Doubles, toil and trouble in Pyongyang
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The next time some big-time foreign visitor calls on Kim Jong-il in
Pyongyang, he should probably bring some nasty little gizmo for checking DNA.
And the people with him should be taking photographs and voiceprints with tiny
thumb-nail-sized cameras and recorders tucked away in their coat lapels and tie
clips.
Probably nothing short of the most sophisticated equipment imaginable is going
to settle the issue for sure. Somehow the world has got to know, is this guy
Kim Jong-il or is he not Kim
Jong-il? Until then, the debate is sure to rage with the ultimate question
unanswered, "Is God dead?"
God, that is, in the person of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, who together with
his father, the Great Leader, assumes god-like stature in North Korea in a holy
trinity that would also include the Dear Leader's sainted mother, Kim
Jung-sook.
No self-respecting Korean expert wants to seem too far out on the subject, but
then again how else will anyone really be able to disprove the claims of the
Japanese journalist and academician, Toshimitsu Shigemura. He's been writing
for years that Kim Jong-il cannot accurately be described as on his last legs.
He's bed-ridden, unable to walk at all, Shigemura insisted yet again in a
conversation with me this week - that is, if he's not already history.
Shigemura's thesis about a Kim Jong-il look-alike, or two or three look-alikes,
goes back to the 1990s when he swears a Japanese magician, Princess Tenko,
entertained the Dear Leader on secret trips to Tokyo at a swanky nightclub in
the city's Akasaka district and then was twice invited to see him in Pyongyang.
"Kim Jong-il appeared on a wheelchair," Shigemura said in a recent lecture in
Portland, Oregon. The attentive magician asked a son and daughter of the Dear
Leader - it's not clear which ones - to call her when he appeared near death,
as Shigemura told the story. "They called her cellular phone at the beginning
of 2003."
Shigemura, a correspondent for 30 years with the Japanese newspaper Mainichi
Shimbun and now a professor of international relations at Waseda University in
Tokyo, is undeterred by suggestions that perhaps the story is a little
outdated.
Has Kim Jong-il not proven his existence by hosting former US president Bill
Clinton for more than three hours in early August? And what about his
subsequent meetings with the chairwoman of Hyundai Asan, the company
responsible for developing the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Kumkang
tourist zone? Most convincingly, could anyone doubt his authenticity after
those sessions with China's Premier Wen Jiabao in early October?
Shigemura laughs politely at the notion that anyone should seriously take what
he clearly views as scams at face value. "The Kim Jong-il who saw President
Clinton is totally different," he observed, from the sickly looking one who
appeared before the Supreme People's Assembly after North Korea had test-fired
a long-range Taepodong-2 missile in early April. "He looked very healthy."
A skilled actor, Shigemura believes, could easily have rehearsed what to say
and gotten off all the right lines for the benefit of Clinton and the aides and
advisers who accompanied him. But could Hyun and Wen, both of whom had met him
before, be so easily fooled? Certainly, said Shigemura, especially since the
Kim Jong-il they had met previously may well have been the same actor.
Intriguing though Shigemura's theories may sound, they're less than convincing
to most observers. There seems to be little question, however, that Kim Jong-il
does have a double, or maybe a few of them, to cover for him on all those trips
he makes to farms and factories, army bases and art exhibits. How else could
one man, an ailing one at that, really have gone on more than 120 such
excursions reported so far this year?
Kim Jong-il started going on all those trips several months after he reportedly
had suffered a stroke in August 2008, as reported by Pyongyang's Korean Central
News Agency. The real question everyone was asking initially was whether North
Korean photo editors doctored the photographs, showing earlier pictures of Kim
Jong-il, or whether he had a double sitting in for him.
Shigemura believes careful study of the photographs leaves no doubt of a
double. The fact that dictators everywhere seem to like to doubles as
protection against assassination attempts lends weight to this view.
"These dictators always need look-alikes for security reasons," said Choi
Jin-wook, senior North Korean specialist at the Korea Institute of National
Unification. In any case, he observed, "Kim Jong-il has been doing on-the-spot
guidance too often for his health."
Kim Tae-woo at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses takes a measured view.
"There have been such rumors," he said. "We don't know whether this is real or
fake." As an obvious precedent, however, he cited the example of the late Iraqi
president, Saddam Hussein, who often sent a double for appearances around
Baghdad before the US invasion in 2003.
North Korean defectors have been spreading stories of late that seem to support
the view that Kim Jong-il indeed has a double on travels around the country. "A
North Korean defector was talking to me about the same thing," said Ha
Tae-kyung, whose Open Radio for North Korea broadcasts short-wave news and
views for two hours a day into the North. "He said he knows a girl whose father
is the actor for Kim Jong-il."
A whole cast of actors may have had to be trained to play the role, though,
considering the changes in the Dear Leader's appearance. "One of the refugees
said she has heard of many look-alikes," said Kim Bum-soo, editor of a
political weekly here. "He must have. Why not?"
When the Dear Leader showed up live on video at the Supreme People's Assembly
in April, he was no longer the pudgy fellow that he had been before his stroke
eight months earlier. If Shigemura's hypothesis is correct, an actor would have
had to rehearse diligently to portray him as he slowly recovered to the point
at which he could meet and greet Clinton and Wen.
"Recently Kim Jong-il is losing his hair," said Ha Tae-kyung. "He's very skinny
these days. Most of the pictures put out by North Korean authorities are not
the real Kim Jong-il."
The sense among analysts is that Kim Jong-il has to be preoccupied with
arranging his succession. His third son, Kim Jong-un, still seems to be the
front-runner, even though he's not getting a lot of publicity these days.
As long as the father survives, his brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, seems to
wield the most power. Whenever the Dear Leader passes away, two or three top
generals are likely to want to grab real power behind the figurehead of the
son.
All of which lends credibility to the view that Kim Jong-il does have doubles -
but that he can speak and act for himself when it comes to dealing with his own
underlings as well as foreign visitors.
The next chance for close-up scrutiny may come if he accepts an invitation from
China's President Hu Jintao to go to Beijing. It may be unimaginable for a
double to replace him on such a journey, but the trip should provide a chance
to pick up some DNA evidence.
That's just in case a few drops of sweat and saliva are needed to determine
who's really who as Kim Jong-il clings to life while transferring power to his
son and hanging on until what may be his last big blast, ceremonies in 2012
marking the 100th anniversary of the birth of his father.
Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of
forces in Northeast Asia - for more than 30 years.
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