When it is all said and done, what is going to become of Kim Jong Eun?
You can try to predict the future of North Korea from a number of different angles, but when it comes down to it the core issue is the fate of Kim Jong Eun. Why?
Kim Jong Eun is the ‘heir to the throne’, following in the steps of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il as it were. He is not the successor to the position of Party Chief-Secretary, chairman of the National Defense Commission or the top military position, but he is the new supreme leader of the whole country. For that reason, Kim Jong Eun has the power to control North Korea, as both a Chosun People’s Army general and a member of the Party Central Committee.
Kim Jong Il similarly controlled North Korea as military chief after Kim Il Sung died. He too, of course, was heir to that role. It is only possible to predict what lies in store for the North Korean system once you understand this concept, being as vastly different as it is to the systems in South Korea, America and even China.
There are three prerequisites for control in North Korea: control over the Party (the Party Chief-Secretary), control of the state (chairman of the National Defense Commission) and military control (military chief of staff). For that reason it is crucial not to downplay how important being the successor to the current leader is, in that it is an easy transition to complete power over the state from there.
The next most important position is Party Chief-Secretary. This position is the most important step on the way to wielding authority over the Party and the citizenry. To put it rather bluntly, it is not strictly necessary to become chairman of the NDC right away, and in fact it probably matters little at all. Most ‘experts’ generate their predictions for the future of North Korea without properly understanding this key point.
Kim Jong Eun will automatically become the Party Chief-Secretary, in line with Article 21 of the revised Chosun Workers Party regulations. Moreover, Article 22 says that the chairman of the Central Military Commission, a position with the authority to handle all military issues, is reserved for the Party Chief-Secretary. Many sections of the media have spent their time up until now wondering what kind of status Kim Jong Eun will occupy and how the transfer of power will take place.
To start at the end, there will be absolutely no problems for Kim Jong Eun regarding the transfer of power. There are peripheral bits of interest, such as what kind of propaganda and events the authorities will use to sell the power transfer, but these are mere sidenotes. It will only be possible for those in the media to comprehend this once they get away from focusing on whether the transfer of power will take place smoothly or not.
The media can only report accurately and in the best interests of everybody involved if they stick to the core issues. Only if they do so will it be possible to lead public sentiment in the right direction regarding the future of both Koreas and the Korean Peninsula as a whole. The future of South Korea is not well served by a foolish or stolid media.
The most pressing question to be pondering right now is who will become the head of the Guidance Department. This was the position Kim Jong Il filled when he was still waiting in the wings, and one that allowed him to shore up his status as the leader of the Party and State when Kim Il Sung eventually passed away.
That position has been vacant ever since Kim Jong Il became the Party Chief-Secretary. Or, to look at it another way, you could say that he has filled both. But now that Kim Jong Eun has become the leader, he needs to skip past the job of the Party’s organizing secretary straight to the office of Chief-Secretary. Therefore, what is of interest is whether he will the leave the position in charge of the Guidance Department vacant, or whether he will fill it, and if so with whom and when? It is necessary to know these things in order to understand the dynamics of power in North Korea.
So, if the transferral of power to Kim Jong Eun is a fait accompli, then what is left to be decided? Of course, it is the leadership ability of Kim Jong Eun himself, and there are plenty of doubts about that. The fate of North Korea and its 24 million people rests on his ability to lead the country. The future of the Korean Peninsula and South Korean policy towards the North depend on his leadership. No matter how much China and the US say they hope for the stability of the system under Kim Jong Eun, they have no ability to manage problems that arise internally within North Korea.
You only need the slightest bit of familiarity with history to understand that all problems develop from within. As much as China would like to stop the collapse of the Kim Jong Eun system, what ability would it have to respond to an explosion of contradicting factors within North Korea?
And furthermore, no matter how large China’s influence over the new North Korean leadership were to grow, would China truly be able to order the nation’s new leaders around like serfs? Kim Jong Il had some fitting words of wisdom on this point: “One embedded Soviet or Chinese dog is more dangerous than ten Yankee imperial agents.”
The influence that China can hold over North Korea is limited to areas of economy, shielding the country from the United States and South Korea, and providing it with diplomatic support. It is inconceivable that ideological or political support could ever enter into the equation.
Moving on, Kim Jong Eun has no choice but to follow the path created by Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung. It is thus fairly self-explanatory that he will need to continue bearing the torch of Juche thought and military-first ideology. The country’s annual New Year’s address will almost certainly lay on thick calls for the entire Party, military and citizenry to serve the ‘great leader Kim Jong Eun’ like his father and grandfather before him.
So, for these reasons if no other, there is little basis in any suggestion that pro-Chinese factions will develop under the Kim Jong Eun system and guide the new North Korean leadership.
Therefore the message delivered by the death of Kim Jong Il is clear. The class system dictatorship which began when Kim Il Sung seized power in the North in 1948, and which has carried on for 63 years since, will end soon.
The system of one all-powerful leader will no longer be possible under Kim Jong Eun. The system of absolute dedication to ‘the father Kim Il Sung’ and his successor, Kim Jong Il’, has all but ended. Although he is referred to as the ‘leader’, there isn’t really anybody Kim Jong Eun can lead. For that he would need to maintain the hierarchy of leader-party-people in order to keep the system of control that has existed up until now.
The people that Kim Jong Eun would hope to lead have already left him for the market. For most of the people of Hamkyung, Yangkang, Jagang and Pyongan provinces the market has become the main means of survival. In the minds of these people, images of a father-like leader and a loving, caring, maternal Workers Party have already disappeared without a trace.
All that Kim Jong Eun has left in his control is the privileged class of Pyongyang, and even they are only tied to him out of concern for their own interests rather than any ideological camaraderie. It is a marriage of convenience. Naturally, these people are not all going to suddenly disappear, but if and when they do, Kim Jong Eun will be left without anybody under his control.
Of course, Kim Jong Il was no better when it came to leading the masses. His style of leadership was to feed the people propaganda with one hand and clobber them with the other. Even his death itself was propaganda, stylized to sound as if he had died on a train while working in the interests of his people. It is scarcely believable that there are still some sections of the media and other fools who fail to recognize such old school communist propaganda.
The people of North Korea have lived somewhere between life and death ever since Kim Il Sung died 17 years ago, surviving by absolutely any means necessary, and it is only now that they have grasped a way to depend upon themselves for survival. And like anything of value, people do not wish to throw out that which they have worked so hard to achieve.
So, if Kim Jong Eun truly wishes to lead, he must pick between winning the war against marketization and restoring the vertical system of leader-party-people; or moving to a system of leadership in which markets are tolerated. He has to choose one of them. If he picks the first one, he must lock the doors to North Korea, and kill, purge and beat a great number of people. If he chooses the latter, he must establish a leadership circle based on reform and liberation, and create a master-plan for realizing those goals while dealing one by one with every obstacle that gets in the way. Naturally, the people of North Korea would need to go along with his leadership for that to happen.
Despite that, both of these options are impossible for Kim Jong Eun right now. Regarding the first option, he cannot shut the doors of North Korea and call everyone inside. As for that second option, the people have now lost any reason they may have once had to blindly follow his leadership.
In that sense, the only sensible conclusion is to draw is that the Kim Jong Eun system cannot last for long. It has a major structural problem. Before his rein has even begun it has been doomed by a set of conflicting problems: firstly, the internal conflict that would be created by the military’s opposition to marketization; and secondly, the large and growing civilian displeasure with having a man of only 28 years running the country.
Thirteen years ago the Kim Dae Jung administration established the Sunshine Policy, believing that North Korea had no other option at the time than to pursue liberation and reform, and that all South Korea had to do was give them a little nudge to make it happen. In the end, South Korea lost far more than it gained from this lame and premature analysis.
The after-effects of this policy are still easily more visible in South Korea than the North. Although it came a little late, the Lee Myung Bak government’s decision in August last year to move from a policy of separated, peaceful coexistence with North Korea, to one of peaceful reunification was a step in the right direction.
The keywords of North Korea policy from now on need to be ‘engagement’ and ‘enlargement’. The categories in which they can ‘engage’ and ‘enlarge’ are information, economy, politics and the military. I will deal with these more specifically in my next column.
The death of Kim Jong Il has a profound meaning. One of the biggest obstacles to creating progress on the Korean Peninsula and Asia in general, as well as freedom, democracy and a more peaceful world has gone with the death of Kim Jong Il. Despite that, it does not seem like many people realize the importance of this event.
Nevertheless, there is something I would like to point out to the Lee Myung Bak administration. When Kim Jong Il was first struck down by a stroke in August 2008, Daily NK recommended numerous times to the government that it would be a good time to begin serious preparations for life post-Kim Jong Il, as well as making some suggestions for how to make that happen.
Then following Kim’s death, Chosun Ilbo ran a story with the government saying that now was a chance to start inter-Korean relations all over again. Start all over again? Does this mean that the South Korean government has had three years to prepare for life after Kim Jong Il since word got out of his first stroke, yet did nothing in the way of planning for this eventuality?
Most Koreans would have believed that the government had a plan in store for once Kim Jong Il was out of the picture. When journalists asked what this would mean for the future of North Korea policy, they would have expected the government to say “We have long had a plan in place for life after Kim Jong Il, just go about your business.” They would have taken it for granted that the response would be that this plan would come into effect after enough time had been allowed for the situation in North Korea to settle down.
Instead, what the government came out with is some bizarre talk of a complete reboot in inter-Korean relations. How can it be taken as anything other than a sign that the government had absolutely no idea what it was going to do after Kim Jong Il was no longer around?
Why is it that ordinary people are made to face the consequences when those in charge decide there’s somewhere else they would rather be? Why have young kids braved dark streets and the cold for the sake of North Korean human rights activism, yet the government can’t seem to do anything right with regards to the North Korean Human Rights Act? Why is it that other countries can pass a law on North Korean human rights while ours cannot? It is an unfortunate fact that the end of this year leaves us with little other than too many people in the National Assembly that have passed their use-by date.
