“I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.” Mark Twain
The BBC is reporting that Kim Jong-il, the highly erratic leader of North Korea, has died. His designated successor, Kim Jong-un, is his third son and believed to be in his 20s. The process of making the son the successor was not complete, so there is apt to be internal problems in North Korea, which usually means that they will do something stupid to take people’s minds off of it.
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Established: 21 November 2004
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16 comments
No wonder the stocks in South Korea fell dramatically at the news….
I can only imagine that the new Kim is going to be presiding (if that is the right word) over a lot of infighting within the leading cadre. One thing is for certain is that the lot of the average North Korean ain’t going to get any better and probably will get rather worse.
I only hopethat they are not so damned stupid as to set off a war against the South
Jams, they’re not that stupid. South Korea’s military could conquer the North in about a week, basically as fast as their F-15’s could shoot North Korea’s antique Soviet-era fighters out of the air and could drive their Hyundai tanks across the border (the North doesn’t have anything that would even scratch the paint on those tanks, which are an advanced derivative of the M1A1 but with Hyundai diesel powertrain). And don’t look for China to intervene this time — it would be South Korea vs. North Korea, mano-a-mano. So it’d be suicide for North Korea to start a war with South Korea.
But that’s not the real problem. The real problem is if North Korea totally collapses into chaos, North Korea’s army deserts to go home to defend Mom and Pop, and South Korea and China are forced to step in with “peacekeepers” to restore order in order to prevent a refugee crisis. Neither South Korea nor China wants that, because the last thing either nation needs is a buncha backwards half-starved peasants on their hands that need food and shelter or else you got really bad PR (starving peasants don’t look good on the tube, yo). They’re both praying that Li’l Kim’s successor (Tiny Kim?) manages to keep the country together… and also that he’s a bit more sane than Li’L Kim was, but that’s probably a forlorn hope, given the family he was born into.
– Badtux the Geopolitics Penguin
I agree Badtux, if North Korea was to g to war it wold be a massacre. Their large army will just bean more targets, ultimately. I am worried that a power struggle creates an insane situation where insane things may be done.
I’m not making or taking bets on what happens now in North Korea, other than that things will get worse for the people.
There have been reports of members of the army going to China, which could mean that army rations have been cut, a very bad sign as they are usually maintained no matter what happens to the people.
China and South Korea are both going to want the other to go in first if things collapse because neither wants the North Koreans on their budget.
They are generally set up on the old Soviet model of power shared by the Party, security forces, and the military. Kim Jong-un probably has Party support, but I seriously doubt the military or the security forces are happy with his selection.
In addition to two older brothers, he has an uncle who dabbles in politics, so times are going to be very interesting in North Korea.
I doubt that any of us know enough about the internal politics of North Korea to give predictions on what’s going to happen with Tiny Kim and the security apparatus and army. Maybe they’re unhappy with the selection of Tiny Kim as the successor to Li’l Kim. Or maybe they’re down with it. I doubt even the CIA and NSA know — despite their best efforts, North Korea has been pretty opaque to them, with little elint to analyze and just the self-serving talk of deserters (of whom a sizable percentage may be North Korean disinformation agents) to go on. As we know from Curveball, deserters will say whatever they think their interviewers want them to say, in hopes of getting better treatment…
The sense I got from the stuff I saw was that things are totally compartmentalized. Outside of the very inner circle, no one knows more than the absolute minimum they need to do their particular job. A number of people think that the important jobs are essentially filled by a limited number of ‘elite’ families, that the country is a monarchy with an established aristocracy, but there isn’t enough information to confirm that.
The only useful information coming from defectors is how to escape from North Korea, and that is suspect because of double/triple agents.
High marks to Badtux for inventing (I presume) “Tiny Kim”!
I have avoided noting that his name is pronounced ‘kim young-un’. As I just posted, I wonder about the effect on the North Koreans of having someone so obviously ‘well-fed’ as their “Leader”.
Steve, he may be “tiptoeing through the tulips” shortly, so I wanted to give Li’l Kim’s kid an appropriate nickname :).
Bryan, given what I know of Chinese/Confucian culture, the rotundity of the Kims is likely dismissed as the blessing of the heavens, because surely it must take direct intervention of the gods to become fat on the meager rations of a typical North Korean :twisted:.
Tiny Kim? Perhaps the song is Tiptoe through the turnips….
For some reason, with the Kim family involved, I can imagine “Let them eat tulips” being said, and thousands of acres of turnips being plowed under to attempt to grow tulips.
I forgot about the ‘kings cure dandruff’ part of the divine right to rule. Of course, Kims are chubby because they are favored by the gods.
I think the rotundity may stem from the fact that they do not defecate… I need not say what they are full of!
Tsk, tsk, Jams. 😉
Well, according to this report in The Australian, Tiny Kim apparently has the support of the security services, which has embarked upon a reign of terror purging top Party members in order to obtain a compliant Party. No word on what the third leg of power, the Army, is doing, but Tiny Kim appears to not be quite as much the dim son as he appeared in his early appearances. Which is good for him, and probably good for general geopolitical stability in the region, but of course lousy for the poor sods who live in North Korea, who ain’t exactly tiptoeing through the tulips — or turnips either, for that matter, given the poor yields of North Korean agriculture in recent decades.
North Korea is a prime example of what ‘dirt poor’ really means at it’s most basic level. Weeds won’t grow in what they have for soil without a lot of help. Even in a good year, they are lucky to grow enough for their minimum requirements.
A South Korean North watcher said that we should expect Tiny Kim to maintain a low profile for up to a year as a sign of respect and mourning for his father. I think I heard that his uncle leads the security services, so this may have more to do with protecting the family’s position, than support for Tiny Kim, but no one can know for sure, because everything is a ‘state secret’ in North Korea.
Another factor is that 2012 is the centennial year of the birth of his grandfather, Kim Il-song, so the North Koreans will want to maintain some decorum during the celebration of that event. We can hope.