A North Korean leadership car crash
By Aidan Foster-Carter
Succession is the Achilles' heel of dictatorships, for obvious reasons. In
extreme cases, such as North Korea, even contemplating the mortality of the
leader is seen as lese-majeste, as if this somehow threatens the
quasi-monarch's vaunted omnipotence and implicit immortality.
Yet such an ostrich attitude only makes matters worse. There aren't many
certainties about North Korea, but the fact that Kim Jong-il will die is one of
them. The only issues are when and how he dies, and what will come after him.
The latter needs planning for, right now.
But that is a messy business, which may explain why the Dear Leader has put it
off for so long. Designating a successor means
passing over others who bridle at the choice. Even having nominal rules, such
as male primogeniture in many traditional monarchies, may not stop rival
claimants from plotting against the chosen dauphin. Succession is a can
of worms, and some may turn.
In that context, I do wonder about Kim Jong-il's daughter, Kim Sol-song, by
repute a bright economist. How must she feel at being ruled out by her sex -
some revolution! - leaving the field to her three half-brothers, none of them
self-evidently top-drawer leadership material?
All this is tricky enough right now. When the Dear Leader finally dies, it will
get far worse. Kim Jong-il is a micro-manager, so simply for North Korea to go
on functioning will require his immediate replacement at the center of the
intricate web of control he has constructed.
But it will not be business as usual for long. As after Joseph Stalin and Mao
Zedong, the dictator's death and the vacuum it creates will loosen the
crippling constraints of power and terror, at least momentarily. Conflicts
hitherto suppressed will burst forth. These are of at least three kinds, which
in practice will overlap: personality, policy and the role of outside powers.
Leading North Korea is a poisoned chalice, yet Kim's three sons and others will
fight for it - if only for fear of the consequences of losing. Eldest son Kim
Jong-nam, now out of the loop in Macau, is said to have been the target of two
murder plots already. Think the Borgias.
As for policy, some in Pyongyang realize the present course is a road to
nowhere. Reformers like ex-premier Pak Pong-ju - if still with us; he is
unmentioned since his sacking in 2007 - surely know North Korea needs to
embrace the market and make its peace with the world. So far the hawks rule the
roost, but once Kim is gone the doves may fight back.
Then there are the neighbors. If Korean history is any guide, rivals for the
throne will seek support from nearby powers. Kim Jong-nam, whose measured if
few words suggest a keen mind behind his dire dress sense, is rumored to be
China's choice. Beijing yearns for a nice pliant client in Pyongyang, one who
would do the sensible thing and stop causing trouble.
For all these reasons the death of Kim Jong-il will be North Korea's moment of
truth. The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) has managed a
succession before, but Kim Jong-il's ascent was meticulously planned for
decades, and even so may not have been smooth. After Kim Il-sung died in 1994,
the country's politics went into an odd quasi-hibernation until Kim Jong-il
emerged formally in 1998.
By contrast, it's a real puzzle how late the Dear Leader has left things this
time. Whereas he himself gained valuable experience from the 1970s and exposure
during the 1980s as a de facto prime minister, his third son, Kim Jong-eun, is
wholly unknown and untried. Foisting such a greenhorn on the throne is a highly
risky maneuver, with no guarantee of success.
When a rare second session this year of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA),
the DPRK's rubber-stamp parliament, was called for June 7, I wondered if this
would be Kim Jong-eun's long overdue coming-out party. Not so. Evidently the
lad isn't ready for exposure just yet.
Instead, his big moment may not come until 2012, the centenary of Kim Il-sung's
birth. This is being hugely built up as the year the DPRK will become a great
and prosperous nation (Kangsong Taeguk). Yet this too must risk being a
moment of truth. As with the emperor's clothes, the chasm between grandiose
claim and threadbare reality will be hard to hide.
Meanwhile, the recent SPA session was indeed about the succession, only less
directly. Kim Jong-il's brother-in-law, Jang Song-thaek, a likely regent come
the transition, was promoted vice chairman of the National Defence Commission
(NDC); this is the DPRK's highest executive organ, outranking the merely
civilian cabinet under the songun (military-first) policy.
While this is undoubtedly promotion for Jang, who only joined the NDC as a rare
civilian a year ago, some reports have exaggerated this. Jang is only one of
several vice chairs, and he is not first vice chairman, a post apparently still
held by Vice Marshal Jo Myong-rok despite longstanding reports that he is
unwell. (It was Jo who in happier times in October 2000 took tea at the White
House, wearing full army uniform, with president Bill Clinton, but that's
another story.)
The other main change at the SPA was the sacking of the confusingly named premier Kim Yong-il, after three years in the job. (Another Kim Yong-il remains and is on
the up, as party secretary for international affairs.) Dashing any hopes that
the top economic job - which this is - would go to some energetic reforming
young turk, the new premier is Choe Yong-rim, an 81-year-old veteran loyalist,
latterly party secretary for Pyongyang, who was once Kim Il-sung's bodyguard.
Clearly this is a political appointment to manage the succession, rather than
new blood to kick-start the economic revival that North Korea desperately
needs.
Other personnel changes did center on the economy, although musical chairs
won't resolve its deep problems. Three vice premiers got the elbow, while four
new ones were appointed.
Four economic ministers were sacked, a pair each on the production and
consumption side: electronics, machinery, food and light industry. Sports
supremo Pak Hak-son got the boot too - ahead of the football World Cup, oddly,
where so far the so-called Chollima boys are doing well in South Africa.
But most Pyongyang politics happens offstage or behind the scenes. Michael
Madden, who keeps an eagle eye on all this [1], notes a growing rate of
attrition among the DPRK nomenklatura. No fewer than 11 - a full football
squad, albeit elderly - senior figures have died, retired or moved in recent
months.
Some of this is the inevitable result of gerontocracy. To an extraordinary
degree, octogenarians today run North Korea: naturally they die off. But other
cases are intriguing, and odd.
None is stranger than the sudden death of Ri Je-gang, not of natural causes -
though he was 80 - but in a car crash at 12:45 am on June 2. Sometimes DPRK
media supply more detail than you'd expect. Ri is hardly a household name, and
his anodyne title - he was a first vice department director of the Central
Committee of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea - disguised an important role
at Kim Jong-il's side, reportedly helping to smooth the succession.
As such, on his last evening alive on June 1, Ri had enjoyed a typical night
out with the boss. The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported him
as among Kim Jong-il's entourage for a performance by army art squad Unit 963.
The full flavor is worth quoting:
The squad put on the stage such
colorful numbers of diverse genres as female quintet "We Serve the General",
male solo and mixed octet "We Will Remain True to the Leadership of the Party",
dialogic poem "Gigantic Footprints for Devoted Service", Oungum and female
sextet "Bright Moon over Our Country", agitation through reminiscences
"Comrades! Take This Revolver, Please!", serial of wartime songs "My Song in
the Trench", "To a Decisive Battle" and "For My Only Motherland" and chorus
"The Road of Victory" ... [and] fully demonstrated the might of the
soldier-artistes creditably performing their sacred mission as buglers in the
Songun era.
(The oungum is a stringed instrument invented in
the 1960s, allegedly by Kim Jong-il in person. It has a lot of tremolo and
vibrato.)
Hours later, Ri was dead. Some suggest he was drunk at the wheel. Others allege
a plot by Jang Song-thaek, who saw Ri as a rival. Countering that theory,
during Jang's brief purge from mid-2003 to early 2006, Ri also largely
vanished; maybe Kim tired of their fighting. If indeed they were foes, it was
clearly convenient to eliminate Ri before Jang got promoted.
A second rum case is Kim Il-chol. An admiral whose rise followed the seizure of
the USS Pueblo in 1968, Kim served over a decade (1998-2009) as defense
minister before being demoted to vice minister last year, an unusual step. On
May 14, KCNA announced that Kim was relieved of all his posts, citing "his
advanced age of 80". Yet many older than him remain in post and Kim looked well
enough on recent outings (including funerals of other elites). So this looks
like a sacking. His being a navy man is intriguing too, in the aftermath of the
sinking on March 25 of the South Korean corvette Cheonan for which North
Korea has been blamed.
Space forbids detailing all the other personnel changes, save one. On April 6,
So Se-phyong, unknown before his appointment in November 2008 to the important
post of ambassador in Tehran, was moved after barely 16 months to Berne. His
predecessor, Ri Chol, had served for 30 years in Switzerland, doubling as envoy
to the United Nations in Geneva. More importantly he oversaw the schooling of
Kim Jong-il's three sons, and allegedly Kim's Swiss bank accounts too. He was
also instrumental in persuading the Egyptian multinational Orascom to become
the top foreign investor in North Korea, first in cement and then mobile
phones.
Ri is a key figure. Rather than punishment for a tough time defending the
DPRK's human-rights record in Geneva last December, his recall to Pyongyang -
no new post has yet been announced - is probably so that he too can assist with
the succession. Kim Jong-eun will need all the help he can get. The coming
months will see more reshuffles in Pyongyang - and perhaps more mysterious car
crashes in the wee hours. Fasten your seatbelts.
Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and
modern Korea at Leeds University, and a freelance consultant, writer and
broadcaster on Korean affairs. A regular visitor to the peninsula, he has
followed North Korea for over 40 years.
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