Michel Houellebecq, the controversial French writer, recently published an intriguing, futuristic novel entitled “Submission.” The novel is set in 2022, a presidential election year in France. Reluctant to choose an extreme right-wing candidate, the French people elect a seemingly moderate Muslim leader from the fictional Muslim Fraternity party.
Soon, however, the French people witness the gradual Islamization of France. For example, the University of Paris IV is rechristened as the Islamic University of Paris-Sorbonne, freedom of speech is severely 
suppressed, the press is heavily censored and women are denied their rights. Even polygamy becomes fashionable in France. Some critics denounce the novel for its far-right scaremongering, arguing that the novel foretells the return of right-wing ideology in Europe, while others point out that the novel persuasively illustrates Europeans’ fear of the rapidly growing Muslim population as well as terrorist threats from fanatics.
A similar collective fear appears in Richard Condon’s novel “The Manchurian Candidate.” In the novel, set during the Korean War, soldiers of a U.S. infantry platoon are kidnapped by communists and taken to Manchuria. They are brainwashed to believe that Sgt. Raymond Shaw saved their lives when in fact, Shaw, who is hypnotized, killed two of them. On their return to the United States, Shaw is awarded the Medal of Honor for his heroism. The communists use Shaw as a sleeper agent who, triggered by seeing the Queen of Diamonds, turns into a ruthless assassin.
Shaw’s handler is, in fact, his domineering mother Eleanor, who manipulates him to sabotage the White House. Eleanor activates his son to assassinate the presidential candidate in the party’s national convention, so her puppet husband Sen. Johnny Iselin, the vice-presidential candidate, can become president. Thanks to the strenuous efforts of his boss Maj. Bennett Marco, Shaw is reprogrammed and ends up shooting Eleanor and Iselin instead, thus eliminating the threat to the U.S. government.
“The Manchurian Candidate,” published in the late 1950s when the “Red Scare” was sweeping across American society, touched a raw nerve by evoking the American people’s lurking fear of communism. What would happen if someone brainwashed by the communists became the president of the United States? If so, the U.S. government would be manipulated by the Soviet Union and, eventually, freedom of speech and the press would be snuffed out, personal property rights would be revoked, and American society would be terrorized by the KGB. Surely, it would have been the most dreadful nightmare for the American people in the 1950s.
“The Manchurian Candidate” was so well received that it was made into a 1962 film starring Frank Sinatra and Janet Leigh and a 2004 version featuring Denzel Washington and Meryl Streep. The 2004 film, though based on Condon’s novel, reimagined the story and modified it to fit the contemporary situation. In this movie, the platoon members are the subjects of a nano-technological experiment conducted by a powerful corporation called Manchurian Global that conspires to manipulate the White House by placing a puppet in the seat of the president. Once their objective is realized, they plan to pull the strings behind the scenes for their company’s profits.
In Hollywood films, a replacement or an impersonator of the U.S. president frequently appears. For example, in the 2013 film “G.I. Joe: Retaliation,” evil Zartan impersonates the president of the United States by using cutting-edge technology to change his face and voice and then attempts to conquer the world by attacking nuclear summit countries with orbital kinetic bombardment weapons called Project Zeus.
Sometimes, I wonder if we Koreans, too, have a similar fear lurking beneath our consciousness and if a similar conspiracy could become possible in South Korea. What if, someday, our president turns out to be a puppet that is indoctrinated and controlled by the communists? What if our president is an impersonator? I cannot but shudder with horror at such nightmarish scenarios.
Of course, these scenarios belong in the realm of fiction so we need not worry. Nevertheless, it unnerves me whenever I think of the possibility of such evil schemes. Some people say that in the past, those who subscribed to the North Korean leader Kim Il-sung’s “Juche Sasang (Philosophy of Self-reliance)” ruled South Korea for some time. Could this be possible? Whatever the case may be, we should exert extreme caution when we elect our political leaders so that we do not end up electing puppets of the North Korean regime.
The recent terrorist attack in Paris against the satirical French magazine Charlie Hebdo by two radical Muslim brothers only makes the nightmarish plots in Houellebecq’s and Condor’s novels seem plausible. We wish to live in a place where we do not need to be afraid of puppets, brainwashed people and terrorists. Sadly, no such place seems to exist at the moment.
By Kim Seong-kon
Kim Seong-kon is a professor emeritus of English at Seoul National University and the president of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea. ― Ed.
