Kim Jong Eun: On Again?

According to the Daily NK, the succession propaganda has resumed. In the long run, however, I agree with the assessment of North Korean defector Kim Kwang Jin, who spoke at the Brookings Institution this week: he doesn’t have the cred to pull it off:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – North Korean efforts to install one of ailing leader Kim Jong-il’s sons as a hereditary successor are likely to fail, a senior defector from the communist country said on Tuesday.

Kim Kwang-jin, a former state insurance executive who helped unveil widespread damage claims fraud by Pyongyang, said Kim’s relative recovery from an apparent 2008 stroke does not alter the fact that the era of Kim rule is fading.

“Fragile, worsening health, long drawn-out economic collapse and growing political instability in North Korea indicate that the Kim Jong-il regime is drawing to an end,” Kim told a panel at a Washington thinktank.

“Right now we are seeing another try in North Korea at hereditary succession. I don’t think it will work well,” said the former manager at the state-owned Korea National Insurance Corp, who defected to South Korea in 2003. [Reuters, Paul Eckert]

I actually took some leave and went to Brookings to see Kim speak, but Eckert’s summary does well enough that I don’t have to add much to it. I agree with Kim Kwang Jin. The best Kim Jong Eun could hope for is to be a figurehead in someone’s gilded cage.

Where I may respectfully differ from Kim is in his expression of optimism that the succession of Jang Son Thaek might be a step in the right direction for the North Korean people. I incline more toward the views of Roberta Cohen, who points out that Jang is generally responsible for North Korea’s prison camps, which makes that a bit like an alt-history novel in which one hopes that Himmler might be a relatively moderate successor to Hitler. I can understand why a North Korean would grasp at reasons for optimism. Were I in the position of watching my homeland die from afar, I’d grasp at hope, too. I can’t begin to imagine the agony of it — no photographs of Mr. Kim were permitted, for obvious and dreary reasons, as Kim spoke in English in steady, somber, and dignified tone. I wish I could see a plausible, non-violent path to a humane North Korea, but I don’t.