Son in line

There is no mistaking the succession of Kim Jong Il by his son Kim Jong-un in due course as the country's supreme leader.

in Singapore

FOR a while in September and early October, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or North Korea, hit the international headlines for some fireworks of the political kind. Such an exposure to the outside world was surely unusual for the DPRK, which has, for most of this century, stayed in the global focus as a country that makes and tests nuclear weapons against the political will of the international community. So, what really was the cause of North Korea's new-found enthusiasm?

Given the DPRK's political practice of keeping the international community guessing, the significant facts that trickled out of Pyongyang during this period were a pointer to the possibility of an eventual political succession there. As officially and otherwise-professionally monitored in the South Korean capital, Seoul, the DPRK's state news agency gave glimpses of the beginning of a new political process in Pyongyang.

Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of the supreme leader Kim Jong Il, was appointed Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) on September 29. There was no change in the status of the senior Kim as Chairman of the powerful Commission.

In the ambience of the WPK's unchallenged power at the helm of national affairs, the DPRK signalled no deviation at all from the long-established state policy based on the military first principle. In all, therefore, there was no mistaking, as of early October, the succession of the senior Kim by Kim Jong-un in due course, should there be no unforeseen complications at the highest echelons of power.

China, as the DPRK's closest ally or friend for long, was quick to take note of the senior Kim's enduring political status. He was re-elected general secretary of the WPK on September 29 before the conclusion of the party's biggest political conference in three decades. In a congratulatory message to him, Chinese President Hu Jintao, who is also the general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC), re-emphasised the deep traditional friendship, geographical proximity and the wide-ranging common interests between the two countries. To consolidate and develop friendship and cooperation between the two countries is a firm policy of the CPC and the Chinese government, he said.

Hu Jintao's tribute

Hu Jintao paid a handsome tribute to the senior Kim, noting that under his leadership the people of the DPRK, with self-reliance and hard work, have scored huge achievements in the cause of building socialism of Korean style. Such a political phraseology might not sound as being particularly different from a conventional congratulatory message. However, the larger international community cannot miss the political significance of the Chinese leader's viewpoint about prospects of continuity and progress in the close engagement between Beijing and Pyongyang.

Hu Jintao emphasised that no matter how the international situation evolves, we [the Chinese leaders] will always view, uphold and enhance China-DPRK relations from a strategic height and a long-term perspective. The political punchline is in the phrase, no matter how the international situation evolves. It requires no great insight to recognise that the phrase acquires considerable meaning in the evolving context of the pressure the DPRK faces from a number of major powers, including the United States, on a range of issues.

As this was written, there was no credible sign of a quick resumption of the long-stalled six-party talks on the DPRK's controversial nuclear weapons programme. China chairs these parleys and the other participants are the U.S., Japan, Russia, the DPRK and South Korea, Pyongyang's estranged but ethnicity-linked neighbour.

The DPRK remains in the international spotlight for other reasons as well. These relate to concerns about its general economic situation, which pales into poverty in comparison with South Korea's progress. Also in focus is the traditional Western discourse on the absence of democracy and transparency and the undue dominance of the military in North Korea. On the nuclear issue itself, several major powers continue to see Pyongyang as an unbridled purveyor of its arguably limited capabilities for proliferation purposes.

It was in this international context that the Chinese leader said: We are ready to continue to work with the DPRK side to lift our relations to new heights for the benefit of our two peoples and make greater contribution to lasting peace and common prosperity of the [East Asian] region.

What cannot be missed, therefore, is a firm commitment by China to let the DPRK stay its present course of domestic politics. In such a situation, the senior Kim's arguably dynasty-brand of politics at home, unusual in itself for a socialist or communist system of whatever intensity, deserves to be taken seriously by the international community.

Interestingly, the senior Kim is widely believed to have taken his Chinese allies into confidence before he embarked on this course of positioning Kim Jong-un as the heir-apparent.

Shortly before being made the Vice-Chairman of the Central Military Commission, the junior Kim was declared a four-star general of the DPRK's million-plus military establishment. Kim Jong-un's first splash on the DPRK's political scene in this fashion has already been widely compared with the manner in which his father had come to the helm through a process of dynastic succession.

Kim Jong Il (now 68) was chosen by his father and the DPRK's founder, Kim Il Sung, to succeed him. This set a precedent for dynastic succession in a communist or socialist system of whatever ideological purity. Kim Il Sung died in 1994, and his son took the reins of power without encountering any known dissent from either the WPK or the DPRK's powerful military.

No authentic biographical details of Kim Jong-un, including his exact age and educational attainments as also ideological orientation, were announced by Pyongyang in the immediate context of his latest rise to prominence.

Party makes progress

Some long-time Korea-watchers in East Asia see signs that the party might begin to gain political precedence over the military hierarchy in matters of state policy. The reason cited in support of this theory was that key members of the country's first dynasty figure more prominently in the Central Military Commission and not so in the National Defence Commission, an organ of state as different from the ruling party.

As supreme leader, Kim Jong Il, despite his suspected illness, heads both these commissions that straddle the political space of the state and also the governing party. However, the Central Military Commission is now home to three members of the dynasty. They are Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong-un and Jang Song-thaek, husband of the senior Kim's 64-year-old sister Kim Kyoung-hui. She has been given the rank of a full military general, the first North Korean woman to gain this honour, and has also been made a member of the WPK's Central Committee. Jong-un, too, secured a similar party position outside the political bureau as such.

Organisationally, therefore, the senior Kim did place the Central Military Commission in a unique position compared with the National Defence Commission. However, there was no sign, as of October 9, that he might, if at all, devalue the military first principle, which he himself vigorously promoted as state policy after he took power.

Nuclear ambitions

Unsurprisingly in these circumstances, Western experts greeted the new political developments in Pyongyang with intelligence analysis that the DPRK might have by now initiated steps to make nuclear weapons through the uranium-enrichment route as well. The existing nuclear weapons in the arsenal of the DPRK, whatever their size and potency, are said to be entirely plutonium-based.

Also being propagated in Western circles is a firm analysis that the dynastic succession cycle has been set in play in Pyongyang. It is in this ambience that the U.S. and the DPRK's neighbours such as Japan and South Korea have begun to coordinate strategies to meet the perceived new realities in Pyongyang. A series of prospective multilateral events the East Asia Summit in Hanoi, the G20 (Group of 20) conference at the level of heads of state and government in South Korea, and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) leaders' meeting in Japan are expected to spark further interest in the DPRK's succession issues.