Over the years, South Korean officials and analysts have grown accustomed to the North Koreans’ habit of stirring up trouble, whether through missile launchings or nuclear tests. And when faced with international censure, the North lashes out with threats of retaliation and even war. Typically, it is an attention-getting tactic, the South Koreans say, used to win diplomatic and economic concessions.
However, this time the motivation may be different.
Experts on North Korea say that its latest act of belligerence — the sinking of a South Korean ship in March, one of the worst military provocations since the end of the Korean War in 1953 — reflects a new force at play: the efforts of the North’s leader, Kim Jong-il, to establish his 27-year-old son as a legitimate heir to carry on the family dynasty.
“His succession to power is the factor that links all other factors when we try to explain why the North is doing what it does these days,” said Choi Jin-wook, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, the Seoul government’s top research organization on North Korea. “Without it, no explanation is complete or convincing.”
On the surface, the North’s ever-intensifying policy of confrontation can appear self-defeating. But, officials and analysts here say, it is all part of Kim’s effort to groom Kim Jong-un, the youngest of his three known sons, as his successor. According to this line of thinking, the sinking of the South Korean ship was intended to create an atmosphere of crisis that would serve Kim Jong-il’s purposes, both by rallying public support and winning the crucial backing of the military.
“Kim Jong-il needs to create a warlike atmosphere at home to push through with the succession of power to his son,” said Cheon Seong-whun, another senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification. “To do that, he needs tensions and an external enemy.”
Kim Jong-il himself was carefully groomed for years to succeed his father, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. In the years he was consolidating his power base, Kim Jong-il was credited with masterminding a 1968 commando attack on the South Korean presidential palace in Seoul and the 1976 ax killings of two US military officers at the border, said Baek Seung-joo, a North Korea specialist at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses.
Also in 1968, North Korea captured a US naval intelligence ship, the Pueblo, holding 82 hostages for nearly a year, while its commandos attacked remote South Korean villages and clashed with the South Korean military for two months.
However, this latest succession has been thrust upon the Kims prematurely, after Kim Jong-il’s reported stroke in 2008 and subsequent health problems, which have been said to include kidney disease. Although Kim Jong-il, 68, was healthy enough to visit China last month, questions persist over how long he can remain in power.
The next step for Kim Jong-un is to make his official public debut, but that has been complicated by his lack of major achievements, analysts said.
“Planning and ordering a successful naval attack in a disputed sea border with the South boosts Kim Jong-un’s credentials as a ruthless leader who can command the military,” Baek said. “Pulling off a daring provocation to win military charisma was the rite of passage Kim Jong-il himself went through as he was consolidating power as his father’s heir.”
Of course, the succession issue is not the only problem facing Kim Jong-il. His trademark policy of building a “strong and prosperous nation” was called into question when his navy lost a humiliating skirmish against the South in November last year. His government’s recent attempt to arrest inflation and eliminate black markets through a drastic revaluation of the North’s currency set off more inflation and a wave of popular discontent that extended beyond the capital, Pyongyang.
Meanwhile, Seoul refused to offer economic incentives until the North gave up its nuclear weapons program.
With the succession issue and the rising internal and external pressures, it is not surprising that Kim Jong-il would ratchet up confrontation with the South and its allies, Cheon said. North Korea’s propaganda machine uses international condemnation to strengthen internal solidarity, whip up a war fever and justify Kim Jong-il’s near-absolute grip on power, he said.
The North is now telling its people that the US and the South fabricated the sinking of the South’s ship as a version of the “Gulf of Tonkin incident,” a battle that Washington vastly overstated to justify expanding the Vietnam War. Huge outdoor rallies are being mobilized in the North, said North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, a Web site run by defectors from the North, which cited sources inside North Korea.
Last week, using a radio network that reaches every North Korean home, General O Kuk-ryol, a top officer, delivered Kim Jong-il’s order to the military and reserve forces to be ready for combat, the defectors’ Web site said.
However, Kim Jong-il’s most concerted efforts seem to be directed at the military, the critical power base for his son. Despite UN sanctions that ban exports of luxury goods to the North, Kim is believed to have smuggled in fancy foreign cars for loyal generals, and in April 100 senior officers received promotions.
The government has also elevated to hero status six crewmen of the mini-submarine that sank the South Korean ship, said Ha Tae-keung, who runs Open Radio for North Korea, a Web site based in Seoul that collects news from informants inside the North.
Ha said that Kim Jong-il’s tactics seemed to be succeeding.
“I think the son is firmly in place,” Ha said. “He was in charge in Pyongyang when his father and his top aides were all in China.”
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