Year 97 by Kim Il Sung

"Keep me away from the wisdom that does not cry, philosophy that does not laugh, and greatness that does not bow to children," said Lebanese poet Khalil Gibran. In North Korea, none of the philosophy laughs at its great leader. Kim Il Sung's wisdom brings awe-inspiring tears to his people, and every day the children succumb to his greatness.

From the roof of the international airport in the capital Pyongyang, the portrait of the Eternal President welcomes visitors. Laptops and cell phones that have not been left in Beijing are confiscated.

Welcome to the year 97. In one of communism's last outposts, it is 97 years since Kim Il Sung was born, and his birth year, 1912, is considered as year 1 in the North Korean calendar. After his death in 1994, his son, Kim Jong Il, was the head of state in the only communist dynasty in world history, during his tenure as chairman of the Defense Commission. His late father is still president.

Father and son Kim, since the creation of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, has created one of the world's most distinctive societies. On September 9, the nation celebrated its 60th anniversary, and as Dear Leader Kim Jong Il sparked his absent-minded absence, several foreign sources reported the failing health of the 66-year-old head of state. However, from the North Korean side, these speculations have been rejected as conspiracy theories, and they have emphasized that everything is fine with their dear leader.

Prohibited communication

The North Korea's Kim Dynasty is the world's most closed country, and its secrets are strictly guarded. We are duly watched by representatives of the state-run travel company, which runs a hectic, tightly packed program. Only at the hotel, located on a small island in the middle of the river that flows through Pyongyang, is freedom of movement. Any other activity shall be subject to continuous supervision. After a little diversion, we are on our way over the bridge connecting the island to the city. Flamboyant cyclists pass by on their way to work, and a group of schoolchildren are doing well as they march past on a long line. An old wife looks at us in shock when we stand outside her stall and want to buy some water. Surprised and distraught, she hides her wrinkled face behind the hatch as she closes firmly. Communication with locals is prohibited.

When we return to the hotel, there is complete fuss. We do not know that we have been persecuted. Cameras are checked and photos are deleted. The guides are upset. Didn't we know we didn't have to leave the island?

The world's largest prison camp

North Korea is one of the world's poorest and most isolated countries. The economy has been gravel since the mid-90s, and according to Amnesty International, there are up to 200.000 political prisoners in the country. The majority of these prisoners are held in prison camps in the country's northern mountain areas. Former prison guard Ahn Myong Chol talks about the conditions in the camps: “Auschwitz specialized in killing quickly and efficiently. Our concentration camps are slowly being killed ".

He was told by his superiors that the prisoners were disloyal political dissidents and could be executed if they tried to flee. Ahn himself had to flee to China after his parents were accused of treason, killing both his father and brother. Collective punishment for political crimes is common in North Korea. Human Rights Watch reports in its July report that whole families of allegedly disloyal citizens are often arrested and sent to labor camps. Neither are the children spared.
The authorities also continue to deny their citizens the right to leave the country. This is considered treason, and is often punished with forced labor or imprisonment, and in some extreme cases of death, the report states.

Some still manage to escape. Those who are not shot by border guards while trying to cross the Duman River to China are in danger of being sent back by Chinese authorities, who do not recognize North Koreans as refugees. In its 2008 report, Amnesty International reports that hundreds of North Korean refugees are deported each month, and that around 50.000 live in hiding in China, in constant fear of being forced back. The lucky ones manage to get to a South Korean embassy in a third country. South Korea recognizes all North Koreans as people of the same nation and grants citizenship to all who apply.
Still, most North Koreans seem loyal to their leaders.

"Kim Jong Il's popularity among the population is undeniable," said Han Park, a Korea expert at the University of Georgia.

The collective before the individual

- North Korea is different from totalitarian, socialist regimes. Its Juche philosophy is mainly based on a deterministic spiritual doctrine, rather than a Marxist-Leninist one, says Park.

- This ideology combines the traditional culture, which is based on Confucianism, with modern, socialist political thinking. Confucianism emphasizes strong family ties, and the state is seen as an extended part of the family. The North Koreans see their leader as their Father. They support leadership because they are the people's parents. And no one chooses their own parents.

- The regime is more than active when it comes to "educating" the population, emphasizes Geir Helgesen who is a senior researcher at the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies.

- About North Korea, it is said that this upbringing takes place from morning to evening, from cradle to grave. In an isolated society, there is no doubt that this works. Therefore, there is no organized opposition.

It happened in those days ...

Kim Il Sung was a military commander in Japanese-occupied Korea. In a military camp at the foot of the holy mountain of Paektu, the future leader was born. A double rainbow appeared, and a new star appeared in the sky. That's how it happened when Kim Jong Il, the dear leader, came to the world. At least if we are to believe North Korean school books.

The remains of Kim Il Sung are stored in a mausoleum in Pyongyang. With its majestic design, Kumsusan Memorial Palace appears as a North Korea's Versailles. The security measures are formidable. Visitors are posed on a long line before being transported about 400 hundred meters along an assembly line consisting of armed guards, body detectors, metal detectors, a chimney cleaner, and a chamber of wind turbines that remove even the smallest threatening particle. The visitors are then led through a final room, where through the small speaker in the ear you get the latest evocative speech. With theatrical dramaturgy, the Great Leader is referred to as the whole sun of mankind, who so generously bestowed upon us an ideology in which man himself was made God. In the middle of the mausoleum is a embalmed and makeup Kim Il Sung wearing a black suit and a royal red dress. Crying audiences systematically circulate around his glass stand as they stop on each side and bow reverently to their great leader.

- The cult of personality is not a traditional religion, but it replaces in a way religious activity, says Helgesen to Ny Tid.

The military first – food afterwards

The food crisis in the mid and late 90s stirred up a whole world, and it is estimated that up to one million people starved to death. Now a new food crisis is in the pipeline. "Six million North Koreans are in danger of being hit by precarious food shortages," Jean-Pierre de Margerie of the World Food Program said earlier this summer. Due to floods in August 2007 and several poor crops combined with rising prices for basic foods such as rice and maize, the country's food situation is the most precarious since the disaster of the 90s.

The fall of communism and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a radical decline in economic support for North Korea and further isolation of the country. Despite this, Kim Jong Il swears by his father's Juche ideology of total independence – politically, economically and militarily.

As an addition to the state ideology of Juche, Kim Jong Il has introduced his own Songun doctrine: the military first. This means that the military, the 5th largest in the world, has first priority when allocating national resources. It is estimated that the military's share of GDP is up to 25 per cent. The same figure for the world's leading military force, the United States, is about 4 percent and for Norway about 1.6 percent.

nuclear Policy

North Korea is still a country at war. The Korean War from 1950 to 1953 did not end in a peace treaty but in a ceasefire. 49 years later, in 2002, George W. Bush launches the term "axis of evil" where he tangibly places North Korea, Iran and Iraq. Following the US invasion of Iraq, Pyongyang believes that they have been confirmed by the Americans that a military "solution" to the Korea problem is also an opportunity.

In 2003, the six-party talks began between North and South Korea, China, Russia, Japan and the United States, where the purpose was to phase out the North Koreans' nuclear program. However, the negotiations did not prevent North Korea from carrying out a nuclear test in October 2006. This test proved to be the key to the long-coveted direct negotiations with the United States – negotiations that destroyed a cooling tower at the Yongbyon nuclear plant this summer in front of an entire island. world. In addition, Pyongyang handed over its documents on the nuclear program to US authorities. Washington responded by announcing that it would remove North Korea from the list of states that support terrorism.

- The main reason why the regime decided to develop nuclear weapons is that they are aware that they can not keep up militarily with the United States, and for a small and poor country with a certain technological capacity, this is perhaps the simplest and cheapest insurance in a hostile world. , says Geir Helgesen.

However, due to disagreements over how to verify North Korea's nuclear program shutdown, the United States has not done as previously announced, and North Korea is still on the American terror list. In response, Pyongyang issued a press release on August 26 stating that they will stop the disarmament plan and is considering rebuilding the Yongbyon nuclear plant. On September 10, satellite imagery was published showing a launch base at Tongchangdong, about five kilometers from the border with China. According to US intelligence, the rockets reach 4000 kilometers, which in theory means Alaska is within range.

"If the negotiations with the United States and the other countries in the six-party negotiations lead to a peace agreement and promises to assist North Korea's economic development, then there is no reason why North Korea should want to remain a nuclear power," Helgesen believes.

- Longing for a reunion

- We are one people. All Koreans are children of the same culture and history, speak the same language and have the same blood. What we need is reunion! strikes our guide. His name is Kim and he is one of two state-appointed guides who follow us. They tell us what we can take a picture of, and if we take a picture of something else, they make sure that the picture is deleted from the memory stick. It can be difficult to know what one cannot take a picture of. The image of an old lady was deleted. The same was the picture of some street sweepers. Our two guides are the only two North Koreans we are allowed to talk to. Kim continues her little history lesson behind the microphone in the bus.

- Do you know why we Koreans can not live together in one country, he continues and lets the question hang in the air.
– Because of the imperialists in the United States!

Outside the bus windows, the fields are green. Some farmers squat and work in the rice fields, and women wash clothes in the rivers and streams while the children play in the water. Some gravel roads cut through the wooded hills, and the rice fields lie like evergreen carpets in the rolling landscape. The occasional village, filled with small gray-white houses, breaks with the green surroundings. We are on our way to the world's most heavily guarded border – a border between North and South, between East and West. Like a 250-kilometer-long remnant of the Cold War, the line of demarcation cuts across the Korean Peninsula, dividing a nation and a people in two. Ten million people on both sides of the border belong to so-called separated families – families that have been divided between north and south

- The North Koreans long for a reunion with the South, Kim says.

- We do not need interference from the USA, China and Russia. We must be able to ignore differences in political systems, and establish a state on the basis of our cultural and historical roots.

North Korea has been proposing to establish a Korean federation since the 60s, in which Korea would be one country but with two systems – capitalism in the south and communism in the north. The Americans have always been against this solution and only want to see reunification under a capitalist system. "Neo-conservative Americans do not want peace in this region," said former South Korea Peace Prize winner and president Kim Dae Jong after the Bush administration took over the White House.

He went on to say that "they are dogmatists and want a regime change. They are obsessed with an ideology – the ideology of sanctions. But it has never worked, either against Cuba, Iraq, Afghanistan or Iran.

Since the Korean War, the Americans have played a very central role in the Korean peninsula and still have approx. 28.000 soldiers in South Korea. On both sides of the demarcation line, people are watching what is happening in Washington, knowing that the upcoming US presidential election will have consequences for the future of the Korean Peninsula.

Kim Dae Jong was recently in Stavanger, and does not hide that he prefers to see Barack Obama take over the White House. To Stavanger Aftenblad, the former Peace Prize winner stated that "Obama has said he wants direct talks with North Korea, and that is a view I fully share with him. It is in line with my sunshine policy. ”

Nuclear threat versus human rights

The world's insight into North Korea is severely limited, and the uncertainty surrounding their agenda is great. While the entire Western world is concerned about the country's nuclear program, there is painfully little focus on how its people are victims of a situation and regime that regards them as lawless pieces in a system without room for human rights.

North Korea is a country at war, and its people continue their own struggle for decent living. Here one still cries over his dead leader, a leader whose philosophy has created the world's most secretive state. As we worry about the country's nuclear program, North Korea's children continue to succumb to a regime that keeps them locked in the world's largest prison camp.