The Kim is dead, long live the Kim!
By Donald Kirk
SEOUL - The death of bouffant-coifed, platform-heel wearing North Korean
dictator Kim Jong-il on Saturday ushers in a new era of rampant speculation,
pontification and no doubt obfuscation about what's really going on inside the
Hermit Kingdom.
The fact is that Kim Jong-il late last week appeared just fine as he toured a
military strong point, posing beside his son and heir presumptive, Kim
Jong-eun. It was not until late on Monday morning that word came through to
stand by for an "important announcement" at noon, Korea time.
The initial assumption was North Korea was going to beat
Washington to the punch with a deal on a "moratorium" on missile and nuclear
tests in exchange for resumption of United States food aid to North Korea.
Now all bets are off as North Korea goes into mourning for a man who was known
as the Dear Leader while ruling his starving people with an iron hand through
17 years in power. What's sure is that third son Kim Jong-eun is the titular
leader. You only had to see his name at the head of the funeral committee to
know that the clique around the power center was going to honor his father's
wishes to that extent.
However, we will have to wait to see what happens to moves toward
reconciliation between the US and North Korea that appeared well underway even
after Kim Jong-il, 69, had died but before we heard the announcement.
The new US envoy to North Korea, Glyn Davies, was due to return to Beijing this
week for talks with a top North Korean official - the prelude, it was widely
assumed, to the first six-party talks on North Korea's nuclear program since
December 2008.
The six-party talks, hosted by Beijing, may come to pass but not until North
Korea has gone through a power shift that may be little understood beyond the
inner sanctums of power in Pyongyang. Kim Jong-eun may well appear to be his
father's heir, just as his father was heir to power after the death of Kim
Il-sung in July 1994, but Kim Jong-il was far better prepared than was his son
to take over.
Jong-eun, anointed a four-star general by his father and seen standing beside
him in an enormous display of military might in October 2010, will have
difficulty making his way among the aging generals who control every region of
the country.
More immediately, he will have to show he's capable of dealing with a conniving
aunt, Kim Jong-il's sister, Kim Kyung-hui, and her ambitious husband, Jang
Song-thaek. Jang ranks as one of four vice chairmen of the National Defense
Commission, the center of power in North Korea, which Kim Jong-il served as
chairman.
How Jong-eun manipulates among generals who know much more about what's going
on, and who's doing what to whom, within the ruling elite of Pyongyang will be
the stuff of intriguing drama - with a denouement that's far from certain.
It's possible, though, that the generals, the relative and in-laws will all
decide it's best for their own survival to rally behind the young man as a
unifying, compromise, conciliatory figure - conciliatory, that is, within the
top circles of power in Pyongyang. A question for the US, South Korea and
others will be whether he feels the compulsion to show off his power with
rhetoric and perhaps threats or will be in a mood for reconciliation with North
Korea's long-time enemies.
Another question is how the starving, disease-ridden population will take the
news. The record of public executions and imprisonment of anyone showing the
slightest sign of dissent is not likely to inspire veneration for his memory.
Nonetheless, we can be sure of public displays of weeping and wailing as went
on for years after his father's demise. In that spirit, it was woman dressed in
black traditional hanbok dress who announced Kim's death from a massive
heart attack while on a train. He was apparently on another inspection tour -
one of many that he's made in the past few years despite apparently suffering a
stroke in August 2008.
Undoubtedly the death of Jong-il leaves a power vacuum in North Korea. However,
in the past three years the Dear Leader has sought to advance Swiss-educated
Jong-eun as his successor after bypassing two older brothers, notably the
playboy Kim Jong-nam, living in luxury in Macau.
"In a situation like that the systems don't allow for easy adjustment," said
David Straub, former head of the Korea desk at the US State Department. Straub
noted the influence of the core inner circle that also includes Kim's wife, Kim
Ok, as key players along with the generals who may form a ruling junta or power
behind the throne held by Kim Jong-eun.
In fact, North Korea before Kim's death appeared to have softened its rhetoric
while preparing for what would have been Kim's 70th birthday in February and
huge celebrations surrounding the 100th anniversary of the birth of his
long-ruling father, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994.
North Korea has conducted two underground nuclear tests, in October 2006 and
May 2009 but seemed to have put the threat of a third test on hold while
appealing for food aid from the US and South Korea, whose conservative
president, Lee Myung-bak, cut off such aid after his inauguration in February
2008. Lee promptly called an emergency cabinet meeting while South Korean
troops went on full emergency alert.
The US envoy on North Korean human rights, Robert King, recently met with a top
North Korean official in Beijing to talk about food aid.
"Now we have a situation where South Korean and US officials have to decide
very quickly in terms of public statements," said Straub. "They will have to
review and regroup on food aid."
North Korean officials since the first reports of Kim Jong-il's stroke in 2008
had gone to great lengths to demonstrate the strength of the man who imposed a
one-man rule over the country that was just as harsh as his father's.
His health deteriorated sharply after he hosted the late South Korean
president, Roh Moo-hyun, at a summit in Pyongyang in October 2007. Roh had
carried on the "Sunshine" policy of reconciliation inaugurated by the late Kim
Dae-jung, who went to Pyongyang for the first inter-Korean summit in June 2000.
Nonetheless, says Straub, "he looked a lot better" when he hosted former US
president Bill Clinton in Pyongyang in August 2009. Straub accompanied the
former US president on a private plane to Pyongyang to rescue two US television
journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been picked up five months
earlier filming along the Tumen River border with China. "He got around just
fine," Straub recalls. "I'm a little surprised he passed away this badly."
KCNA reported that Kim "suffered an advanced acute myocardial infarction,
complicated by serious heart shock, on a train on December 17". The report said
that he had been under "a great mental and physical strain caused by his
uninterrupted field guidance tour for the building of a thriving nation".
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