North Korea Takes Steps to Extend Dynastic Rule

By CHOE SANG-HUN

Published: September 2, 2010

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, is expected to convene a rare congress of the ruling Workers’ Party in coming days to pave the way for his son to succeed him, a feat of political engineering that would be a first in the Communist world: extending dynastic rule to a third generation.

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Korean Central News Agency, via Reuters

The North Korean leader Kim Jong-il at a factory in Pyongyang. He is expected to convene a party meeting in coming days.

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• Times Topics: Kim Jong-un | Kim Jong-il

Ahead of the national congress, the first ceremonial conclave of the party’s delegates in decades, Mr. Kim’s propaganda machine is busily reminding North Koreans that their nation owes it existence to Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Il-sung, who was a leader of anti-Japanese guerrillas in Manchuria in the early 20th century.

The meeting, like all political events in the North, will be secret, and even the precise starting date has not been publicly confirmed. North Korea has said that the party’s “highest leading body” will be elected at the meeting; beyond that, the agenda is unknown, and it is unclear how the expected promotion of Mr. Kim’s third son, Kim Jong-un, will be presented. But Mr. Kim’s recent trip to China, North Korea’s main patron and supporter, which followed the announcement of the meeting, has fueled speculation that a momentous transition is under way.

“This party meeting will be a coming-out party for Kim Jong-un,” said Peter Beck, a North Korea expert at Keio University in Japan.

Little is known about the son, believed to be in his late 20s, and no photos or public sightings of him have been reported since he attended a Swiss school as a teenager. After his father’s stroke in 2008, however, his grooming as heir picked up speed. He has accompanied Mr. Kim on visits to factories and military units and is getting policy briefings, according to South Korean intelligence officials who monitor developments in the North.

Songs, poems and posters alluding to the son are in circulation, they say. North Korean media have not mentioned the son by name, but propaganda has hinted about the virtues of transferring power to a younger generation. Kim Jong-il, who took over when his father died in 1994, began building his “military first” leadership platform 50 years ago as a teenager, official media say.

Under Mr. Kim’s military-oriented rule, the Workers’ Party has withered. The last time the party held its congress, a 1980 meeting during which Mr. Kim sealed his position as successor by assuming crucial party posts, the party’s Politburo had 34 members. Now it has only eight, as those who have died have not been replaced.

“A new force will come in who will pave the way for the succession and support the young, inexperienced kid as leader,” said Chang Yong-seok, research director at the Institute for Peace Affairs in Seoul. “If a new generation of leaders comes in, this is not a bad thing. They could be less bound by ideology and more pragmatic about opening up.”

Historically, the Kim family has used party caucuses to purge political enemies, as well as proclaim long-term visions for the country. Recently, there has been an unusually large number of reports about top-ranking North Korean officials being executed, killed in mysterious traffic accidents or declared missing.

Jang Song-taek, Mr. Kim’s brother-in-law, and hard-line generals on Mr. Kim’s National Defense Commission, the country’s top ruling body, are expected to move into crucial party posts to ensure a smooth transition of power, analysts say. Less clear is whether Mr. Kim is confident enough to place his son in the Politburo and the party’s Central Military Commission.

Woo Seong-ji, a professor at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, said that he believed Mr. Kim might start his son in a rather modest post to “lessen the shock” and buy time to build his leadership credentials.

Mr. Beck of Keio University said: “He can’t be too prominent because he is not known to the North Korean public. They have to make the sale to the public. But they have to make the sale to some of the elite, too.”

It is unclear what other changes might be on the agenda.

During his meeting with Mr. Kim in Changchun, in northeastern China, last Friday, President Hu Jintao urged North Korea to follow China’s example by adopting a “market mechanism,” according to Chinese media. Mr. Kim toured factories and expressed interest in how China had sought to reinvigorate a region just across the North Korean border.

Faced with international sanctions, Mr. Kim may view stronger economic ties with China as one blueprint he can offer at the party congress, said Jin Jingyi, a North Korea expert at Peking University.

The North Korean government survived the first health scare set off by Mr. Kim’s stroke without much instability. That showed that Mr. Kim’s inner circle, whose political fortunes rest with the Kim family’s dynastic rule, would be likely to ensure a smooth transfer of power to the son even if Mr. Kim suddenly died, analysts said.

“I think he is chosen exactly because he is young,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul. “In case of his father’s sudden death, Kim Jong-un — inexperienced, without power base, embarrassingly young — will have no choice but to obediently follow the instructions of the old guard. He will be a dictator, but merely a rubber-stamping dictator. This is what the people in the position of power want.”