The sudden death of Kim Jong Il on December 17th last year brought a sense of great uncertainty to the future of North Korea.
Many predicted that new leader Kim Jong Eun’s age, career (or lack of) and supposedly brief succession period would be destabilizing. However, his hold on power has been remarkable. Even South Korean Minister of National Defense Kim Kwan Jin admitted on November 8th, “The North Korean succession has been achieved relatively securely,” adding that Kim Jong Eun has already “demonstrated his ability to rule.”
The young man appears rather confident in the system; compared to Kim Jong Il, who took an extended period to reformulate key military positions, Kim Jong Eun has employed his father’s power to do the same thing in a veritable heartbeat.
Immediately after Kim Jong Il’s death, Kim Jong Eun became supreme commander, emphasizing his father’s last instructions in the process of becoming “First Secretary” of the Chosun Workers Party in April (a position invented to allow Kim Jong Il to be immortalized as general secretary), followed by chairman of the National Defense Commission at the Supreme People’s Assembly session on April 13th.
He quickly and efficiently made Party-civilian Choi Ryong Hae the People’s Army chief-of-staff to strengthen his grip on the military, and had Kim Kyung Hee and Jang Sung Taek take up key positions in the Party and state.
Over the next three months, Ri Young Ho was purged (although this may not have been easy) and Kim Kyuk Shik was appointed head of the Chosun People’s Army General Political Department. Current Cabinet ministerial and military replacements are, according to the Ministry of Unification, “The last of the leadership moves.”
In the process of building his power, Kim Jong Eun has aggressively wielded the reputations of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. This is best illustrated by the amount that has been paid to date on idolizing Kim Jong Il, but can also be seen in concepts such as “Kim Jong Il patriotism,” which is used to engender loyalty, and the “last instructions of Kim Jong Il,” which allows for almost anything.
Reviewing the year, Professor Yoo Ho Yeol of Korea University told Daily NK this afternoon, “This was a year of concentrating on a stable succession. There is reorganization still going on among military personnel and elsewhere, and this is why there has not been any fundamental policy change.”
