The first meeting of the 12th term of the Supreme People’s Assembly (SPA) concluded on the 9th. The only news released was regarding the court rank of high officials like Kim Jong Il and Jang Sung Taek. This illustrates the degree of indifference North Korean authorities have to the hunger and poverty of its own people.
If North Korea were a normal country, Kim Young Il, the Premier of the North Korea Cabinet, would have been acknowledged at this most recent SPA meeting, especially in the context of North Korea’s economic crisis. During such a tumultuous period the leader of the People’s Economy should have a significant role. However, North Korean state-run media has not acknowledged the role or even the presence of Premier Kim Young Il.
The Premier has played a consistent and merely nominal role for many years, which became more rigidly defined in the 1980s when amidst gradual economic decline, Kim Il Sung entitled the Premier as the “Commander of the Economy.” In practice past Premiers have served their role by acting as scapegoats for State economic failures, which has been exacerbated by the dramatic reallocation of economic resources to military programs that occurred in the 1990s.
Lee Geun Mo, who served as Premier from 1986 to 1988 was demoted to Chief Secretary of the North Hamkyung Province due to his failure to address the faltering economy, while his son was relieved of his post at the National Security Agency, and then executed by firing squad. Subsequently Yeon Hyung Mook, the Premier from 1988 to 1990, was similarly demoted to Chief Secretary of Jagang Province due to increasingly dire economic woes and the failure of the inter-Korean Summit. Park Bong Joo became the Premier in 2003, but he was later relegated to a manager of the Suncheon Vinylon Complex in April 2007 as he was non-cooperative regarding the development of the munitions economy and “Military-first Politics.” All of these former Premiers were cited for their “failure of economic policies.”
Kim Young Il was selected as the Premier of the Cabinet following Park Bong Joo at the fifth meeting of the 11th SPA on April 11, 2007. At the time, he was the Director of the Ministry of Land and Sea Transportation.
Kim Young Il was born in 1945, graduated from Pyongyang Foreign Language University and is well studied in English. He has served as the Director of the International Department of the Party, a councilor of the North Korean embassy to Egypt, director of the African affairs bureau of the North Korean Foreign Ministry, an advisor of the Diplomacy Committee of the SPA, the Director of the Foreign Ministry, Ambassador to Libya, and Director of the Ministry of Land and Sea Transportation.
Kim Young Il’s appointment as Premier has raised hopes for a revitalization of the economy in light of the widely regarded incompetence of Park Bong Joo.
Shortly after his appointment in 2007, Kim Young Il’s first order of business was to initiate the construction of 600 new apartments in Hoiryeong. However, this construction project clearly reflected his personal loyalties and ties to Kim Jong Il as the apartments were planned to commemorate the 90th birthday of Kim Jong Suk, Kim Jong Il’s mother, and were to be built in Hoiryeong, North Hamkyung Province. This was also beneficial to Kim Young Il as he is also from North Hamkyung Province. However, Kim Young Il spent little time on site after delivering 600 metric tons of cement required for the apartment’s construction, and he departed for Pyongyang shortly after making the delivery.
A defector, Mr. Kim, who was present at the site, evaluated that, “Kim Young Il is a really smart person. He can use a win-win opportunity.”
Mr. Kim said that, “The cement Kim Young Il brought to Hoiryeong was aid materials from South Korea in order for flood damage rehabilitation. Although there were not flood damages there, Kim Young Il has used it just for Kim Jong Il’s mother’s birthday commemoration construction.”
He emphasized that, “In North Korea, no one cannot complain about anything when other mentions loyalty.”
The 600 households of apartments, which were completed in January, 2008, were all allocated to cadres. Subsequently, residents in Hoiryeong said, “Premier Kim Young Il didn’t have any interests in the houses’ proper allocation for the residents.”
No matter how loyal Kim Young Il may be to Kim Jong Il, it is unlikely that he will establish a new role for the office of Premier and avoid the seemingly inevitable terms of “retirement” forced upon his predecessors.
