Kim Jong Il didn't favor family succession to power, exiled son told author
YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — When North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died in December, his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, was quickly named as his replacement — fait accompli by all appearances.
But the elder Kim might not have wholeheartedly supported this all-in-the-family succession. At least, that’s the contention of the deceased leader’s eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, said Yoji Gomi, a Tokyo-based journalist and author of the just-released “My Father, Kim Jong Il and I: Kim Jong Nam’s Exclusive Confession.”
Kim Jong Nam has lived in China since 1995 in a self-imposed exile.
During a talk this week at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Gomi, through an English translator, quoted Kim Jong Nam: “My father was more opposed to the third-generation hereditary succession than anybody, and it must have been internal factors that forced him to change his view.”
The eldest son said that his father likely changed his mind because the “North Korean people are so used to obeying orders solely based on the belief of bloodline that they may have trouble accepting any successor outside of that bloodline,” according to Gomi.
Masayuki Suzuki, a professor at Shobi University in Saitama, said that a transfer of power outside of family would have been “unthinkable” because bloodline is the only legitimacy the regime possesses.
Still, even if the image of a dynasty-reluctant Kim Jong Il clashes with common perception, the scenario is not entirely improbable, Michael Breen, author of “Kim Jong Il: North Korea’s Dear Leader,” said in an email interview.
“It is spot-on in that a blood descendant would be more acceptable to the people,” Breen said. “In their political behavior, Koreans are exceedingly fractious. What better way to take the chaos out of succession than to institute a monarchy?”
Indeed, Kim Il Sung, the country’s founding leader, reportedly opposed the suggestion that he name son Kim Jong Il as successor, Breen said. He was persuaded by those around him, however, to select his son as a strategy to prevent North Korea from following the path of post-Stalin Soviet Union and post-Mao China, he said.
Gomi, a newspaper correspondent based in China at the time, met Kim Jong Nam in the Beijing airport in 2004 and has maintained sporadic communication with him since. The eldest son gained international notoriety after being caught using a fake passport to enter Japan in 2001.
North Korea analysts believed at the time that Kim Jong Il had been grooming Kim Jong Nam for leadership until the passport debacle closed that door. The son told Gomi, however, that he fell out of favor with his father because he had become enamored with capitalism.
Gomi said Kim Jong Nam seemed “a little bit jealous of his brother’s accession” but that he held no ambitions to succeed his father.
Perhaps not, but China’s protection of the wayward son — who openly advocates that North Korea adopt China-style economic reforms — might indicate it sees him as a possible leader.
While China doesn’t openly support Kim Jong Nam, said Dr. Jiyoung Song, a North Korea expert at National University of Singapore, allowing him to speak openly and remain in China “indicates they have an alternative if Jong Un fails” or if the unproven leader pursues a provocative course that mirrors his father’s reign.
Stripes and Stripes reporter Chiyomi Sumida contributed to this report.
