The
Ponghwa behind Pyongyang's
throne By Michael Rank
The Supreme Leader is dead, long live the
Supreme Leader.
So it goes in North Korea,
where the quasi-religious personality cult
surrounding the Kim family burns as intensely as
ever, reaching further heights of superstitious
weirdness with the installation of the youthful
Kim Jong-eun as its third deity.
The
official North Korean media have gone out of their
way to give the impression that the sudden death
of Jong-eun's father Kim Jong-il in December will
signal no deviation from the country's xenophobic
and isolationist policies, stressing the Korean
Workers' Party's "monolithic ideology and
leadership and continuity".
The rhetoric
is every bit as absurd and predictable as it was
before Kim Jong-il's death
last month, with commentaries eulogizing the late
leader as a "peerlessly great man ... an
outstanding thinker-theoretician, prominent
statesman and rare illustrious commander of
songun [military first policies] produced
by humankind".
Bears wept and magpies
screeched in mourning at the Dear Leader's demise,
while the personality cult around his "dear
respected" son took on similar proportions, with
soldiers expressing their "ardent reverence" for
Jong-eun as he makes sure that they are warm and
well fed "as their real father would do".
All this may change in time, and Jong-eun,
who is in his late 20s, may yet put his own stamp
on his country's policies, possibly opening North
Korea up to the outside world in order to prevent
widespread hunger and poverty from getting even
worse.
There has been no sign of this so
far, but Jong-il has only been dead a month and
nobody expects anything to happen fast in a
country as conservative and hidebound as North
Korea.
Readers of North Korean tea leaves
say Jong-eun is being guided by his father's
sister, Kim Kyong-hui, and her husband, Jang
Song-taek, and that there may be some cause for
optimism in the fact that Jang last year
reportedly signed an agreement under which China
will provide electricity for the Rason development
zone close to the Chinese border.
The zone
is highly sensitive and conservatives in the
Pyongyang hierarchy are believed to regard it as a
Trojan horse that could bring Chinese-style market
reforms to North Korea, undermining the regime's
legitimacy.
However, the reported signing
of an electricity agreement by his mentor is thin
evidence of Jong-eun's policy intentions, and the
fact is that no one knows how the sudden and
enforced change of leadership in Pyongyang will
pan out.
It is widely assumed that if
anyone knows what the North Koreans are up to,
it's the Chinese, and Chinese-language Internet
sites have provided news stories about drug
smuggling and border-crossing refugees. But there
seems to have been a clampdown in the last year or
two and these sources have dried up.
However, the Beijing magazine Kan Tianxia
published a noteworthy article after Jong-il's
death highlighting the so-called Ponghwa group
consisting of the sons (and presumably the
occasional daughter) of the Pyongyang elite.
This privileged clique, which was first
formed around 2000, consists of people mainly in
their 30s and, the magazine claims, included
Jong-eun himself after he returned home from his
studies in Switzerland.
It says the
group's purpose is to strengthen Jong-eun's power
base and to act as his backstage support.
The article quotes an informed source as
saying the Ponghwa group are mainly graduates of
Kim Il-sung University, Pyongyang Foreign
Languages University and other elite institutions,
and that they tend to work in the security and
intelligence apparatus and in top government
organs such as the supreme procuratorate
(prosecutor's office).
The word Ponghwa
means "smoke of battle" and also has connotations
of "advance guard". It is the name of the area of
Pyongyang on the Taedong River that was the home
of Kim Il-sung's mother Kang Pan-sok; it is also
the name of Pyongyang's most elite hospital and
there is a Ponghwa underground station.
The group is said to be headed by the sons
of two generals. One of these is O Se-hyon, the
second son of General O Kuk-ryol, who, according
to the North Korea Leadership Watch (NKLW) blog,
participated in a crucial meeting hours after
Jong-il's death which "began the order of
operations which publicized KJI's [Kim Jong-il's]
demise and taking on KJI's remaining
administrative and command mechanisms".
The other leader is Kim Chol, son of
General Kim Won-hong, who, according to rumors,
was involved in various scandals but was
nevertheless promoted to full general in 2009.
General Kim, like the fathers of several Ponghwa
members named in the article, belongs to the
super-elite as is clear from his listing as a
member of Jong-il's funeral committee.
Ponghwa members also include the son of
former veteran ambassador to Switzerland Ri Chol
(Ri Tcheul) who is said to have been close to the
young Jong-eun when he attended the International
School in Bern, as well as the son of vice premier
Kang Sok-ju. Kang was until 2010 the senior vice
minister of foreign affairs and is, according to
NKLW, a cousin of Jong-il; he also has has ties to
Jong-eun's mentors and uncle and aunt, Jang
Song-taek and Kim Kyong-hui.
Members of
elite groups such as the Ponghwa set are visible
to the foreign community in Pyongyang where they
frequent hard currency shops and restaurants, and
have a clear parallel in China where the sons and
daughters of top officials are assiduous in
exploiting family connections.
Although
Jong-eun is said to be as omniscient and
omnipotent as his father and grandfather, almost
nothing is known for sure about him. There is
little doubt that he went to school in
Switzerland, and the Chinese magazine claims this
has been confirmed in North Korean "propaganda
documents" - probably internal briefing materials
distributed to senior officials.
Pyongyang
watchers experienced a mild frisson when his
mother was mentioned in a television documentary
earlier this month, as this was the first time
there had been official recognition that he has a
mother. She has never been officially named,
apparently because she was a Japanese-born Korean,
and also because her relationship with Jong-il was
not a happy one. She is said to have died in Paris
in 2004.
Nobody is sure if Jong-eun was
born in 1983 or 1984. According to a book written
by his father's former live-in chef, his birthday
is on January 8, but there were no signs of
celebration in Pyongyang on that day. Perhaps it
was considered unfitting to celebrate so soon
after his father's demise.
The only
utterance attributed to Kim Jong-eun is a paean of
praise to the joys of working all night. "Even
when I work night after night, once I have brought
joy to the comrade supreme commander, the
weariness vanishes and a new strength courses
through my whole body. This is what
revolutionaries should live for."
His
father and grandfather were also fond of lauding
the joys of working through the night, and there's
nothing North Korean leaders fear more than
original thinking.
Michael Rank
is a London-based journalist and translator. He
graduated in Chinese from Cambridge University and
is a former Reuters correspondent in Beijing. He
visited Rason in North Korea in 2010.
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