Power Struggle Looms in N.Korea

Chosun Ilbo

The North Korean elite lead insecure lives nowadays. Some members of the Unification and Propaganda Department of the Workers Party, accused of having bungled their South Korea policy, have recently been sent to the Yoduk concentration camp.

All North Korean intelligence officers assigned overseas were called back home early this year to undergo questioning by the State Security Department. About 30 percent of them have yet to return to their overseas posts, and those who have returned were emaciated from harsh interrogations, according to sources.

Asked what the food situation is like in North Korea, a North Korean overseas official said what was more serious in the North is the manhunt. The State Security Department is hunting innocent people in a bid to ferret out spies implicated in South Korea's recently reinforced overseas intelligence activities.

With economic aid from the South suspended since the Roh Moo-hyun administration ended, the North Korean elite have begun watching their leadership. The North Korean regime, though it managed without much difficulty thanks to the South's handout aid in the past decade, was unprepared for the post-Roh era. Kim Jong-il and the top leadership, despite an extreme economic crisis, shot dead South Korean tourist in the Mt. Kumgang resort, applied pressure over the joint Kaesong Industrial Estate, and fired a missile.

Ordinary North Koreans are pessimistic about these self-destructive acts. The elite fear that if Kim Jong-il goes under, so will they. A recent sharp increase in the defection of senior North Korean figures is not unrelated to that sense of crisis.

The elite have witnessed two types of transformation. One was the German unification and the other China's reform and opening. German unification completely deprived all East German Communist party and military leaders of their privileges and made them jobless. Kim Jong-il had the plight of former East German leaders photographed and shown to North Korean cadres. And many members of the elite, though they detested Kim Jong-il, thought they had no alternative but to follow him for fear of losing their privileges if the regime collapsed. That is why the regime did not collapse despite the 1990s famine that starved millions to death.

The current crisis, however, stems from the gradually growing power of the masses. The state is unable to ration food, the market has expanded and the power of individuals is growing to an uncontrollable extent. The elite have no choice but to think seriously about Chinese-style reform and opening as a way to survive. They generally agree that the North is not a normal socialist country, and that Chinese-style reform is not the betrayal of socialism the Kim Jong-il regime claims it is.

That is why a consensus is emerging in the North that a socialist collective leadership is needed, and that idolatry of the great leader should be abandoned to achieve reform and opening. That the Workers' Party's Operations Department recently shifted its major role from defending the North against the South to safeguarding the political system in the course of revamping the National Defense Commission is one result of that change. The shift shows how determined the regime is to punish anyone who defies it. A power struggle between conservatives, who will share their fate with Kim Jong-il, and the normal elite looms. We should watch closely.

By Kang Chol-hwan from the Chosun Ilbo's News Desk