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North Korea's deepening succession
mystery
By Andrei Lankov
SEOUL - Now, at long last, we know what
North Korea's founder, Kim Il-sung, told his wife
more than 60 years ago about his intentions for
dynastic succession - or at least what a Korean
broadcast says that he said. Korea watchers are
parsing this purported political pillow-talk - or
some other private conversation or fabrication -
stitched together by propagandists. And it comes
on the eve of current Korean leader Kim Jong-il's
64th birthday on February 16, with no known plans
for his succession.
North Korean radio
cited comments that Kim Il-sung, the dynasty's
founder, allegedly made when talking to his wife
in 1943 (in all probability, these comments are
pure invention - like more or less the entire
"history of the Great Leader" as taught in North
Korea). The Great Leader reportedly told his wife:
"I would obey my father's instruction to struggle
for Korea's liberation from Japanese colonial rule
and establish the communist country ... if I fail,
the tasks should be carried out by my son and
grandson." This was broadcast on January 27.
So, for the first time we have Kim
Il-sung's grandsons in the picture. Or have we?
After all, many analysts interpret this as yet
another propaganda exercise aimed at promoting Kim
Jong-il, not his sons. But the majority seem to
believe that these remarks do have some hidden
meaning, indicating that Pyongyang leaders finally
have decided to move ahead with their succession
plans.
For more than a decade, Pyongyang
watchers have wondered why Kim Jong-il has not
appointed an official heir. Indeed, Kim's oldest
son is now 34 - and Kim Jong-il himself was 32 in
1974 when he became a full Politburo member. This
promotion to the Politburo made clear that his
appointment as heir-designate was forthcoming (it
took six more years to make an official statement
to this effect). Hence from the mid-1990s
observers have been scrutinizing information from
Pyongyang in search of signs that a Kim III is
going to be appointed any time soon.
It is
widely believed that a dynastic succession is the
only way to save the regime from collapse after
Kim Jong-il's death. If a new leader came from
outside the ruling family, he would have too much
incentive to negotiate surrender to the prosperous
and powerful South, likely sacrificing the lives
and property of the current elite in exchange for
his own security. He would also probably lack the
legitimacy necessary to keep the country and
populace under control. Frankly, this writer
believes that nothing short of Chinese
intervention will save the regime one way or
another, but if the Pyongyang royalty does not
want to go down without a fight, it makes sense to
appoint a new leader from the incumbent royal
family.
But Pyongyang is running behind
schedule. Some signs of a potential appointment
emerged recently, but it is clear that not much
groundwork has been done, and appointments should
be carefully considered. When in 1974 Kim Jong-il
became a Politburo member, the North Korean press
began to bombard the public with stories about his
superhuman wisdom and magnificence, his qualities
second only to those of his father, Kim Il-sung.
North Koreans were required to study Kim Jong-il's
articles, and his birthday on February 16 was
marked by grandiose events. In 1972, an arts
school was named after him. Portraits of Kim
Jong-il began to appear nationwide. Nothing like
this has happened yet with any of Kim's own
children.
It is not too difficult to
understand why in the early 1970s Kim Il-sung
broke with the established Communist Party
tradition and chose his son as his heir. Kim saw
how the posthumous reputation of communist
strongmen, including Josef Stalin himself, had
been destroyed by their own henchmen - the very
same people who had once pledged loyalty to them.
Once a leader was dead, he was accused of
transgressions, mistakes and crimes. Kim did not
want the same thing happen to his own heritage,
and he chose a simple solution: to arrange a
transfer of power within the ruling family. In the
1980s, most North Koreans expected that the newly
established tradition would be continued, and that
they would live under the reign of the Kim family
for the foreseeable future.
But what are
the reasons for the current delay in choosing a
successor? Nobody knows for sure, and perhaps we
will have to be content forever with speculations
and/or more or less plausible reconstructions - it
is unlikely that Kim Jong-il is very frank with
his henchmen, and this observer cannot imagine his
writing a frank private diary in which he explains
all the motivations of his actions and schemes.
A lot of troubles for the succession seem
to be created by Kim Jong-il's own personal
lifestyle, which is certain to inspire a number of
soap operas in decades to come. He is different
from his father, in whose life women never played
a major role (with the probable exception of his
first wife, Jong-il's mother Kim Jong-suk). Kim
Jong-Il is a ladies' man. He has had a number of
love affairs with stunning beauties, some of whom
bore his children. To give him his due, Kim
Jong-il was a good father who denied his children
nothing (needless to say, the money came from
state coffers). He was a good ex-partner, too.
Even after the passion burned itself out, his
former partners still could count on very special
treatment and an occasional shopping trip to
Switzerland. These are admirable qualities in a
private man, but for a quasi-feudal absolute
monarch they could spell disaster - as emperors,
sultans and sheikhs have known for millennia.
For ages, rich and powerful males knew how
to reconcile their philandering with the demands
of political stability. In polygamous societies,
powerful men were usually allowed to play around,
but still were expected to have one primary wife
whose official standing was clearly different from
those of assorted mistresses and concubines. First
and foremost, it was the primary wife's children
who normally became heirs to the father's realm.
This approach was based on bitter experience: too
many women with uncertain standing, and too many
children borne by them, were a prescription for
chaos and outbursts of harem politics at its
worst. In North Korea, the situation is different:
it appears that few if any of Kim Jong-il's unions
were ever registered officially, and he has no
"primary wife" in a strict sense. Taking into
consideration his playboy lifestyle in his youth,
this is a problem in his older years.
In
the 1960s Kim Jong-il was dashing, even
attractive. He loved motorcycles (yes, the Dear
Leader was probably the first North Korean biker)
and beautiful girls. Certainly, the austere
official mores of Pyongyang did not approve of
such pastimes, but the prince was above the normal
regulations. He enjoyed success with women - and
not only because of his family background, even
though few beauties would dare to reject
approaches from the son of the Great Leader. In
spite of some excessive weight (typical for the
family), Kim Jong-il was a nice guy: smart,
charming and witty.
In the late 1960s,
after several reputed affairs and a short-lived
marriage (or cohabitation - we do not know that
any legal papers were ever signed), Kim fell for
Song Hye-rim, a stunningly beautiful film actress
who was the closest approximation to a "sex
symbol" North Korea had in the 1960s. There was a
problem: the prince's paramour was married and had
a child. Her father-in-law was Yi Ki-young, a head
of the North Korean literary bureaucracy. However,
this did not matter: the Kim family was above the
law, written and unwritten. A hot affair between
the First Son and the First Beauty of the Realm
developed, and in the late 1960s Song Hye-rim
moved into the residence of Kim Jong-il, to give
birth to his older son, Kim Jong-nam, in 1971.
However, there were more serious problems.
Kim Il-sung did not like his would-be
daughter-in-law because she was an actress and
also because she had a tarnished pedigree (North
Koreans take pedigree very seriously). The problem
was that Song Hye-rim's parents once came from the
South. They were devoted communists, of course:
her mother once was a star of left-wing Seoul
journalism, and her father, a rich landowner, gave
all possessions to the Communist Party.
Nonetheless, they were Southerners and hence
suspect. It did not help that the lady was a
divorcee herself.
Under family pressures
the union broke up, though Song Hye-rim and her
relatives continued to enjoy considerable
privileges. Kim Jong-il never abandoned his son
from this union, Kim Jong-nam, who got the best
possible education, including a stay in a
prestigious Swiss school (the Kim family loves
Switzerland - this may have something to do with
banking regulations in that peculiar country).
Meanwhile Song Hye-rim suffered a nervous
breakdown and around 1980 she left for Moscow,
where she lived in comfortable exile until her
death in 2002. Her sister eventually fled to an
unspecified Western country where she lives in
exile, writing books about North Korea's first
family.
Kim Il-sung picked a suitable
bride himself, but the girl, a certain Kim
Yong-suk, never enjoyed much popularity with
Jong-il, who remained attracted to stunning
beauties of dubious political credibility. In the
mid-1970s he fell for dancer Ko Yong-hui. Her
origins were hardly better than those of Song
Hye-rim: she was born in Japan to a family of the
ethnic Koreans who later moved to the Democratic
People's Republic of Korea. In due time, she gave
birth to two more children: Kim Jong-ch'ol (born
in 1979) and Kim Jong-un (1981). There might be
other children as well, of whom nothing is known
to the outside world. Apart form sons, Kim Jong-il
also has a few daughters by other women.
The choice of Kim Jong-nam as a crown
prince seems logical: he is the oldest son, and
his age allows him to assume official duties and
be taken seriously. Indeed, in the 1990s there
were indeed numerous stories about his coming
promotion (admittedly, it was not always clear
whether these stories were based on facts or on
some common-sense speculations). Jong-nam was sent
to work in the security/spying agencies that play
such a prominent role in North Korean politics.
But no promotion took place.
Perhaps this
delay reflected the campaign Ko Yong-hui probably
waged to promote her sons. Song Hye-rim was
confined to her Moscow exile, receiving
psychiatric treatment, while Ko Yong-hui was
always next to the Dear Leader. Even if he had
more affairs, Ko Yong-hui remained the major
person in his private life throughout the 1980s
and 1990s. In the ancient spirit of harem
politics, the woman obviously tried to ensure that
it would be one of her sons who would eventually
become a new Dear Leader. One can suspect that
Ko's pressures contributed to the constant delays
in appointment of a successor.
To an
extent, Kim Jong-nam made things even worse by his
own behavior - or, at least, by one strange
debacle in Japan in May 2001. On May 1, Jong-nam
was arrested when he tried to enter Japan on a
counterfeit Dominican Republic passport,
accompanied by a boy and two women (presumably his
girlfriend and their maid). He identified himself,
and said he was going to show Tokyo Disneyland to
his child. Perhaps this was the case: people do
not go on secret missions with a toddler in row.
But Kim Jong-il was reportedly annoyed by his
son's antics. There have been reports
(unconfirmed) that Kim was disappointed in his
oldest son, whom he allegedly considers unsuitable
for leadership.
Against such an uncertain
background, it briefly appeared that Ko Yong-hui
and her schemes had com close to success. In 2002
the North Korean army was issued curious
propaganda material that extolled the virtues of
an unspecified "female comrade of the Dear
Leader". She was eulogized in the terms that once
were used for the wife of the late Kim Il-sung.
People in the know understood that the "comrade"
in question was Ko, and this looked like a
beginning of promotion of this branch of the royal
family. But these plans were interrupted by Ko's
sudden death in June 2004 at the relatively young
age of 57. This death must have changed the
balance once again, since without a mother's
lobbying, the chances of younger children
ascending politically appear slim.
And
now, the enigmatic radio commentary of January 27
makes the situation even more complicated. Does
this mean that succession is coming? Perhaps. But
time it running out. Kim Jong-il is not very old,
but he is not as fit as his father was, and
reportedly has serious health problems. His system
survives on life support provided by his enemies
(over the past decade about a third of all known
aid going to North Korea has been provided by the
United States and another third by South Korea,
both still technically at war with Pyongyang). And
nobody knows who will become the third ruler of
the Kim dynasty.
Dr Andrei
Lankov is a lecturer in the faculty of Asian
Studies, China and Korea Center, Australian
National University. He graduated from Leningrad
State University with a PhD in Far Eastern history
and China, with emphasis on Korea, and his thesis
focused on factionalism in the Yi Dynasty. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North
Asia. He is currently on leave, teaching at the
Kookmin University, Seoul.
(Copyright
2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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Kim Jong-il's 'useful idiots' in the
West
(Feb 3, '05)
China's worsening NK
headache
(Jan 29, '05)
Case of missing Kim
portraits
(Nov 20, '04)
Hawks push regime change in
NK
(Nov
24, '04)
Happy Birthday, Dear Leader, who's
next? (Feb
14, '04)
The Dear Leader,
demystified
(Jun 24, '03)
Soap, sleeze: North Korea's first
family
(Mar 2, '02)
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