On December 17th, it will be two
years since the death of Kim Jong Il.
Jang Sung Taek’s downfall was predictable.
It should not have come as a huge surprise. Following Kim Jong Eun’s
confirmation as anointed successor in September 2010, a number of seminars
focusing on the “post-Kim Jong Il structure” took place. Many people, myself included,
asserted that internal power struggles would occur within a year or two of Kim’s
death.
There was no particularly insightful reason
for that. Simply, it is how things go in North Korea. In such an “absolutist
Suryeongist dictatorship,” power is consolidated in one person, and to totally
consolidate power requires monolithic leadership.
In
April 1974, Kim Jong Il stated that the
formation of such a monolithic leadership demanded idolization, unconditional
loyalty, and complete obedience. There is no room for a second-in-command; only the absolute leader can hold power.
Anyone found acting against the regime’s system of strict ideological and organizational
regulation must be attacked; securing power is the first and greatest priority. All other priorities are entirely insignificant when compared to this, even the starvation
of a million or more civilians. Faced with insecurity in the system of power, issues
such as the fate of 13 economic development zones take on a trifling
irrelevance.
These are the core, the very DNA, of the North Korean system. The problem is that while the DNA remains the same, our observation of it is continuously tainted by the fervent hope that the DNA could be changing. This is perhaps why many of our prognoses about North Korea are wrong.
▲ What lies in store for Jang Sung Taek?
It seems clear that Lee Yong Ha and Jang
Soo Kil have been executed. Kim Jong Eun did so to extract the sting from Jang’s
power. For ready comparison, think about the following situation.
Toward the end of the 1960s, a power struggle
erupted between Kim Yong Ju and Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Il gained the upper hand
using the idea of a “Kapsan faction” to purge Kim Yong Ju’s key allies, Kim
Do Man and Park Yong Guk, thereby completely undermining his support base. Once
Kim Jong Il had been appointed Kim Il Sung’s successor in 1974, Kim Yong Ju was exiled
to Jagang Province, where he remained until 1993. Then, his usefulness somewhat restored, Kim Jong Il appointed him
to the post of Vice-Premier and recalled him to Pyongyang, though without allotting him any real power.
Jang’s fate could generally mirror this. Kim Jong Eun will probably not execute or exile him, or indeed ship
him off to a political prison camp. Equally, he will not be sent overseas, as
happened to Kim Pyong Il, since Jang appointed many of his loyal associates to
overseas postings during his time as head of overseas operations for the
Organization and Guidance Department of the Party, and Kim Jong Eun may fear that sending him overseas would enable him to form a viable power base there. In toto,
Kim will not completely eliminate Jang, preferring to put him in a position
from which a political comeback will prove almost impossible.
However, doubts remain over whether the Kim regime has the freedom to put in place a mid-term plan to deal with the fallout of the Jang purge. It depends whether Jang is the only one to have outlived his usefulness.
Power struggles in Soviet countries
tend to take the form of battles between political lines, and most are resolved through
extended periods of blood-filled, deep-set purging. Examples include the Gang of Four,
Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping during the Cultural Revolution in China, as well Khrushchev
and his two rivals after Stalin’s death in the USSR.
North Korea also went through something
similar in 1956, after members of the “pro-Soviet
faction” of the Workers’ Party plotted Kim Il Sung’s downfall. They had wanted
to emulate the Soviet system of oligarchy under Khrushchev, it is said, replacing Kimist
absolutism. Kim Il Sung’s extended purge of this faction continued through the
end of 1958. The 1960s Kapsan faction purge also required the purging of approximately
two-thirds of mid-level regional cadres.
If this was a simple case of Jang outliving his personal usefulness to Kim Jong Eun then analysis is simpler; however, if it was a battle between political line that incited the purge then the situation is sure to be more complex.
Under the North Korean political system,
with power comes everything, and everything goes when power is lost. Fall out of favor with the Suryeong and you lose not only the house, but also the office,
secretary, desk, telephone, and even the right to state distribution. This is then followed by immediate exile to the provinces
with nothing more in hand than a spoon and pair of chopsticks. This is no
“earthly paradise”: unlike the South, North Korea does not allow one to become a
part-time university lecturer after losing a parliamentary election, or to
secure a bank loan with one’s possessions as collateral. The person who falls from
grace is penniless. Everyone who holds political power knows it.
If Jang, as a main channel to China, had been promoting a policy of
Chinese-style reform and opening with a reformist faction in active support, and if the extreme conservatives of the military were now to be destroying this group from the top down, then hereafter the
situation could develop very differently. Jang Sung Taek spent the forty years from the 1970s developing his ties in the military, Party, Cabinet and overseas. His network is broad, and runs deep. We cannot see it yet, but the battle may not go according to plan. This is what we must watch out for.
