Some analysts have been speculating that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un wants a total revolution in North Korean policy — a revolution in which he would push China even farther away and either join an American-led alliance outright or attempt to play off China against the United States.
Kim does have poor relations with China, as shown by the lack of visits and contacts. And there are the anonymous sources who say he was alerted to a plot by Uncle Jang Song-taek to enlist China’s help in kicking him out of office and putting his half-brother Jong-nam in power instead.
That certainly would explain why Kim Jong-un saw the need to kill both his uncle (execution) and his half-brother (assassination), and why he hasn’t warmed to China. And if he had such a revolutionary intention as switching from the United States to China as his great power protector, that would likewise explain his sudden peace offensive and reported offer to meet US President Donald Trump.
All that said, however, and as intriguing as those notions are, we need to remember just who Kim Jong-un is.
We have it from his father’s Japanese sushi chef that Jong-un was the meanest and most belligerent of the late Dear Leader’s three sons. My guess is that he was chosen precisely on that account. You have to be a mean son of a bitch to be a dictator in the Kim family mold.
If, in fact, he’d been a secret reformer, Kim had time after his father’s 2011 death to show that. I’ve seen little evidence that he differs significantly from his father, who never could pull himself far from the policies instituted by his own father, the first-generation head of the dynasty, Kim Il-sung.
We cannot know for sure how a true reformer would be greeted domestically. Still, I think it’s reasonable to assume that military/security hardliners would resist a major turn away from the militarism that the eldest Kim unveiled with the 1950 invasion of the South, and then developed further from the 1960s on.
There are some indications that the reaction of secret dissidents among the elite as well as the long-suffering population of ordinary people might be positive This is the possibility I imagine in the plot of my new novel Nuclear Blues.
But Kim must also bear in mind that his claim to legitimacy as one-man ruler depends mainly upon his fidelity to family policies. In other words, even if we posit that some other North Korean from another family, coming to power afresh, could afford a major, Dengist break with the past, Jong-un has to question whether he, as the designated Kim heir, could get away with it.
As for the reports that Kim Jong-un has quoted his father and grandfather on their goal of denuclearlizing the peninsula, we know very well that definitions of denuclearization differ widely.
My guess at this moment is that Jong-un is trying yet another hustle in the tried and true Kim family regime tradition. I hope I’m wrong, and I will keep watching eagerly for evidence that I’m wrong. But just look at young Kim’s retinue.
Who represented the regime at the opening ceremony of the Olympics? Answer: Kim Yong-nam, 90 years old, the same official who had been trying for four decades to con the Americans into leaving their South Korean ally to fend for itself. (He sat me down in Pyongyang in 1979 and had me listen to his spin for five hours.)
Meanwhile, Jang Song-taek, the most likely Dengist figure we’d seen since Kim Dal-hyon enjoyed an all-too-short run near the top of the power structure in the 1990s, is dead at the hand of his nephew. (Kim Dal-hyon took his own life in despair after hardliners got him sidetracked.)
If you’re going to revolutionize your own regime, normally you’d want to align your personnel more in that direction, I’d say. Unfortunately, another DPRK con job — if that is what Kim’s current diplomatic outreach represents — may be coming at precisely the wrong time: It would be music to the ears of Washington’s most reckless hardliner, the newly appointed national security advisor Ambassador John Bolton.
This was about n Korea, what the hell you blabber about all this other nonsense,,,
Too far fetched! PDRK is tied to China by "umbilical" cord. Their link is forged with "blood" & baptised by "fire & fury". The instant the bond is severed, it signal the end of the "Kim’s".
Listen carefully to the Pakistanis. China is a "all weather" friend!
9 of the 10 comments are Chinese trolls… go figure. This is not news, because it is irrelevant. North Korea will either give up her nukes or be annihilated. What China or her peon trolls opine is of no import. As a matter of fact, you fools can dominate this particular article with your nonsensical, pointless ramblings. Have fun.
Kim,his wife and all powerful younger sister are in China to meet with President Xi———-without the MASTERS approval there is no summit with the U.S. and South Korea fast approaching.
yesterday’s news …
Is this another Trump’s dream? North Korea will never be a friend of USA because USA is invading Korea, because USA had massacred millions of Koreans and because USA is still causing a lot of damage to Korea and the Koreans.
What a juvenile article. Whole thing predicated on an anonymous source. Please!
As far as i can tell. .N.Korea only threatens others when it was threatened first.
Strange I was just reading this morning that Kim is in China for meetings with his Chinese counter parts…
Dumb analysis based on fake news and reports. You must try harder if you want Uncle Sam to keep you on its payroll…
Here are some of John Bolton’s words:
The point that I want to leave with you, in this very brief presentation, is where I started, is there is no United Nations. There is an international community that occasionally can be led by the only real power left in the world, and that’s the United States, when it suits our interest and when we can get others to go along. … The Secretariat Building in New York has 38 stories. If you lost 10 stories today, it wouldn’t make a bit of difference.
Who’s the bully?
It’s a monarchy, obviously. You are right.
Not one word about Bush II’s tearing apart the Agreed framework reached with Kim II and Clinton.
Not one word about NATO expansion despite promise by Bush I to Gorbachev not to move it one inch to the east. It has since moved miles eastwards up to the Russian border.
Not one word about Bush I’s welcoming Saddam’s nuclear scientists to the Whitehouse and Bush II later hanged him.
Not one word about Bush II’s unilateral withdrawal from the ABM treaty with Russia.
Not one word about Trump’s likely sabotage of the Iran Nuclear Deal reached with the UN P5+Germany.
Whose con jobs are these?
quote: "And if he had such a revolutionary intention as switching from the United States to China as his great power protector … "
Huh? The other way around perhaps? What about Russia? And none of the three should be considered "his great power protector" because the US wants him removed, whereas Russia and China are only interested in a peaceful, trouble-free Korean penisular, regardless of who runs North Korea.
quote: "But Kim must also bear in mind that his claim to legitimacy as one-man ruler depends mainly upon his fidelity to family policies."
No. The North Koreans have been indoctrinated to follow the despotic family, not family policies (if there is even such a thing), just like the Chinese had been indoctrinated to follow Mao prior to and during the Cultural Revolution, regardless of the merits of his policies. They would follow, or are supposed to follow, whatever policies the Kim family dictates.
I’m a big fan of Meritocracy. Therefore I consider Kim Jung-un, his close followers, Donald Trump, John Bolton, and all other neo-cons in the US government a bunch of cancers. Their rise to high office is the biggest Con job.