Asia: North Korea's Uncertain Succession (CFR)

North Korea's Uncertain Succession

Interviewee:	Scott A. Snyder, Senior Fellow for Korea Studies and Director of the Program on U.S.-Korea Policy, Council on Foreign Relations
Interviewer:	Bernard Gwertzman, Consulting Editor, CFR.org

December 19, 2011

Despite an outward show of unity in the wake of Kim Jong-il's death, there is much unknown about North Korea's succession process, says Scott A. Snyder, CFR's top expert on Korea. Snyder expects the North Korean leadership to focus inward to put its policies in order, but he questions whether the military leadership will remain loyal to Kim Jong-un, Kim's youngest son and handpicked successor, who turns twenty-eight next month. "Korea is a society that is attentive to age and seniority," says Snyder. "And so the idea of a twenty-eight-year-old who also commands the military is hard for outsiders to grasp, and it remains to be seen whether it is in fact sustainable."

With the death of North Korea's President Kim Jong-il, there seems to be a leadership plan in place in which his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, would take over. But Kim Jong-il's sister, Kim Kyong-hui is there in a senior position as well as her husband, Jang Song-taek. What is going to happen?

The initial focus is going to be on getting through this mourning period and the funeral. The funeral is going to be held on December 28. There already is a funeral committee and a kind of rank ordering of top individuals serving on the committee, and it is headed by Kim Jong-un. So that projects a sense of order to this process. Kim Kyong-hui is on the list as well as Jang Song-taek.

Do we learn much from the funeral list?

This list really flows in my view from the September 2010unveiling of Kim Jong-un (MSNBC) as the next leader at the Workers Party conference. And so far it looks like there are a lot of efforts to suggest a sense of continuity and a sense there is a collective process that is effectively functioning. What we don't know is what is happening behind the scenes and whether the process can hold in the absence of Kim-Jong-il, because he really has been the glue that has held the system together over the course of the past fifteen years.

Will North Korea become less militant, more willing to strike deals with the outside world, go back to nuclear disarmament talks or become more belligerent? Do you have any guesses?

I'm actually expecting kind of an inward turn and a focus on getting affairs in Pyongyang in order before things move forward. You know, Kim Jong-il actually observed a three-year mourning period [after his father died] in which he, even though everyone knew he was the successor, did not come out and perform any public functions or take any visible external leadership positions.

I anticipate that it is unlikely that Kim Jong-un is going to take an active role in the near term in managing state affairs.

That was back in what years?

That was between 1994 and 1997. There was the continuation of and resolution of the Agreed Framework [between the United States and North Korea] in 1994 so it didn't mean North Korea's diplomacy ground to a complete halt. But I anticipate that it is unlikely that Kim Jong-un is going to take an active role in the near term in managing state affairs. He will be involved much more in a kind of initial behind-the-scenes role especially as it relates to foreign diplomacy.

Any chance of provocation from the new leadership?

Because we know so little about the leadership, it also means we don't have a good grasp on the motivation in the event of provocations. And this is particularly complicated in a circumstance where a provocation could be evidence of fragmentation or divisions in the North Korean leadership. Or it could be a tactic used to signal to outsiders to stay away or it could be a tactic used by design to gain some kind of tactical advantage.

And I take it this funeral will not be attended by Western leaders?

That's right; it's all just a domestic affair. No foreign leaders invited.

In the last few weeks the United States has had diplomats in China meeting with North Korean officials. What was the purpose of those talks (NYT), and do you think those will continue or come to a halt?

Last week, the Special Envoy for North Korean Human Rights Issues, Robert King, had discussions in Beijing with his counterpart, Ambassador Ri Gun, on the issue of conditions under which the United States might provide food assistance to North Korea. There was also anticipation following the visit of Special Representative for North Korean Policy Glyn Davies to Seoul, Tokyo, and Beijing-- that there might be a third round of U.S.-North Korean bilateral talks. There were press rumors that that set of talks might have even occurred at the end of this week. It is unlikely now that will happen.

The United States does have some interesting decisions to make regarding whether or not, in the context of this transition, it might want to announce provision of food assistance now-- especially since the talks have already occurred and presumably there was some level of understanding reached about the conditions under which the United States would be willing to provide that assistance.

Would such assistance be conditioned on North Korea's returning to the Six Party Talks concerning stopping their nuclear program?

The talks about food have been separated from the nuclear issues.

And, the new presumptive leader, Mr. Kim Jong-un, hasn't really made himself known to the international scene yet; has he spoken publicly?

No. He has met some international leaders but always with his father. And all of his public appearances so far had been with his father. So he was being groomed for leadership, but this is still the early stages. Now he is basically on his own, and we will find out if he can move forward. If he does, he is supported by some sort of collective leadership process that looks like it had been put in place. We saw something very similar to this following Kim Il-sung's death when Kim Jong-il took over.

There is another factor here that I have to mention. He is turning twenty-eight on January 8, and although he carries the title of General, Korea is a society that is attentive to age and seniority. And so the idea of a twenty-eight-year-old who also commands the military is hard for outsiders to grasp and it remains to be seen whether it is in fact sustainable.

Talk a bit about him.

He apparently was at a Swiss boarding school for a couple of years and also has had educational opportunities in North. But my impression is that really he may be the North Korean version of a home school product with the exception of his two years in Switzerland. It doesn't appear to be the case that as he was receiving instruction in North Korea, or that he had a lot of interaction with peers, for instance, at Kim Il-sung University or at some other North Korean university.

Kim Kyong- hui, who is the new leader's aunt and her husband, Jang Song-taek, are high up in the leadership. Some people speculate that Jang in fact might be the true leader of the military for the time being.

Well, it's complicated. Jang is actually lower down on some of the leadership lists, and he also was not highly ranked in the September 2010 party conference. But he has the greatest potential for cross-institutional experience or connections in various parts of North Korea's bureaucratic system. Jang is the one who at first brush appears to have more lateral contact than many others in the system.

Talk about the relationship right now between South Korea and North Korea. How tense is it?

The two Koreas have really not been on speaking terms over the course of the summer and fall. The new unification minister [for South Korea] Yu Woo-ik, appointed back in October, has been attempting to open some new channels. But the North Korean leadership has shifted its focus more toward who is likely to succeed the current South Korean president, Lee Myung-bak, than on having dialogue with Lee. So that's a reflection of the poor quality of Korean relations. Lee has continued to insist on a North Korean apology for the 2010 sinking of the South Korean naval ship, Cheonan, and the shelling of Yeonpyeong, a South Korean island near the North Korean mainland.

Is there an election scheduled in South Korea?

There are parliamentary elections that will take place in April of next year, and the presidential election takes place in December. Lee cannot run again so there will be a new president. At the moment it looks like it could be a fairly competitive race. There was a recent election for Seoul mayor, which was won by a progressive candidate, Park Won-soon, who beat a candidate from Lee's conservative party. So there is the possibility of a shift in power from conservative to progressive in South Korea.

Are the progressives more interested in closer relations with the north?

Yeah, they've been historically more interested in engagement.

It's arguable that there is nothing that North Korea would like more than for the U.S. to come in as a kind of strategic counterweight to China.

How are North Korea's relations with China and the United States?

North Korea is economically almost completely dependent on China and that has resulted in a closer political relationship, but as far as I can see it is because the Chinese are hugging the North Koreans. Not necessarily because the North Koreans are hugging the Chinese back. And in fact it's arguable that there is nothing that North Korea would like more than for the U.S. to come in as a kind of strategic counterweight to China. But the nuclear issue remains as a major, really inescapable sticking point. There is simply no prospect for the United States to improve diplomatic relations with North Korea without denuclearization.

And is it likely the new leadership will want to maintain this nuclear foothold?

There's no reason yet to expect that there would be a change in policy direction in North Korea.

Source: CFR.

Asia: Kim Jong Il's Death and North Korea's Transition (Stratfor)

Dispatch: Kim Jong Il's Death and North Korea's Transition

Source: Stratfor


Read more on North Korea:
International security: North Korea: Dear Leader, departed (The Economist)

International security: North Korea: Dear Leader, departed (The Economist)

North Korea

Dear Leader, departed

Dec 20th 2011, 0:20 by D.T. and G.E. | SEOUL and BEIJING

THE tyrant has perished, leaving a failing, nuclear-armed nation in the uncertain young hands of his “Great Successor”. His father, since 1994 the "Dear Leader" of one of the world’s most secretive and repressive states (iconic, to the right in the photo above), died on a train at 8.30am on Saturday morning, of a heart attack. North Korea's 69-year-old supremo had been in poor health: he had heart disease and diabetes, and suffered a stroke in 2008. Nonetheless his demise places sudden and extraordinary pressure on his third son, his designated but untested successor, Kim Jong Un (to the left, in the photo above).

Kim junior—recently dubbed the “Young General”—is now officially in charge of North Korea. His dynastic succession, which had been in preparation since 2009, was reaffirmed swiftly by the state media (as swiftly as the 51 hours it took to announce the elder Kim’s death). The machinery of party and propaganda are organised to support a smooth succession. That does not mean its success is assured. At just 27 or perhaps 28 years of age, the young Un, educated in Switzerland and a great fan of basketball, wants for both experience and proof of loyalty from the armed forces. He was installed as the country’s leader-in-waiting little more than a year ago. By contrast his father had been groomed for leadership for nearly 20 years, with careful attention paid to establishing for him a cult of personality in the image of his own father, the dynasty’s founding dictator, Kim Il Sung.

That Kim Jong Un has no such background may be cause more for anxiety than for relief. His only qualification to lead the country is to be the son of a man who all but destroyed it, and a grandson of the man who built its disastrous brand of totalitarianism. In the 17 years Kim Jong Il ruled since the death of Kim Il Sung, North Korea teetered on the brink of collapse. A devastating famine in the mid-1990s killed as many as a million of his countrymen, while Kim Jong Il indulged his own appetites to excess and diverted massive resources to his dream, now realised, of building a nuclear weapon.

A third Kim may be a step too far. This succession’s viability may well depend on the work of a “regent”: Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law, Chang Sung Taek. He and his wife, Kim Kyong Hui, appear to have accompanied the Young General’s elevation in lockstep, as those who might stand in his (and their) way have been pushed aside. The ruling elite around the family trinity might appear cohesive from a distance, but they are potentially vulnerable to intrigue. North Korea’s is a government of obscure and competing factions—the army, the Korean Workers’ Party and the cabinet being the greatest—and any uncertainty or crisis in the months ahead could upset the delicate balance behind the dictatorship.

In the very short term though, it seems unlikely that anyone will make a move. Bruce Cumings, a professor of history at the University of Chicago, argues that the cohort of officials who rose during Kim Jong Il’s reign “are now in power and have much privilege to protect”. Even those who privately oppose Kim Jong Un will proclaim loyalty for now. China, fearing instability, will support the succession in so far as it promises to maintain order and prevent a flood of refugees from spilling over its border.

Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for China’s ministry of foreign affairs, called Kim Jong Il “a great leader of North Korean people and a close and intimate friend of Chinese people”. Zhang Liangui of the Central Party School in Beijing however told Caijing magazine that China’s policy has been developed with regard for “North Korea the country, not Kim Jong Il the man”. For many years Chinese leaders tried in vain to convince Kim Jong Il to embrace Chinese-style economic reforms; they might yet choose to push those reforms with renewed vigour.

The optimists’ argument would be that the time is ripe for such an overture, and that the West should join with its own. The year 2012, the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birth, is supposed to be the year that North Korea becomes a “strong and prosperous nation” (kangsong taeguk). The domestic justification for reform could go like so: Kim Jong Il built the nuclear weapons that made his nation “strong”, regardless of whether North Korea might choose to give them up; now it is the time make the country “prosperous”. “Diplomatically, that’s where you want to engage with them,” says John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul who watches China and North Korea. “Okay, you got strength, you’re secure. Now let’s work on prosperity together.”

Sceptics, a group who were proved right under the late Leader time and again, argue that the regime’s elite circles will be loth to abandon the systems of patronage and rent-seeking that have so enriched them. Moreover, any meaningful effort to open up the economy risks exposing the state’s ruling mythology. It has long been shielded from contamination by such inconveniences as facts.

Given a choice, the people might prefer facts to mythology, and real economic well-being over juche (loosely, self-reliance, or autarky). Local television reports are filled with the requisite footage of wailing on the streets of Pyongyang, where the more privileged and well-fed reside, but these images do not offer much insight into the reaction of the impoverished countryside. One NGO worker with extensive contacts around the country states that though they “lived under undeniable fear with Kim Jong Il as the leader of the nation, they are surely even more fearful with him gone.” Without even the barest infrastructure of civil society, lacking most of the tools of modern technology, the rural population of North Korea cannot be fruitfully compared to the victims of repression in the Middle East who are trying to make good on the Arab Spring.

North Korea's fate may depend in some measure, then, on how the rest of the world chooses to grapple with the new leadership, and vice versa. The death of Kim Il Sung in 1994 was quickly followed by the completion of an “agreed framework”, negotiated with the Clinton administration, that had seemed to sideline North Korea’s nuclear programme. Last week, immediately prior to Kim Jong Il’s death, there were whispers of a possible thaw in relations. North Korea is in desperate need of food aid, and the United States had reportedly offered to ship nearly a quarter of a million tonnes of "nutritional aid" on a month-to-month basis—on the condition that it would be allowed to verify that none of it ended up "on some leader's banquet table". There were even murmurs to the effect that Pyongyang might suspend its uranium-enrichment programme. There is something on which to build. Facing an election year of his own however, Barack Obama may find it difficult to pursue a new, softer line on North Korea, even with a new Kim.

Another approach could come from South Korea, but perhaps not until after its parliamentary and presidential elections in 2012. The sitting president, Lee Myung-bak, has defined his term in office with a hawkish stance towards the North. The South’s public reaction to Kim’s death was relatively muted: The KOSPI index of leading Korean stocks fell at first but then stabilised. Ordinary South Koreans have been debating whether or not condolences should be sent (as Pyongyang did when Kim Dae-jung, a former president of South Korea, died in 2009). Some have taken to criticising the country’s intelligence capabilities. The timing of Mr Lee’s visit to Japan on Saturday, December 17th, makes it seem plain that none of South Korea’s spooks were aware of Kim Jong Il’s fate until the official announcement was broadcast. That happened to fall on the president’s birthday; his party was cancelled at the last minute.

A spokesman for Mr Lee, Cho Hyun-jin, says that he is “cautiously optimistic” about North-South relations, and notes that he is in close contact with leaders in Japan, America, and Russia. Mr Lee’s term in office has been marked by severe tensions with North Korea. In November 2010, the North shelled a South Korean island, killing two civilians. Earlier in the same year it was accused of sinking a South Korean naval vessel with a torpedo, killing 46 sailors. Those may prove to have been the last two attacks to have been carried out at the order of Kim Jong Il. But some observers have attributed them to the “Great Successor” as rites of initiation.

Kim Jong Il’s funeral, which may provide the first opportunity for assessing the regime’s new pecking order, is to take place on December 28th. (Intriguingly, Mr Chang, the Great Successor’s chief regent, is ranked a lowly 19th on the official list of attendants.) The late Kim’s record, according to Mr Cumings, will be one of “failure at almost every level, except the critical one of maintaining maximum power for his family and the regime”. We will soon see whether or not Kim Jong Un—the youngest leader in the world to command a nuclear arsenal—has such staying power, or such unfortunate consequences for his people. The months ahead will be most telling. Mr Zhang, of the Central Party School in Beijing, makes a wry nod to his own country’s experience. Uttering the ritual platitudes of succession and actually carrying it out are two very different things. “Socialist countries are like this,” he says. “There's a certain distance between legal procedure and actual practice.”

(Picture credit: AFP PHOTO / KCNA VIA KNS)

Source: The Economist.

International security: South China Sea dispute (The Economist)

Banyan

Not littorally Shangri-La

The South China Sea becomes a zone of eternal dispute

Jun 9th 2011 | from the print edition

CHINA and America make the weather in Asia-Pacific security. A year ago, when policy wonks and defence officials gathered in Singapore at the Shangri-La hotel for their annual “dialogue” on the subject, a chill was in the air. Robert Gates, America’s defence secretary, complained about petulant rebuffs from China, which at the time put up a cold front. A hawkish Chinese strategist at the conference was unapologetic, growling that America was “taking the Chinese as the enemy”.

This year, when the dialogue reconvened on June 4th, Singapore was deluged by a succession of tropical downpours, but Mr Gates, on the brink of retirement, was in sunnier mood, praising an improvement in China-US relations. China even honoured the event, organised by the International Institute of Strategic Studies, a London-based think-tank, by sending its defence minister, Liang Guanglie, for the first time. By the standards of speechifying Chinese soldiers, General Liang was remarkably affable, praising a “co-operative partnership” with America.

Yet the shifts in tone from the blunt to the bland and in posture from finger-pointing to backslapping have not been matched by progress toward solving any of the two countries’ underlying disputes in the region. The biggest concern Taiwan, the Korean peninsula and—which is bound to dominate any forum held in South-East Asia—the South China Sea, where the risks of failing to resolve a mesh of overlapping territorial claims are mounting.

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America is not directly involved. But it has declared a “national interest” in preserving freedom of navigation in the sea. Of the 74,000 vessels, carrying one-third of global seaborne trade, that passed through the Strait of Malacca last year, most also plied the South China Sea. Commerce is not in fact under immediate threat. But America, Mr Gates insisted in Singapore, wants to remain an Asia-Pacific power. Ever twitchy about China’s intentions, South-East Asian countries hope he means it.

Speaking at another annual regional forum, the Asia-Pacific Round-table, in Kuala Lumpur a few days earlier, Admiral Robert Willard, America’s commander in the Pacific, said its navy aimed to maintain a “continuous presence” in the South China Sea. Despite budget constraints, America seems determined to beef up its deployment in the area. China is unlikely to welcome that. Its spokesmen are complaining more loudly about America’s habit of sending surveillance ships close to its shores. In 2009 a nasty row erupted when China harassed one. In Singapore Mr Gates blamed China’s lack of transparency, saying most of the snooping was into “mysteries” rather than “secrets”. China is hardly willing to accept that distinction.

More likely than conflict between the big powers, however, are clashes between China and the smaller claimants to parts of the sea. Of these, Taiwan, still notionally the Republic of China, mirrors the Beijing government’s claim. This seems based on a 1940s map giving China virtually the whole sea, ignoring the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). The most belligerent of the other claimants is Vietnam, which says it has sovereignty over both the Paracel Islands, in the northern part of the sea, from which China evicted it in 1974, and the Spratlys, farther south (where the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei all have partial claims). On June 5th hundreds joined anti-Chinese protests in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City provoked by an incident in late May in which a Vietnamese ship exploring for oil and gas had its surveying cables cut by Chinese patrol boats.

Besides a wealth of marine life, the sea is believed to be rich in oil and gas: the “next Persian Gulf” in the words of one excited observer. The countries laying claim to this bounty have all been building up their navies, notably China which this week officially confirmed long-known plans to deploy its first aircraft-carrier. To counter such advances, Vietnam has ordered six Kilo-class submarines from Russia.

In 2002 China and the ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations agreed to a “declaration” on a code of conduct for the sea. This is a promise to formalise a code minimising the risk that disputes between fishermen or other users of the sea might escalate into conflict. The code has not emerged. But optimists point to the restraint parties have shown since 2002 in not occupying uninhabited islands or specks of rock (though they have been energetically fortifying the places where they already had a presence). Similarly, some were cheered when China’s most recent statement of its claim did not include the contentious map, and could even be construed as accepting UNCLOS principles.

Douglas Unfairbank

However, China does not inspire confidence. Around the time when the Vietnamese survey ship had its lines cut, the Philippines reported that Chinese vessels had been spotted unloading building material on an uninhabited reef, known as the Amy Douglas Bank, in waters it claims, apparently to build an oil rig. If so, this would undermine the declaration’s one big achievement. “It could be the final nail in its coffin,” says Ian Storey of the Institute for South-East Asian Studies in Singapore, author of a new book on China’s rise and South-East Asian security.

Even if China does not build on the reef, the perception has taken hold that it is intent on picking off the South-East Asian claimants one by one, starting with the Philippines, one of the weakest. No wonder many in the region will have been cheered by Mr Gates’s response to a question about America’s commitment: laying a $100 bet “that five years from now the United States’ influence in this region [will be] as strong if not stronger than it is today.” An even safer bet is that, during that period, hardly any of the plethora of interlocking international disputes in the South China Sea will have been resolved.

Source: The Economist.

International security: Military spending in 2010 (The Economist)

Military spending

Defence costs

Jun 8th 2011, 14:00 by The Economist online

The biggest military spenders

ON JUNE 8th China's top military brass confirmed that the country's first aircraft carrier, a refurbishment of an old Russian carrier, will be ready shortly. Only a handful of nations operate carriers, which are costly to build and maintain. Indeed, Britain has recently decommissioned its sole carrier because of budget pressures. China's defence spending has risen by nearly 200% since 2001 to reach an estimated $119 billion in 2010—though it has remained fairly constant in terms of its share of GDP. America's own budget crisis is prompting tough discussions about its defence spending, which, at nearly $700 billion, is bigger than that of the next 17 countries combined.

Source: The Economist.