North Korean defectors recall their goose-stepping days in Pyongyang

Even two decades after he fled North Korea, even with an abiding hatred of the ruling dictatorship, Sim Ju-il sometimes still relives the days when he goose-stepped past the nation’s revered founder, Kim Il-sung, as a young man. Alone on a Seoul street, he will pretend his umbrella is a rifle and present arms as he lifts his now aged legs in a rigid, still springy march and remembers the long-ago, exalted feeling.

“I was proud of myself because not too many people got to take part in these marches, and I still have that pride,” said Sim, 67, who took part in military parades in 1972 and 1985 – first as a goose-stepper and later riding on a military vehicle – before later defecting to South Korea. “I think North Korean military parades are the best in the world.”

Ahead of a massive military parade on Sunday to mark the 70th anniversary of the founding of North Korea’s socialist government, there are mixed feelings among former North Korean soldiers who goose-stepped in previous years’ parades. Pride, for some like Sim, but bitterness among others who say they were beaten, battered and malnourished during intense training sessions that never seemed to end. There’s also acknowledgement that the privilege of marching in one of the North’s premier events guaranteed speedy promotion and higher social standing.

Another former North Korean goose-stepper, Kim Jungah, was once proud of her marching but now feels she was physically abused. Still, she, too, sometimes dusts off her goose-stepping skills for South Koreans curious about the harsh training she experienced ahead of a 1997 military parade in North Korea.

The sight of thousands of goose-stepping soldiers can be a breathtaking spectacle: Columns of young soldiers, some with bayonet-tipped rifles, kick their unbending legs high in perfect unison as they parade through Pyongyang’s main Kim Il-sung square. Metal tips and heel plates on their boots ring out in unison, and the troops often look more like they are bouncing than marching as they spring forward. When they reach an elevated reviewing stand where North Korea’s young ruler, Kim Jong-un, smiles and waves his hands, they all instantly whip their heads at a 45-degree angle at the command, “Eyes right!” The current batch of North Korean goose-steppers appears to swing their feet much higher than their predecessors.

Goose-stepping was once favoured by despots like Hitler, Mussolini, Mao and Stalin, but North Korea is now one of the few nations whose military still does a full-fledged version. Experts say the spectacle allows Kim to display to the world highly disciplined, devoted and powerful troops as he manoeuvres in a decades-long nuclear stand-off with the United States and South Korea.

The goose-steppers are mostly from military academies or elite army units, selected because of their loyalty to the Kim government, family background and height.

Sim was a member of Kim Il-sung University of Politics, a prestigious army academy, in 1972, when he marched. His school only selected those who were between 165 and 174cm (5-foot-4-inches and 5-foot-7-inches) tall. Kim Jungah, who eventually dropped out of the parade because of injuries, said her academy only selected female cadets who were 160-164cm.