Kim Jong-un shuns traditional calendar to bolster personality cult

Despots around the world have often tried to impose themselves on their societies’ systems for reckoning time. Now North Korea has abandoned its unique calendar, in a further indication of the growing confidence of its supreme leader, Kim Jong-un.

The newspaper of the Korean Workers’ Party, as well as state-run Korean Central Television, have recently stopped using the Juche system for counting the years in favour of the Western Gregorian calendar.

Beginning last month, the state-run Rodong Sinmun, or Workers’ Newspaper, and KCTV have dated their stories 2024, rather than Juche 113.

Juche is North Korea’s ideology of self-reliance, and the Juche calendar begins with the birth of the country’s first president, Kim Il-sung, in 1912, which is taken to be Year 1.

It was one of the ways in which his successors glorified the founder after his death, creating a near-divine figure from whom they derived their own authority. However, in recent years Kim has watered down the Kim Il-sung cult and stealthily begun to replace it with one that centres on himself.

The state-run Korean Central News Agency, whose website can be accessed from outside the country, is still using the Juche system in its online articles — but there have been reports that Juche dates are being removed from North Korea’s many propaganda monuments.

“This seems to be part of Kim Jong-un’s efforts to establish his own independent cult of personality, which has been evident since the start of this year,” an official of South Korea’s unification ministry told the country’s Yonhap news agency.

The Juche calendar was first introduced in 1997, three years after Kim Il-sung’s death. For all the energy that state media has expended on glorifying his successors, an important element of the personality cult has always been the pretence of self-deprecation. Both his son and grandson affected humility in comparison with their even more glorious forebear.

It was several years after his father’s death before Jong-il began to take on his leadership titles — and even in death Kim Il-sung remains “eternal president”. Kim visibly modelled himself on his grandfather soon after coming to power in 2011, imitating his haircut and his fedora hat. Recently though, there have been signs that the importance of the founder is diminishing and that his grandson is casting off modesty and establishing a personal iconography.

The dropping of the calendar tied to the year of his birth is only one example. This year, for the first time, state media failed to refer to Kim Il-sung’s birthday on April 15 by its long-standing appellation, “The Day of the Sun”.

In the same month North Korea broadcast a new song, entitled Friendly Father, in praise of Kim, accompanied by a video of ecstatic citizens singing his name and praising the “bright future” that he promises.

In May a portrait of Kim began to be displayed for the first time alongside that of his father and grandfather. Photographs of the two older leaders have long been displayed in every school, workplace and state institution and in many private homes, but this was the first time that they have been seen alongside that of the young Kim.

Then in June, state media pictured Workers’ Party officials wearing badges bearing the face of Kim Jong-un for the first time — formerly such ornaments only showed the dead leaders.

Hong Min, of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul, told the NK News website: “When viewed from a broader perspective, this may also serve to highlight the Kim Jong-un era more distinctly … to emphasise his status as a leader achieving great accomplishments in this era, it would be better to minimise the connections to the preceding leadership.”

The process is still fairly subtle. Although the birthdays of his father and grandfather are public holidays, Kim’s birthday on January 8 is still not marked on official calendars.

The Juche calendar has been widely employed. When North Korea unveiled a new assault rifle, it was christened the Type 111, after the Juche year — 2022 — in which it was brought into use. Fragments of North Korean shells found in Ukraine have been found to use the calendar to indicate their year of manufacture.

Other countries use alternatives to the western system of years. In Iran and Afghanistan, it is the year 1446 AH in the Islamic Hijri calendar. Japan also has its own system of counting the years, based on the reign of the current emperor. The year 2024 is also known as Reiwa 6 — the fourth year of Emperor Naruhito. The system is widely used on official documents in parallel with the Gregorian calendar.