Keeping Dear Leader's Score
Eric Ellis

10/19/1994

The first hole at the Pyongyang Golf Club is a 340-meter (370-yard) dogleg par four, a severe test of skill even for a Greg Norman or a Jack Nicklaus. It was a cakewalk for North Korea's "Dear Leader," Kim Jong Il, when he gave "on the spot guidance" not long ago at the country's only golf club.
"Dear Leader Comrade General Kim Jong Il, whom I respect from the bottom of my heart, scored two on this hole," said the course professional, Park Young Man.

Clearly, the mysterious 52- year-old son of the late "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung is a hero of the golf course as well as of the nation.
Mr. Park, who confessed to having never heard of Arnold Palmer, explained that the Dear Leader shot a 34 over 18 holes, including five holes-in- one, and did no worse than a birdie on any hole.

"He is an excellent golfer," Mr. Park said.

If North Korea is in the dire economic straits that the world suspects it to be in, one possible solution might be this: Launch the Dear Leader on the professional golf tour.

The reports of his recent golf outing illustrate the lengths to which North Koreans go to deify the family that has ruled the country in the name of socialism for five decades. Indeed, in a week of traveling with tour guides- cum-secret police, this was one of the less incredible of the assertions I heard.

Official propaganda has it that the two Kims are responsible for everything from the morning sun and harvest rain to world peace and the Mona Lisa (not, however, for the moon landing; no ordinary citizen of North Korea yet knows that there has been such a landing).

This is a nation of roads without cars, restaurants without diners and chimneys without smoke.

It seemed an image of rural harmony in developing Asia - a woman riding a push-bike beside a paddy field where peasants were harvesting rice. But the bicycle carried two oversized loudspeakers blaring a jaunty revolutionary song: "Kim Jong Il, you are our supreme commander; with you we will win a great victory."

Her task was to ride up and down a single short stretch of road outside Pyongyang for eight hours a day, every day. The speed of the woman's pedaling directly determined the tune of the song, like a dynamo powering a bicycle headlight. If she slowed, the song slurred, and in North Korea nothing is permitted to stop the revolution.

China seems positively liberal compared with North Korea, where the economy has contracted by 4 to 5 percent a year since 1990. North Korea also has a history of failing to repay its debts.

This is doubtless one reason there is little obvious foreign influence in the country. The doctrine of juche, or self-reliance, promoted by the Kims, has forced North Koreans to do almost everything themselves. The result: shoddy output - a Communist specialty - and not much of it.

The average shop in North Korea has no foreign goods. In hard currency stores, where privileged foreigners and party potentates shop, Chinese goods are considered luxuries.

There is clearly a severe energy shortage. At 6:30 P.M., apartment lights in Pyongyang come on automatically, illuminating the portraits of the two Kims that every household and public building is obliged to display. At 10 P.M. the lights go off.

North of Pyongyang in the International Friendship Exhibition Center, an eight-story building of traditional Korean design, there are displayed no fewer than 73,035 gifts to Kim Il Sung and 29,831 to Kim Jong Il.

Alongside it, a museum is being built to house new gifts, apparently in preparation for many years of rule by the younger Mr. Kim.