Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (57 page)

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Gift-giving didn’t win over all the skeptics who questioned Kim Jong-il’s rise. Different approaches were needed to deal with several first-generation revolutionaries who “treated Kim Jong-il as a kid not yet weaned,” in Kang Myong-do’s words. Those included top civilian officials Kim Dong-kyu, Kim Il and Pak Song-chol as well as a senior general, O Jin-u, who had been a guerrilla protégé of Kim Il-sung’s in Manchuria.

According to Kang’s account, Kim Jong-il betrayed a bosom pal to get O on his side. The pal was Yi Yong-mu, the ambitious general and Politburo member in charge of the political department of the Korean People’s Army (and, by some accounts, the husband of a cousin of Kim Il-sung’s), who had oiled his way into Kim Jong-il’s inner circle starting in the junior Kim’s college days. “Yi was very obsequious to Kim Jong-il, and Kim Jong-il liked that very much,” said Kang. “He gave lots of presents to Kim Jong-il and built him a mansion at Changwan Mountain. From the KPA orchestra he handed over nineteen-to-twenty-year-old women to Kim Jong-il as Happy Corps members—they both liked women. Yi was really friendly with Kim Jong-il. They went all over the country in a Lincoln and a Mercedes-Benz. Yi used familiar language in addressing Kim Jong-il. Kim Jong-il trusted Yi 100 percent. Yi was very confident, and O Jin-u didn’t like his attitude.”

Then, said Kang, “some personnel problems arose in Kangwon Province. The First Infantry commander’s job was open, and Yi and O favored different people. O was a veteran of the First Infantry and he wanted a first-generation revolutionary to take over the job. Yi wanted one of his own cronies.” On paper, Yi was in charge of military personnel matters, having been assigned the job by Kim Il-sung himself. According to Kang, though, Kim Jong-il realized that if he supported his buddy Yi he would “be seen as siding against the first generation of revolutionaries. Kim Jong-il, being smart, sacrificed Yi, consigning him to a secondary post in a logging area in the remote mountains of Chagang Province.” Going further, Kim Jong-il suggested to Kim Il-sung that O Jin-u be given Yi’s former job as head of the overall political department of the KPA. “Kim Jong-il considered O Jin-u not so smart, but he wanted somebody from the first generation on his side,” said Kang.
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O’s support apparently proved useful to Kim Jong-il in his competition with his uncle. Hwang Jang-yop is quoted as reporting that Kim Jong-il and O Jin-u “were major factors behind driving Hur Bong-hak, Kim Kwang-yop and other military men out of power between 1969 and 1970 for purposes of emasculating Kim Yong-ju politically”
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Kim Yong-ju was elected to the Politburo in 1970, ranked sixth in the
regime. Kim Il-sung gave him the high-profile mission of negotiating with South Korean intelligence chief Lee Hu-rak in the North-South talks of 1972–1973. But in the palace politics at home Yong-ju had met his match in his cunning nephew, and the uncle’s rise proved ephemeral. He lost to Kim Jong-il his post as party chief of organization and guidance in September 1973. As a consolation prize Kim Il-sung gave him a vice-premiership— negligible in the scheme of things in Pyongyang, where the party apparatus far outranked the cabinet. Kim Yong-ju was dropped from public mention entirely after his attendance was noted at an April 1975 meeting of the Supreme People’s Assembly. (He was not to make another announced appearance until 1993.
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) His follower Ryu Jang-shik like-wise disappeared from public view in September of 1975.

Around that time, Kim Jong-il managed to neutralize any clout possessed by his stepmother, Kim Song-ae, who had favored Uncle Yong-ju in a bid to improve the eventual chances of her own son Pyong-il. By introducing Kim Il-sung to two women who then became favorites of the Great Leader, Kang Myong-do told me, Kim Jong-il drove a wedge into his father’s marriage and reduced the first lady’s influence. (Kang added that the Fatherly Leader’s son by one of those women was being raised in Switzerland.) To add insult to injury, the propaganda apparatus pressed Song-ae into service in 1975 to offer public praise of her late predecessor and rival for Kim Il-sung’s affections. Photographed wearing a facial expression in which some
Nodong Shinmun
readers thought they discerned distaste, she called Kim Jong-suk— Kim Jong-il’s late mother, then the subject of Pyongyang’s version of beatification—an “imperishable communist revolutionary fighter and outstanding woman activist.”

An apparent interruption in Kim Jong-il’s rise came when the regime removed his portrait from public places in October 1976 and reduced what had been practically daily references to “the Party Center,” then dropped all use of the term from the early part of 1977. That curious incident remains to be fully explained, but the consensus of Pyongyang-watchers seems to be that the young Kim’s disappearance from public view was a response to concern his advance had engendered among influential people.

Soviet newsmen stationed in Pyongyang told me when I visited the capital in 1979 that the key concerns leading to Kim Jong-il’s public sidelining had been expressed within the military, where Kim Jong-il—as we saw in his involvement in the the contest between O and Yi—had assumed an oversight role.

The junior Kim’s portaits came down just a few weeks after the 1976
Panmunjom incident in which North Korean troops, wielding axes, killed two American officers who had led a detail to trim a poplar tree that interfered with visual monitoring of the truce zone. The killings came after the Americans had refused North Korean soldiers’ demand that they halt the tree-cutting. Having seen enough of the younger Kim’s leadership, one of the Russians told me, irate North Korean officers had blamed Kim Jong-il for the diplomatically embarrassing axe incident and had succeeded in getting him removed, for the time being, from his military role.

An unofficial, Tokyo-based spokesman for the regime, Kim Myong-chol, insisted in a 1982 article in a Hong Kong magazine that Kim Jong-il had not been involved in the axe incident: “Kim Jong-il was preoccupied at that time with organizing the North Korean people, party and government. He was simply too busy to have had any role in that affair, Pyongyang says.” Much later, however, after Pyongyang had cranked up a propaganda campaign to glorify the junior Kim as a great general, another unofficial overseas spokesman pictured Kim Jong-il as having given an order, during the axe incident, that the Americans “should be taught a lesson.” When the United States responded to the killings with a display of military muscle, “Kim Jong-il was not impressed and laughed at the American moves.”
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A Swedish diplomat who was based in Pyongyang as his country’s ambassador during that period offers an intriguing aside: “The pictures of the son seemed to change.” Mean-while, Eastern European diplomats openly circulated rumors that Kim Il-sung had a son older than Kim Jong-il from an earlier marriage. “Had the elder one been required to renounce his rights as firstborn in favor of his brother?” The diplomats could only speculate, as they were unable to confirm the rumors that there was an older son.
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In a widely disseminated story from that period, a pro-Seoul Korean-language newspaper in Japan,
Toitsu Nippo
(Unification Daily), alleged on February 2, 1978, that young military officers led by an aide to Gen. Yi Yong-mu had attempted to kill Kim Jong-il in a hit-and-run automobile collision in September 1977, inflicting serious head injuries on him and sending him into a coma. According to the account, the young officers were immediately arrested and executed and Yi was removed from his post, while doctors specializing in treatment of “human vegetables” were invited to Pyongyang to examine the junior Kim. There is little evidence for this. Although, as we have seen, Yi Yong-mu was out of favor while Kim Jong-il drew closer to regime elder O Jin-u, Yi later made a comeback of the sort that was not uncommon in the North Korea system. He came to be ranked near the top of the regime as a key deputy to Kim Jong-il on the Central Military Commission.

That would have been out of the question if Yi ever had involved himself in such a seriously bad career move as a botched attempt to assassinate the Great Leader–designate.

Tales such as that assassination yarn seem to have been fed by Kim Jong-il’s still-wild personal life, which was public enough to cause some in the military and the leadership to disdain him as a young reprobate. The story of his being seriously injured in an automobile wreck fits into what some others have said—one account says he was driving recklessly and caused an accident himself—even if there is nothing to the coup story. Hwang Jang-yop after his defection to the South said he had heard that Kim Jong-il “was injured when he fell during horse riding—but I don’t know well.”
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A leader more concerned than Kim Il-sung with the opinions of others might have heeded the signs of opposition or skepticism and withdrawn his son’s appointment. But they did not call Kim Il-sung “iron-willed” for nothing. Kim Jong-il’s retreat to the shadows was merely temporary. Meanwhile, efforts continued to remove or isolate those resisting the succession scheme.

Vice-President Kim Dong-kyu was the center of opposition to Kim Jong-il’s succession within the older generation of former guerrillas in the leadership. Not only had he been an anti-Japanese resistance fighter but he also had lost an arm in the struggle. When ousted, he ranked number two in North Korea, right after Kim Il-sung. He didn’t like Kim Jong-il, as Kang Myong-do related to the Seoul newspaper
JoongAng Ilbo.
When the young man was being elevated, Kim Dong-kyu said: “I think they’re being too rash on this succession matter.” At that point, according to Kang’s account, Kim Il-sung did nothing.

Having gotten O Jin-u on his side, according to Kang’s account, Kim Jong-il manipulated documents so as to be able to give Kim Il-sung a report that Kim Dong-kyu had been a traitor to the Japanese resistance movement. That got Kim Dong-kyu exiled in 1977 to a rural area in North Hamgyong Province. In 1980, Kim Il-sung happened to be in that area and caught sight of a very large mansion. He found that it was Kim Dong-kyu’s and became very upset. Kim Il-sung sent Kim Dong-kyu to dissidents’ camp No. 16 in Hwasong, according to Kang’s version, and in 1984 Kim Dong-kyu died there “of malnutrition and despair.”

First Lady Kim Song-ae’s dream of seeing a child of her own succeed to her husband’s position at the helm of the nation came to naught. Her elder son,
Pyong-il, had his career in the capital cut short. His younger brother Yong-il never had a place in public life in the first place.

Born in the early 1950s,
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Pyong-il studied English in Malta in the late 1960s, attended the North Korean military academy and learned to fly light, civilian aircraft at an airport in East Germany. (Some reports say he also studied in Moscow.) He became a member of his father’s military bodyguard corps, as had his stepbrother, Kim Jong-il. Kim Yong-il, for his part, studied electronics at Dresden Technical University in East Germany, becoming fluent in German. He went on to get his Ph.D. in Berlin. His plan when he finished his studies in the mid-1980s was to go back to North Korea to head an electronics factory, according to a former East German official who knew both him and Pyong-il. The German described the two brothers as “intelligent and well-educated.” Both displayed the common touch, he told me. “They know life and they know regular Koreans.” Both spoke Russian, he added.
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Kang Myong-do in his interviews with
JoongAng Ilbo
sorted out the story of Pyong-il. According to Kang’s account, as North-South tension increased following the axe incident at the DMZ, Pyong-il entered the bodyguard division. A Kim Il-sung University graduate in addition to being a member of the first family, he rose quickly at first. Soon he was promoted to colonel and named vice-head of the strategic department of the bodyguards.

Pyong-il’s lifestyle became extravagant, according to Kang’s account. Pyong-il’s cronies included Kim Chang-ha, son of Kim Byong-ha, who was head of the State Security Department, and Chon Wi, son of the head of bodyguards. They often met at the Kim Byong-ha home and held frequent parties there. Pyong-il’s custom was to hand out watches engraved “with Kim Il-sung’s name as presents to guests. “He was very extravagant and generous and had lots of followers who flattered him by saying: ‘Long live Kim Pyong-il!’ You weren’t supposed to say that about anyone but Kim Il-sung—it’s against the one-man rule system.”
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At that time, according to Kang’s account, Kim Jong-il was spying on Kim Pyong-il and learned of his activities through Room 10 in the party headquarters, which was established in 1978 to set up spy net-works to catch any deviation from one-man rule. (Kim Jong-il had no use for either Pyong-il or Yong-il, caring only for his sister Kyong-hui, one former high-ranking official recalled.
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) “Kim Jong-il was always waiting for a chance to get his stepbrother in trouble,” said Kang. “He used this information and made a report to Kim Il-sung.” Kim Il-sung got angry and fired Pyong-il, according to Kang, who told me in an interview that Kim Pyong-il for a time stayed in Pyongyang. Finding that few people dared to have anything to do with him, he asked to be sent abroad. Thus were Pyong-il’s political hopes dashed. In the army where real influence resided, Kang said in his
JoongAng Ilbo
interviews, “there is no one who supports Pyong-il. No one.” Kim Pyong-il was consigned
to overseas embassies, far from the center of power. He drew successive postings as ambassador to European countries including Bulgaria and Finland.

It seems to me that Kim Jong-il must have learned from this incident a profound lesson: He must stick to the role of the modest, filial son for a
very
long time. This may help to explain his reluctance to show himself publicly and step front and center, even after his father died.