Fear
reigns as Jong-eun stamps
authority By Donald Kirk
The rise of the son as "supreme commander"
of North Korea's armed forces gives rise to
nostalgia. Already the reign of the father is
beginning to seem like the good old days.
At least as long as Kim Jong-il was around
a certain sense of security prevailed. South
Koreans could be sure, despite "incidents", that
North Korea was not going to stage more than
isolated attacks. And North Koreans could be sure,
as long as
they suffered in silent
acceptance of their fates, they would not be
consigned to the country's vast gulag system or
some lesser form of torture and imprisonment.
Now, as Kim Jong-eun begins to throw his
considerable weight around, that sense of security
is gone. The rules are tightening. Families are
subject to execution unto the third generation if
one of their members is caught sneaking across the
Yalu or Tumen River borders into China.
Authorities are cracking down on private markets,
the lifelines for millions in the starving
countryside.
More than anything else, the
specter of purge hangs over the populace. It's
begun with confessions and punishment for those
who did not mourn convincingly over Kim Jong-il's
death; those who missed mass weeping and wailing
in cities and towns around the country or who did
not seem sufficiently sincere.
The
punishment for insincerity and absenteeism can
range from the humiliation of public confession to
imprisonment or worse, and that's just the
beginning. From purging those who failed to
display the requisite grief, the purge extends
from the general populace into the party and
finally to the armed forces, the 1.1 million
troops at the center of control over the country.
The ultimate purpose of the purging is to
insure if anything more loyalty for Kim Jong-eun
than was demanded by his father. The need for this
level of assurance is the obvious insecurity of
the rule of North Korea by a young man, not yet
30, with no experience in running or governing or
doing anything other than going through a quick
course in leadership administered by his father in
the last two or three years of his life.
Just as Kim Jong-eun rose with incredible
speed as "great successor" in the days of mourning
after his father's death, so he now has to spread
his writ, harshly and without hesitation, over a
populace that has every reason to want to rebel
against him. Armed with the title of "supreme
commander", he chose to inspect a tank unit
enshrined in history for roaring into Seoul in
first week of the Korean War.
The heroes
of that triumph may be long gone, but the
tradition lives on, the symbolism a portent of the
durability of the songun, military first
policy enunciated by his father as chairman of the
national military commission.
Not that
Jong-eun is alone in his work. Presumably those
around him are calling the shots, doing the
meticulous planning that establishes his
supremacy. But who's carrying out the details,
from the fire-eating editorials to the visitations
to military units and factories and farms that he
will have to be making, to the carefully staged
appearances on the state TV networks?
The
answer to that question is so much a matter of
mystery as to defy speculation. Intelligence
beneath the highest level is notoriously slim. All
we really know a little about are the grim-faced
old men seen trudging along with Kim Jong-eun on
either side of the hearse that carried his
father's flag-draped coffin on top and then lining
up beside him the next day on a balcony
overlooking thousands massed on Kim Il-sung
square.
The conventional wisdom is that
Jang Song-thaek, installed by Kim Jong-il as a
vice chairman of the national defense commission,
who was walking beside the hearse right behind Kim
Jong-eun, seems to be the acting regent. As
everyone knows, that has a lot to do with the
influence of his wife, Kim Kyong-hui, who happens
to be Kim Jong-il's sister. Then there are the
generals, led by Ri Yong-ho, chief of staff,
walking on the other side of the hearse from the
kid.
And there's Kim Yong-nam, at 86 still
the chairman of the presidium of the Supreme
People's Assembly, a post that makes him titular
head of state. It was Kim Yong-nam who proclaimed
Jong-eun "supreme leader" and demanded total
loyalty to him at the ceremony on Kim Il-sung
square - an event that was roughly equivalent to a
coronation or inauguration though Kim Jong-eun
remained stolidly silent.
No one is likely
to know where all these characters really stand,
however, until the transition shakes down - and
other faces emerge as contenders. The prospects
for a purge permeating the highest levels are
high, but when that's going to happen is anyone's
guess.
Wouldn't a purge be a great way,
though, to get rid of Jang, seen for the first
time preening as a full general while standing
with Kim Jong-eun before his father's
glass-enclosed coffin? Surely Jang, having never
served in the armed forces, cannot have the real
respect of those glowering generals who actually
had to make their way up through the ranks.
Jang, in fact, has been "purged" before -
or at least forced out of the limelight. From 2004
to 2007 he seems to have been relegated to distant
positions after asserting himself a trifle too
forcefully among those surrounding Kim Jong-il.
He might not have recovered at all had it
not been for the influence of his wife, made a
general by her brother in 2010 at the same time
Kim Jong-eun acquired the same rank. Neither
auntie nor son had been known to have had any
military training - clearly not a prerequisite for
rising to the top of the armed forces if that's
what it takes to show the real generals who's
boss.
Kim Jong-eun, though, needs to
acquire still more titles before he can claim to
have filled his father's platform-heeled shoes.
Sure he's "supreme commander", and a
general to boot, but he's still not chairman of
the national defense commission, the basis of his
father's power, the reason fawning visitors, from
Madeleine Albright when she was US president Bill
Clinton's secretary of state to South Korea's late
president, Kim Dae-jung, when he flew to Pyongyang
to pay homage to the leader of the North at the
first inter-Korean summit in June 2000, addressed
him as "chairman".
Indeed, Kim Jong-eun is
not even chairman of the central military
commission of the Workers' Party. Nor is he
general secretary of the party - his father's
other high post. Instead, he was hailed a few days
after his father's death as "leader" of the
party's central committee while remaining, so far,
vice chairman of the party's military commission.
Clearly the kid has a way to go.
That's
all the more reason why Kim Jong-eun has to act
tough, to go along with the wishes of the generals
when it comes to getting rid of malcontents who
want to cross into China. That may also be reason
enough for perpetrating a few more "incidents"
against the South, for testing missiles, maybe for
conducting a third nuclear test.
A lot of
people presumably must be trying to figure out
what Kim Jong-eun should do. It's in the interests
of all of them, though, to sublimate factional
strife and compete to showing their loyalty to him
in order not to destroy one another. That's until
the kid has enough confidence to get rid of a few
of them, maybe more than a few - all on the
pretext, of course, of not showing enough depth of
grieving over the passing of his father.
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