TOKYO - North Korea's new supreme leader Kim
Jong-eun spoke in public for the first time on
Sunday after a massive military parade in
Pyongyang celebrating the centenary of the birth
of the nation's founding father, Kim Il-sung, who
died in 1994 and is still the country's "eternal
president".
For the young leader (in his
twenties), the speech was apparently aimed to add
the final touches to consolidating his grip on power
after ascending to the top
military, party and state titles last week.
Kim
said, "What was once a weak country [North Korea]
has now transformed into a political and military
power: he said. "If we intend to succeed in the
great endeavor of building a strong and prosperous
socialist state, our first, second, and third
steps are to strengthen the people's military in
every way possible."
Kim also stressed the
importance of economic development. "We must tend
well to the precious seeds planted by Comrade Kim
Jong-il [his father] for the sake of building a
strong and prosperous nation and improving the
peoples' lives, cultivating them so that they
blossom into a glorious reality."
And as
if going into damage control after the
embarrassing satellite launch failure on Friday,
the third-generation leader firmly stood in the
symbolic shadow of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung by
imitating everything from his gestures to his way
of speaking, hair-style and black Mao
Zedong-jacket-type costume.
Experts expect
Pyongyang's young master, who is reportedly short
of experience and charisma, will continue to
establish his authority by stressing his heroic
family lineage stretching back to his
grandfather's partisan guerilla activities against
Japan in the 1930s.
Jong-eun's father, Kim
Jong-il, was the supreme leader of North Korea
from 1994 until his death in late 2011.
"Kim Jong-eun was almost a carbon copy of
his grandfather," Satoru Miyamoto, an expert on
North Korean affairs in Japan and an associate
professor at Seigakuin University's General
Research Institute in Saitama prefecture, told
Asia Times Online on Monday. "His vocal quality
was almost the same as Kim Il-sung's, so was the
way of his speech. Kim Jong-eun sometimes stopped
speaking to wait for the public to clap and cheer.
Kim Il-sung did the same."
The
voice Kim Jong-eun delivered his first
public speech by simply and monotonously reading
from prepared text for 20 minutes in front of a
crowd of more than 100,000 people, including
soldiers. He swayed and twisted his body 111 times
during the speech, according to Japanese
broadcaster Fuji TV.
It was
indeed a rare and - in some way unimaginable -
moment, given his father Kim Jong-il's reticent
attitude. The "Dear Leader" was known to have said, "Glory to the
heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!" in
1992, at a ceremony for the army's 60th
anniversary. It marked Kim Jong-il's only public
speech during his rule, and lasted about five
seconds, compared with his third son's 20-minute
speech on Sunday.
During his speech, Kim
Jong-eun referred to Kim Il-sung's guerilla
activities, which are deeply ingrained in the
minds of many North Koreans, thus legitimizing the
blood-heir's succession over three generations.
(In 1931, Kim joined the Communist Party of China
and various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in
northern China, and in 1935 he became a member of
the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a
guerrilla group led by the Communist Party of
China.)
The hereditary transfer is
also seen in the power elites surrounding
Jong-eun. For example, Choe Ryong-hae, 62, whose
father was a minister of the People's Armed
Forces; Choe Hyon, a close comrade of Kim Il-sung
during his days as a partisan fighter, last week
completed the climb to the top of the ladder by
becoming one
of the five members of the decision-making
Politburo Presidium of the Workers' Party of Korea
as well as vice chairman of the party’s central
military commission.
The rise of Choe Ryong-hae,
despite his previous civilian status in the
Workers' Party, coincides with Kim Jong-eun's
ascension to power.
North Korea's top
power elite also includes O Il-jong, who is the
son of O Jin-u, a former People's Armed Forces
minister, and O Kum-chol, who is the son of O
Baek-yong, a one-time head of state security.
Their fathers were all guerrillas together, and
they supported Kim Jong-il when he was in
competition with his uncle, Kim Yong-ju, to
succeed North Korea founder Kim Il-sung, according
to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo.
"The
hereditary system of power leads to the
stabilization of the current regime," Hiroyasu
Akutsu, a professor and senior fellow at the
National Institute for Defense Studies, told Asia
Times Online on Monday. "It's North Korean version
of the Crown Prince Party, or The Princelings."
Japanese experts on North
Korean affairs see three pledges in Kim Jong-eun's
speech. One is the maintenance of the policies of
Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il based on their instructions
and wills. The second is that the songun
(military-first) policy is rooted in the ideology
that embodies the juche (self-reliance)
idea and strengthens the rigidity of the Kim
family dynasty. The third is to establish an
economically prosperous nation, which has never
been realized to date.
The public in front
of the young leader on Sunday displayed unusual
characters on placards, such as "No enemy, Strong
military", along with the usual characters such as
"Military-first politics" and "a strong and
prosperous nation". Japanese experts say this
represents North Korea's strong willingness to
continue developing nuclear and missile programs.
Kosuke Takahashi is a
Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. Besides Asia
Times Online, he also writes for Jane's Defence
Weekly as Tokyo correspondent. His twitter is
@TakahashiKosuke
(Copyright 2012 Asia
Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.
Please contact us about sales, syndication and
republishing.)
Head
Office: Unit B, 16/F, Li Dong Building, No. 9 Li Yuen Street East,
Central, Hong Kong Thailand Bureau:
11/13 Petchkasem Road, Hua Hin, Prachuab Kirikhan, Thailand 77110
