19: Who Comes After Kim Jong-un?
"It's easy to be wrong on this one," - John Delury, prof of IR at Yonsei University
Hello, friends,
Rumors have been circulating that Kim Jong-un, the leader of the world’s most secretive state, is reportedly in dire straits. And in a country with nuclear weapons, an opaque and possibly even ad-hoc or non-existent leadership succession plan, a brainwashed “racist” populace which is heavily militarized, the world watches with bated breath.
The story begins with an apparent heart-related surgery, or “cardiovascular system procedure,” on April 12, 2020. Jong-un then missed both a missile launch and the celebration of his grandfather Kim Jung-il’s birthday a few days after that. News outlets started to report that something was amiss in North Korea. Both Jong-un’s father and grandfather died from heart attacks and Jong-un has missed important events before due to surgery on his foot. A history of heart disease runs in the family; a personal history of ill-health (the leader reportedly smokes cigarettes and has diabetes) makes this story, on the surface, plausible. Back to the timeline.
On April 20, CNN reported that Jong-un was last seen on April 11 (on state TV so who knows?) and that he was in “grave danger,” according to some U.S. officials. Doug Bandow over at The National Interest points out that this would be the first “open contest for power in 72 years.” (The word “open” is doing a lot of work here). Reuters is now reporting that Chinese officials and medical experts have crossed the border into North Korea to “assist,” the situation; but that report is just as muddy and reliant on unnamed sources as the above news stories are.
What’s going on?
Capsule History
North Korea, whose landmass is approximately the size of Pennsylvania, is considered one of the most idiosyncratic states on the planet. It’s a state built on an unfair caste system (songbun) and it’s a nation of gulags—forced-labor prisons, ideological re-education prisons—and its citizens face a repressive, oppressive, Stalinist police state. It’s “citizens” are forced to spy on one another in a system called inminban or “people’s groups.” An almost unbelievable prison system exists based on collective-familial punishment where families and households are punished based on “family responsibility”; if an individual is deemed to have violated some “law,” rule or norm, as many as three generations of a person’s family can be thrown into labor (read: slave) camps; some eventually are released; others are not and wind up in a section called “zones of absolute control.”
Almost every person in the country is required to attend multiple meetings a week. Listen to this horrifying reality, which has to be reprinted in some depth to capture the brutality, from the book The Real North Korea (2013), by Andrei Lankov:
“The ‘organizational life’ usually consisted of frequent and soporifically long meetings. Typically there were three meetings every week, each lasting one or two hours. Two meetings would be dedicated to ideological indoctrination: their participants were lectured on the greatness of their Great Leader Kim Il-sung and his family, the glorious achievements of the Korean Workers’ Party, and the incomparable triumphs of the North Korean economy. The diabolical nature of US imperialism and sufferings of the destitute and oppressed South Korean population were also discussed frequently (as we’ll see below, however, in the recent decade the sufferings of South Koreans are being presented in a slightly different light).
One of the three weekly meetings is, however, quite different from the other two. It is known as a ‘Weekly Life Review Session’ but better recognized under the descriptive translation as a ‘Self-Criticism and Mutual-Criticism Session.’ Such a session usually meant that every participant (that is, every North Korean above the age of 14) was supposed to give a brief report about the misdeeds and unsound actions of him/herself in the week under review. Concurrently, another member of the same ‘organization’ is expected to criticize the particular person for the same or different misdeeds. Of course, in real life these sessions are somewhat akin to theatrical performances, since people are street-smart enough to not admit anything that might lead to serious consequences. Typically, individuals would admit to being late for their shift or not being diligent enough in taking care of portraits of the Great Leader (surprisingly, the latter is seen as a minor deviation). Nonetheless, these self-criticism and mutual-criticism sessions help to keep the population in line and in some rare cases even lead to the exposure of significant ideological deviations.”
North Korea is unfathomable, yet it’s real. It’s worst or near the bottom of the world in all sorts of metrics, including press freedom, income, gross domestic product, and trade volume. Its songbun caste system violates international rights treaties that North Korea itself has even signed. A 2014 UN Commission of Inquiry deemed North Korea’s prison system a “crime against humanity.” By most accounts, its people are trapped, helpless, and doomed, and even mild optimistic scenarios for the future look rather grim.
One can’t say enough bad things about this place. Christopher Hitchens called it a “slave state,” “worse than Nineteen Eighty-Four,” and one controlled by a “militarized crime family that completely owns both the country and its people.” North Korea is a ghastly, murderous, brutal place. The books I’ve read this week (finished one, looked through a handful of others) all paint the average North Korean as normal. This makes it all the more devastating. They want what people want everywhere: jobs, happiness, a family, a story and a nation to believe in.
My all-time favorite article on North Korea is one I read in Foreign Affairs titled “The Opening of the North Korean Mind,” which talked about how people would try to dance quietly in their bedrooms. The author Jieun Baek tells a story from an escapee that made my heart glow:
“As Min Jun, a recent defector in his early 20s, told me, ‘In our generation, young people get together quietly in each other’s homes, put on South Korean K-pop, and have a little dance party. We have no idea if we’re doing it right, but we dance with the music on low.’”
North Koreans, like all people, deserve better. North Koreans like to dance.
~
As I was writing this more rumors have spread that basically speak with even more confidence: Kim jong-Un is dead. We should be skeptical.
Is This Just a Rumor?
Harry J. Kazianis, the Senior Director for Korea Studies at the Center for the National Interest, calls these developments unsubstantiated rumors. He reports that the Daily NK, a site ran by escapees, first broke the story and it was not heavily sourced. Then CNN and MSNBC picked up on the story but kept having to walk back some of the more salacious claims. NBC’s Katy Tur tweeted out Jung-un was “brain dead,” only to then delete the tweet hours later “due to an abundance of caution.” Alas, it seems too late for that. Jessica J. Lee on ForeignPolicy.com considers this rumor of his death or impending death “false.” And former CIA officer Bruce Klingner says that these rumors “should be met with caution.” Regardless of what happens today or in the near future, Jung-un is very unhealthy and not likely to last as long as his father and grandfather did.
Who Succeeds Jong-un?
North Korea—effectively created by the Soviet Union in 1945 through 1948—has been run by the Kim Dynasty ever since; first by Kim Il-sung (1948-1994), followed up by his son Kim Jong-il (1994-2011), and now by Kim Jong-un (2011), the son of Jong-il and grandson of Kim Il-sung. Officially known as the People’s Republic of Korea; unofficially known as the worst place on Earth. Well…there is no rule of law or rights. What has transpired is that the Kim’s have ruled North Korea as the first communist dynastic monarchy in history. The Kim family has spread and constructed a mythical bloodline origin story, traced to Mount Paektu. But who succeeds Jong-un if, not when, he dies? If its soon, no one really knows.
Some international relations (IR) generalists keep repeating that the likely successor would be Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-jong. A simple reading of Klingner’s aforementioned piece gives some credence to the sister as successor possibility as well. And the former vice minister of foreign affairs of South Korea Sung-han Kim thinks that “collective leadership that consists of top party and military leaders” could act as regents for Yo-jong until she is better prepared and ready to be the leader. Anna Fifield sums up her thoughts: “I can’t see how Kim Yo-jong could become the leader. But I also can’t see how she could not become the leader. There’s no one else.”
Gabriela Bernal posits that Yo-jong could possibly be next in line but she thinks it’s likely that Jong-un’s son, who is probably around ten years old, could ultimately wind-up being the likely successor in a few years time. It’s actually not entirely clear how many children Jong-un has, by the way. Barbara Demick reports that he might have three children; the former CIA office Jung H. Pak analyst believes this is the case as well.
However, Mitchell Lerner bets against Jong-un’s sister but thinks that the regime could be taken over directly by a military junta. Bandow argues that “there is no reason to believe [Yo-jong] can grab the brass ring, especially given the enduring sexism of North Korean politics.” This side of the argument was also made my Michael Malice in a YouTube video; Malice has visited North Korea and has a book on the country.
In a 2013 book, Lankov wrote that “Kim Kyong-hee, Kim Jong Il’s younger sister, and her husband are expected to act as regents if the Dear Leader dies too soon.” This is not likely since Kyong-hee’s husband has since been assassinated. Kim Pyong-il, Jong-il’s half-brother is also a name I’ve seen thrown around but he would be quite old (Baek; Demick). Jong-un also has a half-sister and brother (Jong-chul) who are possibilities. Korean watcher Sue Mi Terry tweeted that Jong-chul is unlikely due to him already being passed over for being “effeminate.” Though Middle East watchers thought Bashar al-Assad was an unlikely heir in Syria over two decades ago because he was “effeminate,” and we know how that turned out.
I think Van Jackson, senior lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington, on Twitter is worth reading on this.
There are more tweets in this thread; click through to read them all.
So who ends up replacing Kim jong-un is a mystery, with some obvious names and less obvious names thrown out. We tend to remember history as point-estimate-like data points; this tends to make us believe that the past was more predictable than it was. Yeah, Khrushchev came after Stalin but first there was a power struggle (for four months after Stalin’s death) and he himself was deposed a bit more than a decade after coming to power.
Things are unsettled. Things will be unsettled.
~
I was going to include a “what comes after?” section that focused on the short- and mid-term outcomes or possibilities for a post-Jung-un North Korea. Then I was going to explore what should be U.S. strategy toward North Korea. I will save that for if, in fact, he has died.
Until then, treat these rumors with caution and skepticism. The latest intelligence coming out of Washington D.C. suggests the leader is alive.
And what should always be at the forefront when thinking of North Korea is the people, all 25.5 million of them. Let’s hope the future brings the ability for North Koreans to laugh, dance, and live as free individuals sometime in our lifetime.
- Patrick M. Foran