Read Online All Monsters Must Die by Magnus Bärtås - Free Book Online

declared: “Let the imperialist enemies come at us with their nuclear weapons, for there is no power on earth that can defeat our strength and love and the power of our belief, which thanks to the blood bond between mother and child create a fortress of single-heartedness. Our Great Mother, General Kim Jong-il!”
    IN HIS FINAL years, Kim Il-sung was plagued by a tumour the size of an orange on the side of his neck. Among the malnourished, these tumours — calcium deposits — aren’t uncommon. In North Korea they are called hok . Doctors didn’t dare operate on the leader because the growth was too close to his spinal cord and brain. But all photography of that side of him was forbidden, and on official occasions his bodyguards arranged themselves so as to block its view.
    In a Swedish national radio documentary by Lovisa Lamm, the Swedish diplomat Lars Bergqvist describes how he briefly met Kim Il-sung in the 1980s. He talks about how he couldn’t take his eyes off the enormous tumour, “which was also covered in hair.”
    After the meeting, he said to the North Korean chief of protocol: “It’s very interesting to meet Kim Il-sung, but that was a terrible growth he had. Shouldn’t it be removed?”
    â€œWhich growth?” the functionary replied. “No, he doesn’t have a tumour, it doesn’t exist.”
    Bergqvist understood that the thing was unmentionable and wrapped up the conversation. “All right then, let’s leave it at that.”
    The tumour could have been seen as a mark of nobility, proof of the simple roots that Kim Il-sung transcended. But not at that size. It ruined all that was inviting — those defined eyebrows and the symmetry of his peach-like cheeks.
    As a parental figure, Kim Il-sung is a synthesis of mother and father in the eyes of his citizens. The Korean word “ oboi ” (parent), which is most often used about the leader, is just a compound of the words “ ob ” (mother) and “ oi ” (father). In the large mosaics and cult imagery depicting the leader, his wife is seldom by his side. Mother/Father Kim Il-sung doesn’t need a woman, and all the citizens in the country are his children. In TV interviews at schools and orphanages, the children call Kim Il-sung “Father.” In Korea and Its Futures , Roy Richard Grinker describes a South Korean television spot in which a young North Korean boy is snacking on sweets. A Japanese journalist asks who gave him the candy, and the boy replies: “From the Great Leader, my father.”
    There are many stories, most of them from the KCNA , about how during a catastrophe the first things regular North Korean citizens rescue are portraits of the leader. After the floods that plagued the country in 1997, the KCNA reported: “When the water drained away in the areas that were hit, people were found buried in the clay and sand. Clutched to their chests were portraits carefully wrapped in plastic.”
    WE ARE ENCOURAGED to buy a bouquet of cloth flowers that some uniformed women are selling. They are the only people around. Then we are lined up and asked to bow before the statue, and a representative of the group approaches the pedestal and lays down the flowers. We are slightly embarrassed when we bow, but none of us protest. We’re being incorporated into North Korea’s choreography.
    After a short walk in the afternoon sun by the mirror-like Lake Samji, where we see small squirrels scurrying in the balsam poplars, we notice that the bouquet we bought and placed at the foot of the statue is being offered for sale again. But we don’t see any new customers.
    * * *
    BACK ON THE bus, Mr. Song tries to explain to us what Juche means and how the unique ideology gives the country direction, but it’s all very abstract and we aren’t any the wiser. In English, the word is sometimes translated as “self-reliance.” The Juche