Meet the New Boss, Part 3
Via the Dong-A Ilbo, the wire services are reporting that North Korea’s overseas missions have been instructed to swear loyalty to Kim Jong Un, who is also following Kim Jong Il around in his daily rounds. Time reports that he’s the spitting image of his father.
Update: Yonhap, citing South Korean intel reports to legislators, confirms.
Update 2: Here’s a roundup of my previous postings on Kim Jong Un and his brothers:
In the end, speculation about Jong Un may be much ado about nothing. Kim Jong Un is in his 20’s, is a third son, is illegitimate, is hardly conditioned to North Korea’ palace intrigues, and has no real military experience. All of these things are great disadvantages in North Korea’s paternalistic, militant, and Confucian culture. It’s unlikely that Jong Un can be more than a mere figurehead.
This confirms what many analysts have been saying since 2003: the ratcheting up of the Juche cult has been more and more rigorous in order to counter the influx of outside information that has been leaking into the DPRK for a decade. The only reason a dynasty can occur in a supposed socialist/communist nation is that the religious cult has permeated every pore of the soon-to-fail state. The Juche cult ideology prescribes the dynastic succession of the line of Kim Il-sung – and the attendant adulation of Kim Jong-un.
Mark my words: the Juche ideology will fail very soon, and the masses will quit on the cult even when it seems unassailable. A weakened cult will cause the entire house of cards to collapse. There will be nothing the Chinese nor the South Koreans can do. It will be a humanitarian crisis of the most grave order. 23 million people will be plunged into a depth of insecurity and confusion that no nation has experienced in modern times.
The social, moral and religious crisis that will result will make every form of government imposed on the North Korean impractible for years. The people will never trust government again. From these ashes, however, a real democracy can emerge and a revival of religion is sure to follow. Free people win their liberties from the ground up and village by village.