Even assuming Kim’s current health crisis, if that’s what it is, soon passes, it’s worth asking what will happen in North Korea when his embalmed body joins those of his father and grandfather in the Kim Il Sung Mausoleum in Pyongyang.
That day may not be all that long in coming. Carrying an estimated 300 pounds on his 5'6” frame, Kim Jong Un is morbidly obese. Add to this his diabetes, his fondness for wine and cheese, his cigarette habit (four packs a day), and his family history of coronary artery disease, and it is no exaggeration to say he’s a walking heart attack.
In the event Kim doesn’t recover from his current health crisis, if that’s what it is, or suffers a fatal one in the next few years, which seems possible, who would succeed him? And what, if anything, would change in North Korea’s repressive domestic or foreign policies?
Kim’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, probably has the inside track. The two Kims are said to have developed a close relationship while they were in Switzerland from 1996 to 2000 attending school. She was a junior cadre in the Korean Worker’s Party until 2011, when her brother became supreme leader. Since then, she has received one promotion after another, a sure sign of his favor.
Aside from their personal relationship, which may matter less to the man who fed his uncle to a pack of hungry dogs than one might think, Ms. Kim is also the vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Korean Worker’s Party, and as such was reportedly the mastermind behind the creation of her brother’s personality cult. Having done that successfully for her older brother, she would be more than capable of creating her own larger-than-life image.
By 2017, she had joined the Politburo of the Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee, and since then has become a public figure in North Korea, often present at Kim’s public appearances. Internationally, she represented her country at the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympic Winter Games, and accompanied her brother to the summit meetings with Trump in Singapore and Vietnam.
Although Kim Jong Un has entrusted his sister with considerable authority, some analysts dismiss the idea that she could become the top leader in a male-dominated communist country with a strong Confucian tradition, a tradition in which women are decidedly subordinate to men. They point to the fact that in neighboring China, Jiang Qing, also known as Madame Mao, was removed by a military coup shortly after the death of her husband, Mao Zedong.
Ms. Kim has a number of advantages over Madame Mao in the power game, however. First of all, she is Kim Jong Un’s only politically active sibling. In a sense, Kim Jong Un has cleared the way for her future rise by sidelining his two older brothers, one permanently. One was put out to pasture while the other, Kim Jong Nam, was assassinated in 2017 in the Kuala Lumpur Airport. Aside from Kim Jong Un’s 2-year-old son, that leaves Ms. Kim as the sole claimant for the Kim dynasty throne.
Moreover, despite her tender years, Ms. Kim seems to be no pushover. As soon as she was appointed as vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department in November 2014, she took control of the organization in typical Kim family fashion—by carrying out a purge.
Having successfully created her older brother’s personality cult, Ms. Kim is probably more than capable of creating her own. The illusion of toughness is at least as important as the reality, at least with regard to the North Korean army.
The biggest constituency in North Korea, and the one that is key to seizing and holding power, is the 1.2-million-man army. Here Ms. Kim brings important family ties of her own to the table. She is married to the second son of Workers’ Party vice chairman Choe Ryong Hae, who since late 2017 has been a member of the Party’s powerful military commission.
It was perhaps this connection, along with her brother’s support, that allowed her to issue her first direct military order in late 2019.
If Ms. Kim one day manages to ascend to the Kim dynasty throne, we shouldn’t expect her rule to be much different from that of her tyrannical brother, father, and grandfather. There will likely be no dramatic opening of the country to the outside world. One-sixth of the North Korean population will remain incarcerated in the nation’s huge network of labor camps, while the rest will continue to languish in the larger prison camp that is North Korea itself, kept in the dark about what goes on outside the country’s borders.
As for what Ms. Kim’s rule would mean for North Korean foreign policy, that remains an open question. She hasn’t given any major policy addresses, either on foreign or domestic policy. Some have suggested that she, as a woman, will have to prove her toughness by returning to the practice of her father and grandfather of carrying out lethal attacks on South Korea and the U.S. forces stationed there. Others have suggested that, at a minimum, she may be expected to resume the periodic nuclear tests and destabilizing missile launches that have characterized her brother’s rule.
This latter is probably closer to the mark.
The firings, she said, were an “action for self-defense” that was “not aimed to threaten anybody.”
This surely sounds more bellicose than conciliatory. It may be a sign that, even if Ms. Kim one day replaces her brother, the reunification of the Korean peninsula will remain a long way off.
