demonstrating its capabilities through the testing of nuclear armaments and ballistic missiles, then employing a charm offensive to defuse tensions and to buy time to further perfect its weapons program.
Kim Jong Il had decades of tutelage under his father to learn these skills of manipulating the internal and external environments, outlasting two U.S. presidents, and the ups and downs of nuclear negotiations. By successfully creating an alternate reality, carefully wrapping his father’s image and his own in multiple layers of mythology and heroism, he was able to persuade the North Korean people to live as if they were unaware of their country’s declining fortunes and growing poverty. Sycophancy, nepotism, Kim’s dogged commitment to replacing his father, and the personality cult formed a powerful combination that helped to secure the Kim family’s dynastic fortunes and legitimacy. Kim himself had a front-row seat in shaping and adapting to North Korea’s new surroundings. The next generation, however, would not have this luxury to educate itself or to learn fully the extent of North Korea’s problems.
Kim Jong Il didn’t just love movies and making them; he also loved the women who starred in them. Like his father, he was known as a womanizer, attending wild, lavish parties with loyalists and, over the course of his life, hundreds of young women. Imagining him in this role brings a rather discordant image to mind, given his ubiquitous beige jumpsuit, big glasses, and bouffant teased to make him look taller. Defectors previously close to the Kims reported lurid details of these infamous parties that went well into the wee hours. Champagne, cognac, and caviar overflowed the tables, while naked dancing girls entertained the attendees.
As the ultimate puppet-master host, Kim Jong Il would command partygoers to dance, sing, or drink. Young girls plucked from outlying villages, picked for their beauty and youth—both Kims had an affinity for teenagers, as if they could become immortal by having sex with them—entertained the guests with singing, dancing, and massaging. Their parents willingly, naïvely, or helplessly “donated” their daughters to the Kims, convinced that they were either serving their country or improving their livelihoods and their daughters’ future prospects by sending them to the capital. Many defectors described the regime’s use of “joy divisions” in which these teenagers were trained and then dispatched to Jong Il’s holiday homes or hunting grounds. Of course, their parents couldn’t possibly turn down the Great Leader or the Dear Leader, even if they’d wanted to.
Like his father, Jong Il had multiple wives and consorts whom he housed in mansions and villas sprinkled throughout Pyongyang. And like the Great Leader, he seems to have compartmentalized his home life from his work life, keeping his family away from the public by cloistering them in private, secure housing. Father and son most likely did so in an effort to keep the spotlight on themselves, to tamp down any rumors of other potential sources of power, and to underscore the ideology of a paternal leader, whose only “family” is the entire country.
THE THREE SONS
Because the regime’s continuity was based on the Kim genealogy, a crucial duty for the Dear Leader was to designate which of his three sons by two favored consorts would be his successor, and then to prepare that son to rule North Korea.
The mother of his eldest son was Song Hye Rim. Beautiful and glamorous, she was a famous North Korean actress who traveled to international film festivals and was already married to a prominent novelist. She was born in South Korea, but her Communist parents left for the North during the Korean War. Her background and relationship with Jong Il are sketchy, as so many things are about North Korea. But one can imagine a twentysomething Jong Il, already in love with cinema, besotted by a leading actress who was four or five years older. As the son of a dictator with absolute power, he cared little for convention or rules. He demanded that she divorce her husband and leave her family so that he could have her complete devotion. They lived together, but it is unclear if they actually married. No one but Song herself would be in a position to know how she really felt about Jong Il, though one can imagine that Kim showered her with gifts and compliments—Americans who met him said that he could be quite charming. Song’s sister, who used to live with the couple in the early days of their relationship, wrote in her memoir that Kim and