North Korean growth industry: Kim statues
Kim Jong Un’s plan to solidify his hereditary succession
Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s “Great Successor,” has been tearing down statues of his grandfather, “Eternal President” Kim Il Sung, and replacing them with new statues of his grandfather and his father, Kim Jong Il.
In North Korea, there’s no escaping the Kim family. “Eternal President” Kim Il Sung continues to reign — according to North Korean lore — 21 years after his death. His son, “Dear Leader” Kim Jong Il, died in 2011 but lies in state with his father in a huge mausoleum the size of Buckingham Palace on the outskirts of Pyongyang. And the grandson, “Great Successor” Kim Jong Un, is making sure none of his subjects forget about the family line — by strengthening the bizarre personality cult that the family has perpetuated during the past 60 years.
The latest outlet for Kimism: new statues. The regime has been tearing down statues of Kim Il Sung around the country — an act that must require all sorts of hoopla since it’s a treasonous offence to even place a newspaper with a photo of one of the Kims face down — and replacing them with huge new statues of Kim Senior and Kim Junior.
“This looks like part of Kim Jong Un’s plan to solidify his hereditary succession, carry on his father’s mantle,” says Curtis Melvin, a North Korea researcher at the U.S.Korea Institute at SAIS, Johns Hopkins. He has noted the steady replacement of the statues over time, thanks to his remarkable knowledge of the country through Google Earth.
The first statue to go was the one of Kim Il Sung that stood at Mansudae, a hill in the centre of Pyongyang that was the required first stop for all delegations visiting Pyongyang. There, visitors were given bouquets of flowers to place at Kim Il Sung’s feet and were expected to bow.
But in 2012, soon after Kim Jong Il’s death, the statue was removed and replaced with two statues, a new one, or at least extensively remoulded, one of Kim Il Sung, with a brand new statue of Kim Jong Il next to him. But that statue, which showed the second Kim in a light coat, didn’t last long, and was soon replaced by a statue of him in a heavier winter coat (like his dad).
The statues are thought to be about 70 feet tall and appear to be made of bronze.
Since then, the authorities have been methodically going around the country pulling down the statue of Kim Senior and replacing it with new likenesses of him and Kim Junior.
The cost of the statues is unquantifiable — it’s not clear exactly how big they are or what they’re made of — but Adam Cathcart, a North Korea specialist at Leeds University, says that it would have required “huge expenditure.”
But the statues are not the extent of it. “In addition to the statues, there are Kim Il Sung/ Kim Jong Il monuments going up across the country. I have counted 233 of those and they are still going up,” Melvin says.
At least there’s one sector that North Korea can say is really booming.
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