North Korean state media is encouraging citizens to undertake winter climbs of Mount Baekdu, a peak venerated by Koreans ancient and modern, North and South.
The official Rodong Shinmun newspaper noted approvingly late last week that thousands of groups have followed leader Kim Jong-un’s example and ascended the mountain. It urged others to do so to refresh their “revolutionary spirit.”
The deliberate association of a myth-laden mountain with newer myths of the Kims has emerged as a core element of the powerful personality cult buttressing the family that has ruled North Korea for three generations, Pyongyang watchers say.
A merger of propaganda from the 1970s and 1980s with East Asian traditions of sacred mountains has generated the legend of a “Mount Baekdu bloodline” that supposedly runs through the veins of Mr. Kim, his ancestors and a rising generation coming to prominence.
The current North Korean dictator, having succeeded his father and grandfather in the post, has often been photographed in the area. Most famously, he was shown in 2019, outfitted in bespoke riding gear and mounted upon a white steed on Baekdu’s snow-covered trails.
The images of an obese individual in a nation wracked by malnutrition striking heroic poses generated guffaws across English-language social media, but to North Koreans, it was no joke to North Koreans.
Living in a shuttered state without freedom of movement, information, association or expression, something close to religious fervor surrounds the Kims, and Mount Baekdu is a key pilgrimage site.
Mighty mountain, heroic Kim
The mountain, which straddles North Korea’s border with China – where it is known as Changbai - is actually an extinct volcano. Complete with a scenic lake in its crater that was legendarily inhabited by a water dragon, the 9.003-foot Mt. Baekdu is the Korean peninsula’s highest point.
East Asians have long venerated mountains. Japan has Mount Fuji. Chinese sages and emperors were associated with certain peaks, said academic and tour guide David Mason, and an official system of mountains, complete with shrines and pilgrimage sites, was established.
Ancient Koreans embraced the concept as well.
“Mountains were very much used in the founding myths of various Korean kingdoms and dynasties,” said Mr. Mason, who specializes in sacred Korean peaks. The mythological first Korean, Dangun, was supposedly born on the mountain.
“It has often been remarked how North Korea is un-Communist and anti-Marxist because it turned to a traditional, mountain-based bloodline royalty,” Mr. Mason said.
Though a powerful personality cult surrounded Chinese Communist Party founder Mao Zedong, he did not create a dynasty.
Kim Il Sung – who was installed in Pyongyang under Soviet auspices — was more successful: His son and grandson went on to hold apparently undisputed power in North Korea, a grip that has lasted to this day.
Born in 1912, Kim Il Sung was a Korean communist and guerilla leader who spent three decades in exile before returning home when Soviet Union forces invaded Manchuria and northern Korea in 1945 at the very end of World War II.
His personality cult went into overdrive after the disastrous Korean War that he had initiated.
In the 1970s and 1980s, state propaganda linked Mr. Kim to Mount Baekdu. It claimed he established a secret guerilla headquarters on the forested slopes, siring his son there between battles with the Japanese.
“This a pure, 100% propaganda fantasy: Such a camp never existed,” said Andrei Lankov, a South Korea-based Russian specialist in Korean studies who previously studied in Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung University. “But the myth of Mount Baekdu is extremely important for North Korean nation-building and the essential ‘Koreanness’ of the Kim family.”
Working behind the scenes in Pyongyang media in the 1970s and ‘80s, Kim Il Sung’s Russian-born son, named Yuri at birth, took the Korean name Kim Jong-il.
“He was a big influence on his father’s personality cult though he was smart enough not to promote himself,” said Michael Breen, a biographer of Kim Jong-il. “Therein lay his own legitimacy.”
Kim Jong-il took power after his father died in 1994, the first-ever dynastic succession in a supposedly Communist state. He was succeeded by his own son, Kim Jong-un, after his death in 2011.
Further broadening the Kim dynastic footprint is Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong. A high-ranking party functionary and state media columnist, some credit her with boosting her brother’s public image by linking it more closely to that of his esteemed grandfather.
Official statues and paintings depict the latter on horseback, while a famous poster of Kim Jong-il shows him standing on Mount Baekdu.
Mountain landscapes, sacred landscapes
A diplomat with experience in Pyongyang said that the average North Korean takes the “Baekdu bloodline” seriously. South of the DMZ, few South Koreans admire the Kims, but Mount Baekdu is famed there, too.
It is mentioned in the first line of South Korea’s national anthem, and its crater lake is a hugely popular image on paintings, posters and calendars. Despite its border location, young South Koreans in Seoul say that they are taught in school that the mountain is Korean, not Chinese.
It was no coincidence that a trip up Mount Baekdu, by cable car, was the highlight of a visit by then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in with Mr. Kim in 2018 when inter-Koreans relations were – briefly – rosy.
Currently, Mr. Kim appears to be expanding his family’s media presence. He has made multiple appearances with his daughter Ju Ae. His wife, Ri Sol Ju, has been pictured with him at a wintry Mount Baekdu.
In an officially agnostic state, the linkages forged between an iconic mountain, a heroicized ruling clan and North Korea itself are no joke, experts said.
“People from different religions take pilgrimages to their holy lands – be it Islam, Christianity or ‘Kimism,’” said Steve Tharp, a retired U.S. Army lieutenant colonel who formerly undertook negotiations with North Korean officers.
“Though we live in an age when we are encouraged to respect others’ religions and cultures, I don’t think we should respect North Korea’s, as that state is not admirable,” added Mr. Breen. “But I don’t think we should dismiss it either, as it is sort of a symbol of the sacred — it is a deep place.”
• Andrew Salmon can be reached at asalmon@washingtontimes.com.