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As the North Korean regime embarked on a massive project to deify Kim Jong-Un, it is being met by jeers and ridicule from the people as it relies on absurd propaganda defying common sense. As the regime strains to package a 27-year-old man without any achievement as a "great leader," the tactic is backfiring.
On the 11th of this month, Open North Korea Radio, a radio station broadcasting toward North Korea, made public the material for lectures held late last year against Labor Party officials and members. The propaganda material, titled "Material on the Greatness of Young General Comrade Kim Jong-Un", claimed that "Comrade Young General was an expert marksman since the age of three, and this year hit a row of light bulbs and bottles 100 meters away with a semiautomatic rifle, firing at three shots per second." It also claimed that Kim fired 20 shots at a target and hit all of them within the 10-point circle. In addition, it claimed that Kim "figured out all renowned generals through the East and the West and throughout history by his teens, is proficient in all areas of military affairs including the army, navy and the air force, and only took a few days to complete the 'automatic ceremonial cannon firing program,' which not even engineers could not accomplish."
Reportedly, this material also contains claims that Kim Jong-Un is not only proficient in politics, economics, culture, history and military affairs, but also a genius who completely acquired four languages -- English, German, French and Italian -- in his two years of study abroad, and that he is taking time out to study and master up to seven languages. It also propagandized that Kim amazed those around him by composing a difficult Chinese poem with a calligraphy brush at age three, and that North Korea developed nuclear weapon because Kim, through his study abroad, determined that "Against those with nuclear weapon, we must rise with nuclear weapon also."
The material directed toward farmers reportedly contains claims that Kim Jong-Un surprised the researchers of Sariwon Grain Cooperative Farm on a visit in 2008 when he spontaneously invented a microbial fertilizer that improves acidic soil, and that this farm produced 15 tons of rice per jeongbo [TK: unit of area, equivalent to 9917 m²) the next year. Last year, South Korea produced 5.2 tons of rice per jeongbo.
North Korean informants said after hearing the lecture, the people sneered, "Now there is no more food problem since all the rain and snow will turn into rice," "We are already worried about how to handle the excess food," "[Kim Jong-Un, the child of heaven] decided that this year's crop will be destroyed by flood," etc.
The deification of Kim Jong-Un is far more absurd than the deification of Kim Il-Sung or Kim Jong-Il. Kim Il-Sung's deification propaganda (also well-known in South Korea) about how he "made grenades with pine cones and crossed rivers on floating leaves" is on a children's book. Neither did Kim Jong-Il's deification, at least when aimed toward adults, contain such propaganda as absurd as "expert marksman at age 3." One defector noted, "It looks like the propaganda is getting worse as the officers of the propaganda bureaus have changed into the generation that grew up with the deification education."
김일성 뺨치는 김정은 우상화… 北주민 “쌀 넘치겠네” 비아냥 [Dong-A Ilbo]
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