cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/11171384
It has been an interesting topic that I couldn’t find an exact answer to.
I am not calling them the “Kim Dynasty,” like anticommunist propaganda says, but I find it rather unusual that the family of the founding leader is the “face” of the DPRK.
I’m not saying that they shouldn’t be politicians; I just find it interesting since the other AES states don’t/didn’t have that dynamic.
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Think of how Americans think of George Washington
Now imagine if he was alive within living memory and the British weren’t barely indistinguishable from the revolutionaries and were instead a genocidal existential threat against the new U.S., having reduced New York, Boston, and Philadelphia to nothing but rubble
I feel pretty confident Americans would do the same thing if not more
This is a great way to describe it. You could probably add to the hypo that most of the other founding fathers had been killed, and British held onto the southern colonies/stationed a huge army there without ever agreeing to a formal end to the war. Oh, and add that Washington didn’t have a slave plantation to retire to in luxury.
Yeah also all of that
Basically imagine if George Washington was actually good, the British were more evil, and this all happened when your grandfather was a kid
Because Kim Il Sung is viewed as a national hero there.
It’s not that strange especially considering the DPRK is a pretty young country. Multiple members of the Bush family have had big roles in the US politics: Prescott and Jeb Bush both being senators and H.W. and W. Bush both being presidents.
The official term for them in DPRK media is the “Mount Paektu bloodline” and they are a cultural fixture as the revolutionary family that serves as a model to all Koreans as presented in state media (rodong simun has a column dedicated to Kim Jong Un’s activities).
Not all members of the Paektu bloodline are relevant though. President Kim Jong Un’s aunt and uncle left the country and went into witness protection for the CIA but now want to return. Article.
Also being part of the family doesnt recuse you from consequences such as the case for Kim Jong Nam whose gambling fixation in Macao and snitching to the CIA got him assassinated via chemical agent.
Other family members are more secretive and official pictures have not been published, likely for their safety and maintaing the cultural physique.
Its really not unusual that the Mount paektu lineage was mythologized, not to the orientalist and anticommunist extent that western stenogtaphers pretend it is, but that it serves as revolutionary idealism for the people of the DPRK.
If the imperialists assassinate president KJU they will only create a martyr of enormous proportion that would rival the heroic martyrdom of Nasrallah and Khamenei.
I figure each Kim gives the next Kim to the people after subjecting them to a lifetime of gentle guidance and intensive study in the subtle art of statecraft.
Its a romantic notion that inverts the idea of the dynasty of rulers into a succession of blood-close public servants who are especially suited among their peers for statecraft owing to constant familial exposure to the work and thought and lifestyle of the country’s earlier leader. Especially during very lean decades I don’t imagine there were a surplus of hyper educated bureaucrats in a position to learn as intensively as the Kims without specialising in some other important aspect of building or defending the DPRK.
In this way I can conceive of how the Kim family unit might be the natural place and best place to select and train a trusted successor.
I just find it interesting since the other AES states don’t/didn’t have that dynamic.
Its not the same thing at all but Laos had (has?) a king and a communist government at the same time similar(ish) to the commonwealth keeping their monarchy. My point being only that AES and monarchism have a more complex history than I initially realised. You might find Laos interesting reading I dunno, this has reminded me I want to read more about my problematic fave.
Does history provide a single example showing that under a king imposed by the grace of God, the bourgeoisie ever succeeded in attaining a form of government in keeping with its material interests?
In order to establish a constitutional monarchy it was twice compelled to get rid of the Stuarts in Britain, and the hereditary Bourbons in France and to expel William of Orange from Belgium. [158]
What is the reason?
A hereditary king by the grace of God is not a particular individual but the physical representative of the old society within the new society. Political power in the hands of a king by the grace of God is political power in the hands of the old society existing now merely as a ruin; it is political power in the hands of the feudal estates, whose interests are profoundly antagonistic to those of the bourgeoisie.
Marx, Montesquieu LVI
I wager the answer is that the bureaucracy invested on the guaranteed stability that blood relationships offer versus one that originates from merit and loyalty while under siege
But I haven’t investigated, neither have I studied, and my input is likely wrong
Is there an error in the “official” record? (The general narrative, I mean, without looking at the minute details or biased analysis.)
As I understand it, Kim Il Sung was a revolutionary before WWII. After the war, Stalin helped Sung solidify his position as a military and political leader. Yada, yada, yada, Korean War and Sung rose as the leader of the new DPRK. In the 90s, he started handing power off to his son, Kim Jong Il.
The DPRK clearly has the makings of dynasty, at least in the modern Western sense of the word (e.g., “The Bush Dynasty”). Kim Jong Un is the third generation to take the reins; he seems to be preparing his daughter for a similar role.
What else do you call a family that uses nepotism to claim authoritarian control over a country and holds power through three generations if not a dynasty?
