Twist and shout, Kim style
By Kosuke Takahashi
TOKYO - North Korea's new supreme leader Kim Jong-eun spoke in public for the first time on Sunday after a massive military parade in Pyongyang celebrating the centenary of the birth of the nation's founding father, Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994 and is still the country's "eternal president".
For the young leader (in his twenties), the speech was apparently aimed to add the final touches to consolidating his grip on power after ascending to the top military, party and state titles last week.
Kim said, "What was once a weak country [North Korea] has now transformed into a political and military power: he said. "If we intend to succeed in the great endeavor of building a strong and prosperous socialist state, our first, second, and third steps are to strengthen the people's military in every way possible."
Kim also stressed the importance of economic development. "We must tend well to the precious seeds planted by Comrade Kim Jong-il [his father] for the sake of building a strong and prosperous nation and improving the peoples' lives, cultivating them so that they blossom into a glorious reality."
And as if going into damage control after the embarrassing satellite launch failure on Friday, the third-generation leader firmly stood in the symbolic shadow of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung by imitating everything from his gestures to his way of speaking, hair-style and black Mao Zedong-jacket-type costume.
Experts expect Pyongyang's young master, who is reportedly short of experience and charisma, will continue to establish his authority by stressing his heroic family lineage stretching back to his grandfather's partisan guerilla activities against Japan in the 1930s.
Jong-eun's father, Kim Jong-il, was the supreme leader of North Korea from 1994 until his death in late 2011.
"Kim Jong-eun was almost a carbon copy of his grandfather," Satoru Miyamoto, an expert on North Korean affairs in Japan and an associate professor at Seigakuin University's General Research Institute in Saitama prefecture, told Asia Times Online on Monday. "His vocal quality was almost the same as Kim Il-sung's, so was the way of his speech. Kim Jong-eun sometimes stopped speaking to wait for the public to clap and cheer. Kim Il-sung did the same."
The voice
Kim Jong-eun delivered his first public speech by simply and monotonously reading from prepared text for 20 minutes in front of a crowd of more than 100,000 people, including soldiers. He swayed and twisted his body 111 times during the speech, according to Japanese broadcaster Fuji TV.
It was indeed a rare and - in some way unimaginable - moment, given his father Kim Jong-il's reticent attitude. The "Dear Leader" was known to have said, "Glory to the heroic soldiers of the Korean People's Army!" in 1992, at a ceremony for the army's 60th anniversary. It marked Kim Jong-il's only public speech during his rule, and lasted about five seconds, compared with his third son's 20-minute speech on Sunday.
During his speech, Kim Jong-eun referred to Kim Il-sung's guerilla activities, which are deeply ingrained in the minds of many North Koreans, thus legitimizing the blood-heir's succession over three generations. (In 1931, Kim joined the Communist Party of China and various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups in northern China, and in 1935 he became a member of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, a guerrilla group led by the Communist Party of China.)
The hereditary transfer is also seen in the power elites surrounding Jong-eun. For example, Choe Ryong-hae, 62, whose father was a minister of the People's Armed Forces; Choe Hyon, a close comrade of Kim Il-sung during his days as a partisan fighter, last week completed the climb to the top of the ladder by becoming one of the five members of the decision-making Politburo Presidium of the Workers' Party of Korea as well as vice chairman of the party’s central military commission.
The rise of Choe Ryong-hae, despite his previous civilian status in the Workers' Party, coincides with Kim Jong-eun's ascension to power.
North Korea's top power elite also includes O Il-jong, who is the son of O Jin-u, a former People's Armed Forces minister, and O Kum-chol, who is the son of O Baek-yong, a one-time head of state security. Their fathers were all guerrillas together, and they supported Kim Jong-il when he was in competition with his uncle, Kim Yong-ju, to succeed North Korea founder Kim Il-sung, according to South Korea's Chosun Ilbo.
"The hereditary system of power leads to the stabilization of the current regime," Hiroyasu Akutsu, a professor and senior fellow at the National Institute for Defense Studies, told Asia Times Online on Monday. "It's North Korean version of the Crown Prince Party, or The Princelings."
Japanese experts on North Korean affairs see three pledges in Kim Jong-eun's speech. One is the maintenance of the policies of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il based on their instructions and wills. The second is that the songun (military-first) policy is rooted in the ideology that embodies the juche (self-reliance) idea and strengthens the rigidity of the Kim family dynasty. The third is to establish an economically prosperous nation, which has never been realized to date.
The public in front of the young leader on Sunday displayed unusual characters on placards, such as "No enemy, Strong military", along with the usual characters such as "Military-first politics" and "a strong and prosperous nation". Japanese experts say this represents North Korea's strong willingness to continue developing nuclear and missile programs.
Kosuke Takahashi is a Tokyo-based Japanese journalist. Besides Asia Times Online, he also writes for Jane's Defence Weekly as Tokyo correspondent. His twitter is @TakahashiKosuke
(Copyright 2012 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
No comments:
Post a Comment