Trouble In “Paradise On Earth?” | Why Bam Bam Doesn’t Trust His Badasss Son, Kim Jong-Eun…

July 16th, 2010 | Author: ADM

(“On the spot guidance”: an enfeebled Bam Bam plays shuffleboard with his new residential model dinkytoy)

September promises to be a humdinger of a “historical” month over in DPR Korea according to recent a South Korean news report.

Bam Bam, aka Kim Jong-il, the country’s much-maligned headman and pictured above waving around his oversized plaything, will be convening an all-senior Korean Worker’s Party (KWP) Congress in the autumn. The last time this happened was in 1966. Something must be up.

You think?

The rarer-than-the-Holy-Grail fall confab, according to ROK experts, will be an attempt by said ailing North Korean leader pygmy fascist to shore up his hardline ideological support for the eventual leadership succession which all NK observers now claim is a foregone conclusion. Transfer of “hereditary power” to Kim’s Swiss-educated youngest son, Kim Jong-un (Eun), aka the “Youth Captain” is happening, and sooner than we think.

Jong-un, the heir apparent, is alleged to be a dead ringer for his daddy-o’s temperament and affect. The apple of Kim’s fatherly eye is currently being fast-track groomed to take up the cudgel in defense of the oft-maligned nuclear peninsular statelet as Kim steps down due to health reasons sometime during the end of this year (that is, if untimely death doesn’t relieve the planet of his rancorous presence sooner).

(Is this Kim Jong-un? Anyone?)

The sum of Bam Bam’s greatest fears:

Kim’s own father, the “Great Leader” and eternal DPRK President, Kim Il-sung, never really had much confidence in his wayward son’s ability to administer his beloved socialist experiment with a needed iron fist. Once he was gone, Kim the Elder believed, North Korea would be doomed unless some evasive measures were then-swiftly put into place.

Kim the Younger, that unrepentant playboy, movie buff, womanizer, scotch-swiller, porn-enthusiast, and bender boy, was light years less the ideologue than his poppa. NK’s establishment positively reviled the son; nearly as much as they lionized and worshipped the father. The Great Leader harbored genuine fears right up until his 1994 death that the socialist experiment he’d devoted his entire life to (not to mention that of nearly 1M Chinese conscripts and almost 500,000 of his own KPA troops during the 3-year Korean War, figures here) would be overrun by US/South Korean forces once he departed from the scene. Desperately anxious that North Korea’s army would never fully rally behind Jong-il as part of the first “succession,” Kim Il-sung commanded his son to place less emphasis upon economic matters, and to concentrate more on courting the North Korea’s mighty military and on giving the army establishment a prominent role and presence in the running of the nation post-1994 (Kim Il-sung’s death).

According to Kim Jong-il’s own recollection:

The Great Leader told me when he was alive never to be involved in economic projects, just concentrate on the military and the party and leave economics to party functionaries. If I do delve into economics, then I cannot run the party and the military effectively.

Given how Jong-il was never much of a military recruit and cut a decidedly unimposing image as a leader to be dually feared and loved, this was sage advice.

Kim Jong-il would only succeed in keeping DPRK together over coming decades as a strong militaristic state if he brought the military into the picture. He didn’t possess nearly the same cult of personality as his dad, and he knew it. Bam Bam opted for a different tack.

Similarly, Kim Jong-un is a dark horse in the succession race.

Outside of a handful of purported sightings in North Korea itself, the international media scrum hasn’t dug up much on the Youth Captain.

Classmates and teachers from his former exclusive finishing school in Switzerland, the International School of Bern, are for the most part mum about the allegedly mild-mannered former student.

Observe how carefree Jong-un is in these late ‘90s gonzo snaps from Switzerland:

September’s KWP congress is Kim Jong-il’s almost last-ditch gambit to ensure grassroots support for the coddled 27 year-old who also has little-to-no military experience, and who, Kim fully expects, North Korea’s army will be gunning for and seeking to dominate once Kim Jong-il “abdicates his throne.”

By appealing, unprecedentedly, to the Korean Workers Party’s vanguard, Kim intends to do an end-around the military hardliners, the same inside cabal who are purportedly responsible for issuing the order to sink the South Korean corvette, Cheonan.

Expect Jong-un to be paraded around the congress venue like a princeling and to deliver a blistering (and fully scripted) anti-imperialist, anti-ROK flunky, anti-US racist bitter screed, with the requisite mentions about DPRK’s burgeoning nuclear capacities at Yongbyon and the usual hand-clapping, grab-assing, and orchestrated North Korean pomp which makes for a down-home DPRK jamboree, yee-haw!

It might mark our first chance to glean some live photos of the reclusive heir.

But will this prove to be Kim’s most successful strategy?

At this stage, Kim has his hands hog-tied for the following reasons:

China’s leadership has already strongly indicated to the dictator during his “secret” May swing through the PRC that under no circumstances (here, here, and here) is Jong-un’s succession to be marred by last-minute DPRK brinkmanship or military grandstanding or threats. Bam Bam’s trip was likely hastily organized by the Chinese Party to express their extreme displeasure about the Cheonan’s incident and as a due rejoinder to Kim that Jong-un’s succession must go down with nary a hitch…or else!
North Korea maintains the world’s 4th-largest standing military (a position, incidentally, formerly occupied by the Former Yugoslavia) with its heavy artillery, heavy guns, Russian tanks, and missile-borne ordinance pointed firmly at the South Korean capital. If North Korea’s military storms the DPRK’s leadership at the expense of the grassroots in a coup, a second (all-out?) war on the peninsula is indeed a possibility. The US has even wargamed the scenario: its army (along with South Korean backup) will be ultimately victorious, but at a likely cost of 1 million troops on all sides. Seoul will suffer devastating economic hardship, citizens across the entire peninsula will die, and total havoc will reign supreme with the Chinese leadership, who want absolutely no part of a military confrontation with the Allies (at least not now). In other words: North Korea will be ground into dust and the Kim Farm will be no more. Kim must therefore ensure that Jong-un is in firm control of his country – both from a propagandistic standpoint and de facto; that is, with DPRK’s political and military higher-ups.
Kim has suffered two serious health incidents in the past two years. At 68 and in miserable health, he is not likely to survive well into the next decade, at least as DPRK’s paramount leader. If Kim doesn’t move now to shore up political and grassroots support for his son and his coterie of sycophants expected to lead alongside him, both Kim’s and his father’s grand work will come to a crashing end. An unconscionable choice for Pyongyang.
South Korea (and the international community) have remained relatively mum about the Cheonan incident. A firm (militaristic?) response may yet be forthcoming. If Kim Jong-un’s succession hasn’t been secured well before then, or worse, if North Korea’s military somehow senses dissention in Kim Family ranks, they may take matters into their own hands by embroiling the peninsula in a potential nuclear maelstrom (it can happen). This, of course, represents the ultimate in failures for Kim Jong-il, the reason why he’s laboring so hard to tie up loose ends while he still has time.

This, again from Yonhap:

Earlier this year, North Korea promoted Kim’s brother-in-law as a vice head of the National Defense Commission, the highest seat of power. Jang Song-thaek is believed to be the central figure behind the succession process.

What should we be on the lookout for this summer?

The weeks leading up to the KWP Congress are sure to be very revealing.

We may very well be witnessing North Korean history in the making because, for the first time in decades, Kim is left with no military maneuvering room: if he can’t threaten the Six Parties (US, ROK, Japan, Russia, North Korea, China) with military retaliation if he doesn’t get his way during a parley, he’s toast. Military control may have already slipped through Kim’s fingers as evidenced by the ongoing mystery surrounding who or what actually gave the order to sink the Cheonan.

I think the old cliché applies: we’re living in very interesting times.

BONUS:

For some excellent commentary (duration: 1h29m23s), Frontline recently hosted an engaging roundtable of distinguished Korean veteran journos, academics, politicians, and UN humanitarians, which you can watch below: