Kim Jong Il's succession means more uncertainty in Korea
by Steven Butler, Susan V. Lawrence, Fred Coleman
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Violent storms erupted suddenly over Mount Paekdu, the mythical cradle of Korean communism, in the early hours of July 8, at the very moment late North Korean President Kim Il Sung's heart stopped beating, according to North Korean radio.
"Lake Chon, which had been calm under a thick fog, suddenly stirred up violent waves," reported the Korean Central News Agency. "It rained uninterrupted for three days. Tens of thousands of big and small streams flowed into the lake like falls from the cliffs of the crater atop the mountain, and sometimes they rose into the air in sprays. The waves did not subside for days. Raging waves beat upon the shore and rose high in a whirlwind."
Yet the reported anguish of nature was no match for the sight last week of millions of wailing, breast-beating North Koreans in a mass demonstration of cathartic grief following the death of Great Leader Kim Il Sung, a man elevated to demigod status by a cult of personality during his lifetime. For North Korea, and the world, the passing of Kim Il Sung marked the end of an era. It also opened a new chapter of uncertainty and possible instability on a Korean peninsula that may already be nuclear armed.
It is virtually assured that Kim Il Sung will be replaced by his reclusive and erratic eldest son, Kim Jong Il, whose hereditary claim to power directly contradicts the Marxist ideology he vows to uphold.
Dynasty. Still, in contrast to the public tumult, the plans that Kim Il Sung carefully laid for 20 years to transfer power to his 52-year-old son proceeded like clockwork. In a symbolic message that the dynastic succession was all but complete, the younger Kim appeared at his father's biersurrounded, and obviously endorsed, by key members of the country's leadership. He is likely to formally inherit all his father's official positions, including the presidency, this week. But lacking his father's charisma or revolutionary credentials, Kim Jong Il will have to prove himself amid widespread doubts over whether he is up to the job.
There is no indication that the outside world will be able to judge that for itself anytime soon. Only ethnic Koreans were permitted to attend Kim Il Sung's funeral, and Pyongyang has shelved indefinitely plans for a late July summit between leaders from the North and South. Still, some information on the heir is available. Raised as the pampered and indulged son of a ruthless tyrant, "Dear Leader," as he was known in North Korea's press, developed an early love for women, wine and movies. While many of the stories have been amplified by South Korea's propaganda machine, they come from enough different sources to be credible.
Kim personally participated in the making of over 100 films. According to Alexander Platkovsky, a Russian correspondent in Pyongyang from 1987 to 1991, "Kim Jong Il would come to the film studio between 2 and 3 a.m. He would summon the actors and actresses and criticize their low level of revolutionary zeal and creative ability. Then he would insist on a rehearsal to improve their performances. These sessions always ended with a celebration ... of `the victory of the revolutionary spirit.' According to a Korean actor who attended one such celebration, it included singing and drinking and ended up with an orgy."
In April 1990, Platkovsky entered the hotel Koryo, Pyongyang's most luxurious, and was amazed to see a group of attractive blond European women registering. In the then puritanical North Korea, "the scene was totally out of place," he recalls. One woman told Platkovsky that her name was Catherine and that she was with a group of "exotic dancers" from Sweden that had been "brought in to entertain Kim Jong Il."
Atrocities. Kim would not be the first tyrant -- or democratic leader for that matter -- to have a taste for the fast life. More damning are reports that South Korean intelligence believes conclusively link Kim Jong Il to a string of atrocities that at least once nearly sparked a second war in Korea. These include the 1976 murders by 30 ax-wielding North Korean guards of two U.S. Army officers who were trimming a tree in the truce village of Panmunjom; the 1983 Yangon bombing that killed 14 South Koreans, including four cabinet ministers, and the 1987 bombing of a Korean Air Lines jet off the coast of Myanmar, leaving 115 passengers and crew members dead. "When you combine this all, you come up with a very grisly kind of character," says Lee Dong Bok, a North Korea expert in Seoul who has been involved in negotiations with the North for over 20 years.
Yet set against the image of the ruthless, emotional womanizer is also Kim's record of having run the day-to-day affairs of government since the mid-1980s. A Russian diplomat who has met Kim Jong Il described him as always confident and well briefed, and able to meet with Russian visitors without notes. Korean officials normally were obsessed with secrecy and unable to make decisions alone. "Kim Jong Il was different. He could tell you what had happened yesterday and what they were planning tomorrow. It was a mark of his confidence, his lack of fear of his father." Yet compared with the father, he was weaker and more vain. He wore elevator heels and permed his hair into high curls to obscure his short stature.
Even if Kim turns out to be blessed with his father's considerable political skills, he faces enormous challenges. North Korea's economy has shrunk by between 4 and 5 percent a year for the past four years. Widespread food shortages have forced people to eat just two meals a day in much of the country. Until the early 1970s, Northerners actually lived better than Southerners. But in 1993, according to the Bank of Korea, North Korea's per capita gross national product fell to $904, compared with $7,466 in the South.
Pyongyang's economic difficulties were compounded when Russia began demanding hard currency for deliveries of oil and machinery following the collapse of the Soviet Union. China is now Pyongyang's principal source of oil and imported food, much of which is supplied on cheap credit. While most analysts say Kim Jong Il will have a grace period that could last several years, he will eventually have to deliver the goods in order to broaden support beyond the privileged elite.
Technocrats. That will prove difficult because putting the economy into gear will require opening up to further foreign trade and investment. Kim is close to a number of younger technocrats who seem interested in increasing contacts with the outside. But Kim's room to maneuver is highly constricted because in order to dramatically open the economy, he would have to overturn his father's legacy of juche, or self-reliance, which is the very basis of his legitimacy. There are also doubts about his associates' reformist credentials. Kim Dal Hyon, frequently referred to as a reformist, told a visiting Chinese delegation in 1990: "What we have hung out is not an iron curtain, but a mosquito net. It can let in breezes, and it can also defend against mosquitoes." The remark implies a limited willingness at best to tolerate the outside influences that would come with a more open economy.
North Korea's economic system is also extremely rigid, more Soviet than Chinese. Only drastic reforms would likely have much impact, but these too would destroy the foundations of political power as they did in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Kim is only too aware of this. In 1992, he delivered two speeches in which he blamed the collapse of the Soviet Union on the loss of socialist "ideological consciousness." His chosen remedy, to strengthen the Communist Party and ideological work, hardly sounds like a prescription for reform.
Kim Jong Il faces a stark choice: to reform and watch his political base of support erode, or to stagnate and face a challenge from a different direction as North Korea falls fu
