When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un met with the ruling Workers’ Party last week, he had some good news. The country, which has long struggled with civil war, hungerexpected a “fairly good” harvest this year, he said, and had recently signed a mutual defense treaty with Russia.
But the most important news may well be the dress of officials at the meeting in Pyongyang, the capital: breast pins bearing the image of Mr. Kim, according to photos released by state media.
Mr. Kim’s family has ruled North Korea since its founding in 1948 and has long indoctrinated its people to revere the Kims as godlike figures. Every home and office building has portraits of Mr. Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-sung, and his father, Kim Jong-il, hanging on the walls. Every North Korean is required to wear a pin bearing the image of one of the two senior Kims Or a double image badge on their chest.
By introducing a pin with his image, Mr. Kim is elevating his idolatry and the cult of personality surrounding him to levels previously reserved only for his grandfather, who ruled from 1948 until his death in 1994, and his father, who succeeded him and ruled until 2011, according to South Korean officials and analysts. With the introduction, North Koreans now have a choice of three pins and images.
If the tradition continues, the image of the last leader – now that of Kim Jong-un – will eventually become the most common choice.
“This is part of Kim Jong-un’s efforts to establish his own independent image as a leader,” Kim Inae, a deputy spokeswoman for the South Korean government’s Unification Ministry, said Monday.
North Korea introduced the Kim Il-sung badge in 1970, after the country’s founder purged all domestic competitors to establish a monolithic regime. Kim Il-sung was 58 at the time. Kim Jong-il’s badge was introduced in 1992, when he was 50. By then, he had solidified his status as heir apparent and was ruling the country alongside his ailing father.
Lapel badges have since become the most recognizable element of the cult of personality. But they began to lose their appeal Ordinary North Koreans have found them wildly popular, especially after a famine that killed millions in the 1990s. Once considered sacred objects by North Koreans, they were smuggled into China and sold as cheap tourist souvenirs near the border with North Korea. North Korean defectors have called them “signs of slavery.”
Ms. Kim, of the Unification Ministry, linked the introduction of the new Kim Jong-un badge to Mr. Kim’s efforts to unify the country around his leadership as he faces economic difficulties And the perceived threat of external influences, including K-pop entertainment from rival South Korea.
When he came to power after his father’s death in 2011, Mr. Kim quickly established a totalitarian regime through what South Korean officials and analysts have called a “reign of terror”. Anyone seen as a challenge to his authority disappeared or was accomplished Or murdered.
But he has struggled to deliver on his family’s promise to the long-suffering North Korean people: to build a “strong and prosperous country” where people would no longer have to tighten their belts because of food shortages or fear invasion by the United States.
Mr Kim has struggled economically, unable to convince Washington to lift sanctions on his country over its nuclear weapons development. His credentials with his people relied largely on his carefully choreographed image as the leader who finally made North Korea a nuclear-weapon state.
Under Mr. Kim, North Korea has conducted four underground nuclear tests and developed a fleet of missiles, including long-range rockets capable of reaching the continental United States. On Monday, the last day of the Workers’ Party meeting, the country said it had conducted underground nuclear tests. a new ballistic missile capable of carrying a “very large warhead.”
Despite these military successes, Mr Kim’s continued power depends on his ability to reinvigorate the personality cult and keep the North Koreans at bay. according to outside news.
Mr. Kim has tried to reinvent his family’s rule, presenting himself as a youthful, energetic and even transformative leader. He has emphasized his family lineage by dressing like his grandfather, but he has also appeared to distance himself from his ancestors in an effort to emerge from their long shadow and show that he is a worthy leader.
This year he gave up a long-standing goalset by his grandfather to reunite the country with the South and branded Seoul an enemy that must be subdued, if necessary, by nuclear war. This year, North Korea has not made as much of a splash on Kim Il-sung’s birthday as it once did. State propagandists have begun to praise Mr. Kim as they once did his father and grandfather, calling him “the Sun” of the Korean people and the “father” of all Koreans, and have begun distributing portraits of him to hang in government buildings and homes.
The distribution of the badge reflects Mr Kim’s growing confidence in his single-handed dictatorship, analysts said.
“This makes it official that he is now on the same level as his ancestors, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il,” said Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
