In a complex series of moves, power has shifted from the military, to a civilian elite
by Alan Parker on Friday, August 3, 2012 10:19pm
There’s been a military takeover in North Korea. Not a takeover BY the military but a takeover OF the Korean People’s Army (KPA) by a civilian elite clustered around precariously perched boy dictator Kim Jong-un.
Kim Jong-un has been nominal leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) since his father’s death a week before Christmas 2011. Even before Kim Jong-il’s death on Dec. 17, the inner circle at the top of the North Korean pyramid was jockeying for ultimate power.
In the first few months of the new regime, a group of military hardliners led by Vice-Marshal Ri Yong-ho — chief of the KPA general staff and an anointed guardian of the newest dictator Kim — held the upper hand.
The other principal faction — civilian bureaucrats and politicians led by Kim Jong-un’s wily uncle, Jang Song-taek — initially made a public show of deference to the military’s dominance, but worked behind the scenes to break the soldiers’ grip on the levers of power.
The culmination of that struggle came on Sunday, July 15, when Vice-Marshal Ri was stripped of all military and political titles in a public purging at a meeting of the full WPK politburo, followed by the elevation of a little-known general, Hyong Yong-chol, to the rank of vice-marshal the next day.
Two days later — on Wednesday, July 18 — the military takeover was complete with the announcements that boy dictator Kim Jong-un now held the titles Supreme Leader of the DPRK and Marshal of the Korean People’s Army. In the process of public celebrations that followed, newly minted Vice-Marshal Hyong was revealed as the new chief of the KPA general staff.
And two days after that, unconfirmed reports began emerging in South Korea that Ri had been — perhaps — wounded or even killed in a shootout that left dozens dead when a military unit loyal to Jang Song-taek (Kim Jong-un’s wily uncle, remember?) arrived at Ri’s headquarters to arrest him.
Other reports — just as unconfirmed — cast doubt on the shootout scenario.
And still other unconfirmed reports said Ri had—perhaps—initiated the chain of cataclysmic events by trying to orchestrate a pre-emptive strike when he ordered unauthorized large-scale military manoeuvres close to the capital of Pyongyang.
In the end, Ri and his hardline KPA supporters were defanged, a new military leadership loyal to the clique around Kim Jung-un and his wily uncle Jang Song-taek was installed, and control of the levers of powers in North Korea was transferred to civilians and politicians. For the time being.
But the events of July were only the final act of a tense process that actually had its most pivotal points months earlier, in March, April and May.
It’s crucial to know two things:
1. There are no Good Guys and Bad Guys in the North Korean power struggle. They’re all Bad Guys, to one degree or another—second- and third-generation Stalinist thugs, gangsters and killers—who are fighting among themselves for the spoils of power and economic control while millions of their fellow North Koreans teeter on the brink of famine and hundreds of thousands of political prisoners are brutalized and die in concentration camps.
2. For most of the past two decades, North Korea has been run on the principle of Songun, a “military first” policy that has dominated every aspect of North Korean life and thought, ensuring that the KPA’s needs—from food to nuclear weapons to a primary role in society—are supplied in full before anyone else gets anything. Songun was the payoff for the military backing now-deceased “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il (father of the current Kim dictator) in the mid-1990s when his ascension to supreme power (after the death of his father, North Korean founding dictator Jim Il-sung) was being stymied by the political elite in Pyongyang. Now, 17 years later, the politicians are striking back and Songun—while still paid lip service—is in the early stages of being dismantled.
As for the crucial events of spring, the first move came in February when the civilian government agreed to a North Korean moratorium on nuclear and missile testing in exchange for 240,000 tonnes of food and medical aid from the U.S.—aid specifically designated for children and pregnant women.
Military hardliners led by Ri flexed their muscle in March by announcing that, despite the aid deal, plans would go ahead for the launch of a rocket carrying a “communications satellite”—widely seen as a veiled nuclear delivery-system test.
In response, the U.S. froze its planned aid shipment, putting North Korea’s food supply under intense strain. What is less well-known is that China — North Korea’s strongest supporter — also froze its food and fuel shipments at the same time, to show its displeasure over the hardliners’ sabre-rattling.
Move ahead to mid-April as the North Korean regime pulled out all stops to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of founding dictator Kim Il-sung. The military rocket launch was a centrepiece of the propaganda extravaganza, with a raft of KPA and WPK promotions and high-profile meetings packed in around huge parades, armament displays, spectacles and endless professions of undying loyalty to the Kim dynasty and the Korean People’s Army.
The KPA satellite/missile was launched on April 13—and promptly blew up in mid-air (possibly as a result of the same U.S.-generated computer mega-virus that has infected the Iranian nuclear development programme).
When the missile blew up, so too did the dominance of the military hardliners. The civilian politicians—the so-called “economic reformers”—immediately went on the attack.
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