What the fuck was his problem?

>>1877724
manlet

>>1877724
Kim Jong-Il was Kim Il-Sung's first son, but his mother died before his father obtained power. Kim Il-Sung remarried and had a public wife, Kim Sung-Ae and had a son, Kim Yong-Ju, and people pretended that Jong-Il's monther didn't exist.

So even before the inheritance principle was established, Kim Jong-Il was engaged in a power struggle to establish his legitimacy as Kim Il-Sung's son. To win this struggle, Kim Jong-Il positioned himself as the most loyal perfect son. This is where the Cult of Personality in Korea really takes off, because Kim Jong-Il makes an industry out of it.

Now obviously, praising Kim Il-Sung has the double purpose of ingratiating himself to the president, and making him seem like a loyal son, but this really takes off because the cult of personality becomes a system of patronage just as the North Korean economy is locking up from the limits of a command economy and the implementation of Songun.

Expensive public flattery becomes a way to distribute semi-illicit goods upward, towards his father, but also downwards and horizontally, allowing Kim Jong-Il to control vital goods. Since he outplayed all his rivals in the power struggle, he expanded this system, which means more over the top praise and declaration of godhood as this becomes the primary means of moving luxury goods, with Kim Jong-Il controlling all distribution.

By the 80s he's cemented his position and succession, and begins appearing regularly in public images and monuments to Kim Il-Sung, as his equal. At the same time, he begins running day to day affairs of North Korea. But he was never really a leader and public figure the way his father was:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4Z5ypN_08Q
Even when he was old, Kim Il-Sung had a strong, confident baritone voice for public speaking. He began his leadership with a small band of partisan fighters, and those strengths carried him and set his limits. (continued

>>1879127
Kim Jong-Il was in many ways that Stalin to Lenin, he secured power through bureaucratic rather than populist means. Combined with the whole 'had to struggle his whole life to be acknowledged as his father's son' thing, he had a wee bit of a chip on his shoulder and was deeply paranoid that people would betray him at the first opportunity. He also never had a life outside the party and expected the same of everyone else.

>>1877724
He drowned his own brother when he was a kid.

>>1879134
That probably didn't help either, yeah.

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>>1879131
I smell a buthurt Trot
Stalin was elected your fuck.