Succession Rumors Spread Inside North Korea

There may or may not be any truth to rumors that third son Kim Jong Un will the figurehead successor to His Porcine Majesty, but word seems to have spread inside the kingdom:

The source said, “People who have secretly been listening to South Korean radio seem to be circulating these stories but the Party in Pyongyang has not issued a special decree about it. Many people have an interest in the successor issue, so the rumors have been spreading even more rapidly.

According to the source, the rumor began to circulate in mid-January. This coincides with the issuance of a related report from South Korea. [Daily NK]

The Daily NK sees significance in the regime’s lackluster efforts to tamp the rumors down:

The source said, “A majority of the people heard then for the first time the fact that the General (Kim Jong Il) even has a third son! After hearing the rumor, most people were unmoved, questioning whether a third-generation of Kims would continue to rule.

The North Korean authorities have shown awareness of the circulation of these rumors, but have not implemented anything as a consequence. This is quite a different situation than the strict prohibition of the spread of rumors regarding Kim Jong Il’s sickness, as given in “People’s Unit” lectures at the time.

It’s interesting that the regime isn’t more aggressive about this in light of Jong Un’s illegitimacy and how that contradicts the state’s Confucian morality, and its attribution of that morality to Kim Jong Il. The most interesting point, of course, is that the regime lacks the ability to keep rumors like this out of North Korea today. It’s doubtful that Sunshine-era engagement allowed rumors like these to reach the provinces. Instead, it was most likely illegal border crossers, smugglers, and banned cell phones. As with economic change, political change will come from the bottom up, not from the top down.

4 Responses

  1. “As with economic change, political change will come from the bottom up, not from the top down. ”

    sweet!! it gives me hope that the ceaucescu moment can still happen.

    probably not with KJI as he’s gonna kick the bucket soon.

  2. Bottom up is correct:

    “You cannot expect North Korea to change from the top,” said Yu Suk Ryul, chairman of Cornerstone Ministries International. “The best way to change North Korea from the bottom is to spread the Gospel.”

    Cornerstone supports underground churches in North Korea by way of ethnic Korean-Chinese traders, who supply Christians there with “mini-Bibles” translated into a North Korean dialect, as well as financial assistance and other goods. The group says that it supports more than 1,000 underground cells in North Korea, and that the number is “growing fast,” Yu said.

    Cornerstone also releases plastic bags filled with Christian messages and sweets at sea, with the intent that they wash ashore in the North.

    The evangelists’ tactics are aimed at undermining two pillars of North Korea’s Communist government: the isolation of its people and the near-deification of Kim and his late father, Kim Il Sung.

    http://www.iht.com/articles/2007/11/01/asia/korea.php

  3. This reminds me…usinkorea wrote this a few years ago – I think it’s worth repeating here:

    One thing I have been thinking about this week, which I’ve blogged about a good bit, is how the US could fund, work with, and/or imitate the efforts of the Christian groups that have been working with North Koreans in Manchuria and North Korea.
    At its most successful, the spread of this movement could benefit us in many, many ways, but the ultimate goal would be to provide a thought system that would connect North Koreans with the greater world – that would help bridge their transition from an ultra-hermit kingdom status defined by hatred and fear of the outside world into one accepting major components of that outside world. It could do things like help them understand better the nature of democracy as viewed in Western (and now global) civilization. It could help ease the possible consequences of a collapse of the North by providing them with a spiritual meaning at a time of deep crisis…..
    ……it could also help distance them away from China as well as bring them closer to the US and West and South Korea…..given China’s stance on religion and Christianity…..

  4. Irene:
    Dr. Lankov appears to agree:

    “The collapse of Kim Jong-il’s rule someday is likely to leave a serious ideological and spiritual vacuum, which can be easily filled by Christianity. The associations between Christianity and South Korean prosperity will not hurt either – as well as right-wing sympathies of Korean mainstream Christians (the left is unlikely to be popular in post-Kim North Korea for at least a generation). And it seems likely that in many cases the new-found North Korean Protestantism will take rather extreme forms.”

    – Dr. Andrei Lankov, Associate Professor at Kookmin University, in Seoul