Kim Jong Nam has revealed more about the rule of Kim Jong Eun and his view of the future of North Korea in previously unreleased e-mails between he and Tokyo Shimbun editor Yoji Komi .
“In that young man’s expression I can see neither the mission nor the prudence of a man who has become the successor to a troubled country like North Korea, nor the expression of a man worrying about a future vision for the state,” Kim is quoted as saying in one of the correspondences.
“In North Korea, the amount people who are earning money have to pay in bribes to high-ranking officials in order to survive is rising. A corrupt system like this absolutely will collapse. It reminds me of the Soviet Union right before it collapsed,” he reportedly goes on.
“The people’s trust in the North Korean leadership collapsed thanks to the currency redenomination,” he also comments in an e-mail dated December 13th, shortly before the death of Kim Jong Il on the 17th. “An ageing leader, an inexperienced successor and a sunk economy… nations surrounding North Korea can’t help seeing it as dangerous.”
“North Korea passed responsibility onto Party Planning and Finance head Park Nam Ki and executed him, but the people all know perfectly well that the currency redenomination could not have been done by a mere cadre,” he adds.
Kim also offers a withering critique of the North Korean regime’s propagandist media in a November exchange, saying of Workers’ Party publication Rodong Shinmun, which is now available in print and online in both Korean and English, “They don’t have enough paper to print it so people can’t read it. For the electronic version you need to have a computer, but how many North Korean people actually have one… and even if they do, there is no electricity so how are they going to use it.”
The formerly unreleased set of e-mails are to be officially released by Japanese monthly magazine Bungeishunju in its March edition, but were revealed by South Korean daily newspaper Donga Ilbo today.
