Kim Jong-il: Revolutionary Art of Death

Kim Jong-il

Some readers will recall this deathly image of Kim Jong-il from a couple of years ago, drawn and colored by my son, En-Uk, who was about ten years old at the time. In honor, therefore, of the death of Kim Jong-il, I thought that the occasion called for this work of art to be resurrected as somehow fitting.

Not everyone will be pleased to see it, I suppose, perhaps least of all a Swedish fellow who goes by the pseudonym "Revolutionärt äckel," which translates as "Revolutionary disgust," and who visited my blog a couple of days ago. He stumbled across one of my posts while conducting a Google search for:

women skirts north korera

I can't imagine what he might have been looking for, but what he found was my deeply ironical blogpost "Skirting Trouble in North Korea." He remained at my blog only 24 seconds, but that was long enough. Challenged by my ironic remarks about North Korea's shortlived attempt to prevent women from wearing pants, he wrote:

Propaganda. When my party has had meetings with north korea or went to north korea, our female comrades had pants. I know more about NK than you do, skirts are fashion there, just like leggings and tights jeans are fashion in western world. Do you see any white girls without tights jeans or leggings these days?

I don't see many 'white' girls these days, so I don't know about that, but to his contention that he knows more about North Korea than I do, I replied:

Braggert.

"But," I told myself, relenting a bit, "perhaps I am being too hasty, too quick in assuming that Scandinavians still brag like Beowulf in opening their word-hoard. After all, the man belongs to a party that has been to North Korea, so he must be an expert." I therefore visited his blog, Revolutionär konst, i.e., "Revolutionary art," which tells us:

Förord

Hej. Jag vill vara anonym av den enkla anledningen att det jag kommer lägga ut på denna blogg kommer att kunna rasera en karriär. Folk har hela tiden bara lekt med tankar, men dem vågar inte eftersom dem vet att fascisterna, med andra ord neo-liberalisterna kommer att straffa dem.

Jag är antirevisionist, antireformist, marxist-leninist och inspireras även av maoism. Jag vill inte berätta vilket parti jag är med i då detta kan få er att hitta mig väldigt fort, om någon kamrat till mig hittar denna blogg så, ja, det är jag. Var vänlig och säg ingenting om detta till dem andra. Tack!

Mina aktioner kan ses som sexuella för perversa mentalt rubbade människor som kommer att sitta runka till mina videor, imorgon kväll ska jag lägga ut min första video. Det här gör jag för att jag ser det som en konstnärlig aktion, och inget annat, det ni kommer att få se av mig är endast mina ben eller mina händer, händerna ska jag dölja med något för om någon ser mitt specifika särdrag på handen så kan man lätt identifiera mig om man har träffat mig på politiska evenemang eller tillsammans med mitt parti. Jag vill vara anonym med respekt för mina kamrater och parti.

En del av er kanske kommer hylla mina videor, andra kommer att hata dem. Kolla in här imorgon kväll. Jag har lyckats pricka in ett perfekt tillfälle dessutom, jag hoppas Hans Majestät tycker om lite lingonsylt till drinken. Om han inte gör det får han göra det ändå, vi arbetare får finna oss i hans fascistfasoner. Det är dags för honom att få igen all skit han gjort.

Hmmm . . . let's see if Google Translate can sort this out:

Foreword

Hello. I wish to remain anonymous for the simple reason that I will post on this blog will be able to destroy a career. People have always just played with tanks, but they dare not because they know that the fascists, in other words, neo-liberal revisionists will punish them.

I antirevisionist, anti-reformist, Marxist-Leninist and even inspired by Maoism. I will not tell you which party I'm in, as this can make you find me very quickly, if any friend of mine found this blog so, yes, that's me. Please do not say anything about this to the others. Thank you!

My actions can be seen as sexual perverts for mentally disturbed people who will be sitting j*rk off to my videos, tomorrow night I'll put out my first video.

This I do because I see it as an artistic action, and nothing else, what you will see of me is only my legs or my hands, the hands should I conceal with something because if someone sees my specific characteristics of the hand as one can easily identify me if you have met me on the political events or with my party. I wish to remain anonymous with respect for my peers and party.

Some of you might pay tribute to my videos, others will hate them. Check out here tomorrow night. I have managed to pinpoint the perfect opportunity also, I hope His Majesty likes a little lingonberry jam to drink. If he does not, he may do that anyway, we workers will find us in his Fascist airs. It is time for him to get back all the sh*t he did.

I guess that's a rought equivalent of the Swedish, and if so, I'm relieved to see that our new friend doesn't take himself too seriously, that he's neither full of self-importance nor overweening in his belief about what he can accomplish. Nor is he the sort to spout terms like "fascism" or define them in arbitrary ways. Nor is his political position grounded in aesthetic reaction rather than intellectual engagement. And I'm especially pleased to see that he's neither a Maoist-inspired, Marxist-Leninist antirevisionist resolutely opposed to reform nor, I hazard to infer, associated with North Korea's party of Juche (주체, jou-che), a position that would be so antirevisionistic as to nearly predate Marx himself. Excellent, if I reason right, for I doubt that our new friend would wish to man that particular fort now that Beloved Leader Kim Jong-il has passed on from his earthly reward to his more metaphysical one.

I hope our new friend, this Revolutionary Artist, enjoyed his 24-second visit at Gypsy Scholar and that he might return soon and offer his aesthetic views on the artwork above, views that I am sure will, in their wounded disgust, shed revolutionary light on everything, or as Georges Braque put it:

"L'art est une blessure qui devient une lumière."

"Art is a wound that becomes a light." I can't put it any better than that . . .

[UPDATE (December 22, 2011): Sometime after posting this entry above, I found time to view the video referred to by this Revolutionary Artist, and I now believe the 'Artist' to be a woman rather than a man, a woman deserving our pity, based on what I discovered in the video, and probably even a woman in need of long-term psychological counseling.]