Reports coming from inside North Korea suggest that the regime’s plan to construct 100,000 new homes in Pyongyang by 2012 as part of the creation of the ‘Strong and Prosperous State’ is not going to be a success.
National Intelligence Service director Won Sei Hoon reported news of the failure to the National Assembly Intelligence Committee on Wednesday, stating that as of the end of last year just five hundred homes had been completed, and that construction had been reduced on most sites to just one quarter of the original scale. The construction, which began in September, 2009, has reportedly been beset by shortages of materials and power.
It is understood that the head of the project is actually Party administrative chief Jang Sung Taek (as head of the Capital City Construction Committee), but there have been reports saying that the construction is being portrayed as the work of Kim Jong Eun.
So, because the project was promoted domestically as being led by the successor, Party officials will have to move to minimize the damage caused to perceptions of his leadership skills by whatever degree of failure results.
This type of undertaking is common in dictatorships. Just in terms of North Korea, there are two famous cases. First, at the height of the famine in 1997, Workers’ Party Agriculture Secretary Suh Gwan Hee was publicly executed, while the director of the Party Planning and Finance Department, Park Nam Gi, was also executed following the botched currency redenomination of 2009. In nations with no democratic outlets for discontent, scapegoats are an important feature of governance.
Therefore, experts predict that this time the blame will again be successfully shifted to administrative cadres, and say it is unlikely to reach Kim Jong Eun.
In addition, since the impending failure of the 100,000 homes project does not look like a public relations disaster on the scale of the currency redenomination or famine, it is plausible that the cadres who eventually draw the short straw will escape with their lives.
On this, a source inside North Korea has already claimed, “Those responsible have been told they will be fired if the project does not get completed.”
“There’s a good chance that second-tier officials outside the core leadership will be made to wear the blame for this situation so that Kim Jong Eun’s leadership prospects are not damaged,” Park Young Ho, a researcher at the Korean Institute for National Reunification agreed in a telephone conversation with The Daily NK. “It’s possible that they will face censure on the premise of failing to follow Youth Captain Kim Jong Eun’s instructions properly or harming the prestige of the Supreme Leader.”
A second researcher from a South Korean research institute concurred, saying that in terms of an excuse, “They can just lay the blame on the cadres in charge of core parts of the project, such as materials procurement or logistics, and then replace them with someone else.”
Choi Yong Hwan from Gyeonggi Research Institute reaffirmed, however, that the failure will not harm the successor, since it will not be allowed to do so. He said, “This is a failure in Kim Jong Il’s legacy, but the damage won’t spread to perceptions of Kim Jong Eun’s leadership. In particular, this can be seen from the fact that North Korea has always made sure that damage is restricted to certain officials, never affecting the Supreme Leader.”
