Mick Hartley

In North Korea it’s increasingly hard to keep up with the ideological twists. From the Daily NK:

A provincial party official in North Hamgyong province was seized by State Information Bureau agents the moment he stepped down from the lectern at a political lecture session last month, after accidentally mixing quotes from Kim Il Sung into a presentation intended to promote the distinct ideological legacy of Kim Jong Un, Daily NK has learned….

A Daily NK source in North Hamgyong province reported Thursday that the incident occurred in mid-March during a lecture session held in Chongjin city. The official, attached to the provincial party committee, had been explaining what the state describes as the independent and distinctive character of Kim Jong Un’s ideology when he mistakenly incorporated instructions associated with Kim Il Sung. He was detained by agents present in the room as soon as the lecture ended.…

“The word going around inside the provincial party is that the arrest was carried out deliberately and publicly to make an example,” the source said, “to show that anyone who damages the authority of General Secretary Kim Jong Un will not be forgiven regardless of their rank or position.”

A second line of reasoning also circulated. “In the past, it was Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il whose names appeared at the head of documents and lectures,” the source said. “Now, General Secretary Kim Jong Un’s name is the one being emphasized as singularly dominant across everything. Mixing in the previous leaders’ instructions was seen as a refusal to accept that shift.”

Out with the old: in with the new.

The incident reflects the intense pressure that has accompanied a sweeping ideological campaign launched following the Ninth WPK Congress, which elevated Kim Jong Un’s personal ideology as a distinct system of thought separate from the legacy of his predecessors. North Korea’s ideological tradition had long framed Kim Jong Un’s thinking as the continuation and development of “Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism,” the combined ideological framework of the two previous leaders. The current campaign treats Kim Jong Un’s thought as independently supreme, a shift that has created new pitfalls for officials accustomed to decades of standard formulations.