The Implausible Jong Eun Portrait Fiasco

[imText1]A portrait photographed in Rajin Art Gallery on a trip to North Korea in late October by Canadian lawyer Percy Toop was reported as probably being that of Kim Jong Eun by Canadian daily The Globe and Mail last weekend, but this has been rejected as highly unlikely in reality.

Instead, the portrait is more reminiscent of Kim Il Sung at the height of his revolutionary activities in the mid-1920s, when he was a teenager. The uniform of the young man depicted in the portrait bears a resemblance to those worn by exchange students in China and Japan in the 1920s, and the hat is based on the ones worn during the same period at Yuwen Middle School in Jilin, called a “takga” in North Korea.

Explaining the likely source of the image, one North Korean defector with a fine art education gained in the Kim Il Sung period explained to The Daily NK that the angle of the man’s face and line of vision reflect a formula used in innumerable official portraits of Kim Il Sung, who of course did not pose for every picture in which he appeared, and that the background is a homage to the North Korean founder’s time as a revolutionary in cities in places like Jilin and Harbin in Northeast China.

On all levels this portrait resembles the Kim Il Sung seen in cultural films about his revolutionary tradition, for example “The Star of Chosun” and “Sun of the People”.

Not only that, but as one North Korean defector who worked in the arts said, “If this was really a portrait of Kim Jong Eun for his glorification, it would have been distributed systematically by the Department of Agitation and Propaganda,” adding that, “It doesn’t make any sense that a glorification portrait of Kim Jong Eun which hasn’t even been published in Pyongyang yet would have been on display in the Rajin Art Gallery in October.”

“When I look at this picture, it looks like something a student from Pyongyang Art University might have submitted for their graduation piece,” he added.