Asia Times: PYONGYANG WATCH: For those sunset years



	January 19, 2000	atimes.com

The Koreas

PYONGYANG WATCH: For those sunset years
By Bradley Martin

''Where will Kim Jong-il go when the DPRK collapses?'' That's the irreverent question that the Russian-Australian website North Korea Studies poses in introducing a North Korean Central News Agency report that the Great Leader was made an honorary citizen of a Peruvian city.

Of course the formalities-hating Kim was not present in the city, Huacho, for the presentation last month of a certificate and a gold medal; the North Korean ambassador to Peru received them for him. And evidently those who produce the North Korea Studies site do not really imagine that Kim would ever choose to move to Peru - even if he could surround himself with Maoist Shining Path guerrillas.

For they quickly shift into summarizing a Korea Herald article alleging that Beijing turned down Kim's proposal to make an unofficial visit to China. That juxtaposition seems to suggest that China is a place Kim might like to live some day, if worse came to worst, and that he wanted to check it out quietly as a possible retirement destination.

Now, we should note high up in this column that quite a few predictions by foreign experts that Kim Jong-il would not last in power for five years after his father's death in July 1994 have been proven wrong. And it goes without saying that Kim himself, a resourceful survivor, has no intention of permitting his regime to collapse.

But even if it were no more than an intellectual exercise played out on an unlikely hypothesis, one might profitably spend a little time wondering: Where WOULD the junior Kim go if he had to get out? Put it another way. If things were going so badly that his welcome mat at home had worn out completely, which countries would be tempting enough to Kim that he just MIGHT consider retirement to one of them a reasonable alternative to starting a suicidal war?

China and Russia might seem possibilities because Kim lived in both countries during his childhood. He was born in Russia, during World War II, while his father was part of a Soviet army unit preparing for action against Japan. In fact the boy went by the Russian nickname Yura - all the way through secondary school, by some accounts. The Pyongyang schools attended by Yura and other children of the North Korean elite taught Russian. But Kim Jong-il was not among the up-and-coming North Koreans who went on to university in Moscow. And there is little evidence that as an adult he has felt any particular affection for the country of Khrushchev and Gorbachev - those betrayers of the Stalinist system that was so beloved of Kim's father, Kim Il-sung. Rather, Russia for the adult Kim has been mainly a lesson in what not to do.

China is where eight-year-old Jong-il and his sister were relocated when United Nations troops were overrunning Pyongyang in 1950. As in the case of his Russian birth, you wouldn't know this from reading his official biographies, which simply say he moved to the ''rear area''. Anyhow, whatever practical influence he might have felt from the fact he was in China was minimized, as his school was reopened there and Jong-il remained among the same people who had surrounded him in Pyongyang. There is no evidence that he feels anything like the affinity for Chinese people and their language and culture that his father - who grew up in Manchuria and attended Chinese schools - displayed.

Certainly during a 1983 trip to China - a trip that his aides exhaustively filmed and showed to the world in a disastrous attempt to show him in a positive light - Kim Jong-il did not act like someone enjoying himself in a quasi-homecoming. In fact his behavior much of the time appeared to compound arrogance, petulance and boredom. Clearly, for his Chinese hosts, he was not an easy guest.

Unpleasant memories of 1983 may have something to do with the Chinese government's reported rejection of an unofficial visit by Kim Jong-il last year and its suggestion of an official visit instead. Knowing that Kim hates official occasions, they could have assumed he would not come himself but instead would send an underling. That in fact is what he did, dispatching Kim Yong-nam, president of the Supreme People's Assembly (and a far less difficult guest), for a June visit.

So don't picture China as Kim's escape valve. And most other Asian possibilities also seem unlikely - although if Kim wanted to go to Cambodia, King Sihanouk no doubt would see to his comfort, to reciprocate for the hospitality and loyalty shown him by Kim Il-sung when Sihanouk was having troubles at home.

The United States is, of course, a perennial destination for exiled political figures worldwide. And movie buff Kim Jong-il no doubt would find much to entertain him in Hollywood and surrounding Los Angeles, which has a very large Korean population. But the Koreans there include many of the anti-communist persuasion, quite a few of them refugees who left North Korea during the Korean War and their descendants. Kim Jong-il might not fit in there as well as did, say, a certain former South Vietnamese leader who went into the liquor store business in LA.

Then there's Europe. Rule out much of Eastern Europe, as that is the turf of Kim Jong-il's hated younger stepbrother, Pyong-il, who has been ambassador to several of the countries.

In Western Europe, Italy might be a possibility. It has just formed diplomatic relations with North Korea - the first country in the Group of Seven industrialized nations to do so. And perhaps the only extant photo showing Kim Jong-il actually enjoying himself with Westerners in a social setting was taken aboard his yacht a few years ago as he laughed heartily while entertaining visiting Italian businessmen.

But it seems to me that the most likely European country of all for the reclusive Kim to consider as a potential place of refuge may be the one that makes the greatest fetish out of respecting foreigners' privacy. That is, of course, Switzerland. High-level defectors say Kim has numbered bank accounts waiting for him there. And Switzerland has long been a place for members of the Kim dynasty to park leftover wives and children.

(Special to Asia Times Online)

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