Vaporize the Messenger
“People simply disappeared, always during the night. Your name was removed from the registers, every record of everything you had ever done was wiped out, your one-time existence was denied and then forgotten. You were abolished, annihilated: vaporized was the usual word.”
Today, the Dong-A Ilbo reports a surprising defection, and an unsurprising, yet on some level, rather remarkable result:
Recently, rumors have been spreading in North Korea that Jeong Ha Cheol (74-year-old), the propaganda secretary of the Workers’ Party, has defected from North Korea, stirring public sentiment.
Party officials have been going door-to-door to remove traces of Jeong from publications without giving any reason. Officials are painting over Jeong’s face with black ink on any pictures that show Jeong accompanying North Korean leader Kim Jong Il or its former leader Kim Il Sung. They are also censuring his name with black ink if there are any passages that include his name and sealing the book. Moreover, writings by Jeong have been torn to pieces. All households which have a few dozens of those books now are required to get rid of them since most North Korea publications are propaganda books.
The Daily NK adds this eerie pic:
The Ken Gause Guide to North Korean Apparatchiks does not list Jeong (or Jung) as having been on all of the main funeral committees, although the Dong-A makes it sound as if he had a long and distinguished career spooning out the official pablum. Among other jobs he held were Editor in Chief of the Rodong Sinmun and at least one job Kim Jong Il himself once held. He was apparently a close confidant of Kim until last seen in 2005. Then, nothing but a few rumors:
Some sources said that he was imprisoned at a concentration camp in North Pyongan Province because his faults were revealed during an intensive investigation into the staff of Central Broadcasting who was caught drinking during the daytime.
According to the sources, Jeong was sentenced as “a traitor against the party and revolution,” and was ordered to be erased from all the records, including publications. In short, he is unlikely to regain his power since he has been completely shunned by North Korean society.
This being North Korea, the vaporization process naturally has its own Confucian characteristic:
All these people were involved in the so-called, “August Clan Incident. The names of the children of Kim Sung Ae, Kim Il Sung’s third wife, who fell from political power and Seo Gwan-hee, former agricultural secretary of the Workers’ Party, who was shot to death on charges of espionage, were also removed from publications. You can see black marks quite often on North Korean political books. In North Korea, it is a principle that if one is accused of a serious crime, his or her family members and relatives (father’s side: up to second cousins, mother’s side: up to first cousins) are also sent to concentration camps or deep in the mountains, as it happened in the feudal age.
The remainder of the article speculates on the possible reasons for Jeong’s defection, including rumors of corruption, and notes other cases where senior officials were reportedly vaporized the same way. As with all reports on North Korean Kremlinology, it would be pretty interesting if actually true. It would mean that Hwang Jang Yop was no aberration, and that even within the regime’s ideological core, doublethink has become disillusionment and dissent.
Congrats to the Secretary!
I’ve only caught bits and pieces of it here and there over the years of studying about Korea, but my very tentative feeling is that there is a good bit of (Korean) Confucianism behind a good bit of what North Korea does.
Collective surveillance was part of the village codes in at least the Chosun Dynasty (1392-1910). It was probably codified at the national level as well — or at least as seen in the Censorate branch of government.
3 years of mourning was standard – as KJI did for his father.
Collective punishment of the village was part of the surveillance package. There were also village meetings where citizens who had done wrong were to expose their faults and be instructed on living better and good citizens praised for their deeds too. Similar things grew out of the Communist movement in Europe as well, but it is also a Confucian thing.
Forcing undesirables to live outside the city limits of the villages is also a Chosun thing.
Using familial terms when speaking of the king and high government officials also a traditional Korean thing.
I believe punishing 3 generations for the sins of one was also traditional.