Jeffery Hodges

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A few years back I was a dedicated Kuro5hin reader. These days, I regret to say, I am not, primarily because it looks like most of the good writers have buggered off who knows where. However every now and then a good post shows up there and this one …..

Let’s put it this way…to use the Japanese analogy, say in 1941 or so there’d been a coup overthrowing Hirohito (I don’t know if that really makes sense, though; wouldn’t he have been more of a figurehead?). Anyhow, let’s say it happened. Then the whole Japanese propaganda machine—predicated on the divinity of the emperor and all that jazz—would have collapsed, right?

While the hijacking of the Japanese government in the early 20th Century might not have exactly been a ‘coup’ so to speak, it certainly did do a lot to diminish the power of the Emperor. So even despite his purported ‘divinity’ (or perhaps because of it), the Japanese Emperor was kept out of the loop. And of course, this was the situation throughout much of Japanese history — the Emperor has very rarely exerted any kind of real power over his nation, leaving control to (at various times), the daimyo, shogun, and other military leaders.

So it wouldn’t necessarily be a stretch to say that the same thing could happen in North Korea. A military coup wouldn’t have to strike at KJI, but rather at his handlers. The coup leaders could leave the Kim regime in place as the ’spiritual head’ of the North Korean nation, even while isolating him from anything more than a ceremonial role, much like what happened to the Japanese Emperors.

So would that cause the propaganda machine to collapse? Not necessarily. After all, although KJI may be considered ‘divine’, the people around him generally aren’t. Heck, the leaders of the coup might end up believing that they were simply removing the people who were attempting to ‘corrupt’ KJI, and then keeping him in isolation ‘for his own good.’