A few days ago, a new law was issued in North Korea. It was described by the Western media as intending to eradicate all forms of foreign influence: Punishment that goes as far as the death penalty for anyone caught acquiring Western movies or wearing foreign clothes. Speaking some of the country’s dialects is another cause for punishment. Everyone from the detainee’s neighborhood is summoned to witness the execution of the sentence. Whoever does not show up is considered a traitor.
Observers have linked the new law to the country’s worsening economic conditions, which have left North Korea on the verge of starvation: COVID-19 forced the country to shut itself off from the world, leaving it without the Chinese foodstuffs that had been keeping it alive. The country’s meager domestic resources are used to produce missiles and weapons of mass destruction. But this scourge was accompanied by what the regime sees as a blessing: Artistic and cultural products that used to be smuggled from China were not entering the country either.
This is how, as the authorities see it, the potential for people being exposed to ways of life in other countries, especially in South Korea, was weakened. Contemplate that, as Western commentators have warned, people were trapped in their homes for a year and a few months because of the coronavirus, forbidden from watching anything except for speeches and directives given by the great leader Kim Jong-un.
All of this is torture that falls under the category of the incredible and inconceivable, or the “horrifying,” as the Syrian writer Yassin al-Hajj Saleh put in his latest book, “The Horrifying and Its Representation.” But aren’t the conditions described above merely the means through which a regime that produces nothing but horror perpetuates itself: Keeping 26 million people in a permanent state of subjugation, fear of severe punishment, isolation from the outside world, poverty to the point of hunger, submission to republican inheritance, and the temperament of a very moody, totally unchecked ruler. This is besides the anxiety that arises from this regime’s armament projects, which endangers Koreans themselves before anyone else.
With all of that, we must admit that Kim Jong-un has some charm and that many of us, even if we don’t admit it, are captivated: When engaging with his actions, we do not react with the anger or resentment they deserve. We laugh and shake our heads with a mixture of ridicule and bewilderment. Of course, a small part of our reaction stems from his eccentric appearance, hairstyle and mannerisms. But the bulk of the reasons for this reaction are found elsewhere; supreme leader Kim has the ability, whether it is intentional or not, to turn cinema or literature into a reality. He exists in a space between art and reality, between the imaginary and the real. He thus manages to leave us treating him as though he were not a serious being. As though he doesn’t belong to this world. As though his political acts are not political. As though his tyranny is not tyranny.
What comes out of him thereby diverges from everything we know and expect, and there is probably no clear and precise definition of this likely unprecedented freak show called Kim Jong-un or its acts. So, we are faced with a massive paradox that leaves us, as paradoxes do, laughing. True, the stark contrast between his baby face and the gravity of his crimes bring his monstrosity and the evil defects that reside to the surface. However, it is also true that he induces another sentiment, leaving us feeling like the man is a creature resembling Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. It is a machine stuffed with evil, stripped of any brains, which causes harm as machines could.
When we assess Kim according to the standards of other political regimes, what do we find? A nationalist who inherited his grandfather Kim Il-sung’s theory of “self-reliance” (‘Juche’)? A Communist and Marxist-Leninist? By adopting such descriptions, it seems as though we are painting Kim with a brush of a contrived seriousness that is not grounded in reality. He is someone who cannot be associated with a doctrine, any doctrine. It could be accurate to say that his regime is the remnant of the disintegration that in 1989 struck this kind of political system across the globe, but this fact does not provide much insight into a regime that has managed to survive for more than three decades after the collapse of the USSR.
Let us think for a moment about tyrants such as Stalin or Saddam Hussein or Hafez and Bashar al-Assad in order to understand what is meant by the fascination with Kim Jong-un. They are barren and predictable, incapable of making people smile or laugh. Perhaps Muammar Gaddafi comes closest to the model we are talking about: Strange and exceptional in many ways, from his dress, appearance, speeches and diplomacy, to the novel political regime that he created and called the “Jamahiriya.” Donald Trump perhaps shared with Kim an infantile narcissism that almost turned them into friends.
In any case, however, the North Korean leader is causing the death of human beings and the misery and torment of millions. As for the degree of rage he deserves- and which, for reasons mentioned above, he has evaded- he will most likely fail to evade it for long. Those who are fascinated by him, like myself, may be inclined to take their wrath out on his grim grandfather, who established this regime in 1948. But on the decisive day, if that day comes, they will not grieve for him any more than they grieved for Gaddafi. That charmer, just as he does not induce hatred at first, does not induce sadness at the end. Emotions, whether hate or sadness, do not function with these exotic machines!
