BEIJING - The media hunt is hot again for
the hard-to-pin-down eldest son of North Korean
leader Kim Jong-il, a possible heir to the Dear
Leader. This time, the son showed up in Paris to
treat his bad teeth. At least, that's a more
innocuous reason than the one he had used in 2001
at Tokyo Airport, where he was caught while trying
to enter the country illegally on a forged
Dominican passport "to see Disneyland".
Kim Jong-nam, 36, just like his father,
enjoys international fame of
being mysterious. But, unlike
his father, who is on an almost 24-hour
unsolicited watch by US intelligence satellites
that can monitor objects as small as 30
centimeters in diameter, the son may deserve more
credit in for being enveloped in mystery.
While Kim Jong-il only insulates himself
within isolated North Korea, his son is a world
traveler, often spending his time outside North
Korea, and yet he still manages to be invisible -
most of the time.
Kim Jong-nam is an
adventurous soul, surfacing at different pockets
of the world at unexpected times. Besides Paris,
he has previously been known to have traveled to
Moscow, Singapore, Germany, Thailand, South
America, Australia and even New York. Intelligence
sources believe he has about 10 different
passports.
This time when he was sighted
in Paris by a Japanese television crew, the junior
Kim said in fluent French that he was there to
treat his tooth problems and offered an apology
for having to excuse himself from the short media
encounter because he "didn't have much to say".
The junior Kim speaks French because he
studied at an international school in Geneva in
Switzerland in his teens. He had applied for a
French visa in March through the French Embassy in
Beijing.
The intense foreign media as well
as intelligence attention on Kim Jong-nam is
primarily because his father, Kim Jong-il, has yet
to announce his heir-apparent and the little
junior has the potential to become the next top
North Korean leader - an event that will change
the contour of North Korea's power topography as
well as the regional political landscape.
The issue appeared resolved about two
years ago when North Korean experts came to a
more-or-less consensus that the eldest son was out
of his father's favor and the second son, Kim
Jong-chol, had received the father's blessing.
But then things became murky again. Much
speculative energy has since started to be
expended on this matter. Now, hearsay, theorizing
and guesswork are again in great demand.
Among Kim Jong-il's heir candidates, Kim
Jong-nam often becomes the focus of attention
because he is, at least, sometimes "available" for
the media when he is abroad.
The resumed
attention on the eldest son also intensified
recently when Japan's NHK and the Associated Press
reported eagerly in June that Kim Jong-nam was
back in Pyongyang to assume a key post at the
Guidance Department, which is North Korea's core
organization in charge of personnel affairs,
managing the main positions of the Workers' Party
and the military. If accurate, this would have
signaled a start of Kim Jong-nam's official
reentry into the race to be North Korea's heir.
Fitting into the speculation was an August
report by Hong Kong's South China Morning Post of
the imminent relocation of Kim Jong-nam's family,
which had a residence in Macau, back to North
Korea.
Things snowballed. Later, there was
even some expectation that Kim Jong-nam might show
up at the South-North Korea summit in October with
Kim Jong-il in a public demonstration of
Jong-nam's ascendance to heir-apparent. That
didn't materialize.
Since then, Kim
Jong-nam disappeared from the media's radar until
he suddenly showed up in Paris, raising more
questions on the unconnected dots of this whole
mysterious heir saga.
Kim Jong-il also has
two other sons, Kim Jong-chol, 26, and Kim
Jong-un, 23. But Kim Jong-nam and his two younger
brothers are from different mothers.
"Although the eldest son Kim Jong-nam
displays a knack for leadership and political
instinct, he is an unlikely candidate because of
the issue surrounding his mother," Cheong
Seong-chang, a North Korean expert at the Sejong
Institute south of Seoul, said at a recent forum.
Cheong was referring to Song Hye-rim, who
had "disgraced" North Korea by abortively trying
to defect to the West in 1996. Some view that was
politically fatal to Kim Jong-nam. With that,
Song's son lost a key political sphere of
influence to become the heir.
His prospect
became even dimmer when, after Kim Il-sung's
death, North Korea embarked on the deification of
Koh Young-hee - the mother of Kim Jong-nam's
younger son, Kim Jong-chol, who is now a more
promising candidate.
So, when is the Dear
Leader finally going to tell us who will inherit
his crown? Many observers previously speculated
that the timing of heir designation based on the
timing of Kim Il-sung's designation of Kim Jong-il
as his heir. Kim Il-sung designated Kim Jong-il as
his heir at the age of 62.
But Kim Jong-il
is now 65 and hasn't fulfilled such expectation.
Cheong believes that Kim Jong-il now has a
different timeframe in mind for it. Namely, the
North Korean leader wants to establish a solid
foundation for his heir by resolving the present
nuclear issue and resuscitating the nation's
economy first. That will take another five years
or so, pushing the timing to 2012. Then, Cheong
believes, Kim Jong-il will designate the second
son, Kim Jong-chol, as his heir.
Even if
that's how the heir saga completes, Professor Shi
Yinhong of Renmin University in Beijing believes
that North Korea, with its gradual opening up to
the outside world, won't be likely ruled by one
all-powerful leader as we have seen. The heir will
very likely find himself exercising less absolute
power than Kim Jong-il, who again has had less
power than his father, Kim Il-sung.
This
idea, coming from a renowned Chinese scholar, is
interesting on its own. In a sense, it reflects
how China sees the North's leadership would evolve
from here - towards decentralization.
Also
underscored is the view that even in North Korea,
a three-generation of "holy heir relay" may be
hard to sell, as its citizens won't be kept in the
dark forever.
Relevant to this view is an
alternative school of thought that departs from
the long-anticipated father-to-son power transfer.
This school of thought sees that it's possible the
post-Kim Jong-il era might be governed by a small
group of key military personnel, rather than by a
single leader.
Regardless what actually
transpires eventually, there is now so much
unpredictability surrounding the heir designation
business. So much so that now even a geomancer
jumps in the oracle. Park Min-chan, a famous
television geomancer in South Korea predicts that
North Korea cannot have a three-generation
succession of one absolute leader.
The
reason? Park points out that Kim Il-sung's body
was not properly buried. (Like Mao Zedong, Kim
Il-sung's body is preserved and enshrined in a
mausoleum for public display.) According to Park,
that cuts the flow of Qi energy that has been
behind the Kim family's hold on power.
Well, if Park is right, we're not going to
see an heir at all. Discussing this far, things
look like it's anyone's game. The only thing we
know is how little we know about what's happening
inside the mind of Kim Jong-il in his deliberation
on the heir.
Sunny Lee is a
writer/journalist based in Beijing, where he has
lived for five years. A native of South Korea, Lee
is a graduate of Harvard University and Beijing
Foreign Studies University.
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2007 Asia Times Online Ltd. All rights reserved.
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