Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (140 page)

One argument against taking either of Ko’s sons seriously as a possible heir was that Kim Jong-chol and Kim Jong-un were not long out of college. But Kim Jong-il himself had started his career at a rather high level, straight from university. His father might already have had him in mind as heir at that time.

An intelligence source cited by Seoul’s
Chosun Ilbo
described Kim Jong-chol as an intelligent young man who had studied in France. He was reported to have begun work in the central Workers’ Party apparatus.
⁵¹
Other sources said he had studied in Switzerland at an international school, watched over by the North Korean ambassador—and there had developed a passion for American NBA basketball. Oh Young-nam thought he had studied in Singapore.

Even less was known of Kim Jong-un, said to be two years younger than Jong-chol. In early 2003 a Japanese chef, who said he had traveled to Pyongyang frequently to cook for Kim Jong-il at home, talked about the two sons on television. He told Japanese viewers that, in contrast to his polite elder brother, the younger lad when very small exhibited to strangers a suspicious mien. Jong-un’s glaring ferocity, the chef said, pleased Kim Jong-il.
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The chef said Papa had indicated he would not choose Jong-un’s elder brother because he considered Jong-chol too girlish. Being mean, after all, could help round out the résumé of a dictator in waiting.

Ko Yong-hui’s own family background might have seemed a negative influence on her children’s prospects, in view of the dismal fate of other returned Japanese-Korean families. In the end, though, if Kim Jong-il said someone had a good family background, then the definition of “good” simply changed. As we have seen in chapter 36, the old doctrine of placing the working class first was on its way out and the moneyed class—-which included many Japanese-Korean families—-was becoming recognized as valuable to the country.

From Kim’s point of view as a leader obsessed with propaganda and hard currency, Ko’s family background might seem ideal. First, as a migrant from Japan she might be presumed to have some influence with the remaining Korean residents of Japan, whose money Kim Jong-il continued to covet. Additionally, her father’s reported birthplace near Mount Halla on Cheju island would fit nicely with a pro-reunification slogan Pyongyang had spouted for several years: “From Mount Paektu to Mount Halla.” The vision was of a single, united Korea stretching from the northern tip of the Korean peninsula, where Kim Jong-il allegedly was born, to the southern tip. The slogan was thus seen in some quarters as a device either originally intended or later adapted to further the development of a personality cult centering on Ko and, through her, one of her sons.

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With that background, consider an August 2002 article published by North Korea’s People’s Army Publishing Company entitled, “The Respected Mother is the Most Faithful and Loyal Subject to the Dear Leader Comrade Supreme Commander.” The South Korean monthly
Wolgan Choson,
which told the rest of the world about the article in its March 2003 issue, reported that several experts believed it referred to Ko Yong-hui.

It could not refer to Kim Jong-nam’s mother, Song Hye-rim, because she was dead; the language indicated a live person, the magazine’s experts said. The unnamed
omon’im,
or “Respected Mother,” according to the People’s Army article, was “the most faithful of the faithful.” She “devotes herself to the personal safety of the Comrade Supreme Commander,” Kim Jong-il. “Accompanying the Comrade Supreme Commander, she has climbed frontline hills for over eight years.” Kim Jong-il himself-was quoted as saying of her, “She understands me deeper than anyone else, devotes herself to me. It is utter happiness to have someone like her right beside me.”

Respected Mother was boundlessly considerate of the troops of the People’s Army. Knowing that the country was in a “difficult” situation, she showed her concern by asking if soldiers had enough soap and other essentials. Like Kim Jong-il as a young marksman accompanying his father, and like Kim Jong-il’s own, deified mother,
omonim
was portrayed as a fine shot, free with advice to soldiers on how to shoot better with small arms. “You should hit a moving object,” she was said to exhort the soldiers she visited.

Why could all that not apply to Kim Yong-suk, who had been recognized as Kim Jong-il’s wife by his father? The analysts’ thinking seemed to be that Kim Yong-suk had been dumped, more or less, and wasn’t getting as much quality time as Ko Yong-hui with the Dear Comrade Supreme Commander. The magazine quoted high-level defector Hwang Jang-yop as saying, “An heir must be the child of a woman a king loves, and it is true that Kim Jong-il loves Ko Yong-hui most.”
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Note that the eight years during which
omonim
was said to have been accompanying Kim Jong-il on visits to front-line military units would have begun almost precisely at the moment in July 1994 when Kim Il-sung died. Possibly Kim Jong-il had hesitated to show Ko Yong-hui off publicly before then, for fear of sparking an uncomfortable discussion of family values with his dad. Now that he himself was the Dear Comrade Supreme Commander, however, he could arrange for public opinion to shift to recognize as his main squeeze whomever he might choose.

The South Korean magazine’s expert consultants focused particularly on a phrase in the People’s Army article that said the unnamed Respected Mother “assists the Comrade Supreme Commander closest to his body.” That seemed to be a reference to a wife or concubine, they argued. And if
legal wife Kim Yong-suk was intended, they wondered, “why wouldn’t the propagandists come right out and name her?

A further argument for assuming that Respected Mother was not Kim Jong-il’s recognized “wife Kim Yong-suk was that there would be no need to deify a-woman whose child could not expect to be named heir. Kim Yong-suk had only a daughter. The propaganda about a third-generation succession specifically mentioned a grandson of Kim Il-sung.

Respected Mother, then—like the Glorious Party Center of the 1970s— was supposed to be recognized and deferred to first, identified only later after people got used to the idea that there was a new deity in town.

That said, consider this: What if Kim Jong-il had looked over his offspring and judged daughter Sol-song—-who, as we saw earlier, had been accompanying him and advising him on his guidance trips—the most competent and “loyal” of the lot? An article in the leading South Korean daily
Chosun Ilbo
quoted an unnamed source who described Sol-song not only as her father’s frequent companion on his trips to offer on-the-spot guidance but as the apple of Papa’s eye. Beautiful (resembling her mother, official wife Kim Yong-suk), Sol-song was also beloved of her father “because of her good and kind nature,” the paper’s source said. She was modest. As a political economy student at Kim Il-sung University, she had insisted on alighting from her car a hundred meters before reaching the campus, then walking the rest of the way so that she would not appear to put on airs as the Leader’s daughter.

Add that Sol-song, born in 1974, was considered an economic specialist. The article didn’t mention the likelihood that her college training in that field might be no better than her father’s, since she graduated in his department at KISU. But maybe she had a private tutor. Maybe under an assumed name she had joined one of the groups of North Koreans who went to study Western-style business administration in Australia.

In any case,
Chosun Ilbo’s
source said that Kim Jong-il on his guidance trips “is often seen asking Sol-song, who is standing behind him, what her opinion is, after receiving a briefing from the supervisor. The scenes of father and daughter exchanging questions and answers on economy occasionally appear in North Korean documentary films.” The paper’s account concluded: “Some view the fact that both Sol-song and Jong-nam accompany Kim Jong-il on his on-the-spot inspections as grooming them for their separate roles as the regime’s successors.” Like her aunt, Kim Jong-il’s sister Kim Kyong-hui, the light-industries boss for the party, “Sol-song could take charge of the economic sector.”
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Indeed, thinking from Kim Jong-il’s point of view, why not anoint her as Respected Mother (maybe she was such a good daughter she trimmed his toenails, thus assisting him “closest to his body”)—or glorify her mother, Kim Yong-suk, in that fashion? Then Sol-song could eventually reign—alone or
in combination with the Young General or another half-sibling. It would be a simple matter to order the propagandists to adjust the late Great Leader’s alleged remark about a grandson to make the word read, thenceforth, “grandchild” or “grandchildren.” Designating a daughter as heir would be in line with efforts Kim Jong-il had made early in his career to reduce discrimination against women. And—no small matter to him—he would have the satisfaction of having outsmarted, once again, most of the people who presumed to figure him out.

The Asian royal model that Kim Jong-il told Madeleine Albright he was interested in emulating, Thailand, had been a constitutional rather than absolute monarchy since a 1932 revolution. Still, while living there as a Peace Corps volunteer in the 1960s and then decades later as a journalist, I encountered a deep-seated, old-fashioned popular reverence for the royal family. The king from time to time would call in feuding politicians and lecture them, insisting that they straighten out messes they had created and look to the welfare of the people. Agonizing over the monumental traffic jams caused whenever a royal entourage took to the streets of Bangkok during rush hour, he might suggest construction of a new express-way or river bridge. But for the most part he left the management of the country to a prime minister chosen by a more or less democratically elected parliament.

I was not sure Kim Jong-il personally could make an easy transition from absolute monarch to Thai-style limited monarch—although the limited role might have been what he thought he was playing in 1996 when he bemoaned the poor work of subordinates he had entrusted to take care of the economy. It seemed more likely that a younger representative of the dynasty—perhaps one of those who had been educated, like Thailand’s King Bhumibol Adulyadej, in Switzerland—could make a go of it.

On the off chance that Kim Jong-il might summon me to Pyongyang as a consultant advising him how to apply the Thai model, I drafted a memo for him:

Permit me to summarize the points I made in yesterday’s discussion, Mr. Chairman. I advised that if your son Jong-un is as ferocious as we have heard he is, you should pass him over as your successor. Pardon me for the odious comparison, but Saddam Hussein chose Uday and Qusay—and look where they are now. Since your intention is to choose a modern, limited monarch instead of a dictator, you should pick not the toughest but the most humane candidate. The chosen successor should then work ceaselessly and devotedly to improve the people’s welfare.

In Thailand, as I told you, the people are especially fond of one of His Majesty King Bhumipol’s daughters. But while the rather saintly Princess Sirinthorn is hugely admired for her charitable good works, her older brother is first in line to succeed to the throne at the conclusion of the reign of the deeply beloved present king.

In the case of the DPKK (Democratic People’s Kingdom of Korea—I hope I’m not getting ahead of myself here) you have not publicized a formal choice and therefore you are still in a position to consider elevating your own reputedly modest daughter, Sol-song. With her knowledge of the economic issues that are so important to your subjects, she might become a monarch who could “win hearts and minds.

Assuming that your daughter is of the caliber of the Thai princess, you could even avoid the expense of cranking up a brand-new propaganda campaign to create reverence for her. How? When instructing young writers I often pass along (in addition, of course, to your own trenchant observations on the importance of grasping the “seed” of a work) the advice that they “show us; don’t tell us.” By applying that same principle to statecraft, showing her greatness rather than telling about it, your daughter could inspire the people to recycle the old propaganda slogans on their own initiative. That way they would continue to believe in the slogans despite intrusion of the sort of foreign influences that otherwise might incline them to disbelief. “Under the Loving Care of the Motherly Leader” has a nice ring to it, don’t you think?

I do not know much about the other candidates. Perhaps one of them is better cast as Respected and Beloved Leader than your daughter. I simply suggest, strongly, that in judging all of them you use this criterion of humanity.

As we discussed, the second point is that crowning your designated heir sooner rather than later could improve the prospects that the economic transformation would succeed and the Kim dynasty survive—perhaps even for thousands of years, as those immortal lyrics from
Song of Paradise
envision. Once out from under the worst of the present economic and diplomatic crisis, having delegated to competent and trusted officials the task of running the country, you could abdicate and retire to Cannes—or even to Hollywood, assuming a breakthrough in relations with the United States.

So there you have it, Mr. Chairman. On a personal note, I am full of gratitude for your very kind hospitality. The guesthouse was wonderfully appointed, and my lack of appetite at dinner last night certainly was no reflection on the quality of the cuisine, which was magnificent. (I imagine I simply had not adjusted to the time
difference.) The karaoke party was great fun, all the ladies truly lovely. Please convey my parting regards especially to Miss Choe, along with my regrets that I was not in a position to accept your very generous offer of her hand in marriage. About my consulting fee: I took your sage advice and confided to your bursar my plan to donate the amount to an aid foundation. When he realized it would be coming back to your country in that fashion he agreed to pay me in real dollars this time, instead of Super-Ks.