Un for the Road

He allegedly has traveled on false passports (like his older brother), is clearly his daddy’s favorite and seems to share his father’s disdain for the rest of the world. He’s got a weight problem, purportedly suffers from diabetes and high blood pressure, and the above photograph (taken when he was eleven years old) is the only confirmed picture of him that resides outside of his native land. Now in his mid-twenties, this lad has an older brother and a younger sister from his father’s marriage to his local opera star mother, although there are two additional half siblings around as well.

While we can never be 100% sure what is going on, this young man’s father, Kim Jong-il (“Dear Leader”), has named him the heir apparent as the next North Korean leader (presumably for life). Kim Jong-il, himself the son of the previous North Korean dictator, Kim Il-sung (“Great Leader”), suffered a stroke last August, and health issues prompted the sixty-seven-year-old to name Kim Jong-un as his successor. What is shocking is how little is known about this clearly inexperienced “son of the boss,” who is about to take over a nation that is profoundly isolated from the rest of the world, defiant to the demands of both regional and global powers and armed with fully-tested nuclear weapons and the missile systems to deliver those weapons presumably to American shores.

If Communism had any roots as a populist movement, that impression has most certainly died in North Korea, where leadership appears to be remarkably like a fully descendible monarchy. They might as well call them “kings” or “czars.” There is absolutely nothing “populist” about this ruthless family, a fact which seems to embarrass even the leaders of the Peoples Republic of China. Jong-un grew up in a household filled with decadent vestiges of the Western world – swimming pools, water fountains, bowling alleys, billiard rooms, inline skating tracks, a beach, Jet Skis and horses according to the June 14^th New York Times – but no one is particularly sure of exactly who he is.

The Times: “Analysts are divided over whether Kim Jong-un also attended the school in Switzerland. They say he was enrolled from 2002 to 2007 in the Kim Il-sung Military University, a leading officer-training school in Pyongyang, the capital, but was taught at home. The son, these accounts say, is about 5 feet 9 inches tall and weighs more than 200 pounds.” Some say he even speaks English, relatively fluently. He apparently likes Japanese cartoons, is even a fan of Arnold Schwarzenegger (in his Terminator role) and plays basketball.

The hidden story has to be with the “deal” that Kim Jong-il had to make with his military leadership to permit the announcement in the first place. Clearly, determined generals could have easily derailed the elder statesman’s efforts to place his younger son on the throne, and if the young successor doesn’t “play ball” with the military leaders that surround him – at least until he has demonstrated skillful manipulative political skills – no one would be surprised to see a “transition” to an entirely different leader. What compromises were made?

Are the current spate of missile and nuclear tests that the North has promulgated against the protests of the rest of the world the result of a diabolical agreement with the military? Will extreme deprivation continue to be the lot of the vast majority of North Korean citizens? Will saber-rattling escalate to the actual deployment of the litany of military horrors clearly within the control of the North Korean leadership? Are the North Koreans really thinking of firing a missile towards Hawaii?

I’m Peter Dekom, and I wonder every day.