Kremlinology Update

Rev. Doug Shin e-mailed this very interesting report today, and although the main subject matter is the visible unraveling of the regime from the border town of Dandong, China, here is the first thing that I thought would interest readers, and Doug himself is the source:

From subtle rewordings in the state press and from reports Mr. Shin receives from a high-ranking North Korean official, he believes a band of military generals has already sidelined Mr. Kim. Most unusual, Mr. Shin said, is Kim Jong Il’s virtual disappearance from the public eye. “This kind of thing on this scale has never happened before,” Mr. Shin said. “Kim Jong Il has never spent more than five months away from outsiders’ view.” Yet even photos released of Mr. Kim with Chinese envoy Wang Jiarui in late February appear dated. The same entourage from Mr. Wang’s North Korea visit last year is shown.

Mr. Shin said official news organs are increasingly highlighting subordinates more than Kim Jong Il. At a Feb. 2-3 meeting of the “General Onward March for the Songun Revolution,” a pow-wow of the Communist Party leadership introduced 10 years ago by Mr. Kim to reinforce military-socialist indoctrination, the rhetoric shifted slightly away from praising Mr. Kim alone and toward the military leadership around him. An editorial in the country’s state-run newspaper, the Rodong Shinmun, carried “very unfamiliar terminology,” Mr. Shin said. “It said all the people have to protect and follow–usually Kim Jong Il–but this time also the head leadership. It was a plural concept with Kim Jong Il at the peak.”

Read the rest on your own. There is much information and speculation about possible sidelining of the civilian leadership, but as with all reports on North Korea, it rests on very few sources and should be consumed cautiously.

Still, there comes a point at which quantity of information begins to take on a degree of quality from its sheer cumulative and uncontradicted weight. I’d find some fresh videotape of Kim Jong Il or an announcement that the Dear Leader is rolling his special train into Beijing far more persuasive, but the lack thereof after so many diplomatically tense months is also starting to get persuasive.