Absurd Propaganda Promoting NK Heir Apparent

North Koreans are reportedly ridiculing their government’s efforts to glorify heir apparent Kim Jong Un (photo) with absurd propaganda, with the drive to promote the 27-year-old into a “great leader” causing adverse effects.

Open Radio for North Korea, which sends signals to Pyongyang from Seoul, released Monday lecture documents for the leadership and members of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party for the second half of last year.

A document on “the greatness of young leader Kim Jong Un” said, “Our youth leader comrade grasped a gun at age 3 and hit the target, as well as hitting all lamps and bottles 100 meters away by shooting three shots per second with an automatic rifle.” It also claimed that he made 20 shots within a 10-point circle.

The document also said Kim learned about all of the world’s famous generals as a teenager, is well versed in the armed forces, and completed an “automatic program on firing a gun salute” in just a few days, something which even technicians could not do.

Kim was also described as knowledgeable in politics, economics, culture, history and military affairs, fluent in English, German, French and Italian after two years of study abroad, and occasionally studying to master seven foreign languages.

He also wrote difficult Chinese poems at age 3 to surprise people, the document said, adding Pyongyang developed nuclear weapons because Kim learned while studying abroad that a confrontation with nuclear weapons is needed to counter those with nuclear weapons.

Another document for farmers said Kim devised in 2008 a biological fertilizer that can spontaneously improve acid earth to surprise researchers when he visited a joint farm in Sariwon, North Hwanghae Province. The farm was said to have produced 15 tons of rice per jungbo, or 9,917 square meters.

South Korea, which has an oversupply of rice, produced 5.2 tons of rice per jungbo last year.

A North Korea source quoted a lecture given to North Korean residents as saying, “We have no food problems at all as all snow and rain will turn into rice,” “We’re so concerned about how to deal with food when it overflows,” or “(the God-sent Kim Jong Un) decided to ruin farming with floods this year.”

The residents laughed at and ridiculed such statements after hearing them, the source said.

The North’s glorification of Kim Jong Un is proving to be more nonsensical than that for Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. A myth about Kim Jong Il in a legends book for children, which is also well known in South Korea, says he made a grenade out of a pine cone and crossed a river on a leaf.

Even when North Korea began idolizing Kim Jong Il, it never resorted to nonsense such as calling him a “sharp shooter at age 3.”

A North Korean defector in South Korea said, “As leaders of the propaganda department became the generation that got indoctrinated in cult of personality, they are apparently taking things even further.”

zsh75@donga.com