THE
NORTH KOREAN ENIGMA Sons and
heirs By Bertil Lintner
BANGKOK - While the rest of the world was
anxiously following news about North Korea's
recent missile tests, Kim Jong-il's second son and
possible heir apparent, Kim Jong-chul, had his
mind focused on entirely different matters. He was
among the fans who followed British rock and blues
guitarist Eric Clapton on his German tour, which
took him to Frankfurt, Stuttgart, Leipzig and
Berlin.
Jong-chul, 25, is said to be a
diehard Clapton fan, and may have acquired a taste
for Western popular music when, in the mid-1990s,
he studied at a private international boarding
school in Bern, Switzerland.
Jong-chul
belongs to the third generation of Kims, who are
being
groomed to continue ruling
North Korea once Dear Leader Kim Jong-il is gone
from the scene. And if his interests are anything
to go by, change may be in the air once he or one
of his brothers takes over. Jong-chul is fluent in
English and German, possibly also in French, and
according to the South Korean daily Chosun Ilbo,
he "makes frequent trips to France and other
European countries as a member of Pyongyang's
delegation to UNESCO [United Nations Educational,
Scientific and Cultural Organization] under the
alias of Kim Chol-song".
To ensure the
continuity of the present regime - and the Kims'
grip on power - a successor may soon be named,
sources in South Korea suggest. Kim Jong-il turned
64 on February 15, a year older than his father,
the Great Leader Kim Il-sung, was when he
nominated him as the successor. Kim Il-sung died
20 years later, in 1994, and Kim Jong-il ascended
to power in Pyongyang.
It is, of course,
almost impossible to predict what is going to
happen in North Korea - and the actual role of the
country's First Family - and there are nearly as
many speculations as there are observers of the
political scene in this hermetically sealed and
secretive country.
But as far as family
matters go, Kim Jong-il is known to have seven
children - four daughters and three sons - with
four wives and mistresses. The North Koreans
themselves detest the use of the word "dynasty",
and even foreign residents in Pyongyang say it is
simplistic to look at the country's power
structure in terms of dynastic tendencies. But if
it is not a dynasty, it is at least a very
powerful clan, and it is hard to believe that Kim
Jong-il's successor would be an outsider and not
one of his own sons.
Kim Jong-il's first
wife is believed to be Hong II-chun, whom he
married in 1966. She was later appointed vice
minister of education and a delegate to the
Supreme People's Assembly. They are supposed to
have had a daughter, Kim Hye-suk, who is now in
her mid-30s.
Kim Jong-il then took a
mistress, Song Hye-rim, who was five years older
than he and an actress of the Korean Art Film
Studio. She bore him a son, Kim Jong-nam, in 1971.
In order for him not to grow up alone, Song's
niece, Lee Nam-ok, was called into Kim Jong-il's
heavily guarded residence in Pyongyang. She was
only 13 when she went to live with Jong-nam, a
lonely child who was not allowed to go out and
play with other children.
An interview Lee
Nam-ok gave much later - in February 1998 - to the
Japanese magazine Tokyo Bungei Shunju is one of
the few available accounts of the Kim family's
private life. She describes Jong-nam as "totally
submissive to his father" and says that he "never
criticized what Kim Jong-il decided for him".
Lee's own life in the Kim residence was that of "a
princess who was not allowed to go out of her
castle, which was far removed from the realities
of the lives of ordinary North Korean people".
The only times they went around Pyongyang
was in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes-Benz. Teachers
came to the residence, and it was only later that
they went to a normal school - in Geneva in the
1980s. That was a happy time for the two
teenagers. Both of them became fluent in French,
and learned to live in an open, capitalist
society.
Naturally, there were also
contradictions between what they had been told in
North Korea and what they learned in Switzerland.
Kim Jong-nam, however, wanted to believe in what
he had been told back home in Pyongyang, and
remained immensely loyal to his father and his
country. When something happened and North Korea
was blamed for it, Jong-nam always denied the
accusations, believing the official version of any
untoward incident. Lee Nam-ok defected to the West
in 1992, and is now believed to be living in
Cambodia with her French husband.
Kim
Jong-nam, though, remained loyal to his father and
soon found a job with the State Security
Department. He was also put in charge of one of
Kim Jong-il's favorite projects: the Korea
Computer Center in Pyongyang, which was set up in
1990 and employs more than 800 people. In 1995,
the center was rebuilt with state-of-the-art
equipment, much of which was obtained in Japan
through the General Association of Korean
Residents in Japan (Chongryun). Kim Jong-il's
fascination with computers is well known, and his
eldest son clearly shares that interest.
Jong-nam's rise to prominence led many to believe
that he would be the next ruler of North Korea.
But in May 2001, he was caught at Tokyo's
Narita Airport traveling on a passport he had
bought from the Dominican Republic. He had arrived
with a small group of children to visit Tokyo
Disneyland, but they were all expelled. The
incident caused a major diplomatic embarrassment
for North Korea, which led to speculation that he
would perhaps not succeed his father.
His
mother, Song Hye-rim, also left North Korea and
died in exile in Moscow in 2002. Her sister Song
Hae-rang - Lee Nam-ok's mother - defected to the
West in 1996, where she now lives at an
undisclosed location. Song Hae-rang did not go
unpunished for that action. Her son, Lee Il-man,
who had fled to the West at the age of 21 in 1982
and later made it to South Korea, was gunned down
in Seoul in 1997, most probably by Northern
agents.
North Korea pundits have therefore
begun to look at some of Jong-nam's younger
half-brothers for a possible successor to keep the
Kim family in power. Kim Jong-il married again in
1974 to Kim Yong-suk, the daughter of a
high-ranking military official. But she had only
two daughters and no sons, so he took a new
mistress, Koh Yong-hee, a dancer in the
state-sponsored Mansudae Art Troupe. Koh Yong-hee
was born in Japan, but came with her parents to
North Korea in the early 1960s, when many ethnic
Koreans emigrated to what they saw as their real
"fatherland".
They have two sons and a
daughter, and the elder son, Eric Clapton fan Kim
Jong-chul, was soon identified as a possible
alternative to Kim Jong-nam. Despite his tender
age, he is a key official in the Korean Workers'
Party's Department of Agitation and Propaganda.
Speculation that he is the new heir
apparent began in February 2003, when a North
Korean magazine published a report based on a
document from the Korean People's Army titled "The
Respected Mother Is the Most Faithful and Loyal
Subject to the Dear Leader Comrade Supreme
Commander". The mother was not named, but was
generally assumed to be Koh Yong-hee, and the
respect with which she was mentioned in the
article resembled the campaign elevating Kim
Jong-il's mother, Kim Jong-suk, to the pantheon of
revolutionary heroes preceding his ascension to
power. Koh died, however, from apparent natural
causes in August 2004.
Then, all of a
sudden, Koh's younger son, Kim Jong-oon - two
years Kim Jong-chul's junior - appeared in
discussions about the succession. According to Kim
Jong-il's former Japanese sushi chef, who spent a
lot of time with the family, Jong-oon "resembles
his father in every way, including his physical
frame".
Like his brother and half-brother,
he is Swiss-educated, and speculation about a role
for him as the future leader of North Korea began
when Southern intelligence claimed to have
intercepted communications indicating that Kim
Jong-il favored the younger son, whom he saw as
stronger, more political savvy and more masculine
than his older brother.
But all this
speculation is based on Western or South Korean
perceptions of the North Korean power structure.
If the North Koreans follow their established
Confucian pattern, the oldest son of the oldest
son of the oldest son, Kim Jong-nam, would still
be the favorite. It is highly unlikely that the
incident at Tokyo airport in 2001 has had any
severe impact on how Kim Jong-il views his sons
and what is expected of them.
And there is
nothing to indicate that Jong-nam has left his
central position as head of the Korea Computer
Center, which many believe is part of North
Korea's cyber warfare machine, and thus a mainly
military facility. It also directs Pyongyang's
worldwide clandestine intelligence-gathering
efforts, a very important task that would not be
left in the hands of someone who was not fully
trusted by Kim Jong-il.
Kim Jong-nam is
reported to spend a lot of time in China - and
Macau, where he goes to gamble - but that does not
mean he is out of favor. Pyon Jin-il, editor of
the Korea Report in Tokyo, also believes that
Jong-nam is the most likely successor: "North
Korea is a feudalistic country. Under feudalism
the eldest brother is the heir of the father," he
told the British Broadcasting Corp in October
2003.
Kim Jong-il may have many more years
to contemplate his succession, and no outsiders
can know what he has in mind. But whoever takes
over from him - if the Kim family manages to
retain its hold on power, and if North Korea does
not, as many Western observers predict, simply
collapse - is bound to have an outlook that
differs considerably from those of the Great as
well as the Dear Leader.
Kim Il-sung
emerged from the ranks of anti-Japanese guerrilla
fighters in the 1930s and 1940s, and he was
groomed by the Soviet Union to be a leader in the
Stalinist style. Kim Jong-il has seen the world
around him change, and is trying, albeit
cautiously, to introduce some free-market reforms.
The third-generation Kims appear to be an entirely
new breed: Western-educated and widely traveled
computer buffs and Eric Clapton fans. When, and
if, they take over, Pyongyang will rock in its
foundations.
Bertil Lintner is a
former correspondent with the Far Eastern Economic
Review and the author of Great Leader, Dear
Leader: Demystifying North Korea under the Kim
Clan. He is currently a writer with
Asia-Pacific Media Services.
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