On pins and needles over Kim
Jong-il's heir By Rian Jensen
It's usually not big news when government
officials are seen wearing lapel pins - unless
they are North Korean and the pins feature a
picture of dictator Kim Jong-il's son. Then the
talk turns to speculation on the Dear Leader's
successor.
Reports have been circulating
during the past few months about Korean Workers'
Party (KWP) cadres and cabinet members getting
pins or badges with the image of Kim Jong-il's
second son Kim Jong-chol on the occasion of the
elder Kim's 64th birthday on February 16.
Seoul-based Yonhap news agency, citing an unnamed
South Korean government source, confirmed recently
that
North Korean officials were observed wearing the
lapel pins.
That's significant in that
it's seen as yet another sign Kim Jong-il is
getting closer to naming a successor - though that
does not mean he is close to giving up power any
time soon. It has been expected his successor
would be one of his three sons. The Yonhap report,
coupled with sketchy reports beginning in 2002,
suggests that the second son has emerged as the
front-runner to assume leadership in a third
generation of the Kim dynasty.
Yonhap on
April 5 quoted a source inside Seoul's
intelligence agency as saying a South Korean agent
in China "submitted a report that he saw North
Korean officials wearing Kim Jong-chol's badge at
a North Korean restaurant in Beijing". The rank
and identity of the officials remain publicly
unknown, as does their status as either North
Korean diplomats in China or Pyongyang-based
bureaucrats visiting Beijing on official business.
An heir emerges These reports
suggest a formal process is under way to
incorporate Kim Jong-chol into the mythology of
the ruling elite, and bolster claims from the past
few years that suggest he is next in line to take
the helm of the Hermit Kingdom.
A Japanese
newspaper in February published what it called an
internal document from the ruling KWP, headed by
Kim Jong-il, that suggested top officials
"recommend the dignified Kim Jong-chol to the top
echelon of the party".
Chinese diplomatic
sources in November reported that North Korea had
established a department inside the KWP to promote
the idea of Jong-chol's succession among party
loyalists and to educate the prospective heir in
political and governance issues. This department,
which consists of two bureaus of 10 officials
each, is under the control of the powerful
Organization and Guidance Department and is the
result of KWP bureaucratic reorganization
initiatives in 2004.
Part of that
restructuring led to demotion of Kim Jong-il's
brother-in-law, Chang Song-taek, who was then a
serious contender in the succession race, leading
some analysts to conclude that Kim was preparing
to clear the way of any possible challengers to
his son. The activities that now promote Kim
Jong-chol as heir apparent are under the ultimate
authority of Kim Jong-il's National Defense
Commission, a dominant show of political support
among the bureaucratic elite.
A month
earlier, in October, Chinese President Hu Jintao
reportedly met Kim Jong-chol at a family dinner
during a state visit to Pyongyang, leading to
speculation about the significance. State-run
media in North Korea issued no announcement
concerning the possible meeting, and sources in
the South Korean Foreign Ministry and intelligence
agencies expressed doubt and outright skepticism.
Other developments suggest that state
authorities have embarked on a wide-ranging
campaign to present Kim Jong-chol not only as heir
to his father, but also to the institutions and
discourse of state ideology. This grooming process
seems to mimic the one that prepared his father to
assume power from the late Kim Il-sung in 1994.
Beginning in 2002, the North Korean
military initiated an idolization campaign of Kim
Jong-chol's mother, Koh Young-hee, calling her the
country's "respected mother" and "most loyal
companion" to Kim Jong-il. This resembled similar
efforts to promote Kim Jong-il's own mother. That
the motherly praise is from inside the military
establishment is important, as it is the key
source of power in the North's politics and served
as a key base of support for Kim Jong-il's own
ascent.
Sons Kim Jong-un, 22, and Kim
Jong-chol, 24, have the same mother, who was Kim
Jong-il's third wife (some suggest mistress) and
who died in 2004, while the eldest son, Kim
Jong-nam, who will be 35 on May 10, is the product
of his first wife. A second marriage produced a
daughter who is not thought to be factor in the
succession.
Other developments include
"workplace exalting" of Kim Jong-chol and the
hanging of his portrait in the Central Committee
Building of the KWP. These activities are
"relevant to the North Korean regime's succession
process", according to Cheong Seong-chang of South
Korea's Sejong Institute.
Perhaps most
interesting, Kim Jong-chol allegedly inaugurated
his forays into politics under a pseudonym, as did
his father in the 1970s. A member of the South
Korean National Assembly suggested in February
2004 that he was operating under the alias of Pak
Se-bong. Moreover, Kim's son emerged under his
official name in April 2004 to be named as deputy
director of the party's Propaganda and Agitation
Department, the same position held by his father
in 1969.
Family feud The rise of
Kim Jong-chol as possible successor comes against
the decline of other possible contenders, namely
his brother and half-brother.
Kim
Jong-nam, the half-brother of Jong-chol, was
widely assumed to be the heir until 2001, when he
embarrassed his father with his highly publicized
arrest in Japan while en route to Tokyo
Disneyland. He was carrying a large sum of cash
and traveling on a fake Dominican Republic
passport. Recent reports that tie Jong-nam to the
counterfeiting of US dollars through Macau - which
prompted swift US action against Pyongyang to
curtail the activities - have diminished his
standing even further. A South Korean intelligence
analyst said in February that Jong-nam has been
rendered even more unsuitable for leadership in
"his father's mind due to the Macau bank problem".
Kim Jong-un, the youngest son, is
considered too callow for political work, though
South Korean intelligence analysts have carefully
considered him as a successor despite his age. In
2003, Kim Jong-il's former chef published a book
under the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto that suggested
Jong-chol was unfit for leadership - making
Jong-un the default successor (see Cook and tell: Another chef spills
the beans, July 2, 2003).
Imminent retirement? The Dear
Leader is now the same age as Kim Il-sung was when
he formally designated his son Jong-il as heir.
But though he is unlikely to relinquish power any
time soon, it appears a formal naming of his heir,
in particular his second son, is also similarly
doubtful in the near future. Intelligence analysts
in Seoul and Tokyo had suspected the announcement
of an heir would be made on the 60th anniversary
of the KWP last October.
That did not
happen, and Kim Jong-il issued a directive in
December that banned all talk about succession
issues. With speculation still rife, some analysts
now say that Kim, despite sporadic reports about
ill health, will retain power until at least 2012,
his 70th birthday and the 100th anniversary of the
state's founding ideology, juche or
self-reliance. Huh Moon-young, director of North
Korea studies at the Korea Institute for National
Unification (KINU) in Seoul, suggested that "the
North Korean ruling class, in its own way, is
rather agonizing over what to do regarding the
future of Korean people to mark such an occasion
[in 2012], while we [in the South] are busy
speculating on the power-succession issue".
And a certain degree of uncertainty
continues to surround Kim Jong-chol's suitability
for leadership that may contribute to father's
hesitancy to make a formal announcement. Bizarre
rumors persist in Japanese and South Korean media
about a hormonal-imbalance condition that leaves
Jong-chol with an excess of female hormones. These
odd, unsubstantiated reports command a certain
following, or at least acknowledgement, within the
Southern establishment. Lee Kyo-duk, director of
planning and coordination at KINU, has called
Jong-chol's condition a "fatal disease" and
"allegedly incurable".
In any case, the
overriding imperative for North Korea regarding
succession is to effect a transition of power that
does not destabilize the regime. And despite
propaganda in official discourse and preparations
in state and party institutions for
consensus-building around Kim Jong-chol, that
remains a daunting and largely uncertain
enterprise.
Rian Jensen is
associate editor of China Brief, a fortnightly
journal published by the Jamestown Foundation in
Washington, DC. The views expressed are his own
and do not represent those of the Jamestown
Foundation.
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