Kim Jong Il’s son named to two new posts
Party, military jobs fuel succession rumors
SEOUL, South Korea – North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expanded his son’s growing portfolio today, using the country’s largest political conference in 30 years to cement his family’s role in protecting his reclusive regime.
North Korea’s state news agency reported that Kim Jong Il’s son, Kim Jong Un, took his first positions within the ruling Workers’ Party, where he’ll need to build a base of support among members who might question his age or experience. He was named vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, which had previously had just eight members, including his father, and to the party’s Central Committee.
The jobs, in addition to his appointment to a top military position the day before, underscore the young general’s accelerated rise: Until recently, he had never been named in the North Korean news media. Now, at 26 or 27 years old, he is North Korea’s second most powerful man.
But experts say it was the tapping of Kim Jong Il’s sister, Kim Kyong Hui, as a military general that offered a glimpse into the North Korean leader’s strategy for protecting power as his health declines and his untested son emerges. Put simply, he plans to rely on his family.
Politics is the Kim family business, and staying in business is the family’s latest challenge. Though the Kims have always used North Korea as an expansive family headquarters – “the entire bureaucracy is just a personal staff for Kim Jong Il,” Seoul-based analyst Park Hyeong-Jung said – experts on Tuesday noted that Kim Kyong Hui’s new job reinforces the bloodline-over-party priority. She has no military experience, but she was made a four-star general.
“When things really get tough – when the leader gets ill – it’s the family that starts to circle the wagons,” said Ken Gause, an Alexandria, Va.-based analyst specializing in North Korean leadership.
“We’ve seen this in Iraq, in the last years of the Saddam (Hussein) regime. And that’s the case here. It seems to me not an accident that the day before they make party appointments, they make the bloodline appointments.”
Even before Kim Kyong Hui received her new title, the father-to-son power transfer was a family job. Kim Kyong Hui’s husband, National Defense Commission Vice Chairman Jang Song Taek, is widely viewed as a regent for Kim Jong Un. He could also serve as an interim ruler if the “dear leader” dies or falls seriously ill before Kim Jong Un has adapted to his designated role.