New Goddess on Mount Paektu: Myth and Transformation in North Korean Landscape

The ‘Paektusan Generals’ have ruled supreme over North Korea since 1948, three Kims to rule them all. North Korean historiography, ideology and statecraft have it that Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un are everything from Alpha to Omega as far as power and charisma is concerned in Pyongyang. Historians might of course suggest that this was not always so, that North Korea had to create its own narrative and mythology as it went along to develop, consolidate and maintain control over its territory. Kim Il Sung had to be transformed along the way from guerrilla fighter to father of the nation, founder of a dynasty, heir to the energies and power of Mount Paektu. This book explores a character vital to this story and its mythographies, but little known and rarely deeply considered, Kim Jong Suk, the first wife of Kim Il Sung, mother to Kim Jong Il and grandmother to Kim Jong Un. Kim Jong Suk is herself transformed by North Korean history, melded by the political energies of Pyongyang’s theatric politics, moulded by projections of geomantic power from both Korea’s deep past, and nationalist present. Robert Winstanley-Chesters traverses the imagined and reconstructed mythologies of Kim Jong Suk’s transformation from traumatised child of colonial oppression, to notorious ‘crackshot’, revolutionary warrior hero, a New Goddess on Mount Paektu.