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North Korea: Son rise, at last

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In Brief

Even by its own eccentric standards, North Korea is erratic when it comes to due process. Until the past week, it is not clear if the WPK Central Committee (CC) had even met since Kim Jong-il succeeded his father in 1994. A micro-manager when his health allows, the dear leader sits spider-like at the centre of a vast web of state, Party and military bodies, all reporting ultimately only to him.

Yet even in Pyongyang there comes a time when naked absolutism does not quite cut it. If North Korea were an actual rather than merely an aspirant monarchy, King Jong-il could simply anoint Prince Jong-eun as his heir. But successions are the Achilles’ heel of dictatorships.

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Manoeuvring an unknown and untried 20-something, to be in line for the top job is no easy task. Behind the scenes – despite well-choreographed theatrical displays of unanimity in the public sphere – the machinations must have been considerable.

The mask slips

The past year has seen the mask slip with various oddities. Why, for instance, did the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) hold a rare second meeting in June, less than two months after its usual session in April, to reshuffle the Cabinet?

More recently, why did Kim Jong-il suddenly scurry off to China again in late August: his second visit in four months? And why was a major WPK conference, announced in June as upcoming in ‘early September’, not in fact held until September 28?

On the former, Kim is thought to have sought and secured China’s support for his son Jong-eun’s succession. As to the delay, there are three main hypotheses. Severe floods in the northern DPRK may have prevented some delegates reaching Pyongyang; Kim Jong-il’s health might have suffered a relapse; or the last embers of opposition to Jong-eun may have needed to be stamped out.

Or perhaps Kim Jong-il just likes to keep the world guessing. Not until September 21 was it announced that the long-awaited WPK delegates’ conference would now be held on September 28.

But first, to church

On September 26 DPRK media pictured hundreds of delegates as they arrived for the meeting. But first things first. Monday was for worship: they all visited ‘the sacred temple of Juche.’ Thus did the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) describe Kumsusan Memorial Palace where Kim Il-sung lived and worked, and where now his embalmed corpse keeps a glass eye on things.

And so to business. The Party meeting had two functions: primarily to enshrine Kim Jong-eun’s succession, but also to put the WPK’s top organs on a more regular footing. For the first time in years full lists were published of the Central Committee and the Politburo.

Playing soldiers

For the first time Kim Jong-eun’s name and image have now appeared in public and he has gained three formal positions. First, he was one of six persons named as four-star generals. Like him, three of these have no known military experience, including his aunt Kim Kyong-hui, a light industry expert. She also becomes a full Politburo member, as well as the Korean People’s Army (KPA)’s sole female ‘general.’

One can only wonder what real soldiers make of this. The fact that a Party meeting must dish out military ranks to establish credibility shows where the real clout lies these days. Yet such ludicrous appointments might equally be taken as insulting. What soldierly respect could a genuine 3-star KPA general really feel for Kim Jong-eun or Kim Kyong-hui?

Second, Kim Jong-eun was also listed among over 100 members of the new WPK Central Committee. Third, and more importantly, he was named as joint vice-chairman of the party’s Central Military Commission. The CMC is the most powerful body in Pyongyang. It shadows and directs the National Defence Commission (NDC): itself the highest executive organ of state, outranking the civilian cabinet.

Pictured at last

Kim Jong-eun was not otherwise singled out, but a picture published after the event confirmed Pyongyang’s new hierarchy. So little-known is North Korea’s dauphin that this is in fact the first confirmed image of him as an adult.

He stands out, being twice as young as anyone else. Tieless like his father to show he is special, in a dark Mao-type jacket which nods at a military look. While hundreds stand, he is seated in the front row, two places to the right of his father. Between them is the uniformed figure of Chief of the General Staff Ri Yong-ho, freshly promoted vice-marshal and Jong-eun’s co-vice-chair on the CMC. Also newly appointed to the WPK’s five-strong Politburo Presidium, Ri is clearly the man to watch in the KPA now. (He is not to be confused with another Ri Yong-ho, newly promoted as a vice foreign minister.)

First family

Kim Jong-il’s keeping power in the family extends beyond his son. His sister Kim Kyong-hui is now both a four-star general and a full Politburo member. As such she formally outranks her husband Jang Song-taek, nominally a mere alternate Politburo member. Joining the NDC last year as a rare civilian, Jang was promoted in June to vice-chairman. Now he is on the CMC too. His role as eminence grise even comes across in photographs.

As widely canvassed, if Kim Jong-il should die suddenly the burden of regency would surely fall upon Jang Song-taek. But neither this, nor the seemingly successful if woefully overdue staging of North Korea’s first national Party meeting in three decades, guarantees stability when the time of reckoning finally comes. Quite apart from Jong-eun’s two older brothers, there may well be rivalries or mistrust among those who for now maintain a pretence of unity. While we know all too little of the detail, in such a situation power struggles are the rule rather than the exception.

We don’t do policy

Anyone still hopeful that fresh life may yet be breathed into the surely moribund nuclear Six Party Talks (6PT), suspended since 2008, may take heart from the promotion just before the WPK congress of Kim Kye-gwan, the DPRK’s main nuclear negotiator, to be first vice foreign minister. He replaces the long-serving Kang Sok-ju, Kim Jong-il’s cousin, who joins the Politburo and moves to two new posts: as first vice president of the Supreme Court, and also one of at least eight vice-premiers. Kim Kye-gwan’s promotion belies suggestions that he had been purged, either for the 6PT’s perceived failure or undue closeness to his then US counterpart, Christopher Hill. On the other hand, on September 29 yet another DPRK vice foreign minister, Pak Kil-yon, told the UN General Assembly that ‘as long as US nuclear aircraft carriers sail around the seas of our country, our nuclear deterrent can never be abandoned, but should be strengthened further.’

Regarding economic reform, the return of ex-premier Pak Pong-ju, a known reformer sacked in 2007, as an alternate CC member is hopeful. So is Kim Jong-il’s recent praise of China’s development. Yet on September 18 an editorial in Rodong Sinmun uncompromisingly reasserted the old, failed gospel of self-reliance. The tragic irony of Juche is that seeking self-reliance only produces the opposite: reducing a once proud industrial state to beggary. If whoever is in charge in Pyongyang now or in the future does not grasp this, there is no hope.

More broadly, the WPK meeting is only a first step. Kim Jong-eun now has formal positions and a public presence. It remains to be seen whether and how he will wield real power.

Aidan Foster-Carter is honorary senior research fellow in sociology and modern Korea at Leeds University, and a freelance consultant, writer and broadcaster on Korean affairs.

A longer version of this article first appeared in, and is used with the kind permission of, NewNations.com.

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