North Korean politics

  by S.C.S.

IF TRUE, news that Jang Sung Taek has been purged from the North Korean leadership—as South Korea’s spy agency was saying on December 3rd—is a serious development indeed. Mr Jang was thought to be the real power behind the North Korean throne and its inexperienced dictator, who is also his nephew. The report, which was delivered in a closed-door parliamentary session, said it had confirmed that two of Mr Jang’s closest confidants, Jang Su Gil and Ri Ryong Ha, had been executed for corruption in mid-November and that Mr Jang had since “disappeared from public view”. The South’s spies do not know his whereabouts.


So it came as a let-down to hear that all the spy agency had to go on were “multiple reliable sources”. In a familiar fashion, there seemed to be too many reasons to doubt any given interpretation of movements in the North.
There is evidence that North Korea’s ambassadors to Cuba and Malaysia—both of them members of the Jang family—have been recalled, which would seem to corroborate the initial report. But the regime’s official mouthpiece, the Korean Central News Agency, has not yet said a word about Mr Jang, one way or the other. Strong support from the South’s minister of unification, on December 4th, gave weight to the agency’s assessment—which was undone the following day when the ministry of national defence announced that Mr Jang’s removal ought to be double-checked. Add to that the track record of South Korea’s spooks on news of their northern brothers, which is less than stellar (rumour has it that Samsung knew of Kim Jong Il’s death before they did). Little wonder then, that most are treating the news with caution. Many observers were anyway wary of the intelligence service’s motives. It has been embroiled in a year-long political scandal at home, involving allegations that it meddled in elections.
Given that context however, for the South Korean spooks to get this news wrong would be especially embarrassing. There are more reasons to believe that they got the story right. Kim Jong Un, son of Kim Jong Il and the North’s current dictator, has swapped or replaced around 100 top officials since taking power, the most significant of which was Ri Yong Ho, a prominent general, in July 2012. The news also tallies with Mr Jang’s gradual fading from the public view over the past two years: a graph at NK News, a site which tracks changes in the North Korean leadership, offers a concise overview. Reshuffling influential old-timers would consolidate Mr Kim’s new rule; in this light, removing his political guardian and uncle makes him look in control. Mr Kim “is moving away from a faction-based system to one where he is the one and only leader”, reckons Kim Yong-hyun, professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. Since 2010 Mr Jang has been the vice-chairman of the National Defence Commission (NDC), which is regarded as the main political organ of the Korean Worker’s Party.
On the other hand, Jang Jin-sung, a former propaganda official for Kim Jong Il who fled the North in 2004, thinks the NDC is now a purely symbolic organisation. “Outsiders assume rank based on how many times a person appears in public or their title, but there is a big difference between that and their de facto role,” says this Mr Jang (no relation). Much more significant, he thinks, are which people decide who sits on that commission: a group known as the Organisation and Guidance Department (OGD). Like the Kim dynasty, their positions are hereditary—and they have long kept the Kims’ relatives, including Mr Jang, in check. They are the ones that control the young Kim’s personal bodyguards. Mr Jang, at least outwardly, espouses a more moderate policy of economic reform. By contrast the OGD is said to champion the development of nuclear arms and military-driven politics.
Some observers say that Mr Jang’s influence has waned to such a point that his ouster would not be too disruptive. The more worrying puzzle then would be about who has orchestrated his disappearance, and who stands to gain from it. Jang Jin-sung very much doubts that Mr Kim would want him dismissed. Instead, he supposes, Mr Jang was “trimmed” by the hardliners, “like a useless branch that has to be cut away”. He points out that Mr Kim is currently in Samjiyon, the traditional summer retreat of the Kim family, in the northern reaches of the country. That he would be spending any of the winter there suggests the purge is happening without his guidance. “The Kim family and their relatives have lost out to the hardliners on this one.”
If that were the case, then Mr Jang’s purge could mean a small victory for nuclear-bombmaking over economic development. Kim Yong-hyun buys into this theory, at least in part. He says the North is likely to become more conservative, in the short term. He thinks this might even suggest that the influence of Mr Kim’s family is in decline more broadly. Mr Jang’s wife, Kim Kyong Hui (a sister to Kim Jong Il) has been viewed by some as the young Kim’s personal mentor, but she is ailing.
On December 17th, the anniversary of Kim Jong Il’s death, the whole leadership can be expected to march ceremonially to the embalmed bodies of the Dear Leader and his own father, Kim Il Sung, and to bow before them. What can be said for certain is that whoever is not invited to the party could be out—or then again, maybe not.