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| KJU on a visit to the Central Tree Nursery in 2014. Src: Tongil News |
The author is an eminence grise of North Korean literature, co-author of Eternal Life (영생) from the Immortal History series of novels chronicling Kim Il Sung's life. Born in 1938, he trained as a geologist but was scouted by the Korean Writer's Union at age 18 and has been a prolific contributor to the Party's literary journals since the 1960s. He would have been 76 when he wrote this story. Given his high profile and long history of literary achievement, I'd say he phoned this one in. It follows the basic template and seems unimaginative even by North Korean fiction standards.
There is a lot of overlap between this story and "Green Mountains, Green Fields" (2016) - both highlight the Central Tree Nursery, the new National Land Management Mobilization policy, and Kim Jong Un's priority of investing in re-forestation. There is also some thematic overlap with "Morning of Departure" (2016), particularly the depiction of new hydroelectric dam construction destroying woodland and creating flood problems.
The Plot
It’s October 8, 2011. The 66th anniversary of the KWP founding approaches. Environmental Ministry worker Kang Hyŏng Jun reads reports in his office. He’s absorbed in a book sent over personally by KJU; it's the first time he’s directly benefited from the new leader he’s heard so much about.
The book tells of the delicate, interconnected nature of the planet's ecosystems, and the relentless destruction being wrought by "capitalist monopoly industries" in selfish pursuit of profits.
Kang is interrupted from his reading when he is called to his Party Secretary's office and instructed to prepare for the Leaders' impending visit to the Central Tree Nursery.
On returning to his office, Kang finds a note from his old college friend Ri Song Mok. Once a gifted botanist, Ri had recently been dismissed from his post due to an unfortunate mishap at a hydroelectric dam.
In cutting timber for the dam, the deputy chief of construction had unwittingly chopped down five experimental trees, the sole fruit of Ri's twenty years of work adapting semi-tropical hybrids to North Korean soil conditions. Ri had been unable to contain his rage and ended up brawling with the dam worker. For interfering with an important hydroelectric project, Ri's political loyalty was called into question, and he was fired.
The next day, KJU and KJI visit the Central Tree Nursery with a delegation of Environmental Ministry bureaucrats. Kang is introduced; KJI describes him to the assembled group as “capable but stubborn” and thanks him for agreeing to guide their tour.
The Central Tree Nursery workers are delighted to hear KJU’s voice for the first time; he has a twinkle in his eye and a “dignity and fervor that could melt a rock.” They’ve all heard of his diverse knowledge in politics, economics and culture, and his skills in both literary and martial arts.
KJU tells the assembled, “More important than just loving trees, is understanding why we must love trees.”
Riding electric carts, the group tours the greenhouses, the central control room, and several vast fields of tree hybrids. Numerous recent improvements and "cutting-edge" facilities are described. Along the way, KJU repeatedly correctly identifies various trees which had special meaning to his father and grandfather.
Relishing his role as tour guide, Kang gives the group an impassioned, slightly unhinged speech about the important role of trees to the broader ecosystem.
“Those who don’t learn to love trees will surely pay the price. There was one district that cut down many trees to build a hydroelectric dam ‘by their own strength,’ but the next year during the rainy season they suffered severe damage from mudslides.”
At his words, KJU recalls recently seeing a briefing about a certain botanist whose experimental trees, 20 years of work, had been cut down to build the dam in Tokgochŏngrim. The botanist had been sentenced to one year of labor reform (로동단련) for assaulting the dam project's political director.
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| Flood damage in the fall of 2013. Src: Yonhap |
KJU regretted that the Party hadn’t been able to “see the patriotism of a botanist who spent twenty years of his life on trees” and thought “Why should he have to resign over a mistake? We must preserve our technical workers. If anyone is at fault, it is the workers of Tokgochŏngrim who destroyed the trees and ended up with a useless dam."
At the end of the tour, KJI gives a long inspirational speech to the assembled functionaries about the Party's environmental policy. KJU listens quietly and resolves to personally carry out the Leader's wishes.
The story skips forward one year to October 9, 2012. KJU paces in his office, remembering his visit to the tree nursery with his father exactly one year ago.
He hasn’t seen the Environment Ministry workers since that day, except for briefly seeing Kang Hyong Jun at Kumsusan Palace that terrible December when everyone was in shock. KJU had promised him he would carry out KJI’s wishes for environmental protection.
He kept his promise, organizing the first National Land Management Mobilization Conference (국토관리총동원운동열성자대회). He took the opportunity of the festival on May 8, 2012 to announce a major shift in environmental policy through his treatise “On Bringing about a Revolutionary Turn in Land Management to Meet the Demands of Constructing a Strong and Prosperous Socialist Country” (사회주의강성국가건설의 요구에 맞게 국토관리사업에서 혁명적전환을 가져올데 대하여), announcing policies for flood control, anti-erosion land reform, and conservation of natural resources including mineral, fisheries, plant and animal resources. The speech was a big sensation among the delegates.
After the festival the whole country was mobilized, and within months they had planted hundreds of millions of trees, restored 1000 km of roads and railway lines, and created hundreds of jŏngbo of greenspace.
In his office, Kang Hyong Jun reads a letter from his botanist friend Ri Song Mok, now happily re-instated thanks to the intervention of KJU. The phone rings; it's KJU himself. Kang is stunned and tongue-tied. KJU asks after the nursery; Kang says they’ve been busy with tons of visitors lately.
KJU says that’s good, as
“The tree nursery is not just a place for growing trees; it is also for cultivating patriots… not just the masses but especially bureaucrats, so they can learn the world view of the Great Leader and the General. Making bureaucrats into servants of the people is easier said than done. Sometimes bureaucrats think of the people as their servants instead. I’ve seen it happen many times, and it always grieves me.”
Kang thinks with shame that he, too, is guilty of this.
KJU apologizes that he doesn’t have time to talk more but urges Kang to keep giving good interpretative tours to “light the flame of KJI patriotism in people’s hearts.” Kang sobs his gratitude, but the Leader has already hung up.
As Kang heads off to the Central Tree Nursery, he remembers the words of KJI, “Because of Comrade Kim Jong Un, our revolution and our socialism is secure, and our future is endlessly bright and promising.”
Understanding Environmental Problems
This story demonstrates the educational uses of North Korea's state fiction. It opens with a lengthy quote from the book that KJU sent to Kang:
The third planet in our solar system, home to tens of thousands of organisms – this is our Earth. Of all the planets revolving around our sun, only the third has the heat, light and gravity conducive to life, and various life forms thrive there....
For the life forms that are born and grow there, the sun is like a benevolent father and the earth is a gracious mother. Of all her hundreds of thousands of children, only one has the capacity for laughter and tears, for joy, anger, sorrow, and pleasure – human beings. Humans are mother earth’s most precious and beloved children, and she surely believes that they will observe their filial duty to bring her boundless happiness forever.
But today, because of human carelessness, the earth is suffering from terrible wounds. It has grown haggard, withered and infected with a sickness that threatens the existence of all life – and humans are no exception.
Air and water cross national boundaries without a passport. Dust-filled sulfur dioxide gas can blow from London in England to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, and polluted water from the US can follow the rivers to take a trip abroad. Poisoned air can travel freely from the western hemisphere to the eastern hemisphere. Therefore if a country is to protect its own environment it must consider the global environment, and in order to protect the global environment we must surgically remove the greed-organs of imperialists who care only about their own immediate interests. Imperialism is a malignant tumor on the planet as well.
Botanists of the world, never forget! The same American imperialists who destroyed countless lives with atomic bombs and poisoned the air with radiation also spread poison to kill the primeval forests during the Vietnam War. Grass still won’t grow there.
In this passage, the reader is invited to look over Kang's shoulder as he reads up on global environmental problems. This form of political communication is perhaps marginally more engaging than simply sending the same text around as an intra-party document.
At the Central Tree Nursery tour, Kang makes a long speech to the group about the importance of trees.
The ozone layer, which protects all life from the sun’s harmful rays, is created by trees, and thus humans cannot live without trees. Not only that, they generate oxygen and absorb carbon dioxide, absorb water, help prevent erosion, and remove toxins from the air.
The story is peppered with textbook-like sections like this, which seem intended to brush up the reader's general ecological knowledge.
It's interesting that the story refers to polluted air travelling across borders but refrains from explicitly mentioning China, whose dust North Koreans have been breathing for decades. It’s also interesting that the text identifies “imperialism,” rather than capitalism, as the root cause of environmental destruction, although the description of selfish corporations ruthlessly pursuing profits reads more like capitalism.
It's interesting that the story refers to polluted air travelling across borders but refrains from explicitly mentioning China, whose dust North Koreans have been breathing for decades. It’s also interesting that the text identifies “imperialism,” rather than capitalism, as the root cause of environmental destruction, although the description of selfish corporations ruthlessly pursuing profits reads more like capitalism.
Communicating Party Environmental Policy
Insofar as this story has a climactic moment, it comes when KJI gives his speech to the assembled tour group at the end of the Tree Nursery tour:
"Planting and caring for trees is a ten-thousand-year long-term job that can only be done by a true patriot. Short-sighted people who live only for today can’t do it correctly. We must broadly promote patriotic people to care for our forests… Our generation must further beautify the 3,000 li of beautiful landscape (삼천리금수강산) inherited from our ancestors, to pass down to future generations. To do that we must adapt the best trees for our land, properly manage our seedling crops, and develop tree varieties with the most economic value… Comrades, let us promote national land protection work around the country to fill it with blue sky and fresh air, to make our mountains into a socialist fairyland of thick forests, giving golden mountains (황금산) and treasure mountains (보물산) to our next generation."
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| A deforested hillside in North Korea. |
In his phone call after his father's death, KJU tells an emotional Kang,
“Only those who possess true Kim Jong Il patriotism can carry out the work of land management. I say it all the time, but our General really was a great man who led with his heart and his feelings. We must learn from Kim Jong Il patriotism, the sacred patriotism of the General who devoted his life’s labor to the fatherland and the people. Let’s create the socialist fairyland that was his dying wish.”In this passage, we can see that the Party is trying to draw a connection between patriotism and environmentalism, specifically tied to the new propaganda buzzword "Kim Jong Il patriotism." In this way, even as land management is promoted as a major new priority of KJU's, this is portrayed as carrying on the wishes of his predecessor KJI. "Kim Jong Il patriotism" was also a key buzzword in "Green Mountains, Green Fields."
KJI did in fact visit the Central Tree Nursery in October 2011, two months before his death. According to this archived article from Yonhap, he was accompanied by KJU as well as Jang Song Taek and Party Secretary Pak Do Chun.
This fascinating article from Scientific American includes one foreign delegation's impressions after a visit to the Central Tree Nursery.
“On Bringing about a Revolutionary Turn in Land Management to Meet the Demands of Constructing a Strong and Prosperous Socialist Country”
KJU’s 2012 treatise on land management was his first published work. It was published on April 27th, 2012 and distributed at the National Land Management Mobilization Conference (국토관리총동원운동열성자대회) on May 8th. Before this, the most recent major statement on environmental policy was a 1984 speech by KJI on land management.
The full text of KJU's treatise can be read here: http://www.uriminzokkiri.com/index.php?ptype=great&subtype=rozak&no=5813. English translation here: http://onecoreanetwork.blogspot.com/2013/04/on-bringing-about-revolutionary-turn-in.html.
Some sample text:
- “The land that can be brought under cultivation can be found everywhere. A man who strives to find reclaimable land and increase the area of the land under cultivation even by an inch is a genuine patriot.”
- “[A]fforestation and forest conservation are not on a proper track now. Many trees are planted every spring and autumn, but there is no marked improvement in the afforestation of the country. Many mountains in the country remain denuded of trees. In provinces there are not a few bare mountains even among the ones with the signboards reading, 'Forest Conservation,' 'Youth Forest' and 'Children’s Union Forest.' Measures should be taken by the Party and the state to promote afforestation and forest conservation.”
- “We should take careful measures to prevent earth and sand from flowing into rivers and landslides from occurring. To this end, we should plant many trees along rivers and build stone terraces or buttresses where necessary.”
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This is the second story we've seen which describes the problem of overenthusiastic dam construction felling trees and causing soil erosion and flooding. We can assume from this level of literary attention that something like this must have actually happened in the recent past, and the Party is trying to correct its workers' awareness through depictions in state fiction.
Recall that in "Morning of Departure" (2016), the main character was a dam construction brigade leader who faced prosecution from the Ministry of Justice for cutting down trees for the dam project. After saying he would "take responsibility" for the damage, he was excoriated by the Justice Ministry officer:
"Responsibility? What good is responsibility, when the forests are destroyed and the land is unusable? Look, if the reservoir overflows before the hillsides are repaired, they'll wash out and destroy the forest. How can you possibly take responsibility for such a disaster? Of course, if you finish this dam you'll be commended and promoted, but what of the damage you do to the poor mountains that can't speak for themselves?"The brigade leader ended up remorsefully accepting a demotion, but the bigger problem of how to build dams without destroying forests was never resolved.
In this story, which was actually published two years earlier that "Morning of Departure," it appears that the deforestation caused by the dam construction actually did result in severe flooding, which ended up destroying the dam itself. The story conveys a dual message: that it was wrong to cut down trees to build dams, and that it was wrong to punish the environmental workers who protested the damage.
