blame, but he at least let the world know that there was a problem. In that sense, he seems more honest than his father, Kim2, who had kept the failure of the food distribution system secret. He even lied to his father, Kim Il-sung (Kim1), about it. When Kim1 eventually found out about the failure, he became incensed. According to Mr. Hwang, Kim1 cared about the people’s welfare, and Kim2 did not.
By the time Kim2 came up with the arduous-march slogan for his New Year’s message in 1996, the country was well into the unprecedented famine. He coined the slogan after Kim1’s “arduous march,” aka “100-day March” in Manchuria in December 1938, leading his partisan commandoes along the Apnok River near Mt. Baekdu. Kim1 is said to have endured the harshest winter overcoming the Japanese army despite the bitter cold and hunger, a moving legendary tale that every child learned as they grew up. Kim2 and his propaganda crew intended to use Kim1’s travails as a model for rallying the starving population. But his rallying cry didn’t take. People needed food, not words. The number of corpses multiplied as his propagandists told the people to suck it up as their Great Suryong had.
What Kim2 did next was beyond belief. At the height of the famine in 1997, Kim2 spent close to a billion dollars for building Kumsusan Palace to preserve Kim1’s corpse in perpetuity. That was enough money to feed the entire country for ten years. Kim2’s call for an arduous march was meant for the hoi polloi, not for the royal family. It is no wonder that every North Korean refugee I have met hates Kim2 with a passion.
Kim3’s call for an arduous march has a different subtext from Kim2. Kim3 may have publicly admitted the Party’s failure early on, but his fascination with nukes and missiles does not translate into his concern for the people. Despite the dire economic situation, his defense spending stands at an estimated $10 billion annually, about one-fifth of the GDP.
So, what does the nuclear program do for the North Korean people? They are not too thrilled about the notion that Kim3’s nukes are a source of their national pride, according to the micro poll CSIS conducted in 2018 with 50 North Korean residents. According to the survey, “70% of North Korean respondents said the nuclear program is NOT the source of national pride.” This poll represents a tiny sample of the population, but the anti-nuke sentiment is corroborated by the myriad communication channels inside North Korea.
His nukes were going to solve all the problems with the economy. But his justification for the nukes lost its luster at Hanoi. He apologized to the people by demoting himself to a mere mortal in his I-am-not-a-god speech when he returned to Pyongyang after his lonely train ride from Hanoi summit with the US President Trump.
For a brief moment, I had hoped that he realized the simple truth—one cannot eat nukes and missiles and that people would rather have food than nukes. But alas, his humility did not last long. He went back to his old ways, purged his diplomats, and reelevated himself to godhood. His latest edict for the cell secretaries left no doubt what he had in mind—nukes before food. As a god, he is prepared to drag people through another round of arduous march. But the second coming of the catastrophe must not be allowed.
Some time ago, the former Vice-Chair of The National Unification Advisory Council invited me to lunch at Seoul Club and asked me, “What do you think Lee Myung-bak administration could do during the year remaining in his term?”
I gave him my idea about building warehouses along the DMZ and fill them with food in preparation for the eventuality of another famine. I didn’t hear from him again. I doubted if he followed up with a feasibility study or anything like that. Most likely, he thought that the idea was not flashy enough, nor realistic.
The underlying premise of the DMZ food warehouses is that there always will be a need for food no matter what. It is not the be-all, end-all solution to Korean unification, but it is one piece of brick of the multi-prong approach needed to tackle the complex problem. I had a chance to visit the Camp Greaves site near the DMZ with a group of Korean poets in 2014. Walking around the old home of the 1st Marine unit during the Korean War and viewing the abandoned base and empty buildings, I thought of the UN soldiers who came to fight for freedom from halfway around the world. Freedom for the people they had never heard of.
They did something else. Besides repelling the communist invasion, the soldiers shared food with Korean civilians. The C-ration boxes were a godsend, kept a whole lot of people from starving to death. More than anything, Korean people remember the G.I.’s act of kindness that came with the cans of spam and beans. Hunger pain leaves an everlasting impression on a person, and the taste of food after days of starving leaves an even bigger impression. Those C-rations were not just handouts; they were a wise investment in human resources with continuing global implications.
Another thought came to me when I was walking around the grounds of Camp Greaves. These old bases would be ideal to warehouse food for starving people from across the DMZ. Just a few miles away.
Food and freedom go hand in hand. Here’s an opportunity America has demonstrated that these fundamental human rights were a worthwhile investment for South Korea and the world in the past. America can and should make the same investment for North Korean people who are starving. It’s a thought: America was born to lead, and leaders must.
