North Korea: Threatening collapse

In the wake of the sudden death of North Korea's only ruler so far, the late President Kim Il-sung, the Jakarta Post's Asia Correspondent Harvey Stockwin takes a look at developments during the first week of mourning, prior to the funeral tomorrow.

HONG KONG (JP): It was singularly appropriate that the world worried about North Korea this past week at the same time as it commemorated the 25th anniversary of man's landing on the moon.

The North Korean people have never been told about that event. The American "achievements" in oppressing the people of South Korea have been all that they have been told by Pyongyang. They have never learnt about the moon landing either, because, then as now, their radios masses can only tune in to two North Korean stations.

On the scant evidence provided this past week as the departed Great Leader Kim Il-sung gave way to his son the new Great Leader Kim Jong-il, North Koreans were not going to learn about the moon landing anytime soon.

The concerned world outside North Korea spent the first week of mourning worrying about solutions. North Korea spent the week vividly illustrating the problem.

For South Koreans and foreigners North Korea poses vital questions about the succession, the threat, and the prospects in the unending Korean civil war. North Korea appears all set to provide very few immediate answers.

First and last North Korea remains isolated, and foreigners remain basically ignorant about the Hermit Kingdom which Kim Il- sung created.

By Sunday, July 10, for example, South Korean communications intelligence had been able to establish that members of the Central Committee of the (North) Korean Workers Party (KWP) and of the Supreme People's Assembly had been summoned to Pyongyang ostensibly to pay tribute to Kim the Father. Since the KWPCC selects the party Secretary General, while the Assembly chooses the national President, it was widely assumed that a quick succession was under way, perhaps as a preemptive move against any incipient opposition.

By late Friday July 15 the world was still impatiently awaiting the results of that meeting - but North Koreans themselves had not even been told that the meeting was taking place, still less that Kim the son had formally stepped into the posts which his father had held.

It is assumed that this news will only be released once Kim Il-sung's funeral has been held tomorrow.

Meanwhile it has become relatively clear that the dynastic succession which Kim Il-sung sought for the last 24 years of his life is in the process of being achieved -- at least in form.

One crucial sign emerged at 3.30 a.m. Thursday morning July 14, when South Korean monitors first heard Pyongyang radio affix the word "suriyong" to Kim Jong-il. Previously Kim Il-sung was the only "suriyong" (chieftain) in North Korea.

Earlier, on Tuesday, July 12, Radio Pyongyang had announced that "the Dear Leader, the sole successor to the Great Leader, is now revered at the top of the party, the nation and the revolutionary forces". This implied but did not state that the formal succession had actually taken place. The precise reality became particularly elusive, given the elastic nature of the verb used, which could mean that Kim Jong-il had been "installed" and "raised up" as well as "revered".

So while Kim Jong-il's succession may have been completed, and the new Great Leader may be in charge, the known facts could also indicate other realities. The vast outpouring of adoration for Kim -- Radio Kaesong quickly dubbed him the "Sun of all North Koreans" -- is perfectly consistent with Kim being elevated to a figure-head role.

The deluge of ostensible devotion could even mean that the would-be successors aim to sustain the legitimacy of the regime which Kim Il-sung created, while hiding their differing personalities and policies for now.

A critical difference between China-watching and North Korea- watching needs noting. The sheer plethora of provinces and media in China make sustained uniformity impossible. So inferences about any power struggle can be drawn from the diversity of views expressed.

In North Korea's case, the nation is small, the control total. Koreans and foreigners following the outpourings of Radio Pyongyang and the few local stations, plus the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) have so far been unable to detect any tell-tale signs of emerging factionalism.

The radio and the printed word have sustained their uniformity. The television footage which the outside world sees, most notably of a tearful Kim Jong-il paying respects at his father's bier, is what those in power in Pyongyang want the world to see. North Korea has selected the images which go up into the satellite for the rest of the world to take down.

It follows from this that, so far, no divisions within the dynasty have been allowed to peep through. Kim Il-sung's brother Vice-President Kim Yong-ju was to the fore at the bier, and was sixth in protocol order on the funeral committee.

Kim Il-sung's second wife, and Kim Jong-il's stepmother, Kim Song-ae was ranked 104th in the funeral committee in accordance with her post as chairwoman of the Democratic Women's Union.

Kim Il-sung's second son, and Kim Jong-il's stepbrother Kim Pyong-il was visible at the bier, but was not on the funeral committee, perhaps because he still serves as Ambassador to Finland. Nothing has been heard about Kim Jong-il's eldest son Kim Jong-nam, now in his 20s, and whether he will now inherit his father's previous title of Dear Leader.

If the solidarity of the elite was outwardly sustained, then the controlled exposure, by North Korea, of film of the monolithic masses was by far the most frightening image.

If Kim Il-sung's successors wanted to remind the world of the threat which their country posed, then they could hardly have done better than show the "human wave" tactics, once used in war against South Korea, now used in peace against the statues of Kim Il-sung throughout the country.

Of course, all Koreans dramatically and loudly simulate grief on the death of a loved one. Of course, huge crowds like those shown around the statue in Pyongyang seldom if ever just happen --they have to be organized.

But that is precisely the point. By exporting those TV images of thousands upon thousands of hysterical men, women and children shrieking their regret over the passing of a Great Dictator, North Korea not merely provided a vivid illustration of the tight totalitarian control of which it is still capable.

It also reminded the world that Kim Il-sung spent his life trying to bring that degree of fanatical control to the whole of Korea, as he pursued the goal of communist unification under the direction of his KWP.

Yet if the world should have been reminded of the threat which North Korea still poses, those self-same images of mass mourning also indicate a very real threat to Kim Jong-il, or whoever ultimately exercises power in the successor regime.

In a nutshell, he, or they, are trapped. To go on spending disproportionate sums from a shrinking economy on the military and nuclear weapons, in the vain pursuit of communist reunification, would be obvious folly. It would probably hasten collapse.

But to take the opposite tack, and to unveil a radical reform program, opening North Korea to foreign investment and visitors, all in the name of Kim Il-sung's doctrine of juche (self- reliance) would be folly, too.

Leave aside that, given its past record, and those present images, there are not likely to be many Overseas Koreans willing to save North Korea in the same way that Overseas Chinese investors have saved post-Tiananmen China. One homonym for juche, using a different Chinese character, is indigestion, and that is exactly the condition which would result from a crash reform program.

The post Kim Il-sung regime is taking power by legitimizing itself in relation to the past. But real meaningful reform means a break with the past, which the regime could only supply by delegitimizing itself. Again, collapse would threaten.

So while the world looks hard for signs of discord in the North Korean ruling elite, it is not finding it. What is required is that, either now or in the future, some brave North Korean, speaking to the KWP Central Committee does to the Kim Dynasty what Nikita Khrushchev did in his secret speech excoriating Stalin at the 20th Party Congress in Moscow.

For now, North Korea is concerned only with the Great Son and sun but not with the reality of the moon.