The Saviours of North Korea- I
(Kim Il Sung, the Great Leader)
Kim Il Sung the father of North Korea
Grew up when the Korean peninsula
Was under Imperial Japan’s occupation
And later would write of how his heart bled
At the sight of so much Korean blood being shed
Which was what pushed him to the helm of his nation.
He might well have thought that he did not need
Outside help to make his nation bleed.
With the Japanese defeated he took the reins
Of power promising to spare no pains
To drive away anti-communist Syngman Rhee
And reclaim the southern half of the country.
While the regime in the war ravaged south flourished
With American aid, and knew a post-war boom
Kim’s north became more and more impoverished
Subject to famine poverty and gloom.
Kim’s allies the impecunious commies
The war-torn Soviets and the Chinese
Could only offer political advice
No financial aid, no wheat no rice.
If there was no solution economical
Kim thought, might as well make it political
Which led to the creation of songbun
A concept not unallied to apartheid
With all things considered an all’s said and done
It is a truth universally acknowledged
That what a country facing dirth and famine
Needs most is not wheat rice meat or vegs
Clean water, warmth in winter or medicine
But an efficiently run secret service
So that whenever anything is amiss
They know who to watch who to arrest
In order to curtail grumbling and stop protest
Kim’s hand-picked team, his eyes and ears had begun
To divide the population according to
Their attachment to the regime, into songbun
The Core of Ultra-loyalists who blindly do
What they were told without hesitation
Who would be rewarded with a bigger share
Of available perks and benefaction
Foreign travel and imported wares
That’s twenty percent of the population
Comprising of the military and theirs
Family of Korean workers Party members
Descendants of war heroes and their heirs
People from families of laborers…
Red intellectuals trained in North Korea
After the Japs were kicked out of the peninsula.
Neutrals or Waverers made up fifty percent
You belonged if you were a Confucian
A small factory owner, a small merchant
A medium service trader, an artisan
A practitioner of superstition
Tavern hostesses economic offenders
Former high-up figures, mediuk-service traders
It’s from their numbers that dissent would come
They sneeze subversion that others can catch
According to bureaucratic wisdom
So they had to be carefully watched
Last_ and also least _come the rest, the hostiles
They’re the first to have a finger pointed at
Theirs is the last file at the bottom of the pile
The bête noire of the office bureaucrat
They’re what Thatcher would have called the enemy within
People who had to be monitored and fenced-in
When they have queued for a stamp all morning
They’re told to come back the day after tomorrow
And almost certainly on returning
They’re ready to dish out more aggro
It’s the wrong office, the wrong department
You’ve got an outdated document.
Now with songbun, you can go down a scale
A Core can lose his status as an elite
And a Waverer can become a Hostile
But traffic in Songbun is a one-way street
Thus it is that the regime stays afloat
As no one is prepared to rock the boat
