Kim gives more power to the in-crowd By Bradley K Martin
Warning: While not utterly without redeeming social merit - it does cast some
light on the nature of the in-group of family members and cronies that runs
North Korea - the story that follows includes raunchy content. Readers who
insist that news be tasteful are advised to read no further.
Now, for those who are continuing, here's the story: Little noticed alongside
the promotions to full general of Kim Jong-il's sister, Kim Kyong-hui, and Dear
Leader Kim Jong-il's third son and heir apparent Kim Jong-eun, which the North
Korean official news agency announced on Tuesday, was the simultaneous
promotion
to the same exalted rank of Kim's childhood sidekick "Jerkoff" Choe.
As son of the late Choe Hyon, North Korea's then-vice president, Choe Ryong-hae
grew up in the same elite Pyongyang neighborhood where Kim Jong-il lived as the
eldest son of the country's founding leader, Kim Il-sung.
Seven years younger than Kim Jong-il, Choe earned his crude nickname one day at
Kim's house when he was hanging out with Kim and a group of Kim's college
chums, including girlfriends, according to another member of that Pyongyang
elite group who told the story on condition of anonymity after defecting to
South Korea. (Talking about Kim's private life has gotten defectors hunted down
and killed, so this source's precaution is understandable.)
At that gathering, Kim noted that Choe didn't seem to have much interest in
girls and suggested he was impotent. Demanding that Choe drop his pants, then
pointing out his lack of an erection despite the presence of the females, Kim
had one of them massage the boy. Choe duly became aroused and Kim observed,
"Oh, you're capable. I'm satisfied."
Ever since, Choe has been known by the pals of his youth not as Ryong Hae but
as Ryong Du, "the head is moving toward the sky", a slang term for
masturbation.
Choe went on to spend a career in political work on Kim's behalf, becoming
chairman of the Kim Il-sung League of Socialist Working Youth, which is the
ruling Workers' Party's chief agency for organizing and indoctrinating the
country's young people.
He lost that job in 1997. The official reason was health problems. However, the
following year, South Korean intelligence boss Lee Jong-chan told the South's
National Assembly that Choe had been fired for corruption. That's tough
punishment - but not as tough as what was meted out to seven of his colleagues
who could not claim friendship since childhood with the country's top leader.
Those seven were executed, Lee reported.
Choe appears to have stayed in the political wilderness for close to a decade.
There was not a single mention of him by the official Korean Central News
Agency from February 1997 until April 29, 2006, when he returned to the news in
an article identifying him as chief party secretary in his native North
Hwanghae province.
So what makes this guy general material? Certainly not military experience,
which is not mentioned at all in a biographical note produced by North Korea
Leadership Watch. [1]
Rather, as in the case of Boy General Kim Jong-eun and General Sister Kim
Kyong-hui, the promotion is all about putting in place a group of highly placed
in-group members who can carry out a succession of power following Kim
Jong-il's plans when the Dear Leader - a stroke victim in 2008 - dies or moves
into retirement or semi-retirement.
Choe's big contribution at the Youth League was beating the drums to build
support among the country's young people for Kim Jong-il's own succession as
leader, in the face of objections to hereditary rule from some high ranking
cadre.
Meanwhile Kim Jong-il himself in that period was wooing the military, causing
selected career officers to feel indebted to him by promoting them and
showering them with perks including apartments and automobiles. To Kim, with
his vaunted "military first politics", military support is the primary key to a
smooth succession.
What outsiders have yet to figure out is why Kim might have imagined that
giving such high military rank to a son who was born in 1983 or 1984, to Kim's
decidedly non-military sister and to his childhood buddy Choe was a good idea.
"What the real generals think about that is just one of a lot of 'interesting'
questions," as Washington-based analyst Chris Nelson observed in his Nelson
Report.
A veteran Asia correspondent and former managing editor of Asia Times Online,
Bradley K Martin is the author of Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly
Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty. He currently watches North Korea from
Nagano, Japan.
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