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Category: Kremlinology

June 5, 2009

Anticipating Kim Jong Il’s Next Move

The North Koreans seem to be itching for a fight with Lee Myung Bak, but they’re afraid he might actually tell his military to shoot back.  He knows that if that happens, he risks a national humiliation at a delicate moment.  He might, just might, be engineering a tricky sucession as we speak.  Some are even speculating that a bloody purge may be on the horizon.  What does a tyrant have to do to raise the bar from a nuclear...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
June 5, 2009

The Issue of Grooming

While recent announcements of Kim Jong Un as the named successor have been downplayed here at OFK, I can’t help but feel that whoever will eventually take over the reins once Kim Jong Il is gone will be severely disadvantaged if the next leader is indeed directly from the Kim bloodline. Kim Il Sung spent half a lifetime being “groomed” for leadership by the Soviets, including one intense year where he was accompanied in Korea by a Soviet spin doctor...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
June 3, 2009

Must Read: New Details Leaked on North Korea’s Counterfeiting

Say it with me: thank goodness Christopher Hill got the North Koreans promise never, ever to counterfeit our currency ever again — cross my heart and hope to be executed before a crowd of bused-in schoolchildren! A North Korean general who is a confidant of the country’s leader, Kim Jong-il, has been identified by U.S. and foreign intelligence agencies as a key figure in the covert production and distribution of high-quality counterfeit $100 bills called supernotes, according to documents and...

Categories Counterfeiting/Kremlinology/Media Criticism/Money Laundering/Sanctions
June 2, 2009

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: Feb 07: Oldest son Kim Jong Nam, out...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Kremlinology
May 24, 2009

Meet the New Boss, Part 2: Kim Jong Un Makes First Appearances in North Korea’s Official Mythology

Only in a place like North Korea could a major development in a king’s succession be signaled in a kindergarten.  The Daily NK reports that they’re teaching the kids a new song in Pyongyang: In Pyongyang elementary schools, teachers have been teaching their students “The Song of General Kim Jong Woon.   A Japanese source released a rumor to Daily NK on Thursday, “On the 6th, in a few elementary schools in Pyongyang, students learned “˜The Song of General Kim...

Categories Kremlinology
May 19, 2009

North Korea Shoots a Messenger

Surely there is some sensible middle ground between these two extremes of personnel management — in America, diplomats who push for policies that fail get promoted.  We learn today that pressing for bold diplomatic initiatives turns out to be less career-enhancing in the Foreign Ministry of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea: North Korea executed its pointman on South Korea last year, holding him responsible for wrong predictions about Seoul’s new conservative government that has ditched a decade of engagement...

Categories Diplomacy/Inside NK/Kremlinology/NK Economics
May 1, 2009

All About Kim Jong Un

Ken Gause may be the best open-source expert on North Korean kremlinology who writes in the English language, and he has an extensive survey of what we know about Kim Jong Un at Foreign Policy: In February 2009, Yonhap reported that Jang (director of the KWP’s Administrative Department, which oversees much of North Korea’s security apparatus) had shifted his support to Kim Jong-un in light of Kim Jong Il’s “special affection” for his third son and out of consideration for...

Categories Kremlinology
April 14, 2009

Open Radio Comes Into Its Own

Open Radio for North Korea is getting plenty of publicity recently, and it’s also cranking out plenty of interesting reporting about (and often from) North Korea. First, I’ll link to a CNN interview with Open Radio’s founder, Young Howard, a/k/a Ha Tae-Keung a story on Open Radio at the L.A. Times. By far the most popular program for Howard’s station is “Unsent Letters,” which broadcasts messages from outsiders seeking to get word to friends and family in North Korea. It’s...

Categories Deprogramming/Drugs & N Korea/Kremlinology
April 10, 2009

Video: Kim Jong Il Greets the Rubber Stamps; Taepodong Launch

In the video, His Porcine Shriveled Majesty is noticeably gaunt as he shuffles stiffly onto the floor of the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly. He’s aged ten years in the last year. The video also appears to show North Korea’s most recent missile test, which is interesting, but not as interesting as the system of hillside pipes shown at 1:38. Google Earthers will recognize them instantly; contraptions like these are a common sight along North Korea’s east coast, but I’ve never figured...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Missiles
April 9, 2009

Understatement of the Year: “Mr. Kim Ran Unopposed”

Citizens of North Korea, change has not come! The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, had himself re-elected to another five-year term by Parliament on Thursday as questions persisted over his failing health and his regime’s confrontation with the outside world after its recent rocket launch. The Supreme People’s Assembly “upheld” Mr. Kim as chairman of the country’s most powerful agency, the National Defense Commission, said the state-run Korean Central News Agency. Mr. Kim ran unopposed. [N.Y. Times, Choe Sang Hun]...

Categories Kim Jong Il
April 7, 2009

Tearful Kim Jong Il Apologizes to Starving Subjects for Blowing Their Kids’ Lunch Money on Missiles

I did not make this up, and I have the link to prove it: North Korea’s state-run media reported Tuesday that Kim Jong-Il shed tears of regret during the country’s controversial rocket launch because he could not use the launch funds to provide aid to his people, the AFP reported. [….] Kim “felt regret for not being able to spend more money on the people’s livelihoods and was choked with sobs,” AFP quoted ruling communist party paper Rodong Sinmun as...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il/Missiles
April 7, 2009

Eberstadt: Kim Jong Il Has Looked Better (Update: See for Yourself)

Never mind missiles or the U.N., says Nick Eberstadt. The real North Korea story is still Kim Jong Il’s health: In the most recent official footage, undated but released late last month, North Korea’s leader looks like one of the beneficiaries of an extended stay in the Yodok political prison camp. In an alleged outing to a swimming pool at Kim Il Sung University, his signature belly is gone. Indeed, to judge by the picture, this sepulchral figure can barely...

Categories Kim Jong Il
March 23, 2009

Kim Jong Il Now Parade Magazine’s World’s Third-Worst Dictator

In a statement released by KCNA, Kim’s publicist thanked academy members for their votes and said that it was an honor just to be nominated. And in related news — sit down for this one — here’s the latest report that North Korea has been diverting international humanitarian aid. Yet another survey shows that need North Koreans never saw a spoonful of it, except for sale in the markets at prices they couldn’t pay. The charge appears not to have...

Categories Famine & Food Aid/Kim Jong Il
March 10, 2009

Succession Watch

Open Radio reports that among North Korean military officers and high-ranking Workers’ Party officials, it is widely rumored that Kim Jong Un has been designated to succeed His Porcine Majesty. The rumor was first reported by Yonhap back in January. After several weeks without much evidence to support that rumor, a Rodong Sinmun editorial last week made references to “[t]he tradition of the three-generations of Mankyungdae heroes,” which suggests that at least one of Kim’s brood is being groomed. (How...

Categories Kremlinology
March 3, 2009

Succession Watch

Two new reports from the Daily NK, here and here, provide the first evidence that the North Korean regime may be preparing its subjects for one of Kim Jong Il’s brood to inherit the throne. The Rodong Shinmun additionally waxed, “We do not know of such zealous and revolutionary patriots as the heroes of Mankyungdae, who have walked solidly the path of history for three generations for the future of a country and a nation. The tradition of the three-generations...

Categories Kremlinology
February 6, 2009

‘Chosun Gripped With Boundless Emotion and Joy’

You have to wonder what goes through the minds of the people who write this stuff today. It’s so over the top as to suggest a subversive intent. KCNA’s words, my links: Pyongyang, February 4 (KCNA) — Upon hearing the news that General Secretary Kim Jong Il was nominated as a candidate for deputy to the 12th Supreme People’s Assembly at Constituency No. 333, the entire army and people are full of great happiness and pride of having the peerlessly...

Categories Kim Jong Il/Unintended Humor/WTF?