Goodbye, hello

North Korea's succession

Goodbye, hello

Dec 20th 2011, 22:00 by H.T., K.N.C., D.T. | TOKYO and SEOUL

 

 

 

IT IS hard to overestimate how much is at stake for the world after the sudden death of Kim Jong Il, the North Korean despot, on December 17th. Officially, at least, it has thrust into the inexperienced hands of his pudgy young son, Kim Jong Un, control of a nuclear-armed nation that has one of the largest standing armies in the world as well as the capacity to wreak havoc on two of America’s strongest Asian allies, South Korea and Japan. The new Kim’s domain abuts China and Russia, both powers that analysts believe would be opposed to any move America might make to try steering the new regime into its orbit.

 

Almost nothing is known about the man North Korea’s propaganda apparatus has dubbed the “Great Successor”. Apart from evidence he was schooled for a while in Switzerland, it is not even clear whether he is 27 or 28. Since he was unveiled as the heir-apparent in September 2010, he has not spoken in public, and was always accompanied on trips he took with his father by several other veterans of the ruling clique, including his uncle and aunt. These precautions suggest his grooming as dictator-to-be was a race against the clock.

 

The pressure on him now is likely to be huge. Whereas his father had 20 years of apprenticeship to the regime’s founder, Kim Il Sung, this third-generation Kim has had just two years since rumours of his privileged status first surfaced, shortly after his father had a stroke. After the death of his grandfather, North Korea’s “eternal president”, Kim Jong Un’s father had three years of official mourning to stay out of the public eye. Now the youngster will have only 12 days’ seclusion for official grieving, to end the day after his father’s funeral on December 28th. Less than four months later, the country he inherits is supposed to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the eternal president’s birth, by which time it is meant to turn from a land of bellicose misery into a “strong and prosperous” nation. It is a fair bet that an insecure young Mr Kim, surrounded by crusty generals some of whom are triple his age, feels he has a lot to prove.

 

Yet in the face of such insecurity and unpredictability, analysts say there is little that foreign powers, whether allies such as China, or “mortal enemies”, such as America, can do except wait and see how things turn out. Marcus Noland, a North Korea specialist at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, DC, describes North Korea as a country that has remained “remarkably insensitive to punishments and rewards” from abroad; in other words, it shrugs off both sanctions and support, and its behaviour is mostly guided by domestic political considerations. Foreigners have little leverage.

 

Perhaps it is for that reason that many outsiders have chosen to take a sanguine view that the succession will be smooth—at least in the early months—rather than something like a prelude to regime collapse, a refugee crisis, “loose nukes” or even war. The Obama administration on December 20th called for a “peaceful, stable transition”, a position shared by Japan and echoed in Seoul by Lee Myung-bak, the South Korean president (who nevertheless has kept troops on high alert). Several Washington-based think-tanks believe the regime had prepared for the succession, and that a “gang of four”—the young Mr Kim, his powerful aunt, Kim Kyong Hui, her husband, Jang Song Taek, and the most senior general, Ri Yong Ho—will work together to keep order. Kept in check by his seniors, some believe Mr Kim may initially represent little change from his father, either for good—for example, by allowing greater economic modernisation—or for bad, say by ratcheting up repression or aggression. Others are more pessimistic, however. Mr Noland thinks Mr Kim may be tempted to engage in provocative acts, another nuclear test or a military engagement for example, to burnish his credentials (some believe he was partly responsible for attacks in South Korea in the last two years). Or he may be simply unable to control factions within the regime, allowing the army to create mischief of its own.

 

Foreign powers have not even been given a chance to gauge the mood by attending the funeral: it is to be an internal-only affair. That has put more emphasis on the messages sent by North Korea’s interlocutors abroad, which range from condolences, in the case of China and Russia (cravenly, China’s authorities said its people would “forever cherish” Kim Jong Il’s memory) to a sort of sympathetic contortionism by America and South Korea, which have both professed support for the North Korean people in their grief without explicitly offering condolences to the regime. In 1994, when Kim Il Sung died, the refusal of South Korea’s then-government to offer condolences cast a pall over the relationship for years. In contrast, the Clinton administration dispatched an envoy to meet with North Korean officials to express condolences.

 

Coincidentally, almost at the time Mr Kim was suffering a fatal heart attack on a train last Saturday, an American envoy was meeting with the North Koreans to discuss the resumption of food aid to the impoverished country, whose people are stunted by hunger. There are unconfirmed reports that this was in exchange for a halt to North Korea’s uranium-enrichment programme. Whether true or not, the Obama administration and its allies appear to have been moving gingerly back to a resumption of six-party denuclearisation talks with North Korea, involving South Korea, Japan, China and Russia. The food-aid initiative was promptly suspended on news of Mr Kim’s death, replaced by a wait-and-see attitude.

 

No one is as yet pressing the new leader for a quick resumption of denuclearisation talks. Beyond that, one discussion on North Korea that its five counterparts in the six-party talks have never been able to have—even secretly, according to analysts—is how to react to a potential breakdown if the regime implodes. For China, such a discussion may smack of disloyalty and risk exacerbating what it fears most—chaos in the North. Neither have South Korea and America, who are broadly allied on dealing with North Korea, always seen eye to eye on how to handle regime change. Worryingly, one reason all of them now are urging a smooth and stable transition may be that there is no alternative plan if it all goes wrong.

 

 

http://www.economist.com/blogs/banyan/2011/12/north-koreas-succession