Just a little too familiar

North Korea is fascinatingly horrible. Take this recent piece in Daily NK. Originally I read it and moved on, but came back to it as it offers such a grim picture of a world both unfamiliar and just a little too familiar.

North Koreans are all abuzz about Ri Sol Ju’s attire at recent Lunar New Year performance

The performance also saw Kim Kyong Hui's first public appearance since January 2020

North Koreans are talking about a recent Lunar New Year performance attended by North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and his wife, Ri Sol Ju. People have reportedly focused particularly on Ri’s decision to wear traditional Korean clothing.

A Daily NK source in Pyongyang said Friday that Ri wore the same black traditional skirt and wine-colored traditional jacket worn by Kim Jong Suk, the wife of late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, in the years right after the founding of the country. He said everyone who saw Ri and her attire were reminded of Kim.

The piece goes on to link this appearance of Ri with moves to elevate her public and political significance. It conjures up a curiously compelling image of the most ghastly political smoke and mirrors while reminding us of something - we have a celebrity culture too. We also do smoke and mirrors. 

The source said many North Koreans speculate that Ri is trying to draw a line between her and Kim Jong Suk, just as her husband has inherited the legacy of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Un.

In particular, the source said cadres from the Central Committee and Propaganda and Agitation Department are saying that since they have shored up the 10th anniversary of Kim’s leadership, they are now rushing to make Ri the new Kim Jong Suk.

He said this means they are passing the baton from Kim Jong Suk — the “mother of socialist Korea” and a heroine of the anti-Japanese resistance — to Ri, turning her into the “mother of Korea.”

To my mind. North Korea is disturbing, not because it is so grim, but because it is not sufficiently distant from our own culture. We are nowhere near this level of repressive political insanity, but we are nowhere near robust enough to avoid drifting in that direction. We should be drifting in the other direction, but we are not.