Marking the 70th birthday of the late leader Kim Jong-il on February 16th, North Korea held massive commemorative events with a festive mood. The birthdays of the nation’s former leaders, Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, are considered greatly significant in North Korea, as they are designated as the nation’s biggest holidays. North Korea made Kim Il-sung’s birthday a holiday in 1962, and the nation began to observe the day as the biggest national holiday around 1974 when his son Kim Jong-il was nominated for successor. Kim Jong-il’s birthday was designated as a holiday in 1982, two years after he was announced as the nation’s heir-apparent. The day has been commemorated as the biggest holiday since 1995, a year after his father’s death. Professor Ryu Gil-jae at the University of North Korean Studies explains that the birthdays of the two former leaders are used as a political means to inspire loyalty in the general public.

In North Korea, the two Kims aren’t simple political leaders. The nation has idolized them as legendary figures and promoted a massive personality cult around them. So their birthdays aren’t ordinary anniversaries but are closely related to politics. Observed as an important political event, they are viewed as a means of prompting the citizens’ political awakening constantly.

In a special statement in January, the Politburo of the Workers Party designated Kim Jong-il’s birthday as Kwangmyongsong Day. Kwangmyongsong, meaning “shining star” in Korean, refers to the deceased leader in the North. The designation is interpreted as a move to strengthen the personality cult of Kim by elevating his birthday to the level equivalent to the birthday of his father Kim Il-sung, which is called Taeyang (or Sun) Day.

It is uncertain where the star, Kwangmyongsong, is. North Korean legend has it that Kim Jong-il was born at Baekdu Mountain on February 16th, 1942, and Kwangmyongsong is one of the stars that shone in the sky above the mountain on that day. Kim’s birthday has now been named after the star in an apparent move to idolize Kim and give him an air of mystery by using the legend surrounding his birth. For the same purpose, everything related to Kim is now referred to as the star.

North Korea carved a phrase extolling Kim Jong-il, spanning as long as 120 meters, on the rocks in Jeungsan County in South Pyongan Province. The North says that 2,000 people are visiting Kim’s birthplace at Milyoung on Baekdu Mountain every day. The nation also presented “Kim Jong-il medals” to 132 people and issued special pardons for a number of convicts, the first of their kind in seven years. Other celebratory events include the issuance of commemorative coins and stamps and an athletics meeting. The festive mood is certainly different from the three-year mourning period following Kim Il-sung’s death in the 1990s. North Korea watchers say all those commemorative events are, after all, aimed at the new leader Kim Jong-un.

A power transition to Kim Jong-un is still underway in North Korea as the new leadership has yet to take firm root after Kim Jong-il’s death, although the new regime looks stable on the surface. To facilitate the power transfer, Pyongyang needs to create a brighter mood and demonstrate its stability inside and outside the nation. North Korea seems to be trying to quickly change the somber atmosphere created by the death of its former leader.

Meanwhile, North Korea has reportedly relaxed its tight controls on people and cross-border passage to China considerably. According to North Korean human rights-related groups, the North Korean authorities have been quite flexible in issuing passes into China. It is also said that the authorities have banned military units in border regions from using firearms when dealing with citizens attempting to defect to China. Professor Ryu says these measures, too, are aimed at stabilizing the new regime after Kim Jong-il’s birthday.



It appears North Korea concluded that it would be necessary to ease the shock from the former leader’s death and to address the potential changes in people’s daily lives. If the nation keeps controlling its people strictly, citing the difficulties it faces, the public may suspect that their society is rather unstable. Taking this into consideration, the authorities seem to have loosened its grip on people to some extent.

Attention is also being paid to whether high-ranking officials in China will visit North Korea. Pyongyang has refrained from taking any diplomatic steps since Kim Jong-il’s death, but it has recently agreed on a third round of high-level talks with the U.S. Diplomatic experts speculate that North Korea may resume high-level exchanges with Beijing after Kim’s death. Professor Ryu says Kim’s birthday will serve as a litmus test gauging whether the nation will stabilize its new regime.

Unquestionably, the Kim Jong-un leadership has many weaknesses. The new leader will have to decide on numerous state policies. In that process, the key is how he persuades the ruling elites to cooperate to solidify his regime. In this respect, Kim Jong-un needs to utilize the birthdays of his father and grandfather in a way to demonstrate his leadership. If he successfully leads various political events related to the important occasions, he will be able to lay the groundwork for stabilizing his government, at least in the short term. For now, it depends on whether he manages national events related to his father’s birthday properly.

Experts predict that North Korea will maintain the festive mood until the April 15th centennial birthday anniversary of Kim Il-sung and concentrate on seeking internal unity and demonstrating confidence to the outside world. It remains to be seen whether Kim Jong-il’s birthday will be an important step in justifying a third-generation power succession and consolidating the new leadership in North Korea.


[Interview] After-School Class for N. Korean Students
Located in Sinjeong-dong, Yangcheon District in Seoul, this study room is for children A teacher is reading a fairytale to children, and the kids are listening very attentively with twinkling eyes. As the teacher finishes reading, the children shower questions on her. Located in Sinjeong-dong, Yangcheon District in Seoul, this study room is for children whose parents defected from North Korea. The district opened this class on the second floor of the public service center in the region last June, in cooperation with “Good Friends,” a local group dedicated to North Korean human rights issues. The name of the class “Saisup” is short for a Korean phrase meaning “A Forest of Children with Love.” Teacher Kwon Sang-rye explains that this class is sort of a playground to provide emotional stability to North Korean kids, who will play a role in bridging South and North Korea in the future.

Our initial goal was to prepare for the unification of Korea. But there will be great confusion after unification, as seen in the case of Germany. In this sense, many North Korean defectors who have resettled here in South Korea need to restore emotional stability so they can play a bridging role between the two Koreas after unification. This is what we’re working on now. This place can be viewed as a playground that makes the kids feel comfortable.

Currently, the class is attended by some ten children, including North Korean kids and their South Korean counterparts from low-income families. The students learn such subjects as the Korean language, math and English at first, but the after-school class now focuses more on art, gymnastics and experience programs that the children can participate in and enjoy. Unlike other learning institutes, this class features various themes designed to help the students ponder the importance of neighbors and the natural environment.

The class adopts a six-month curriculum. Children here are encouraged to think about the entire universe, the natural environment, the change of nature and the importance of their neighbors. Using different themes each month, the curriculum also helps the defector students realize how important they are and consider multiracial and multicultural families.

But it is the art class that is most popular with the students. Today, the kids are told to work with clay and to make what comes to their mind after listening to the fairytale read by their teacher. Some make animals, while others create something like a human face. The children look happy when explaining what they have made. But their faces were not bright from the beginning. At first, the North Korean children were wary of strangers amid the sudden change of environment. They had a hard time understanding what their teachers said due to cultural differences and they couldn’t express their opinions properly. The teachers discovered psychological problems, which they had rarely found in South Korean students. So, they began to focus on communication with the children and psychotherapy in order to encourage them to open up their minds.

While resettling here, these children become acutely aware of the wide cultural gap between South and North Korea. The class is more about helping the students overcome the cultural estrangement and figuring out exactly how they feel. That is, the class has much to do with psychological analyses and treatments. As an art teacher, I expected the students to develop artistic techniques at first. But I don’t think that way any longer. Now, my goal is to help the children communicate with their classmates in their school and get along well with them. I do hope that North Korean children can resettle in South Korea successfully.

The after-school class serves as a resting place for North Korean children, soothing their wounded hearts. We hope many more children from the North will heal their mental scars here and grow healthily and happily as the nation’s future leaders.