The Ponghwa behind Pyongyang's throne

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The Ponghwa behind Pyongyang's throne
By Michael Rank 
Jan 19, 2012

The Supreme Leader is dead, long live the Supreme Leader.

So it goes in North Korea, where the quasi-religious personality cult surrounding the Kim family burns as intensely as ever, reaching further heights of superstitious weirdness with the installation of the youthful Kim Jong-eun as its third deity.

The official North Korean media have gone out of their way to give the impression that the sudden death of Jong-eun's father Kim Jong-il in December will signal no deviation from the country's xenophobic and isolationist policies, stressing the Korean Workers' Party's "monolithic ideology and leadership and continuity".

The rhetoric is every bit as absurd and predictable as it was before Kim Jong-il's death last month, with commentaries eulogizing the late leader as a "peerlessly great man ... an outstanding thinker-theoretician, prominent statesman and rare illustrious commander of songun [military first policies] produced by humankind".

Bears wept and magpies screeched in mourning at the Dear Leader's demise, while the personality cult around his "dear respected" son took on similar proportions, with soldiers expressing their "ardent reverence" for Jong-eun as he makes sure that they are warm and well fed "as their real father would do".

All this may change in time, and Jong-eun, who is in his late 20s, may yet put his own stamp on his country's policies, possibly opening North Korea up to the outside world in order to prevent widespread hunger and poverty from getting even worse.

There has been no sign of this so far, but Jong-il has only been dead a month and nobody expects anything to happen fast in a country as conservative and hidebound as North Korea.

Readers of North Korean tea leaves say Jong-eun is being guided by his father's sister, Kim Kyong-hui, and her husband, Jang Song-taek, and that there may be some cause for optimism in the fact that Jang last year reportedly signed an agreement under which China will provide electricity for the Rason development zone close to the Chinese border.

The zone is highly sensitive and conservatives in the Pyongyang hierarchy are believed to regard it as a Trojan horse that could bring Chinese-style market reforms to North Korea, undermining the regime's legitimacy.

However, the reported signing of an electricity agreement by his mentor is thin evidence of Jong-eun's policy intentions, and the fact is that no one knows how the sudden and enforced change of leadership in Pyongyang will pan out.

It is widely assumed that if anyone knows what the North Koreans are up to, it's the Chinese, and Chinese-language Internet sites have provided news stories about drug smuggling and border-crossing refugees. But there seems to have been a clampdown in the last year or two and these sources have dried up.

However, the Beijing magazine Kan Tianxia published a noteworthy article after Jong-il's death highlighting the so-called Ponghwa group consisting of the sons (and presumably the occasional daughter) of the Pyongyang elite.

This privileged clique, which was first formed around 2000, consists of people mainly in their 30s and, the magazine claims, included Jong-eun himself after he returned home from his studies in Switzerland.

It says the group's purpose is to strengthen Jong-eun's power base and to act as his backstage support.

The article quotes an informed source as saying the Ponghwa group are mainly graduates of Kim Il-sung University, Pyongyang Foreign Languages University and other elite institutions, and that they tend to work in the security and intelligence apparatus and in top government organs such as the supreme procuratorate (prosecutor's office).

The word Ponghwa means "smoke of battle" and also has connotations of "advance guard". It is the name of the area of Pyongyang on the Taedong River that was the home of Kim Il-sung's mother Kang Pan-sok; it is also the name of Pyongyang's most elite hospital and there is a Ponghwa underground station.

The group is said to be headed by the sons of two generals. One of these is O Se-hyon, the second son of General O Kuk-ryol, who, according to the North Korea Leadership Watch (NKLW) blog, participated in a crucial meeting hours after Jong-il's death which "began the order of operations which publicized KJI's [Kim Jong-il's] demise and taking on KJI's remaining administrative and command mechanisms".

The other leader is Kim Chol, son of General Kim Won-hong, who, according to rumors, was involved in various scandals but was nevertheless promoted to full general in 2009. General Kim, like the fathers of several Ponghwa members named in the article, belongs to the super-elite as is clear from his listing as a member of Jong-il's funeral committee.

Ponghwa members also include the son of former veteran ambassador to Switzerland Ri Chol (Ri Tcheul) who is said to have been close to the young Jong-eun when he attended the International School in Bern, as well as the son of vice premier Kang Sok-ju. Kang was until 2010 the senior vice minister of foreign affairs and is, according to NKLW, a cousin of Jong-il; he also has has ties to Jong-eun's mentors and uncle and aunt, Jang Song-taek and Kim Kyong-hui.

Members of elite groups such as the Ponghwa set are visible to the foreign community in Pyongyang where they frequent hard currency shops and restaurants, and have a clear parallel in China where the sons and daughters of top officials are assiduous in exploiting family connections.

Although Jong-eun is said to be as omniscient and omnipotent as his father and grandfather, almost nothing is known for sure about him. There is little doubt that he went to school in Switzerland, and the Chinese magazine claims this has been confirmed in North Korean "propaganda documents" - probably internal briefing materials distributed to senior officials.

Pyongyang watchers experienced a mild frisson when his mother was mentioned in a television documentary earlier this month, as this was the first time there had been official recognition that he has a mother. She has never been officially named, apparently because she was a Japanese-born Korean, and also because her relationship with Jong-il was not a happy one. She is said to have died in Paris in 2004.

Nobody is sure if Jong-eun was born in 1983 or 1984. According to a book written by his father's former live-in chef, his birthday is on January 8, but there were no signs of celebration in Pyongyang on that day. Perhaps it was considered unfitting to celebrate so soon after his father's demise.

The only utterance attributed to Kim Jong-eun is a paean of praise to the joys of working all night. "Even when I work night after night, once I have brought joy to the comrade supreme commander, the weariness vanishes and a new strength courses through my whole body. This is what revolutionaries should live for."

His father and grandfather were also fond of lauding the joys of working through the night, and there's nothing North Korean leaders fear more than original thinking.

Michael Rank is a London-based journalist and translator. He graduated in Chinese from Cambridge University and is a former Reuters correspondent in Beijing. He visited Rason in North Korea in 2010.

http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Korea/NA19Dg01.html