BEIJING - North Korea announced last weekend that it would convene the 12th Supreme People's Assembly, its rubber-stamp parliament, in Pyongyang on April 7, an occasion analysts predict will see a key step in the power succession to Kim Jong-eun, by promoting him to a vice chairmen of the powerful National Defense Commission.
With the world's attention fixated on the young son and heir, who is believed to be in his twenties, we don't seem to pay enough attention to the Dear Leader, not as we did in the past.
That's understandable in a sense because the Kim Jong-il show is nearing its end. After reportedly suffering a stroke in the summer of 2008, the aging leader has remained frail. So, it would come as
function fixOutOfMemoryError() { __flash_unloadHandler = function() {}; __flash_savedUnloadHandler = function() {}; } window.attachEvent("onbeforeunload", fixOutOfMemoryError); no news to readers that many news outlets, including the New York Times, prepared a pre-written obituary ready to print when the almost immortal Dear Leader finally succumbs.
So, who is Kim Jong-il? How much does the outside world know about him? In fact, knowing the Dear Leader is a tricky business. Given the elusive nature of his life, compounded by inaccessibility to the country, a Japanese professor at Waseda University, Toshimitsu Shigemura, has even claimed that Kim actually died in 2003 from diabetes and the current one is a double.
As late as 2009, Kim surprised the world - when speculation on his waning health was reaching a climax - by showing up in person to meet the former US president Bill Clinton, who was visiting the nation on a mission to secure the release of two detained US journalists.
While Kim's talent in surprising the world is nothing new, time is still ticking. Intelligence communities in the US and South Korea as well as diplomatic cables leaked by WikiLeaks all point to Kim's lifespan being anywhere from two to five years at most.
After Kim's death, analytic reports studying his life will certainly ensue. It may even become an academic specialty, as we saw in the case of the former Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and German leader Adolf Hitler.
But even before "the day" arrives, talking with analysts prompts a call to correct a widely-held misconception of Kim Jong-il. That is, he started as a reluctant leader.
A reluctant leader According to North Korea's official records, Kim Jong-il was born on February 16, 1942, in a guerilla camp on Mount Baekdu in northern North Korea where his father Kim Il-sung, the founder of the country, was fighting against the Japanese occupiers. Soviet records, however, state that he was born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, in the former Soviet Union in 1941.
Analysts give more weight to the Soviet records, saying the North fabricated Kim's birth place to add legitimacy to his leadership, by linking his birth to a mountain that is revered by Koreans.
Kim succeeded his father Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994, and took command of the fourth largest standing army in the world. North Korea officially referred to him as the "Dear Leader".
However, as the top commander of a nation, Kim was a reluctant leader who lacked the charisma of his father. “He was groomed for many years for the top position but he did not seem to want to politically lead the country, although he became interested in what power offered to him,” said John Feffer, the co-director of Foreign Policy In Focus, a Washington-based think-tank.
"Kim Jong-il was someone who liked to work behind the scenes like a movie director, he was not comfortable in front of the camera," Feffer said.
In fact, analysts often gauged Kim by comparing him with his father. Selig Harrison, director of the Asia Program at the Center for International Policy, who met Kim Il-sung and visited North Korea many times, said: "The big difference between Kim Jong-il and his father was that Kim Il-sung was a natural politician. Kim Il-sung was very charismatic. He had many personal followers. Kim Jong-il, on the other hand, didn't like to be a politician. He was very different from his father."
Kim junior was never free from his inferiority complex, according to Nobu Sakajiri, a Japanese journalist who has covered North Korea for many years with Japan's Asahi Shimbun. "The second generation leader tends to have an inferiority complex, compared to his father. Kim Jong-il felt that he was not as talented as his father."
However, experts said Kim has over the years gradually developed the skills to run the country. "He became a very clever manipulator," Harrison said.
The son and the father lived in very different circumstances. Kim Il-sung had to survive fighting against the Japanese and United Nations forces during the 1950-53 Korean War, whereas Kim Jong-il came to power in a much easier way. "All he had to do was inherit his father's position", said Kenneth Quinones, a former US State Department official, who was in charge of North Korean affairs.
Understandably, the biggest task for Kim Jong-il since he took charge has been to sustain the regime that he inherited from his father, by resisting opening up to the outside world. In the process, he has starved his country's people, purged those who displayed signs of a potential rival and relied on a personality cult to keep his authority. In refusing to cooperate with the international community, he has shown his policy posture as primarily defensive. But observers say he lacks a long-term vision for his country.
"Ultimately, he will be remembered as a transitional figure, unable to prepare his country for transition for modernity," Feffer said.
Kim has been depicted in the international media as a dictator who suppressed human rights and who eats imported caviar and drinks Italian wine while watching Hollywood movies and gambling with missile and nuclear brinkmanship. He had been over the years the subject of numerous character assassinations and caricatures which portrayed his as deranged or megalomaniac.
Analysts, scholars, and intelligence officials point out a more dispassionate view. "It's flawed to describe Kim Jong-il as 'irrational'. That's completely inaccurate," said Quinones.
Contrary to the common view that Kim has run the country alone, analysts say the dictator has had to negotiate with different factions to keep power; for example, military hardliners and those who emphasize economic reforms.
"The deterioration of his health gave hardliners a chance to be more powerful," Harrison said.
As for Kim's overall appraisal as a state leader, however, even scholars of the North's closest ideological ally, China, have some reservations. "It would be difficult for Kim Jong-il to be regarded as a good manager of the country," said Zhao Huji, a political scientist at the Community Party's elite Central Party School in Beijing.
Eventually, analysts say, Kim's legacy will judged by what happens to the nation after his passing.
Sunny Lee (sleethenational@gmail.com) is a Seoul-born columnist and journalist; he has degrees from the US and China.
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