Lies and Whispers

Not only are strange things happening in Pyongyang, but things that should be happening are not. Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s newly promoted Great Leader, has not appeared in public since his father’s funeral on July 20. On that occasion he stood by, pale and puffy, as others spoke. Since then he has not said a word to his 22 million subjects. He has not met with representatives of any other country. And he has not been officially installed as President or as General Secretary of the communist Workers’ Party — positions held by Kim Il Sung at his death.

Though the thoroughly Stalinist North Korea does not actually have a Kremlin, outside experts find themselves employing the oblique methods once used to evaluate Soviet politics to plumb the oddities in Pyongyang. Who is standing next to whom? What are the editorials hinting? Is Kim the successful successor or under challenge? These are not mere academic concerns when the U.S. needs to get on with talks about curbing North Korea’s atom-bomb program.

Speculation about Kim’s future has grown rapidly over recent days. First, anti-Kim Jong Il leaflets appeared around the diplomatic quarter in well- policed Pyongyang. Then an official radio broadcast ostensibly supported Kim’s succession as the national leader but may have dropped a hint of a possible power struggle. If the succession “failed to be resolved correctly,” it warned, “acts of betrayal by ambitious people” could bring disaster to the party and the revolution. Finally, Japanese press reports said Kim had turned down an invitation to Beijing.

The South Korean government insists such evidence, ambiguous as it is, points to trouble in the North. “It has heightened our suspicions,” says a senior official in Seoul, “that something is going wrong for Kim Jong Il.” Seoul may be genuinely worried about Kim Jong Il’s stability or may be trying to rock the boat in Pyongyang.

If Kim Jong Il’s power is threatened, it is more likely to be by a palace coup than by popular rebellion. One rival power center could be the million- man armed forces, commanded by Defense Minister O Jin U. Other potential rebels might be ambitious members of Kim’s own family: his stepmother Kim Song Ae; his uncle, Vice President Kim Yong Ju; or his half brother Kim Pyong Il.

Tales of the new leader’s supposed ill health are circulating to account for his absence from public view. Some say he has diabetes; others mention cirrhosis of the liver. There is no evidence for those claims, and some well- informed experts say Kim has always operated in secrecy and silence. His accession to the formal titles of President and head of the party, they believe, will be announced with appropriate fanfare on some special occasion, like the national foundation day next week.

Even if it turns out that Kim has a firm grip on power, he may not be able to hold on to it very long. He faces a policy dilemma that carries the seeds of his destruction: keeping the country isolated and politically rigid will result in widespread starvation and economic collapse, whereas serious efforts at reform will either topple the regime or lead to a coup by hard-liners. In the meantime, the U.S. hopes Kim will manage to stay around long enough to negotiate away his nuclear bomb program — if he intends to do so and his rivals will let him.