Dear Leader is back with a bang
By Donald Kirk

SEOUL - The resurrection of Dear Leader Kim Jong-il from the jaws of death to which "foreign propagandists" consigned him last August is now complete. At least symbolically and rhetorically speaking.

The Supreme People's Assembly, the North's rubber-stamp parliament, capped off a week of vindication and triumph that began with the supposed orbiting of "a communications satellite" with a rousing declaration that he was indeed supremely qualified to serve a third five-year term as chairman of the National Defense Commission.

In a country that's dominated by a military establishment of 1.1 million troops, a panoply of several hundred mid- short-range

 

missiles, an air force of aging Soviet-made MiG fighter jets and reportedly up to a dozen nuclear warheads, the post takes precedence over Kim's other pivotal position, general secretary of the Workers' Party.


The meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly on Thursday was fully as important as the one in September 1998 in which Kim Jong-Il, then the commander of the armed forces, was elected to his first five-year term as defense commission chairman while his father, the late Great Leader Kim Il-Sung, who died in 1994, was named “eternal president.”

This time, the message was that Kim Jong-il is not ill, was never ill, and is fit to lead the country at least until 2012, when the whole country will celebrate the 100th anniversary of his father's birth. For domestic as well as international consumption, the Assembly "solemnly declared internally and externally", as Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency put it, that all the people, military and civilian, offered their "unquestioned support and trust in him".

The message, though, was about as unconvincing as North Korea's repeated claims of having put the satellite in orbit on April 5, just as it claimed to have put a satellite in orbit in a similar missile launch on August 31, 1998. Whatever stories the North may be planning on Thursday's Supreme People's Assembly, initial reports from Pyongyang neglected to show Kim Jong-il addressing the throng. In fact, he wasn't even quoted.

After having shown still photographs for weeks of the Dear Leader visiting factories, farms and military units at a record rate, it was not until Tuesday that North Korea put out the first video of the man in motion. And even then, as he purportedly inspected the facility responsible for launching the long-awaited Taepodong-2 missile, there was no telling the date of the shots, just as it's been almost impossible to date the series of still photos of him that North Korea has been putting out in recent month.

His face mottled and sagging, his pudgy body somewhat reduced, Kim may be on the road to recovery from what is widely believed to have been a stroke in August, but he's clearly not there yet. Regardless of the message he sends to the Supreme People's Assembly, the overriding question is who will succeed him, when and on what terms.

While analysts search for clues in widely anticipated shifts in the line-up of government, party and perhaps military officials, the betting is that the winner if only in name and title will be one of his three sons.

The eldest, Kim Jong-nam, has clearly blotted his copybook by a playboy life in Macao, Japan and China. "I am free," he remarked in a recent interview with Japan's TBS network. "If I was the successor, you wouldn't see me in Macao ... My father is an important person, but I am not."

The second oldest, Kim Jong-chul, is said to look too feminine, whatever that means, leaving the accolade likely to fall on the youngest, Jong-un, educated in Switzerland and only lately bequeathed a mid-level party post. The real leaders will likely be the same coterie of marshals and generals who persist in giving Kim Jong-il at least an appearance of total loyalty while he battles illness, economic problems and increasingly bad relations with South Korea's conservative government.

Against this background North Korean strategists, presumably Kim Jong-il himself, from his sick bed, began the months-long campaign of demonstrating his leadership that climaxed in the Taepodong-2 roaring off the launch pad. While proclaiming the launch an unqualified success, the North sought to convince the world by releasing a videotape of the missile thrusting upward from the site in a great plume of orange flame.

If any North Koreans have gotten the word that its payload, believed to be a dummy and not an actual satellite, plopped into the Pacific along with the second stage of the rocket, no glimmer of doubt has shone through reports from Pyongyang. Instead, North Korea has greeted United States, Japanese and South Korean demands for condemnation by the United Nations (UN) with outcries of against "warmongers" on all sides.

In affirmation of the success of the launch, and preparation for Thursday's session of the Supreme People's Assembly, thousands of demonstrators filled the huge square in the center of Pyongyang on Wednesday shouting praise for their leader and his "unparalleled" accomplishments and denunciations of the country's enemies. Choe Thae-bok, secretary of the central committee of the Workers' Party, presided over the throng, advising that times were "tense" as a result of both the "hostile" policy of American conservatives and the "traitor" South Korean President Lee Myung-bak.

The level of rhetoric was a few decibels higher than a year ago, when North Korea opened its campaign against South Korea's President Lee after he withheld aid while demanding "verification" that the North was getting rid of its nuclear weapons program. Lee also upset the North by raising the issue of the North's abysmal human rights record.

No one had expected Kim Jong-il to be at the mass rally, even for the duration of a wave, but however he manages at the Supreme People's Assembly is a focal point of intense analysis and scrutiny.

In terms of relationships with friends and foes, meanwhile, North Korean strategists have scored a success that may outweigh the reality that their long-heralded satellite was a dud, just like the first one in 1998. Both China and Russia have refused to support the notion of anything like serious action by the UN Security Council, which adopted two resolutions in 2006 when the North sent an earlier Taepodong-2 on a brief abortive flight in July and conducted an underground nuclear test three months later.

Just how ineffective were such resolutions became obvious this week with the refusal of both China and Russia, the North's main Korean War allies, to support another resolution banning North Korea from nuclear or missile tests. Nor do they see any point in a strong message of condemnation. North Korea for its part promises a "strong response" if the UN does anything.

The result has proven a major embarrassment for US President Barack Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, both left to denounce the North's "provocative" action and promising "stern" but ultimately meaningless and unspecified measures. The betting now is that the US will finally have to go for dialogue - first between US and North Korean emissaries and, eventually, six-party talks, hosted by China, last held in Beijing in December.

As warships and spotter planes scour the Pacific for debris, some 2,000 miles from where Taepodong-2 took off, it's clear that the Taepodong-2 got further than all previous flights. That's a success of which North Korean leaders clearly are proud even if they had to play a charade about something to do with a satellite.

Exactly how successful the launch was may be known if the Japanese recover any of the debris, possibly from the first stage that fell off in the waters between North Korea and Japan if not the second stage in the expanse of the Pacific. North Korea has accused Japan of committing "an intolerably provocative act" just by looking - another rhetorical thrust of North Korean pride in leaving its foes in diplomatic disarray.

Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.

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