Hwang Jang Yop Dies at 87

Hwang Jang Yop survived multiple purges and power struggles, a defection, at least one assassination attempt, and 87 years in some especially cruel places and times. I was ambivalent about Hwang, who became Kim Jong Il’s strongest critic, but who still defended the juche ideology as misunderstood and misinterpreted by its more recent oracles. We can appreciate what Hwang did to expose the system’s ruthlessness, even as we must recognize that he probably stepped on plenty of skulls to ascend to its higher ranks.

When my wife told me that Hwang had died, the first thing I wondered was whether it was of natural causes. Officially, the answer is “yes,” and I see no reason to question that, given Hwang’s advanced age. Still, South Koreans love a good conspiracy theory, or even a bad one. The fact that two officers of the Reconnaissance Bureau of the North Korean Workers’ Party pled guilty to charges of trying to give Hwang the Trotsky treatment just months ago would be as good a basis for a conspiracy theory as, say, any of the completely baseless ones that have caught fire on Naver recently. But because a conspiracy theory’s traction is a function of ideology, rather than plausibility, I’d bet that any conspiracy theories about Hwang won’t likely involve any North Korean agents bearing ice-axes.