N Korea reformer’s return may bring change

Interpreting changes in North Korea’s opaque power structure – a pastime that is sometimes referred to as “Kim-inology” – is notoriously difficult.

Kim Jong-il and his father, North Korea’s founder Kim Il-sung, have ruled the state through a personality cult that curtails access to information. And, unlike in the Soviet Union during the cold war, western intelligence agencies are thought to have no people on the ground in North Korea to offer inside information.

But reports this week that Mr Kim’s brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, has been appointed head of the powerful security services will fuel hopes that the Pyongyang regime is at least prepared to tweak its rusting communist system, and at a time when it is taking unprecedented steps to roll back its nuclear programme in return for economic aid.

Mr Jang, who married Mr Kim’s beloved younger sister Kim Kyung-hui in 1972, has been one of the few “reformers” promoting gradual change inside North Korea.

Sohn Kwang-joo, editor of Daily NK, a Seoul-based website that monitors the North, says that Mr Jang is one of only 20 people who are linked to the “brain of the revolution” led by Kim Il-sung.

“He is in charge of the overall rebuilding of the economy and of Pyongyang,” Mr Sohn says. “He is the second most influential man in Korea but not just on economic matters, but on general leadership matters too.”

Mr Jang, 61, is a mercurial character who likes to drink and plays the accordion well, according to North Korean analysts. He previously appeared to be in charge of a tentative economic opening that included plans to develop the city of Sinuiju on the Chinese border into a special economic zone. He also led an economic delegation to Seoul in 2002, visiting Samsung Electronics, Hyundai Motor and Posco Steel.

Three years ago, Mr Jang disappeared from Pyongyang to undergo “political reeducation”, apparently because of Mr Kim’s concerns that he was becoming too powerful.

The hardline military, which is opposed to any change in North Korea that could open up the isolated state to the outside world, was also said to be unhappy with Mr Jang’s relatively liberal ways.

However, he reappeared at the end of 2005 and last year made several visits to China, leading a delegation of the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea Chamber of Commerce to Shanghai, according to people who met him there. He also made a follow-up visit after Mr Kim toured special economic zones in southern China at Beijing’s invitation.

“Jang is a very flexible person – he goes overseas a lot and can talk to Kim Jong-il about everything,” says Kang Chol-hwan, who analyses North Korea for the Chosun Ilbo, the South’s biggest newspaper. “And, especially after his visit to South Korea in 2002, he has many ideas about economic reform.”

Mr Jang’s return has been eventful – just last year his daughter killed herself in Paris and he was involved in a car crash in Pyongyang that was rumoured to have been an attempt on his life.

Some analysts believe that Mr Jang could be a potential heir to Mr Kim in the world’s only communist dynasty, as the leader’s sons are considered too young to succeed him and Mr Jang is part of the Kim family.

With the US administration softening its hardline approach to Mr Kim – and its talk of “regime change” – the rise of Mr Jang could come as good news for Washington. Some North Korea analysts suggests that Mr Jang might emerge as a more palatable alternative to Mr Kim.

You know, for all talks about NK's giving up nuclear program and pursuing economic reform, Kim's regime is cracking down markets which sprang up all over the country spontaneously. These markets are dominated by women who have to earn a living to feed her family because their husbands who are tied to their workplace cannot earn sufficient money due to wholesale industrial collapse. Now NK authorities are cracking down these women engaged in modest form of free-enterprise.

They are furiously tracking down any cellphone users using cutting-edge German-made signal detectors.

What they want to do is rather obvious: They create industrial complexes sealed from the rest of the country, where foreign business can set up the factory. Employees for such business are pick carefully, indoctrinated, and monitored by the state. N. Korea is providing cheap labor working in a sealed sanitized environment who could earn hard cash for the regime.

The authorities can yank employees and disrupt business when they cannot have their way. N. Korean regime will function like mob-dominated oppressive labor union. The regime want rest of Nk to return to what it was. Tightly controlled society.

These industrial complexes just serve to raise hard cash for the regime while not disrupting the state control.

Kaesung industrial complex just north of DMZ is already functioning like this. They have trouble operating profitably, because N. Korean authorities interfere every business decision, including hiring/firing and wage. The regime wants their need to be satisfied first, not that of business. That is, business have to accommodate bureaucratic and political imperative of the regime first.

This is what they are trying to do in order to perpetuate the regime, which they hope could move into the third generation rule of Kim Dynasty.

I don't think this would work. I doubt that playing along with N. Korean scheme would make things any less palatable. We would only postpone the eventual demise of N. Korean regime. There would be no soft-landing with regard to N. Korean regime.

We should minimize the collateral damage, but doing so should be based on the premise that there would be no soft-landing. It will fall abruptly, just like Romania.

Going ahead with succession process will show, he hopes, that he is still in control and his regime is stable despite signs of troubles popping up.

However, it is not really a done deal. There are still several years left before Jong-chol's supposedly public anointment as a successor.

Chia may not want to preside over head-on succession struggles. He wants to keep all potential players at bay, either giving back power Chang once lost, or putting Jong-chol on the official track to succession. However, he does not want to be a lame-duck as his father, I suspect.

So I think that he won't do necessary house-cleaning to secure the power of his successor. Chia's father Kim Il-sung clean up all potential competitors of Chia Head once he became his official successor.

He would not do such a thing. He would maintain the check and balance among the front-runner, Jong-chol, and his close competitors such as Jang Sung-thaek and Kim Jong-nam.

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