Kim Jong Eun’s Reign Will Be Unmercifully Brief

By now, the conventional wisdom on North Korea’s succession has solidified around Jang Song-Thaek as the power behind the scenes in North Korea, in concert with other key figures who began to consolidate their power in 2009, after Kim Jong-Il’s strok — Jang’s wife and Kim Jong-Il’s sister, Kim Kyong-Hui, O Kuk Ryol, and Ju Sang-Sung.

Much has been said about how little we know about Kim Jong-Eun, officially, the Great Successor.  His anointing began in 2009, after Kim Jong-Il’s incapacitating stroke.  He’s a month shy of 28, and is Kim Jong-Eun is Kim Jong-Il’s youngest son.  His mother was the dancer Ko Young-Hee whom Kim Jong Il expropriated from her husband but never married.  He has his father’s personality — aggressive and narcissistic. There has been considerable speculation in the press that Kim Jong-Eun’s recklessness was behind the 2010 attacks on South Korea, although one it’s doubtful that anyone outside North Korea really knows for certain.  He probably studied at a private school in Switzerland. Unfortunately for Jong-Eun, he has already become one of the most unpopular men in North Korea. Thus, as a successor, Kim Jong-Eun’s purpose will be to inspire awe and show continuity, but it’s difficult to imagine that he can succeed as an object of adoration.  Just look at this face.  Is this a face that the regime really wants displayed on portraits in the homes and schools of every hungry North Korean? For these reasons, but especially because of his age and inexperience, the most he is likely to be is a figurehead.

What we don’t know about Kim Jong-Eun matters much less than what we don’t know about Jang Song-Thaek.  Selig Harrison has predictably tried to portray Jang as a closet reformer, of course, but Jang’s biography lends little support to this theory and few details that can be confirmed. He was born in North Hamgyeong province in 1946.  He was an average student at Kim Il Sung University, but he was charismatic and popular for his singing and dancing.  These talents attracted the affections of Kim Kyong-Hui, Kim Jong-Il’s sister and Kim Il-Sung’s daughter.  The Kim family forbade the relationship, but astonishingly, Jang not only continued to date Kim Kyong-Hui, but survived Kim Il-Sung’s disapproval, and continued the relationship at a party school and at Moscow State University.  The two married in 1971 or 1972.

Jang probably survived this and other conflicts because he knew how to make himself useful.  He was a pioneer of North Korea’s use of diplomatic missions to earn foreign currency, through both legitimate and illicit business ventures.  For reasons that aren’t clear, Jang was expelled from the party in 1977, but was on the path to rehabilitation by 1982.  Jang dedicated himself to the work of making friends, building patronage networks, and establishing the infamous Bureau 39.  In 1986, he was “elected” as a Deputy Delegate to the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly, a rubber-stamp parliamentary body.  He became a candidate member of the Central Committee in 1989 and a full member in 1992. In 1995, he is thought to have had a role in the purge of the VI Corps after its abortive mutiny in Chongjin. Jang vanished again between 2003 and 2006, either because he again fell into disfavor or because his activities abroad required him to keep a low profile.  After he reemerged, he took over the regime’s internal security and inspection functions, making him one of the most powerful and feared men in North Korea. From this position, Jang was well postured to accumulate power from within the Kim family’s inner circle after Kim Jong-Il’s stroke.  In 2009, he was appointed to the National Defense Commission, and became a Vice Chairman of that body the following year.

Like Jang, Kim Kyong-Hui was born in 1946, but was not considered an important player in the regime’s power structure until 2009.  She and Jang have one son and one daughter, both born in the late 1970s.  The nature of Kim’s relationship to Jang is matter of wildly varying speculation, characterized by some observers as one of romantic estrangement, even political competition.  The circumstantial evidence suggests, however, that both Kim and Jang rose quickly in the regime power structure in 2009, at about the time that Kim Jong-Eun was chosen to be Kim Jong-Il’s nominal successor.

Another key player to watch is General O Kuk-Ryol, also a Vice Chairman of the National Defense Commission and long-time friend of Kim Jong Il.  O, a war orphan adopted by Kim Il-Sung, has a history that suggests irrational rashness.  For example, O was the mastermind of North Korea’s currency counterfeiting operations, which probably earned North Korea much less money than the sanctions it brought down.  As head of the Reconnaissance Bureau, O almost certainly approved North Korea’s recent assassination attempts against Hwang Jang-Yop and a number of activists in China and North Korea.

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These are not the biographies of reformers.  An extreme optimist would call them the biographies of pragmatists, but all of them are at the very heart of the existing power structure, have staked their lives on its preservation, and probably see reform as an excessive risk to their own survival.  If they have plans to make even limited reforms, they are unlikely to make any policy changes for the next few weeks, as they ensure that they have the allegiance of key leaders in the security forces.  For the short term, expect calm, even the appearance of paralysis in foreign relations (major policy initiatives anytime soon would suggest that Jang was fully, even suspiciously, prepared to assume power on Kim Jong-Il’s death).In the medium term, however, the new leadership may provoke a crisis to burnish its legitimacy.  No doubt, a few South Korean generals will be working overtime in the days leading up to April 15th, the 100th anniversary of Kim Il-Sung’s birth and the start of Juche 101, and a date that has featured prominently in recent North Korean propaganda.In the long term, there are too many reasons why this can’t last.First, Korea’s history is not written in the language of compromise, but of intrigues, schisms, and warring states interrupted by a few interludes of unity.  A power vacuum, a collapsed economy, and discontent in the provinces will all work against North Korea’s new leaders as they attempt to stabilize their broken kingdom.Second, Jang’s extraordinary ambition is a grave risk factor for Kim Jong-Eun’s personal survival. Jang must be North Korea’s most accomplished and cunning survivor.  Not only did he survive the experience of dating Kim Il-Sung’s daughter despite his objections, he later married her, earned the confidence of his omnipotent in-laws, and (forgive the verb) penetrated the inner circle of the ruling family.  His guile and charmisma, combined with Kim Jong-Eun’s personal unpopularity, suggest that Jang could plausibly take advantage of the awe and continuity provided by Jong-Eun’s presence in the leadership for a while, and then discard him. For now, Jang needs Kim Jong-Eun’s hereditary mystique, a force with an inestimable psychological power over North Koreans, including many who despise the regime.

Third, Kim Jong-Eun lacks the age, experience, hagiography, and credibility to consolidate his control over a group of survivors as ruthless and experienced as North Korea’s top leaders.  His genes are his only marketable asset.  He certainly cannot pull off the aura of ruthless guerrilla austerity of his grandfather, and he hasn’t had time to morph himself into the superhuman technocrat and cunning diplomat his father was portrayed as.  The regime only just begun to indoctrinate North Koreans about Kim Jong-Eun.  You can see what an exceptionally difficult thing this must be in a perpetually hungry society that values physical prowess, toughness, and age, and when the material you have to work with is Kim Jong-Eun:

“Youth Captain Kim Jong Eun is a great man who personifies the very modest and easygoing appearance of the Supreme Leader and Great General,” the material opines, adding, “He has a passionate love for soldiers and the people and looking after their lives.”

Also, it asserts impressively, “He is familiar with the Juche idea, military science, Juche political economy, Juche literature and art, and has a wide knowledge of all areas of history, from ancient to modern, economics, the military and culture.”

Kim Jong Eun has long been a favored son. According to Fujimoto Kenji, Kim Jong Il’s former chef who wrote a tell-all book about his years working for the Kim family, “Kim Jong Il said about Kim Jong Cheol, ‘He is not right. He is like a girl’, and often gave him a bad evaluation. On the other hand, his favorite son is Kim Jong Eun.”

“‘Kim Jong Eun is an all round sports player and has leadership and an intrepid personality,'” the book claims, adding, “He resembles Kim Jong Il in appearance, shape, and even personality. He has a vigorous personality and”¦ a strong competitive spirit.”

The mythologies and hagiographies of Kim Il-Sung and Kim Jong-Il — along with ample measures of terror, mutual isolation, and exhausting labor — were essential to North Korea’s cohesion even while the state failed.  Without those things, North Korea is Albania without Enver Hoxha.  Without that cohesive force, the natural condition of Korea is internal division.