N. Koreans flock to ‘holy land’
Spiritual peak of Hermit Kingdom a leader’s tribute
MOUNT PAEKTU: North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s father and predecessor is said to have been born in a simple wooden hut on the slopes of a sacred mountain, and guide Kim Un-sim has no doubts: “Welcome to our holy land”.
The North is avowedly atheist, with its own Juche ideology proclaiming that “Man is the master of all things”, but quasi-religious terminology abounds at Mount Paektu, a dormant volcano straddling the border with China.
It has long been considered the spiritual birthplace of the Korean nation and – according to Pyongyang’s orthodoxy – Kim Jong-il, son of the North’s founder Kim Il-sung, came into the world at a secret guerrilla camp on its slopes, where his father was directing the fight against Korea’s Japanese colonial overlords.
Now it is a place of pilgrimage for tens of thousands of North Koreans every year, who are trained from birth to revere their leaders.
Jong-il “was born amid arduous conditions” guide Un-sim said, “not in a luxurious house, but in an ordinary, humble log cabin”, with bitter winter temperatures plunging to -40°C.
His mother Kim Jong-suk – another member of the North’s revolutionary pantheon – could only be served soup made from dried mountain herbs and corn, she added.
“The guerrilla fighters shed tears from pity that our general – only a few months old – had so little to eat and brought back food and goat milk.”
The story has several echoes of the Christian Nativity, from a bright star shining in the sky, a birth in adversity and well-wishers bringing gifts to the new arrival and future leader.
Un-sim said the secret camp, never located by the occupying Japanese in nine years, was Ilsung’s headquarters from 1936, from where he travelled across Korea and to bases in China “to finally accomplish the historic liberation of the country”.
There was no mention of the US atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 that triggered Japan’s World War II surrender, and with it the end of Tokyo’s 35-year rule over the peninsula.
The ruling Workers’ Party of Korea and the Kim dynasty bases its claim to legitimacy on what it says was Il-sung’s pivotal role in the national struggle for independence.
Korea’s foundational myth says its people descend from King Tangun, born on Mount Paektu to a god who came to earth from heaven and a bear turned into a woman.
Jong-il’s birth in the same place puts the ruling family in the same tradition, a concept reinforced by the North’s references to his son and successor Jong-un as a member of the “Paektu bloodline”.
Outside historians, though, say that the founding Kim spent most of the war in exile, as a guerrilla fighting the Japanese in China and then as a battalion commander in the Soviet army.
Soviet records state his son was born in the east Russian village of Vyatskoye on Feb 16, 1941, a year earlier than his official birthday.
After the war, the Mount Paektu camp was lost to the surrounding forests, the guide explained, but Il-sung recognised its location on a visit to the area in 1986 and had its three huts rebuilt to ensure younger generations could learn about “our country that he has defended and won back with his blood”.
“It is the ardent wish of all the people to visit the secret camp,” she added.
Every year, 100,000 North Koreans or more are taken on study tours to the camp, the mountain, and nearby revolutionary sites where relics of operations are preserved.
Ordinary North Koreans always express wholehearted support for the authorities when speaking to foreign media, but a Western official with knowledge of the peninsula said that for many, their beliefs are deeply held.
The North’s teachings were “allpervading”, he said, drawing a comparison with “medieval Europe, the role of the church and doctrine”.
“For the average person there’s nothing to challenge the narrative.” — AFP