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30acb86
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The fervor and single-mindedness of this deification probably have no precedent in history. It's not like Duvalier or Assad passing the torch to the son and heir. It surpasses anything I have read about the Roman or Babylonian or even Pharaonic excesses. An estimated $2.68 was spent on ceremonies and monuments in the aftermath of Kim Il Sung's death. The concept is not that his son is his successor, but that his son is his . North Korea has an equivalent of Mount Fuji--a mountain sacred to all Koreans. It's called Mount Paekdu, a beautiful peak with a deep blue lake, on the Chinese border. Here, according to the new mythology, Kim Jong Il was born on February 16, 1942. His birth was attended by a double rainbow and by songs of praise (in human voice) uttered by the local birds. In fact, in February 1942 his father and mother were hiding under Stalin's protection in the dank Russian city of Khabarovsk, but as with all miraculous births it's considered best not to allow the facts to get in the way of a good story.
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religion
ancient-egypt
ancient-rome
babylon
baekdu-mountain
bashar-al-assad
dynasties
francois-duvalier
hafez-al-assad
haiti
jean-claude-duvalier
joseph-stalin
khabarovsk
kim-il-sung
kim-jong-il
kim-jong-suk
miraculous-births
mount-fuji
north-korea
reincarnation
syria
mythology
atheism
russia
china
rome
egypt
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Christopher Hitchens |
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3b315a0
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Even in former days, Korea was known as the 'hermit kingdom' for its stubborn resistance to outsiders. And if you wanted to create a totally isolated and hermetic society, northern Korea in the years after the 1953 'armistice' would have been the place to start. It was bounded on two sides by the sea, and to the south by the impregnable and uncrossable DMZ, which divided it from South Korea. Its northern frontier consisted of a long stretch of China and a short stretch of Siberia; in other words its only contiguous neighbors were Mao and Stalin. (The next-nearest neighbor was Japan, historic enemy of the Koreans and the cruel colonial occupier until 1945.) Add to that the fact that almost every work of man had been reduced to shards by the Korean War. Air-force general Curtis LeMay later boasted that 'we burned down town in North Korea,' and that he grounded his bombers only when there were no more targets to hit anywhere north of the 38th parallel. Pyongyang was an ashen moonscape. It was Year Zero. Kim Il Sung could create a laboratory, with controlled conditions, where he alone would be the engineer of the human soul.
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1953
curtis-lemay
division-of-korea
hermit-kingdom
japan
korea
korea-under-japanese-rule
korean-demilitarized-zone
korean-war
mao-zedong
siberia
south-korea
pyongyang
world-war-ii
joseph-stalin
kim-il-sung
north-korea
china
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Christopher Hitchens |