Book review: Kim Il Sung and the dictators that dance on bones
In North Korea, only one version of history exists – a common theme in all authoritarian states, Katie Stallard writes
David Tizzard May 2, 2022
A portrait of DPRK founding leader Kim Il Sung affixed to a government building on central Pyongyang, Sept. 2008 | Image: NK News (file)
As a harbinger of things to come, Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia, and North Korea by Katie Stallard starts with one of Orwell’s most oft-repeated lines: “Who controls the past controls the future; who controls the present controls the past.” Having read the book, one can’t help but think the more appropriate choice would have been, “If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— forever.”
For this is a book about the human suffering inflicted on innocent populations by 20th-century dictators, the reverberations still being felt in various degrees today.
Stallard says she undertook “a multiyear quest to understand how autocrats exploit history to stay in power” and “how successive authoritarian rulers have co-opted and manipulated the past to serve their political needs.” Thus she describes how the past is mythologized, turned into a religion, which then creates a nation of true believers and sends to the rack all those who do not express devout faith in North Korea, Russia and China.
Kim Il Sung propaganda fresco in the liberation war museum, Pyongyang, North Korea, Sept. 2008 | Image: NK News (file)The authoritarian leaders of these states are greatly afraid of their citizens tasting any amount of freedom. It will not only cause domestic unrest, they believe, and also result in the end of ruling class legitimacy. What Stallard points to therefore is an information war carried out by a state on its own citizens.
This is not about external enemies and confronting a sociological or cultural “other.” Instead, this is about malevolent leaders, drunk on power, attacking their own citizens. In terms of morality, it makes one contemplate whether such acts are more or less reprehensible than when carried out against a foreign population. Throughout her work, Stallard describes how Kim Il Sung, Joseph Stalin, and Mao Zedong bolstered and encouraged each other to see just how far and grandiose they could spin a web of lies and deceit, constructing an ever false version of history.
KIM IL SUNG’S NORTH KOREA
Stallard’s analysis of North Korea was achieved through her own time in Pyongyang as a journalist and through consultations with North Korea specialists. Stallard also draws on the experiences of ambassadors who spent time in Pyongyang as well as one-time master of propaganda, Hwang Jang-yop.
Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm is quoted to reinforce the constructed and political nature of history and antagonisms. There are also echoes of Barbara Demick’s work and claims that those we see weeping and celebrating in North Korea are simply doing so out of self-preservation rather than any genuine emotion. Thus we are told, “Maintaining the Kim’s cult of personality was as much about maintaining control as it was about inspiring genuine devotion.”
Stallard asserts that North Korea’s elite rule over their impoverished population on the basis of two established lies. First, that Kim Il Sung almost single-handedly liberated the country from Japanese colonization in 1945. Second, that North Korea was invaded by the United States and South Korea in 1950 at the start of the Korean War and Kim successfully defeated the enemy aggressors. These two fabrications have been reinforced over time and disseminated to the population in patriotic memoirs, movies, and songs, all of which solidify the cult of personality built up around the Kim family.
For seasoned readers on North Korea, much of the descriptions of the internecine war and beyond will be little more than a review. However, the explorations into Pyongyang’s propaganda and the various lies it told its citizens about the atrocities carried out upon the people provide a new gruesome dimension.
Stallard skillfully dissects truth from fiction. She presents the official narrative as told in North Korea and then, alongside this, the more verifiable facts of history which continually contradict Pyongyang’s grand story of heroism against evil invading forces. Nowhere else is this more evident in the dichotomy between the ferocious guerrilla fighter portrayed in North Korean legend and the nervous young man who took charge of the country, not even fluent in the language of the people for whom he was said to have fought for.
Young North Koreans pose for a photo in Pyongyang, Sept. 2019 | Image: NK News (file)CARVING FICTION INTO THE SKYLINE
The historical revisionism and deification of Kim Il Sung and his progeny is not just achieved through cultural products but also supported by a host of archaeological fabrications and purported discoveries which then come to life as the “younger Kim carved the regime’s fiction into the capital’s skyline.”
Decades later, while many predicted reforms and the easing of tensions in North Korea with the rise to power of a young Swiss-educated, tech-savvy, basketball-loving leader, Stallard’s work suggests that even if Kim Jong Un wished to traverse such a path, he couldn’t. Simply, “If he wanted to avoid ending up like Gaddafi, Saddam, or Ceausescu, the third Kim understood that he had to double down on the myth and maintain at least the appearance of public support.
For those with a keen eye on current events, Stallard begins and ends her exploration of autocrats by describing her harrowing experiences in Ukraine in 2014 during Vladimir Putin’s ramping up of nationalist sentiment during the illegal annexation of Crimea. She draws parallels with the embellishment of history and creation of fictional pasts there to can be seen in both Beijing and Pyongyang. In that sense, the book serves as a warning.
The tragedy we are seeing unfolding at the moment in Eastern Europe should not necessarily be seen in isolation but instead as part of a larger authoritarian movement whose traces are also visible elsewhere.
Stallard’s conclusion is not that such glorifications of the past are unique to autocrats nor that they are undesirable. Nostalgia, after all, is a powerful drug for many of us. Instead, the warning is that dangers arise when only one version of history is permitted and when those who challenge the narrative are labeled traitors. Such systems only exist to serve those who rule them irrespective of how many bones upon which they dance.
Some will take umbrage with the book’s framework that places disparate cultures and histories in the same category, perhaps drawing parallels with U.S.President George W. Bush’s “Axis of Evil” designation. Yet, I’m sure Stallard would point out that only those who live outside these three mind-crushing states would be able to make such a statement. And that seems to be the point of this book.
Edited by Arius Derr
HISTORY
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Dancing on Bones: History and Power in China, Russia and North Korea
Katie Stallard
ABSTRACT
Dancing on Bones examines how the leaders of Russia, China, and North Korea exploit the history of past wars—specifically World War II and the Korean War—to shore up popular support and frame contemporary challenges and foreign policy. This book traces the history of how successive ruling regimes have approached this period of history from 1945 to the present day, examining the political utility of historical memory and attempts to enforce a collective national narrative through patriotic education, propaganda, memory laws, censorship, harassment of individual historians, and appeals to nationalism and national pride. It draws on research in Beijing, Moscow, Pyongyang, Seoul, Crimea, Shanghai, and Donetsk and covers events such as Russia’s annexation of Crimea, the 2013–2014 Maidan Revolution and subsequent conflict in Ukraine; the Tiananmen crackdown in 1989; Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika reforms; the collapse of the Soviet Union; Vladimir Putin’s rise to power, his return to the presidency for a third term, and constitutional reforms; and leadership transitions in North Korea from Kim Il Sung to Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un. Key figures covered within the book include Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev, Mikhail Gorbachev, Vladimir Putin, Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin, Xi Jinping, Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il, and Kim Jong Un.
Keywords: historical memory, patriotic education, nationalism, propaganda, World War II, Putin, Xi, Kim, North Korea, Great Patriotic War
BIBLIOGRAPHIC INFORMATION
Print publication date: 2022 Print ISBN-13: 9780197575352
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: April 2022
Katie Stallard, author
Fellow, Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars
Front Matter
Introduction
1 Myth
2 Victory
3 Enemies
4 Memory
5 Victims
6 Truth
7 Lies
8 Control
9 Heroes
10 Patriots
Conclusion
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