On-the-spot guidance

"On-the-spot guidance" (also "guidance tours" or "field guidance") is a term used in the North Korean mass media to describe appearances by the supreme leader of North Korea, often at sites related to the military or to industry, at which the leader gives directives. "On-the-spot" guidance is a key aspect of North Korean propaganda and the North Korean personality cult of the Kim dynasty. Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un have all made use of the practice.

In North Korea, "on-the-spot guidance" is depicted as "a unilateral favor bestowed ... by the supreme ruler," and its use is one "example of how the North Korean system is based on a paternalistic, patriarchal system." In North Korean propaganda, "on-the-spot" guidance furthers the image of a caring, omniscient, and great leader offering "benevolent guidance" to the people.

The phrase "on-the-spot guidance" was first created to describe the public activities of Kim Il-sung at some particular site. North Korea officially recognizes Kim Il-sung's "first" guidance tour as a trip to a Pyongyang factory on September 24, 1945, but "whether this was really a guidance tour is doubtful," as Kim's local visits "were irregular and intermittent in the 1940s, rather than planned and routinized as they were in the 1950s and 1960s." The first guidance tour "as an institutionalized leadership act" came in December 1956 at the Kangson Steel Plant, at which Kim initiated the Chollima Movement "mass competition campaign for rapid economic development" (1957-1961). Kim continued to use guidance tours to launch such campaigns and other new policies.

Under Kim Il-sung, on-the-spot guidance was "a very modern form of pageantry involving intimate contacts between the charismatic ruler and the ordinary worker-citizen, with Kim making prolific visits across the country." Kim Il-sung's widely publicized visits to collective farms, factories, and other sites "powerfully and palpably" conveyed "the intent of the 'on-the-spot guidance' practice to embody state power and state authority."

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