The North Korean Regime has made the first official portrait of the state leader. Is the personality fueled cult around Kim Jong-Un?
On Sunday, North Korea has welcomed the commander-in-chief Kim Jong-Un at the Sunan airport in Pyongyang, President Miguel Díaz-Canel of Cuba, one of the few allies of the East Asian dictatorship. The actually report the values of the state visit, waved, however, in the Form of a larger-than-life painting in the Background: For the first Time the Regime has made an official portrait of Kim Jong-Un, together with the portrait of his guest from Cuba in the same style and Format. Unmistakably, both works come from the Mansudae art studios, the state’s culture factory. One shows a smiling Kim Jong Un in a Western suit and tie with fashionable model glasses, “Malcolm X”.
“The Similarities to the portraits of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il is clearly overdue,” says the German North Korea researcher Martin Wise. North Korea’s head of state is similar to the third Generation on the public image of his father and grandfather (in the case of adjustments to the modern Western taste), was quickly interpreted as an attempt by the Propaganda apparatus, the cult of the leader Kim Jong-Un to boost and to lift him to a level with its predecessors.
Compulsory accessory for North Korean officials: Kim Il Sung badge
North Korea’s cult of Personality remains unmatched
Wise considers this to be covered: “This is not a new stage of Regime Propaganda, but much more a banal portrait, what you want to present during Visits by heads of state.” Probably the painting had existed before, but only with the visit of the Cuban President a reason to use found.
However, the family play for the cult of Personality around the Kim-official-portraits a Central role. The likenesses of the state’s founder, Kim Il Sung, and his 2011 late son Kim Jong Il are, after all, ubiquitous: they hang in every building in the country, as the pins on the left side of the chest of most of the North Koreans and statues are also in the Form of bronze on the city centres to be immortalized.
For portrait-painting, strict rules apply: you may only hang on empty walls and need to be regularly dusted. Tourists may take pictures only in full and not on the sides. If North Korea crumple niche newspaper reader pages, on which an effigy of the state emblazoned leader, or with cigarette ash stain, this is punished regularly with penalties.
“North Korea’s cult of Personality has exceeded its state of establishment in terms of extravagance rapidly the of its Eastern European brethren States. By the end of the 40s, the leading University in the country was named after state founder Kim Il Sung, his home village to the national Shrine chosen, and his Statue in a number of cities built,” writes Brian R. Myers in his standard work on North Korea’s Propaganda, “The Cleanest Race”.
No longer en vogue: Anti-American Propaganda-the art of earlier years, from North Korea
Kim-cult has been mitigated in recent years
Compared with later decades, the Propaganda of the regime at that time was still a fairly timid: they always emphasized the “superior” culture of the Soviet protection and the performance of the Red army of China during the Korean war.
In the 60s, however, Kim Il Sung’s biography has been re-vamped as the heroic resistance fighter against the occupying Japanese, mythical “” and, furthermore, retro has been attributed to him retrospectively, the authorship of several plays and ideological Manifestos. As Kim Il Sung in 1972, his 60. Birthday, celebrated, hung more portraits of him in the country, as it was for Stalin in the Soviet Union or Mao in China.
The 34-year-old Kim Jong-Un was previously exempt from this extreme cult of the leader. This certainly has to do with the Confucian Tradition, the seniority of the highest importance. In addition, he had as President in the third Generation no longer has the natural authority like its predecessors. Kim Jong-Un can be far less on the blind loyalty of his people as his ancestors, but needs to be strengthened by his deeds measure. Not for nothing, the young dictator has linked his legitimacy with the promise of economic prosperity for the population.
In General, the personality cult and the Propaganda of the regime have mitigated significantly the last, especially since the inter-Korean rapprochement, with the beginning of this year. For the first Time since the end of the Korean war in 1953, yet ever-present Anti-U.S. murals from the city of Pyongyang, for example, are gone.
Also, the Governor of South Korea has taken the niches of Gangwon province, Choi Moon-Soon, Kim Jong-Un twice in person, writes: “When I visited North Korea last month, I noticed a noticeable change. As we were previously led to the tourist landmark of Pyongyang, were these ladders from our trip in the first sentence with reference to the quality of the leader Kim Jong Il was presented. It was the last to feel anymore. An international Standard is beginning.”