North Korea: Kim"s Swagger Speaks of Weakness, Not Strength
On a visit to North Korea in the early 1990s, I packed a history of the country. One lunchtime in my Pyongyang hotel room, my guide found me leafing through the section on the country's origins at the close of the Second World War. He spied a photograph of Kim il-Sung, founder of the Kim dynasty, in Russian army uniform. His mouth fell open in amazement. Despite the fact that my guide had been partly educated in the Soviet Union, he had no idea that Kim was essentially a Russian creation.
On my Sony shortwave radio the BBC World Service was relaying the latest election results from London €" the notion of a national leader changing at the behest of the people was equally breathtaking for the guide, who seized the book and started leafing through it, scanning the photographs avidly.
Information is still at a premium in North Korea. Just as when I made my visit there is but a single television station and the evening news usually consists of one item and almost invariably it involves a member of the Kim family.
The day of my arrival happened to coincide with one by the late King of Cambodia, Sihanouk. A full hour was spent examining the relationship with one of Pyongyang's few friends which, even then, was more historic than active.
Today there is more leakage across the border from the south but the government is still able to maintain the central North Korean narrative that the northerners are the only pure representatives of the ethnicity who have maintained their cultural traditions independent of all others and are, therefore, the only true claimants to lead a unified peninsula.
Kim il-Sung took on the trappings of the Stalinist Moscow regime that created him and the structure of the government aped Uncle Joe's, but in reality any ideological connection with communism withered away many years ago to reveal the underlying fascist inclination. The late Kim Jong-il, father of the current leader of the dynastic brand, openly admired Hitler and appears to have learned no lessons from Adolf's demise. Meetings of the Pyongyang 'parliament' look like nothing so much as Nuremberg rallies except there are no out and out Nazi salutes, though the goose-stepping North Korean People's Army commandos look like the original Nazi version. Kim Jong-il's version of his salute to the people was reminiscent of his hero's.
But what makes the current stand-off with the North so hard to read is Jong-eun's lack of experience. It was relatively easy to follow the perorations of policy under his father: he knew how far to raise the stakes to win aid and assistance without risking an all-out conflict. Jong-eun does not seem to understand that the fireworks he has been playing with are real and could go off with disastrous consequences for all concerned. The language used in official threats against the Americans, the Japanese and the southerners goes beyond anything experienced under either his father or grandfather.
The apparent contempt for his primary sponsor, China, though is much harder to divine. It is easy to see why the North should feel it is on a roll with the all too apparent decline of South Korea's sponsor, the United States, in relation to Kim's hitherto best friend, China. That makes the official media's attitude at the beginning of the year all the more puzzling.
Every year Rodong Shinmun, the official organ of the North Korean Workers Party, sends out New Year greetings to fraternal countries and the list has always been topped by China. This year not only was the list headed by Laos but China's message was nowhere to be seen.
That speaks not only to what Jong-eun thinks to be the strength of his own position but his determination to map out a more aggressive approach under his tutelage. That would also help to explain why he purged the four most senior army men after he took power. That is not at all unusual when a new dictator takes power but on this occasion it seems to have had more far-reaching effects than merely signalling his arrival. Perhaps the 'old hands' recognized what potential risks he was taking but it's nonetheless unlikely that they spoke out against a more aggressive policy for that would bring a very speedy removal from office. But a peaceful retirement comes to very few senior officers in the People's Army anyway.
The Pyongyang regime having failed to cow anyone with its missile and nuclear tests, and the US military having managed to restrain itself from responding in kind to North Korean provocations, the way is now open for the north to take a step back and contemplate its handiwork.
Barely 30 years old, the new Korean leader has certainly made his mark, though so far, he has won nothing in the way of concessions from his antagonists. But, following Richard Nixon's madman theory, he has made it abundantly clear that no-one should dismiss anything that he says lightly, be they friend or foe.
The more loudly the North protests, the more clear it becomes that its high-voltage approach to international relations speaks more of weakness than strength.
'North Korea is in a desperate situation,' says Kim Hyun-hui, the former North Korean agent who blew up a South Korean airliner, killing 115 people in 1987. 'Discontent with Kim Jong-eun is so high; he has to put a lid on it.
'The only thing he has is nuclear weapons. That's why he has created this sense of war, to try to rally the population. He's doing business with his nuclear weapons,' says the woman who is now settled in the south and married with two children, having been pardoned and freed from a death sentence.
In reality, the reliance on a nuclear threat is the only way he can express the North's military might. Most of the nation's military power is based on old Soviet-era equipment dating from before the break-up of the Soviet Union.
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On my Sony shortwave radio the BBC World Service was relaying the latest election results from London €" the notion of a national leader changing at the behest of the people was equally breathtaking for the guide, who seized the book and started leafing through it, scanning the photographs avidly.
Information is still at a premium in North Korea. Just as when I made my visit there is but a single television station and the evening news usually consists of one item and almost invariably it involves a member of the Kim family.
The day of my arrival happened to coincide with one by the late King of Cambodia, Sihanouk. A full hour was spent examining the relationship with one of Pyongyang's few friends which, even then, was more historic than active.
Today there is more leakage across the border from the south but the government is still able to maintain the central North Korean narrative that the northerners are the only pure representatives of the ethnicity who have maintained their cultural traditions independent of all others and are, therefore, the only true claimants to lead a unified peninsula.
Kim il-Sung took on the trappings of the Stalinist Moscow regime that created him and the structure of the government aped Uncle Joe's, but in reality any ideological connection with communism withered away many years ago to reveal the underlying fascist inclination. The late Kim Jong-il, father of the current leader of the dynastic brand, openly admired Hitler and appears to have learned no lessons from Adolf's demise. Meetings of the Pyongyang 'parliament' look like nothing so much as Nuremberg rallies except there are no out and out Nazi salutes, though the goose-stepping North Korean People's Army commandos look like the original Nazi version. Kim Jong-il's version of his salute to the people was reminiscent of his hero's.
But what makes the current stand-off with the North so hard to read is Jong-eun's lack of experience. It was relatively easy to follow the perorations of policy under his father: he knew how far to raise the stakes to win aid and assistance without risking an all-out conflict. Jong-eun does not seem to understand that the fireworks he has been playing with are real and could go off with disastrous consequences for all concerned. The language used in official threats against the Americans, the Japanese and the southerners goes beyond anything experienced under either his father or grandfather.
The apparent contempt for his primary sponsor, China, though is much harder to divine. It is easy to see why the North should feel it is on a roll with the all too apparent decline of South Korea's sponsor, the United States, in relation to Kim's hitherto best friend, China. That makes the official media's attitude at the beginning of the year all the more puzzling.
Every year Rodong Shinmun, the official organ of the North Korean Workers Party, sends out New Year greetings to fraternal countries and the list has always been topped by China. This year not only was the list headed by Laos but China's message was nowhere to be seen.
That speaks not only to what Jong-eun thinks to be the strength of his own position but his determination to map out a more aggressive approach under his tutelage. That would also help to explain why he purged the four most senior army men after he took power. That is not at all unusual when a new dictator takes power but on this occasion it seems to have had more far-reaching effects than merely signalling his arrival. Perhaps the 'old hands' recognized what potential risks he was taking but it's nonetheless unlikely that they spoke out against a more aggressive policy for that would bring a very speedy removal from office. But a peaceful retirement comes to very few senior officers in the People's Army anyway.
The Pyongyang regime having failed to cow anyone with its missile and nuclear tests, and the US military having managed to restrain itself from responding in kind to North Korean provocations, the way is now open for the north to take a step back and contemplate its handiwork.
Barely 30 years old, the new Korean leader has certainly made his mark, though so far, he has won nothing in the way of concessions from his antagonists. But, following Richard Nixon's madman theory, he has made it abundantly clear that no-one should dismiss anything that he says lightly, be they friend or foe.
The more loudly the North protests, the more clear it becomes that its high-voltage approach to international relations speaks more of weakness than strength.
'North Korea is in a desperate situation,' says Kim Hyun-hui, the former North Korean agent who blew up a South Korean airliner, killing 115 people in 1987. 'Discontent with Kim Jong-eun is so high; he has to put a lid on it.
'The only thing he has is nuclear weapons. That's why he has created this sense of war, to try to rally the population. He's doing business with his nuclear weapons,' says the woman who is now settled in the south and married with two children, having been pardoned and freed from a death sentence.
In reality, the reliance on a nuclear threat is the only way he can express the North's military might. Most of the nation's military power is based on old Soviet-era equipment dating from before the break-up of the Soviet Union.
news magazine
social affairs