December 19, 2011 10:22 pm
Instability of dynastic shift
Kim Jong-eun will struggle to sustain family’s semi-divine aura created by the Pyongyang dynasty
The Kim is dead, long live the Kim: Jong-eun (left) with father Jong-il at the 65th anniversary of their Workers' party in October 2010
Before Kim Jong-eun was anointed as North Korean heir apparent last year, his father sent him as part of a secret military delegation to China. His mission was to meet top leaders of Pyongyang’s closest ally and begin seeking their approval for the succession.
The autocratic Asian neighbours have long described their relationship as being “as close as lips and teeth”. The Beijing visit gave the inexperienced twentysomething a valuable taste of foreign diplomacy. But it was also both a testing of the waters by the ailing Kim Jong-il and a filial pilgrimage born out of recognition that China’s attitude to the handover would prove crucial.
Now, the death of Kim Jong-il is rekindling speculation that this throwback autocracy must finally be poised to fall. Again, Pyongyang may defy the hopes of many. But in any event, the Korean peninsula faces a perilous period in which the Kim Jr will struggle to rule effectively. Whatever his own capabilities, analysts of the region agree that the family’s semi-divine aura, self-cultivated as it is, can do little except wane in the third generation.
If the reclusive state does break down messily, the scenario becomes one of alarm far beyond the peninsula. Not only is North Korea armed with a handful of primitive nuclear weapons but any unrest in its 1m-strong army could draw the US, China and Japan – the world’s largest economies – into an attritional conflict.
One of the greatest dangers is that US and Chinese forces might meet at close quarters as they pour into North Korea to secure atomic facilities. These are now under the ultimate command of the “Young General”, as Kim Jong-eun is styled in Pyongyang. He will also preside over what has been a brutal network of gulags, where arbitrary execution is common. The population of 24m suffers from chronic malnutrition. The new leader will have to show early mettle in dealing with sanctions levelled against his country’s nuclear weapons and ballistics programme.
Victor Cha, a professor at Georgetown university and former Korea adviser to George W. Bush when US president, says he may not be up to the job. The most likely scenario for a collapse of the North Korean regime was always the sudden death of the leader, he writes on Tuesday in an article for the Financial Times, adding that “we now face that uncertain scenario”.
Other analysts contend, however, that a rapid disintegration and regional conflict are unlikely. Koo Gap-woo, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, says that while collapse is not imminent, decision-making within Pyongyang will become more muddled.
“The country will be run by a collective leadership system composed of bureaucrats and military officials, with Kim Jong-eun as a figurehead,” he adds.
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One question is the extent to which the new ruler can find ways to shore up his dynastic legitimacy. Even in mythological terms, he starts from a weaker position than his father, who was supposedly born on Mount Baekdu, the legendary crucible of Korean civilisation.
During his illness, Kim Jong-il appointed his younger sister Kim Kyong-hui and her husband Chang Sung-taek as mentors to the Young General to help him build authority among the military and the ruling Worker’s party. It is unclear whether that will be enough to secure his status.
Indeed, Mr Klingner argues that Kim Jong-eun may feel under pressure to build his reputation with a risky display of military might. This is a particular fear for South Korea after the North killed 50 of its citizens last year by torpedoing a warship and bombarding an island. Seoul has promised to respond with air strikes if it is once more subjected to a similar attack.
Brian Myers, an expert in North Korean ideology at Dongseo university, sees Kim Jong-eun’s position as safe from an internal coup because it would be unthinkable for a general or party official to overthrow the family in a state that has only ever existed with a member of the Kim dynasty at the helm. Still, he suggests Kim Jong-eun may well have to prove his ideological credentials by “deliberately ratcheting up tensions” and proving that he is in tune with the nation’s prevailing “military first” doctrine.
North Korea has vowed to style itself as entering “the doorway of a mighty and prosperous nation by 2012”. But, given its parlous financial position, Mr Myers stresses that this would have to be by means of a military rather than economic display.
Siegfried Hecker, a prominent US atomic scientist who visited North Korean facilities annually for seven years to 2010, believes Pyongyang may be able to make such a claim to military might shortly. Pyongyang, which conducted nuclear warhead tests in 2006 and 2009, might be able to miniaturise a warhead to fit on a long-range missile after one more test, he adds.
Fearing such sabre-rattling from the North, South Korea has put its forces on an emergency footing.
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South Korean diplomats have long warned that the death of Kim Jong-il was one of the landmark events that could accelerate a sudden unification of the peninsula. Lee Myung-bak, South Korea’s president, has repeatedly warned his people to expect such an outcome. Yet Kim Jong-il, in the last year of his life, may have done just enough to prevent such a meltdown.
According to Mr Klingner, the son he leaves behind is in a far more secure position than he would have been in 2008, when a stroke temporarily removed his father from public life. “If someone were to challenge Jong-eun now, it would be very risky to move against the announced policy of Kim Jong-il,” he says. Shin Bum-chul, a researcher at Seoul’s Korea Institute for Defense Analyses, agrees that an immediate regime collapse looks unlikely, saying: “It is not yet time to talk of reunification. That remains a distant issue.”
Reunification will also remain a remote prospect as long as China supports the new leader. Beijing has stepped up its public support for the Kim regime in recent years, refusing to condemn Pyongyang for the sinking last year of the South Korean warship and implicitly backing the leadership succession.
“As long as North Korea’s policies remain unchanged, then China’s policy towards North Korea will not change,” says Zhang Liangui, a professor at the school of the Chinese Communist party’s central committee in Beijing. Prof Zhang is an influential analyst and one of China’s top North Korea experts.
The stepped-up ties have come despite strong frustration many in the Chinese government feel towards Pyongyang’s recalcitrance over diplomatic relations with Seoul, Washington and Tokyo and its insistence on acquiring nuclear weapons.
An unruly collapse in North Korea is Beijing’s nightmare scenario – both because of the likelihood of millions of refugees streaming across a long and lightly guarded border and because of the possibility of union with South Korea, a staunch US ally.
“We support stability in North Korea and we don’t want to see chaos or collapse there,” says Cai Jian, deputy director of the Center of Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, adding: “China might adopt some measures to ensure political stability there.”
Additional reporting by Song Jung-a
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2011
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