12.17.11
North of Hwanghae , North Korea
“You are unfit to lead!”
The two men stared at each other across the dim room as it rocked with the motion of the train. Despite the poor quality of the tracks it sped across, the weight of the heavily armored car leveled out many of the bumps and smoothed the worst of the uneven waves.
“According to who, Father?” Kim Jong-nam had never spoken to his father like this before and he knew that his tone wouldn’t be tolerated much longer. His father had already allowed his insolence much longer than most older Korean men would have. “I’m unfit according to you? That’s a joke with no punch line.”
“Your point?” The Supreme Leader of North Korea's face was flushed as red as the expensive cognac stirring gently in the equally expensive lead-crystal decanters.
Jong-nam could feel his temper boiling over. He wanted to scream out his point, but knew it wouldn’t help—he had tried that tactic before and had quickly been reminded of his place. Letting his voice drop, Jong-nam hoped that he could take back some control and convince his father that it wasn’t about who led their country next but how they led it. “You are right, Dear Father. I am not fit to lead our country, but…”
“My country!” Jong-il nearly screamed out the words as he massaged his jaw and stared angrily through his eldest son. Jong-il’s oversized glasses sat slightly askew across his face and his tall hair seemed to tilt even further to one side.
Jong-nam was accustomed to the outburst and barely even took notice of it as he continued on. “But Jong-un must know that peace with our southern cousins is preferred. You must make him know that.”
“Peace?” Jong-il’s voice was low and raspy, barely hiding the anger that the man was obviously feeling. “Peace is not preferred! Peace willnever be preferred. There will never be a peaceful solution because they will not allow peace.”
“But they will!” Jong-nam could taste the bitter flavor of pleading on his tongue as he tried to explain the unexplainable to the man who had no desire to hear it. “The youth in the south want peace and reunification even more than we do.”
“You are a fool, my son.” The Dear Leader arched his back uncomfortably before staring through Jong-nam again. “You are a fool to think that peace and reunification are two independent thoughts which can be combined together using a single word other than ‘or’. There is no such thing as ‘peace and reunification’ nor will there ever be a ‘peaceful reunification’. The terms are mutually separate because there can only be peace or reunification.”
“Why, Father?” Jong-nam searched his father’s eyes for some sense of reason, some hidden desire for the redemption of his soul. But there was none. There had never been any. His father, the Dear Leader of the most dismal nation in the world, had only ever seen reason in his own logic and had never felt that he had done anything that might need redeeming.
The train continued its rattling course south as the two men sat silently, both lost in their own thoughts. The interior of the heavily reinforced train was a tribute to another generation—a generation that was long dead to the rest of the world. Just like everything else surrounding them, Jong-nam had to remind himself. This train was the perfect symbol of their dying country, with its thick armored walls that kept the new world out and strangled the old world within. Outside the train, Jong-nam knew their country was dying, but inside there was no evidence that North Korea wasn’t among the richest in the world. The single room filled most of the railroad car, with only two small compartments separated for sleeping and bathroom necessities. With its bright, but simple, carpet and antiquated walnut paneling, the two Kim’s could have been stuck in some upbeat 1950’s Jack Lemmon film retouched in Technicolor to ignore the poverty and starvation just outside.
“The world has moved on. Do you know that?” Jong-nam finally split the dark silence. “It has moved on without you. Nobody wants to play war with you any longer. Not because they have no reason to, but because the world has lost the taste for it. The world would gratefully welcome a united Choson back into it and may even be willing to leave you in command of it. The world would do it just so that your people might have a future. Our southern cousins would destroy their own economy to bolster ours. The Americans would pull their troops and leave us to our own business. The entire world, with their economies already in shambles, would grant you a new status as the ‘hero who opened closed doors’ and collect their spare change to feed our hungry and clothe our cold. They would do all of that if you would only demolish this nepocracy and allow your people to join the world.”
There was no answer as the two men stared into the silence of their own private worlds.
Jong-nam continued. “The world does not look at you in fear any longer. They laugh right before you and acknowledge you only with bored contempt and jaded hatred. Do you know that?”
Still no answer.
“Your name is laughable in any country other than your own. The world has seen inside the dark cell you’ve trapped your people in. They see what you’ve done and they despise you for it.” Jong-nam pushed on, knowing that each of his contemptuous words might be his last, but the time for mincing words had passed long before and he was tired of living a life not entirely his own. Looking at his father, he saw the pain so evident in the old man’s round face. “You’ve destroyed your own country and condemned your countrymen to a fate worse than death.”
When there was no response to his overtly traitorous words, Jong-nam looked closer. Even in the semi-darkness of the pulled drapes, Jong-nam could finally see that his father wasn’t in the emotional pain he’d first believed. The man’s face was barely recognizable any longer. Flushed and taut, Kim Jong-il’s round face was a brilliant mixture of cherries and grays. One hand was clutching at his thin left arm while the other was desperately clinging to the polished wooden arm of his chair.
“Father?” Jong-nam reached out in horror. But, even in the midst of such great pain, there was a hatred burning deeply in his father’s eyes. It was a damning look of both shame and anger that Jong-nam had become so accustomed to. “No. You do not deserve my pity.”
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