NCNK Briefing Book: After Kim Jong-il

Analysis

Spencer Kim, following the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for Korea, calls for a "new model" for relations between North Korea and the world, one that is “holistic, sequential, sustained and consensual.” He also addresses the importance of creating a stronger base of knowledge on North Korea:

The second element of the “New Model” is the creation of a reliable “epistemic” community on North Korea. It was clear to those of us on the council, that there is no agreement among “experts” on North Korea on even on the most narrow set of facts, and no reliable understanding of the workings of the international community, and the players in Northeast Asia, among North Koreans. In other words, considering the magnitude of the issue, we don’t know much about each other ― but we do have a full panoply of preconceptions and stereotypes constantly played back by both the media and propaganda to the point that reality has been distorted out of all proportion. And we are all, on all sides, unconsciously victims of the distortion. Like the poor souls in Plato’s Cave, we see the shadows and allow our imaginations to conjure up a distorted reality. 

Victor Cha and Nicholas Anderson, writing in the Washington Quarterly, argue that the Arab Spring has more relevance for North Korea than experts typically assert:

Ironically, we should pay less attention to scholars and experts who dismiss the Arab Spring’s relevance, and more attention to Kim Jong-il’s actions in the aftermath of the Middle East tumult, which do not look like the actions of a leader confident that his worst days were left behind some 20 years ago. Does Kim appear to fear the Arab Spring? Absolutely. What does this mean for the future of his regime?

John Feffer, writing for Foreign Policy in Focus on January 18, discusses how each new administration in Washington forgets the lessons of its predecessors, and repeats the mistakes of the past:

The challenge for North Korea is that its big year of hoped-for accomplishment coincides with elections in the US, South Korea, and Russia as well as a leadership transition in China. In other words, these countries will be preoccupied with their own domestic issues and will have less time to devote to North Korea policy. In the US in particular, the Obama administration will be rather reluctant to make any significant overtures to Pyongyang for fear of enabling its Republican opposition to play the “appeasement card.”

If Obama loses in 2012, North Korea will have to endure yet another period of amnesia in US foreign policy formulation. If the Obama team wins, however, it can maintain enough institutional continuity to learn from its early mistakes, much as the George W. Bush administration did in its second term. Only then, perhaps, might it be possible to resolve the crisis in US-North Korean relations once and for all before America’s periodic memory loss inevitably kicks in again.

Ruediger Frank, in a January 13 article for 38 North, discusses the difficulties North Korea may face in transferring Kim Il-sung's legitimacy to a third generation of leadership:

For two decades since the mid-1970s, Kim Jong Il was promoted as the only person in the world who could fully grasp the wisdom of Kim Il Sung: he joined him on his numerous journeys through the country, learned from him, assisted him and then humbly continued his work. Kim Jong Il’s position after 1994 was weaker than that of his father, but he could convincingly claim to be the only logical choice for the continuation of a path and leadership that was largely undisputed and beyond any doubt.

One does not need to be a North Korea expert to understand that the same degree of legitimacy cannot be passed on to Kim Jong Un. Kim Jong Il was not Kim Il Sung, but he was his closest aide. Kim Jong Il did not fight against Japan, but he was said to be born at Mt. Paektu. Kim Jong Il did not win the Korean War, but he built the bomb and initiated the Military First era. Kim Jong Il did not invent chuch’e, but he systematized it. Nevertheless, Kim Jong Il for a long time in his career was a moon, not a sun. He gleamed because he reflected Kim Il Sung’s light. This is the “text,” as Brian Myers calls it. But how can a moon illuminate the next generation as brightly as a sun?

Evans Revere, in a Foreign Policy Paper Series article for the Brookings Institution published in January 2012, argues that the United States must continue to prioritize the ultimate denuclearization of North Korea.

Kim Jong-il’s death has dramatically changed the context of efforts to resume multilateral denuclearization talks with North Korea, removing from the scene the mastermind of its development of nuclear weapons. But did it also eliminate the one person who might have been able to end Pyongyang’s nuclear program? We will never know whether Kim, who exercised tremendous power during his 17-year reign, would finally have made the strategic decision to denuclearize North Korea. But we do know that his youngest son and successor, Kim Jong-un, will now face that decision. It will be a difficult, perhaps even impossible, step for a young, inexperienced, untried leader likely to be even more dependent on the military and on the nuclear and missile totems than was his father. Making the wrong decision could hasten the demise of his regime.

James Church, writing in 38 North on January 3, 2012, assesses the dynamics in North Korea evident since Kim Jong-il's memorial service:

This game of “who’s on the merry-go-round today” is liable to get dizzying, not because they keep switching from horsie to giraffe and then back again, but because we will be watching a little too closely. Rankings of one or two people withina particular category (i.e. full and alternate Politburo) can shift on any given day. Moving between the categories is much more telling. In olden days of Central Committee plenary meetings, new appointments at the top levels were often formally announced. We should be so lucky to go back to such regular WPK proceedings again.

Anything that sticks out so far? Well, yes, one thing perhaps. In the nasty, but not overly threatening, NDC statement on Friday, there is a formulation that begs for clarification. “Upon the joint authorization of our party, state, army, and people.” These are not normal times, and that is decidedly not the normal formulation. Normally, No. 1 is cited (or implied) as doing the authorizing. Now, suddenly, it is “joint?” If we see it again, there will be grist for many mills.

Ken Gause, writing for The Peninsula blog on January 3, 2012, discusses the signals on the leadership transition coming out of the DPRK:

What seems to be happening is that the regime is using the mourning period to rapidly move through the third phase of the succession, a phase in which the heir apparent would be adorned with the titles of power. In the coming months, if not weeks according to some sources, we can expect that a formal meeting of the Korean Worker’s Party will be convened to convey at least the title of CMC chairman on Kim Chong-un, which, according to the recently revised Party Charter (Article 22), carries with it the title of General Secretary of the Party. On 30 December, the Politburo passed a decree formally transferring the post of Supreme Commander to Kim Chong-un in accordance with his father’s will. Now all military units are required to obey Kim Chong-un’s orders.

Primary Documents and Statements

Adam Cathcart has collected and edited a lengthy dossier, "China and the North Korean Succession," containing translations of Chinese materials concerning North Korea. 

This dossier, the first in an ongoing series of SinoNK.com digests on relations between the People’s Republic of China (PRC) and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK), draws upon a number of  open source Chinese materials  to  provide a clearer sketch of the Sino-North Korean relationship during the eight days following the announcement of Kim Jong-Il’s death.  

This  dossier represents the tip of the iceberg when it comes to  Chinese interactions with and analysis of North Korea in this  period.  A careful approach to the documents selected, rather than  an attempt at true comprehensiveness, was favored. Several of the  sources featured in  this dossier are being made available for the  first time in English. These include  dispatches from the Chinese  Embassy in Pyongyang,  more accurate translations from state  media stories of Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao’s visits to the DPRK  Embassy in Beijing, and editorials from Huanqiu Shibao [环球时 报/  Global Times] and  important  “think-tank intellectuals” in  China. Also included is a sample of what Kim’s death looked like  from the perspective of  one  rather active corner of the  microblogging site Sina Weibo.  

This January 11, 2012 KCNA article discusses the US-DPRK negotiations for the provision of food aid in return for a suspension of North Korea's uranium enrichment program.

...The U.S., at the DPRK-U.S. high-ranking talks started in July 2011, proposed to take confidence-building steps such as suspension of sanctions as well as food aid in case the DPRK takes similar steps such as temporary suspension of uranium enrichment the former asked. After all the U.S. itself raised this problem as political. 

But, the U.S. has drastically changed the amount and items of provision contrary to the originally promised food aid of more than 300 000 tons. So, the DPRK cannot but have doubt about the U.S. will for confidence building, and this compels the former to return to the boundary discussed in May 2011. 

We will watch if the U.S. truly wants to build confidence.

More...

North Korea's Joint New Year Editorial has traditionally outlined policy goals for the upcoming year, and this year's editorial may offer some insight into the internal dynamics of the DPRK:

As long as there are the Party, army and state, which Kim Jong Il developed to be invincible, as long as Kim Jong Un, successor to the revolutionary cause of Juche, leads us sagaciously and as long as there is an excellent people who support their leaders faithfully through generations, the cause of building a thriving country is sure to emerge victorious--this is an iron truth inscribed in our hearts as we set out on a fresh march. 

This year, Juche 101 (2012), is the year when Kim Jong Il's plan for achieving prosperity will bear a brilliant fruit, and the year of a grand march, when a new century of Kim Il Sung's Korea begins.

In an interview with the Associated Press, Yang Hyong Sop, Vice President of the DPRK's Supreme People's Assembly, stresses continuity between the leadership of Kim Jong-un and that of his father, while also hinting at the creation of a "knowledge-based" economy in North Korea.

In the first interview with foreign journalists by a high-level North Korean official since Kim Jong Il's Dec. 17 death, Politburo member and Kim family confidante Yang Hyong Sop told The Associated Press that North Koreans were in good hands with their young new leader. He emphasized an unbroken continuity from father to son that suggests a continuation of Kim Jong Il's key policies.

"We suffered the greatest loss in the history of our nation as a result of the sudden, unexpected and tragic loss of the great leader Kim Jong Il," he said in the interview Monday at Mansudae Assembly Hall, seat of the North Korean legislative body.

"But still, we are not worried a bit," he added, "because we know that we are being led by comrade Kim Jong Un, who is fully prepared to carry on the heritage created by the great Gen. Kim Jong Il."

...His comments this week indicated there would be little change to major policies laid out by Kim Jong Un's father in the three years before his death. Yang said the new leader was focused on a "knowledge-based" economy and looking at economic reforms enacted by other nations, including China.

Audio/Video

 UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon speaks to CBS News about the possibility of improved inter-Korean relations.

Gi-Wook Shin, David Straub, Joon-woo Park, and Katharina Zellweger speak at a Stanford University panel, "The Korean Peninsula after Kim Jong-il: Challenges and Opportunities."

Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell speaks at the Stimson Center on January 19, discussing a number of issues relevant to US-Asia relations, including potential engagement with North Korea regarding its nuclear program and other matters.