Meet the New Boss: Kim Jong Il Reportedly Names Kim Jong Un as Successor
Kyodo News is reporting that the North Korean regime has chosen Kim Jong Un as the successor to Kim Jong Il. The report follows months of rumors of a succession announcement and rumors of Kim Jong Il’s ill health. You can read my own run-down of the succession contest here.
I must register my grave disappointment that Kim Jong Chol, who would have been such fine blogging material and who really seemed like a contender, was not chosen. Instead, we get a new Dear Leader about whom almost nothing is known and who has relatively little exposure to Earth.
You can read more about Kim Jong Un (or Woon, or Woong) here:
* Wikipedia reminds us that he’s the illegitimate son of His Porcine Majesty and former mistress Ko Young Hee. That should make for some tricky explanations and uncomfortable conversations.
* The Atlantic, which called him “a dark horse.”
* DPRK Studies, on his recent career progressions.
* Even Global Security says “Meh?”
Updates: Yonhap, which appears to be the original source of these reports, tells this story almost like it was a coup:
“(Kim) delivered a directive around Jan. 8 that he has named Jong-un as his successor to the leadership of the Workers’ Party,” one of the sources told Yonhap News Agency on condition of anonymity. [….]
Jong-un’s nomination was completely unexpected in the North, even among party leaders, multiple sources said.
“The sudden nomination caught even senior members of the leadership by surprise,” another source said. “The power elite who have learned of Jong-un’s designation are rushing to line up behind the junior Kim and this climate will rapidly spread across North Korean society,” the source said. [Yonhap]
Predictably, Jong Nam was deemed too corrupted by the outside world and Jong Chol too effiminate to be a credible god of war. On the other hand, good looks seem to be optional:
[Kim Jong Un] is the spitting image of his father. Even his body build is similar,” [ex royal sushi chef Kenji] Fujimoto said in the book. [….]
The youngest son is said to be 175 centimeters tall and weigh about 90kg due to a lack of exercise. He reportedly already has high blood pressure and diabetes. Unlike his brothers, no images of him have been captured by foreign media.
The sources said Pyongyang will soon launch a propaganda drive to officially raise Jong-un’s public standing.
North Korea is scheduled to hold parliamentary elections on March 8, which Seoul experts forecast will promote young economic elite to lay the groundwork for the post-Kim era. The Institute for National Security Strategy, which is an arm of the National Intelligence Agency, said in a report in late December that economic pragmatism will emerge with the generational shift in the North.
Pity the Daily NK if these reports is accurate. They just came out with a piece saying that eldest son Kim Jong Nam was picked. Jong Nam, most famous for his abortive trip to Tokyo Disneyland, has recently been living the good life in Macau … as we can readily observe. Jong Nam, whom we can safely assume the Chinese have been cultivating, may have had some semi-official role in the regime in recent years and is said to have rushed back to Pyongyang when His Porcine Majesty had his stroke. Putting a morbidly obese heir on the throne of a starving nation would also have made for much exquisite blogging material. Pity.
So what will this mean in practical terms? In the short term, damn little, unless the selection of Jong Un upsets enough people in the power structure to destabilize it. It’s doubtful that any of the three sons would ever have held real power anyway. North Korea’s current system invests all powers not reserved by His Porcine Majesty in a wizened coterie of party hacks and generals, and they are steeped in a competitive groupthink where safety is only found in being no less ruthless than those around them.
In the longer term, however, Jong Un is one more generation removed from Kim Il Sung’s martial claims to legitimacy, even divinity. The cruelty, belligerence, and mendacity of the regime will not change, but a regime without legitimacy under which no one really wants to live can only last so long.
Another update: Via Yonhap, the CIA thinks the North Koreans are in the middle of a shakeup of industrial ministers. So we may have flux within the regime on several layers, which could be a tricky thing for the regime to manage.
Stop the Presses! The Chosun Ilbo says:
A collective leadership headed by North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law is in the making in Pyongyang, the Yomiuri Shimbun claimed Wednesday. In a report datelined from the U.S., the Japanese daily said Jang Song-taek (62), who is director of the administrative department of the North Korean Workers Party, is to head this setup, with Kim’s eldest son Jong-nam as the titular head of state. According to the paper, these plans have been made in Kim is incapacitated or dies.
Quoting a senior U.S. intelligence officer, the daily said the collective leadership “would consist of Kim’s family, the NKWP, and the North Korean People’s Army. Its figurehead is Jang, and there is a high likelihood that the North Korean regime will turn out to be in fact a ‘Jang regime.'”
Update 1/15: The Daily NK is sticking to its guns: “[T]here have not been any noticeable signs that Jong Won is taking any instruction to prepare for succession. The word on the streets of North Korea is that Jong Woon has serious hypertension and diabetes.” They are still betting on Jang Song Thaek taking power, which of course isn’t mutually exclusive with the idea of one of the three princes being stood up as a figurehead of sorts.
What a great way to outsmart psychological profiling.
If this is true, there are serious problems. One of the biggest I see is the lack of a propaganda campaign to build a new leader up. As some suggested, it could mean a collective leadership, but this is all conjecture. With that said, a lame duck regime could mean problems too. With nothing confirmed, the bottom line is, intelligence could be wrong.
None of it matters as long as His Porcine Majesty can draw a breath.
The regime will soon crack under the weight of a few helium balloons.
The North Korean Christian Association has my vote.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5hK1TkCn8mk1BcEA0fGgGsx1jezfw
I think that your credibility and objectivity becomes very questionable when you use expressions like “His Porcine Majesty”.
Kim Jong Il is far from the only head of state who is overweight. Here are two reasons not to use this, or similar, expressions:
1) Using this type of language in a ‘serious’ news story is about as sensible/sensitive as being president of a superpower, picking out a few nations that annoy you and say that they constitue an ‘axis of evil’… (Conveniently leaving out several even worse countries which aren’t really evil since they have no oil or aren’t geographically strategiclly positioned.)
2) Or perhaps “His Porcine Majesty” is about as subtle as saying “American Imperialistic Invading Bastards”. Don’t sink as low as those you are trying to fight..
A reader pointed me to the updated CIA list a couple of days ago. I have a link to it here: http://www.nkeconwatch.com/2009/01/14/cia-publishes-2008-dprk-whos-who/
In my very humble opinion, Jang Song-taek will have a role in the next Great/Dear Leader’s government.
Mareike;
Do you know what a “softball” is?
Probably not.
Mareike, do you also get offended when a person refers to Adolf Hitler as a maniacal bastard?
1) I think you are doing a fantastic job covering North Korean news – sorry I didn’t mention it! I will of course continue visiting the site regardless and it is up to you what language you choose to use…
2) I wasn’t saying that I think KJI is a good leader of his country, clearly he and his government have failed miserably.
3) Yes, I am European and we sometimes consider US attitudes to be a bit too aggressive, subjective and uncompromising + twisting the truth for own purposes. Sometimes we also think that the US takes the rhetoric a bit too far.
4) I like objectivity and a high tone. Likening somebody to a pig and critisizing their looks strikes me as irrelevant criticism unworthy of a great website with the mission of spreading important information. It’s not like there aren’t enough real , objective negatives to mention about North Korea!
Sorry I “barged in” with harsh criticism – I REALLY appreciate the site and I should have started off by saying that, instead of criticising!
1) No I don’t know exactly what you mean by softball in this context.
2) Doesn’t bother me how anybody refers to Hitler, it’s all in the past – Europe learnt from the experience, implemented the lessons and it won’t happen again as long as the EU exists.
Hitler was an aggressive war-mongering dictator. The one thing that set him apart from other leaders who have set out to dominate Europe by means of war (JuliusCeasar, Napoleon Bonaparte, Stalin etc) is his despicable genocide of the European Jews. “Maniacal” – I don’t know, “Bastard” – depends on how you define it.
Right. And as an American, I realize that “we sometimes consider Europeans” to be dour, humorless, sanctimonious, and fundamentally unserious about dealing with evil, but rather than let us go down that path, try to see things from my perspective. This can be pretty depressing subject matter. I doubt I’d have the stomach to write about it every day if I couldn’t leaven it with satire. It wasn’t a gratuitous epithet. There’s much absurdity in the contrast between the eating habits of Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Nam on one hand, and their subjects. This goes beyond one individual’s lifestyle choice. The self-evident gluttony of these two men is made possible by stealing from the bowls of starving children.
Arguing for high tone is one thing – the term “objectivity” is quite another.
If this were a “straight news” site and One Free Korea were a journalist, then using phrases like the one you pointed out would be something I’d strike out as an editor — but this is not a news site. It’s a personal subject-oriented informational site by a private citizen — and I’d rather see author(s) on such sites “let their hair down” rather than try to mimic some PBS News Hour “high tone” and (fained) objectivity.
Which brings me to that term —- striving for “objectivity” with something like North Korea’s regime is — immoral/unethical.
For other cases, objectivity on a site like this is nonsense anyway. You would expect Joshua, as an American, to analyze things from an American perspective – and talk about what would be better/best for America. The same with any Citizen X from whatever country.
Of course, in international relations and global policy, you have to factor in what is good for other nations as well – and what is good for the region/group/whole…
But, there is no true “objectivity” when discussing these issues, and trying to force it is just trying to hide a natural, reasonable bias. (Which is exactly what we get from the news media itself – like PBS’ News Hour).
I don’t expect Joshua to be objective either, especially when writing about a regime as despicable as what is currently in place in North Korea. Joshua’s sense of humor combined with his analysis is what makes this site much better then reading some dry straight news site that has no personality and little analysis.
USINKOREA – Your points make a lot of sense. It’s true that this is no newspaper — so expectations one would have on a paper are irrelevant. For an American to analyse something from an American standpoint is also reasonable. I didn’t consider these things!
A pity there is no European based DPRK watch site – the Swedish guy who was running one dropped it, I think. I suppose most people in Europe are quite indifferent to Korea either way.. (Which is why it was a real surprise when the US wanted to put air defense missiles in Poland to protect from DPRK missiles aimed at Europe… Nobody had ever imagined that there was a threat… Oh well, that’s another story 😉
I think the missile threat to Europe is still Russia, and increasingly Iran, but not North Korea.