Chapter 6: Juche

Some developments: By pressing my mind, so to speak, against Gregory and Anthony's minds, I've found I can stimulate telepathic abilities in them.  They are actively developing those abilities now. Putting our heads together we've already come up with an anomaly.  In our investigation of leaders, advisors and propaganda writers regarding the U.S. Coalition war in Iraq and Syria- which we believe to be a controlled burn designed to ring us with fire while we slumber- we’ve found repeated references to North Korea, but they are puzzling.  They do not seem to reference a country, but rather an activity, a secret project, one involving interests all over the globe.  Powerful interests. 

North Korea seems as good a place to focus our nascent anti-war movement as any.  Gregory, who, it turns out, in addition to being a minor cult leader destined to become the world’s predominant post-war political thinker, is a man of independent means (from what source I don’t know), is bankrolling my flight to Gimpo Airport in South Korea.  I’m writing this in a hurry at LAX (Gregory and Anthony are seeing me off) hoping to post before take-off. 

I’ve been to South Korea twice before for teaching jobs.  I like the way students bow to you when they turn papers in.  The school I worked at and my cheap apartment were in the Gangnam District of Seoul, famed from the rap song, Gangnam Style, which is the fashion capital of Asia. I felt quite frumpy each morning walking to school in my teacher outfits among some of the most beautifully dressed and groomed people in the world.  The District was lively at night, and overwhelming with light and size, like five Times Squares one after another.  On Friday nights the girls in their stunning outfits often threw up on the sidewalk after too much drinking, while their bemused dates watched.  

I’d been to Gimpo Airport and was impressed when I arrived at baggage claim to find that the passengers’ luggage was already there!  That was my first experience of Korean efficiency.  The culture is very serious about efficiency, which is a good thing.

From Gimpo I’ll take a train to the southwest coastal city of Pohang, where Gregory has secured a cheap room.  Pohang is a port city, industrial, very few tourists.  We've detected a nexus of communication there, connected to the swirl surrounding North Korea.  My goal will be to locate and understand that nexus.

I’m looking forward to flying Korean Airlines.  They have amazing stewardesses.  Their dazzling smiles seem to bore right into you.  A director at my Korean school told me his wife tried out to be a Korean Air stewardess, one of the most coveted jobs in the country.  She went through an excruciating course involving endless details of decorum, and passed.  The last hurdle was to walk across a stage in high heels.  She stumbled once and was disqualified.  The problem was that she was not perfect.  I talked about perfection to my Korean students once, after they expressed doubts that they had done a poetry exercise “correctly,” i.e. perfectly.  I said that if something is perfect, that means, literally, that it is completed.  “Perfected” means “done,” and thus there should be no positive moral connotation to perfection.  In fact, I argued, there is a negative connotation to “perfection” because to be “done,” colloquially, means to be “finished,” as in “washed up.”  The students listened to me without comment.

Gregory, the 19-year-old leader of the revolutionary group Mantis and future presidential candidate (2044) came rushing across the check-in area to us.  He’d been charging his phone, actually charging his mind by dipping it into the Internet.   Gregory can “surf” the Internet telepathically, using his phone as a prompt, a feat I haven’t mastered.  He was breathless.

“Listen, I’ve gone through hundreds, maybe thousands of emails and texts, and I think I’m going right into the writers’ minds sometimes.  What I’m finding is far-out.”

“What?” we asked, breathlessly.  

He looked at us for a moment.  “There is no North Korea.  In 1945 a B movie actor was abducted from the North when it was administered by the Soviet Union.  It wasn’t just the Soviets who abducted him; it was a consortium also representing China, the U.S. and Europe.  The B movie actor’s name was Dong-ha.  He had no family and little fame.  He was subjected to six months of treatment at a secret facility.  When he emerged he had a new history as an underground fighter against the Japanese, and a title: "Great Leader."  He was also apparently a deep thinker because he had put together a national philosophy called “Juche,” in his words an “original, brilliant and revolutionary contribution to national and international thought.” Juche conveyed that an individual is the “master of his destiny,” and that the North Korean masses should be masters of their destiny against all comers, super-powers or not.  The actor had been given a new name: Kim Il-sung.