Translated material
Youngest Son Conference
North Korea will appoint a successor leader
A conference of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) opened in Pyongyang yesterday, from which foreign observers expected a solution to the issue of succession of power in the DPRK. The very fact of holding a party forum can be considered a historical event - the WPK has not convened a conference for 44 years.Official sources said that yesterday at the party conference, the General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and the Chairman of the State Defense Committee of the DPRK, 69-year-old Kim Jong Il, was re-elected to his party post. There has been no information about the closure of the conference yet. And most importantly, the list of the updated composition of the central committee of the WPK has not yet become public. The appearance of the name Kim Jong Un, the 27-year-old youngest son of Kim Jong Il, would indicate the young man's status as successor to the aging North Korean leader.
North Korean media mentioned Kim Jong Un just a few hours before the start of the party conference, without indicating his relationship with the leader. South Korean and Japanese analysts have been tipping Kim Jong Un as his successor since 2008, when Kim Sr. suffered one or two strokes, according to US and South Korean intelligence. At the end of August this year, Kim Jong Il visited China. This has given rise to speculation that he wants to enlist the support of Beijing as Pyongyang's closest ally in the transfer of power. However, soon former US President Jimmy Carter learned from Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao that Kim Jong Il, in a conversation with him, called all talk about a political heir “nonsense of Western propaganda.”
“The conference of the ruling WPK should theoretically elect members of the party’s central committee due to their attrition due to natural reasons. Kim Jong Il has not left, and his successor has not been named. However, it is likely that Kim Jong Un will appear in the new composition of the Central Committee, because previously he supervised the security forces in the Central Committee apparatus,” Konstantin Asmolov, a leading researcher at the Center for Korean Studies at the Institute of Far Eastern Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences, explained to Vremya Novostey. He noted that Kim Jong Un “due to his youth is known to a relatively narrow circle of people, and therefore, apparently, the powers to lead the state in a difficult political situation will be delegated to him gradually.”
On September 27, on the eve of the party conference, Kim Jong Il, as head of the State Defense Committee, awarded Kim Jong Un the rank of army general. The leader's younger sister, 64-year-old Kim Kyung-hee, who often acted as a senior-level army political worker, also became a general. Her husband, the same age as Jang Song Thaek, was appointed Kim Jong Il’s deputy in the State Defense Committee in June of this year, and previously he headed the administrative department of the WPK Central Committee. South Korean experts believe that the North Korean leader's brother-in-law actually replaced him during illnesses, and in the event of Kim Jong Il's death, he will remain a kind of regent for his son.
It is noteworthy that the North Korean media reported on September 27 that the army had delegated Kim Jong Il and Kim Jong Un to the party conference on August 25. According to the North Korean constitution, the State Defense Committee “is the highest military governing body of state power,” and the state “carries out all its activities under the leadership of the Workers' Party of Korea.” Of the 24 million citizens of the DPRK, approximately 3 million are members of the WPK, of which 1.2 million are military.
Pyongyang announced in June that the WPK conference would take place “in early September.” At the appointed time, there were reports that the delegates had arrived, but the party conference never began. The reasons for the delay were not explained in the North Korean media. “The fact of holding a party conference reflects the internal struggle in the leadership of the DPRK - apparently, between those who rely on the State Defense Committee and the party bureaucracy,” corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences orientalist Vasily Mikheev told VN. The expert noted that Kim Jong Il himself does not need formalities in the form of a party forum, since he “with his power can appoint anyone as anyone” and an example of this is “the general’s shoulder straps on the shoulders of his son, which consolidated Kim Jong Un’s position within the military leadership.”
The current leader, who inherited power in the DPRK after the death of his father Kim Il Sung in 1994, “doesn’t even want to think about going anywhere, and the party conference is not his invention.” According to Vasily Mikheev, Kim Jong Il “was put under pressure by his inner circle—those who are familiar with Soviet party culture.” The leader himself “does not and cannot have this culture, because the WPK has not held a single conference since 1966, not a single congress since 1980, and not a single plenum of the Central Committee since 1993.” The expert concluded: “The party conference, in all likelihood, was needed by Jang Song Thaek, since the highest party nomenklatura, which he represents in the State Defense Committee, intends to strengthen its position in anticipation of great upheavals associated with the ill health and possible departure of Kim Jong Il.”