BEIJING - A report in the British
newspaper The Daily Telegraph claiming that North
Korean leader Kim Jong-il is seriously ill,
coupled with his disappearance from public view
for the past month, has led to speculation and
concern about a post-Kim North Korea.
If
true, it would be very big news, as it opens up
the possibility of many disagreeable things: the
regime's collapse, a flood of refugees to
neighboring countries, a bloody power struggle, or
even
a nuclear war in the case of a hardline military
faction coming to power.
The fact that the
news became the most-viewed article of the
newspaper that day, while other news outlets
around the world busily cited it, testifies that
the world is concerned about what is happening in
Pyongyang.
The most intriguing speculation
contained in the Telegraph article was the
purported visit by a team of German doctors,
specializing in heart surgery, to Pyongyang. That
was seen by some observers to support the
conclusion that Kim is seriously ill, because he
has long been known to suffer from a heart
condition.
The story was further
embellished by vivid details of Kim's condition
that were allegedly provided by foreign diplomatic
sources in Pyongyang. It reported that Kim could
barely walk 30 meters and had to be accompanied by
an assistant carrying a chair so that he could sit
and catch his breath.
But Jang Sung-min, a
former South Korean lawmaker and chief aide to
former president Kim Dae-jung, who just came back
from a trip to Pyongyang, simply brushed off the
news. "When I saw the report, I didn't trust it at
all," Jang said.
Jang visited Pyongyang
from May 12-15, meeting with some high-ranking
officials there. He said he actually asked them,
just out of courtesy, about Kim Jong-il's health.
They briskly replied that he was "in good shape"
and volunteered some details.
They said
candidly that Kim still has some heart conditions,
and that he has not completely recovered from
diabetes. But he is taking good care of his health
by refraining from smoking, and making some
dietary adjustments and taking part in physical
therapy, they said.
Jang, who also served
as a member of the Unification and Foreign Affairs
Trade Committee at the South Korean National
Assembly, declined to name the Pyongyang officials
he had met with, claiming he was asked by the
North Koreans not to disclose such information.
Jang is known to be well connected with
the administrations of both North Korea and the
United States. He is also the one who made public
the e-mails exchanged between North Korea's chief
nuclear negotiator, Kim Kye-gwan, and a senior US
State Department official.
"The
Telegraph's report that Kim can barely walk 30
yards is not the case, as far as I know," Jang
said, adding that if that indeed were the case,
then the militaries in neighboring countries as
well as the US would be on high alert for "all
possible situations that one can imagine,
including a war".
Jang said it's true that
Kim hasn't shown up in public for about a month,
and that this has triggered some suspicion from
the Western media whether something is going on.
However, he said, if that is really
something to do with Kim's health, and if it is as
serious as alleged in the report, then the very
news that North Korea invited a team of German
doctors to conduct some heart surgeries or that he
needs some support to move around would have been
suppressed from the beginning, because it would be
a top national-security issue.
Usually
when high-ranking North Korean officials are sick,
they seek the help of Russian doctors, because
they know the public can be kept in the dark.
"Seeking help from German doctors risks leakage,"
Jang said, adding that the very fact that it was
apparently leaked this time proves that Kim is
okay.
Jang said that the US too knows very
well about Kim's condition, and that's why it has
remained "quiet" after the report. According to
Jang, North Korea is under very close US
surveillance. The US spy satellites above Korea
can photograph objects on the ground as small as
30 centimeters. That means that whenever Kim
leaves his residence, the US will know it for
sure. "It's not likely that they can cheat the
US," Jang said.
In 1994, when the
administration of US president Bill Clinton was
discussing the possibility of bombing North
Korea's nuclear facility in Yongbyon, the family
members of US soldiers in South Korea were already
starting to be evacuated back to home.
"If
the news report is true, then the situation is
even graver than the one in 1994," said Jang. "It
would be a very urgent situation, and the
neighboring countries would have taken hurried
steps as well as the US troops stationed in South
Korea. But we don't see any signs of panic this
time, so I think the media overdid things. I think
it's not appropriate to report that Kim is close
to his last breath."
Jang said that while
he was in Pyongyang, he watched Kim almost every
day on television, busying himself inspecting
various places such as factories processing
mushrooms or producing porcelain or paper and a
recently built dam site.
"If Kim is still
actively conducting site inspections in various
places, it shows that he's confident about his
health. So Kim's disappearance for the last one
month is his disappearance to the outside world,
but not within North Korea. As far as I now, his
activities were reported there," Jang said.
Jang postulates that Kim's disappearance
this time actually is a "strategy" aimed at
seeking international attention. It has to do with
the delay of the Macau funds transfer and the
growing possibility that a candidate from South
Korea's Grand National Party, which opposes
President Roh Moon-hyun's soft policy on the
North, is likely to win the presidential election
in November. According to Jang, these are all
factored into Kim's recent "disappearance".
"I am guessing that North Korea is raising
the stakes by choosing not to show Kim Jong-il to
the outside world," Jang said.
He
said North Korea's recent missile tests are
also Pyongyang's expression of discontent with the
US for its delay of the transfer of US$25 million frozen in
Macau's Banco Delta Asia, as it believes
Washington is taking its sweet time by tossing the
money around many different banks in many
different countries.
The delay of the fund
transfer is in a sense a "litmus test" for
Pyongyang, Jang said. While North Korea is deeply
mistrustful of the US, the US doesn't trust North
Korea either. So before providing the country with
massive assistance, Washington wants to know
whether North Korea will really give up its
nuclear programs this time, or just pretend to do
so while getting all the economic benefits from
the negotiation process, Jang said.
Jang
is highly skeptical about the prospect of the
ultimate implementation of the February 13 pact,
agreed during the last nuclear talks in Beijing.
"Even if the fund transfer is complete, the
negotiation from then will not proceed smoothly
because there is a fundamental lack of trust on
both sides."
Sunny Lee is a
journalist based in Beijing, where he has lived
for five years. A native of South Korea, Lee is a
graduate of Harvard University and Beijing Foreign
Studies University.
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