Fearing fear itself: Kim Jong-un’s most powerful weapon

THAT North Korea is a terror state should terrify everyone on Earth. Kim Jong-un has a weapon that no other country can match.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s most potent weapon is fear. Picture: AFP Photo

AS THE world holds its breath hoping that North Korea doesn’t blow something up next Tuesday which could provoke Donald Trump into a military response, it’s worth considering what it’s like there.

But as former NSA analyst John Schindler recently noted, North Korea’s extreme isolation is a real problem when it comes to dealing with the current crisis: The CIA has virtually no useful intelligence on this hermit kingdom.

The problem is, very few people get to visit there, and the ones that have are monitored 24 hours a day, making it one of the most isolated countries on earth.

But the fact that North Korea can find itself on the brink of nuclear war, with no apparent protest from the population, shows what a strange and terrifying country it is.

I travelled to North Korea about 10 years ago to belatedly complete an “Axis of Evil Tour” that I’d set myself after George W. Bush famously named all the places he was about to bomb. My tour was simply about getting to see them before they were bombed. I’m glad I saw Syria while it was still intact, and I’m beginning to suspect Pyongyang may soon fall into the same category.

(And on the shallow side, there’s nothing more glamorous than setting your laptop’s Time Zone settings to “Pyongyang”.)

Charles Firth in North Korea (in 2007, obviously). Picture: Charles Firth

Probably the most noticeable thing about North Koreans, when you first arrive, is that you can’t discuss what movies they like, or which Hollywood starlet has slept with Johnny Depp this week, because they don’t know anything about the Western Military-Industrial-Entertainment Complex.

On my first day, when I asked one North Korean about action movies, he became very confused. He suggested that maybe an action movie was a bit similar to a documentary about agriculture? I said, no, it was the type of movie where people kill terrorists.

He did not think that these films existed in North Korea. He had not even heard of the Die Hard series. Shocking, I know.

Without doubt, the creepiest aspect of the general weirdness that is North Korea is the Cult of Personality. And as a foreigner, it is easy to miss the thing that drives North Korea’s religious fervour for the country’s original supreme leader Kim Il-sung: Fear.

When I was there, everyone who was visiting North Korea was assigned a minder. I was assigned two.

Everywhere you go in North Korea a minder goes with you. Or in Charles’ case two. Picture: Charles Firth

There is a reason for this: They don’t want anyone wandering off and chatting to friendly locals about what the outside West looks like. Instead, ideologically “trustworthy” minders are the main contact you have: a kind of prophylactic layer between the outside world and local North Koreans.

The most friendly of my minders was Kim Mun Chol, or Mr Kim, as he asked to be called. Every moment I was outside of my hotel room, he was by my side. And we got along really well, but I was having trouble working out how to broach the more important topics with him.

It’s not that I didn’t want to mention the stockpile of nuclear weapons, or the re-education camps or the famine during the 1990s that killed one million people, it’s just that it never seemed like the right moment to bring it up. How does one segue from mindless small-talk into an accusation of state-sponsored genocide?

“Hmm, nice trees — that reminds me: Is your government covering up the death and torture of hundreds of thousands of political dissidents?” Trust me — it’s harder than it sounds, especially when you know you’ll be spending the next week embedded with them by your side the entire time.

But eventually you do. And the most revealing moment of terror came when I started talking to my minder about his badge.

Everyone in North Korea has to wear a badge of Kim Il-sung. If you don’t comply, you go to the gulags — the work camps for political prisoners that, according to Mr Kim are “just the same” as the West’s prisons (except for the mild detail that you can be tortured and starved to death there).

Some people wore large badges with the party flag bestriding the image of the Great Leader, others were small, restrained affairs that just depicted a younger Kim Il-sung.

Mr Kim was amused with my questions trying to pick some sort of pecking order in the different styles of badges that people wore. When I asked his boss, Mr Pak, late one night in the hotel bar if people got into trouble for not wearing the badge, he paused and blinked at me, and gave me a smile that indicated I was about to be “corrected.”

“People always wear the badge. It shows that you know Kim Il-sung was always correct in his decisions,” said Mr Pak.

“But what if you don’t think Kim Il-sung was always correct?”

The three North Koreans I was with all broke into nervous laughter. “But all North Koreans know that Our Great Leader always made the right decisions.”

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un inspecting the ‘Dropping and Target-striking Contest of KPA Special Operation Forces — 2017’ at an undisclosed location in North Korea. Picture: AFP Photo

“OK,” I said, “but in my country, we always disagree with our politicians. We sit around in bars like this, and one of our main hobbies it to tear the shit out of our leaders.”

More laughter. “Australia is very different,” Mr Pak said seriously.

“Do you fear going to prison?”

Mr Pak explained to me that North Korea did not have crime, and therefore there were no prisons.

“But what about the gulags?” I said. Mr Kim had already admitted they existed.

“They are re-education centres,” Mr Pak patiently explained. “When people have the wrong opinion they are sent to re-education centres.”

“Do you fear going to a re-education centre?”

“I have never been to a re-education centre.”

“No,” I asked, that was not my question. “But do you fear it?”

“Going to a re-education centre would bring shame upon all of your family,” Mr Pak said. Mr Pak looked at the others around the table. Suddenly, the two other North Koreans at the table burst into furious agreement, that Kim Il-sung and his son, were indeed always correct because they always knew what was best for North Korea, and that only people who don’t understand that fairly simple fact would ever end up in re-education centres.

That three grown men refused to answer the question of whether they even feared the prison camps said it all.

All the functionaries — in fact, everyone I met in North Korea — was similarly frightened of even confirming whether they were frightened or not.

And for good reason. We’ve all heard the horror stories: the North Koreans have intergenerational punishment. When you say the wrong thing, the next three generations of your family are liable for punishment. Or if you’re senior enough, you may just get executed using an anti-aircraft gun.

Women in uniform march across Kim Il Sung Square during a military parade on Saturday, April 15, 2017, in Pyongyang. Picture: AP Photo/Wong Maye-E

That North Korea is a terror state is something that should terrify everyone on earth, because in that situation, there are no checks on Kim Jong-un’s actions.

It is such a terror state that even if the Generals around Kim Jong-un thought he was taking North Korea into an unwinnable conflict, they would still be too scared to disobey, and they would be too distrustful of each other to organise a coup.

The only hope is for a calm and rational approach from the other side. Instead, we’ve got Donald Trump.

Charles Firth majored in Economics (Social Science) at Sydney University. He is also editor of The Chaser Quarterly. Follow him on Twitter @charlesfirth