Global Times denounces N. Korea coup rumors; State Dep’t says “no confirmation”

China’s Global Times, which must be on edge over the burgeoning protest movement on Hong Kong’s streets, angrily denounces internet rumors of a coup in North Korea.

The rumors that Jo Myong-rok, a late North Korean vice marshal who died four years ago, arrested Kim in a coup and sent his lieutenants to South Korea for negotiations, were quickly denied by South Korean diplomats in Beijing.

In the commentary titled “For those who make up rumors of coup in North Korea, is it so funny?” the Global Times accused the rumormongers of spreading groundless stories.

“Netizens who have a radical opinion can’t represent the opinion of China and China’s attitude toward North Korea was not changed,” the commentary said. [Yonhap]

Even the State Department is being asked about coup rumors now, and responds that it has “no confirmation” of them. Which is an interesting way of putting it.

An alternative theory comes via a rather poorly sourced report in the Chosun Ilbo, that Kim Jong Un broke his ankles while walking on his “Cuban heels,” whatever those are. This theory has the disadvantage of being just as apocryphal as the Emmental Hypothesis, but less delectably ironic.

Although the likelihood of a successful zombie-led coup seems remote, it still strikes me as extraordinary that a meeting of the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly would proceed without Kim, especially if its agenda included the removal of Choe Ryong-Hae.

Could Kim have directed Choe’s removal and felt secure enough to let his minions do it for him? Did Choe just get old and sick (which would be another strange coincidence)? When the Asian games end, will Choe will be there to welcome the athletes home, in his capacity as Vice-Chairman of the State Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission? Will KCNA tell us that Choe is still Secretary of the Central Committee of the ruling party? Or, might we have just seen a quiet coup of sorts, in which Kim Jong Un’s absence from the SPA was somehow arranged by hidden hands that plotted to oust Choe? The correct answer to all of these questions is, “Who the hell knows?” At least until the AP sets its foot fetish aside long enough to live up to the hype and report some news.

Whatever the reason for Choe’s removal, North Korea has never had such a high rate of turnover in its senior ranks, and that has to be a source of insecurity for the elite. I could be wrong, but at least I won’t be alone:

North Korea’s political instability took a turn for the worse in 2013 from a year earlier, the World Bank said Tuesday, apparently due to the execution of its leader’s uncle.

The bank’s annual World Governance Indicators (WGI) data showed the aggregate indicator of “political stability and absence of violence (PV)” for the communist nation dropped to minus 0.53 in 2013 from minus 0.11 a year earlier.

It marks the lowest PV figure for North Korea since the bank launched the WGI program in 1996. The WGI is a set of composite governance indicators based on 32 underlying data sources, with scores ranging from minus 2.5 to plus 2.5, according to the bank. [Yonhap]

I don’t know how a mathematical formula could account for the weird mix of deiocracy, culture, nationalism, hunger, terror, and exhaustion that has kept this system glued together, but it’s hard to keep people invested in preserving a system that has, of late, been one long conveyer belt to an interrogation cell.