Kim Jong Il
Kim Jong-il (In official transliteration: Gim Jeong-il ; 김정일; 金正日) (born February 16, 1942) is the ruler of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea), holding the positions of Chairman of the National Defence Committee and General Secretary of the Korean Workers' Party. North Korean propaganda refers to him as the "Dear Leader".
Rise to power
Kim Jong-il was born in an army camp near Khabarovsk in the Soviet Union, where his father, Kim Il-sung, was an important figure among Korean Communist exiles. (His official biography maintains that he was born at Mount Paektu in northern Korea.) During his boyhood, the younger Kim was known as Yura (or Yuri) Kim.
Kim was three years old when World War II ended and Kim Il-sung returned to Korea to take charge of the Communist apparatus in Pyongyang, in the Soviet-occupied northern half of Korea. The younger Kim's brother, sister, and mother all died under mysterious circumstances, leaving Kim Jong-il as the sole successor to Kim Il-sung.
Kim probably received most of his education in the People's Republic of China, where he was sent for greater safety during the Korean War. According to the official version, he graduated from Namsan School in Pyongyang, a special school for the children of communist party officials. He is later said to have attended Kim Il-sung University and majored in Political Economy, graduating in 1964. By the time of his graduation his father, revered in the regime's propaganda as "the Great Leader," had firmly consolidated control over the regime.
After graduating in 1964, Kim Jong-il began his ascension through the ranks of the ruling Korean Worker's Party, working first in the party's elite Organization Department before being named a member of the Politburo in 1968. In 1969 he was appointed deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department.
The elder Kim had meanwhile remarried and had another son, Kim Pyong-il, sparking an intense rivalry between Kim Jong-il and his younger half-brother. It is unclear when Jong-il was chosen over Pyong-il, or whether Pyong-il was ever seriously considered as successor by his father. Kim Pyong-il was eventually posted to a series of distant embassies to keep the two brothers apart.
In 1973 Kim was made Party secretary of organization and propaganda, and in 1974, he was officially designated his father's successor. During the next 15 years he accumulated further positions, among them Minister of Culture head of party operations against the Republic of Korea.
Kim gradually made his presence felt within the Korean Workers Party from the Seventh Plenum of the Fifth Central Committee in September 1973, leading the "Three Revolution Team" campaigns. He was often referred to as the "Party Center," due to his growing influence over the daily operations of the Party.
By the time of the Sixth Party Congress in October 1980, Kim Jong-il's control of the Party operation was complete. He was given senior posts in the Politburo, the Military Commission and the party Secretariat. When he was made a member of the Seventh Supreme People's Assembly in February 1982, it had become apparent to international observers that he was the heir apparent to succeed his father as the supreme leader of the DPRK.
At this time Kim assumed the title "Dear Leader" and the government began building a personality cult around him patterned after that of his father, the "Great Leader." Kim Jong-il was regularly hailed by the media as the "peerless leader" and "the great successor to the revolutionary cause." He emerged as the most powerful figure behind his father in the DPRK.
In 1991 Kim was also named supreme commander of the DPRK armed forces. Since the Army is the real foundation of power in the DPRK, this was a vital step. It appears that the veteran Defense Minister, Oh Jin-wu, one of Kim Il-sung's most loyal subordinates, engineered Kim Jong-il's acceptance by the Army as the next leader of the DPRK, despite his complete lack of military service. The only other possible leadership candidate, Prime Minister Kim Il (no relation), was removed from his posts in 1976. In 1992, Kim Il-sung publicly stated that his son was in charge of all DPRK internal affairs.
By the 1980s the DPRK was in deep economic crisis as the state controlled command economy stagnated, aggravated by Kim Il-sung's policy of juche (self-reliance), which cut the country off from almost all external trade, even with its traditional partners, the Soviet Union and China. During this period the DPRK resorted to increasingly desperate measures to raise hard currency and fend off its many enemies, and Kim Jong-il seems to have been responsible for some of the more bizarre of these, such as the kidnapping of people from Japan, the dealing of drugs through DPRK embassies and the development of nuclear weapons as a means of blackmailing Japan and the United States into giving the DPRK money.
South Korea accused Kim of ordering the 1983 bombing in Rangoon, Burma, which killed 17 visiting South Korean officials, including four cabinet members, and another in 1987 which killed all 115 on board a South Korean airliner. No direct evidence, however, has emerged to link Kim to these bombings.
In power
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Kim Il-sung died in 1994, aged 82, and Kim Jong-il assumed control of the Party and state apparatus. Although the post of President was left vacant, and appears to have been abolished in deference to the memory of Kim Il-sung, Kim took the titles of General Secretary of the Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission, the real centre of power in the DPRK. In 1998 this position was declared to be "the highest post of the state," so Kim may be regarded as DPRK head of state from that date.
The DPRK's state-controlled economy stagnated throughout the 1990s, as a result of poor industrial and agricultural productivity, the loss of guaranteed markets following the fall of the Soviet Union and the introduction of a market economy in China, and the regime's huge expenditure on armaments. With a hostile international environment, and given the structural imbalances stemming from decades of allocating resources to the defense sector, the DPRK under Kim Jong-il has shown no signs of shrinking its huge military - probably the highest relative to the size of the economy of any country in the world.
By 2000 there were frequent reports from reliable sources of famine in all parts of the DPRK except Pyongyang, which the regime preserves as a showcase for foreign visitors. DPRK citizens ran increasingly desperate risks to escape from the country, mainly into China.
On the domestic front, Kim has given occasional signs that he favors economic reforms similar to those carried out in China by Deng Xiaoping, and on visits to China he has expressed admiration for China's economic progress. But at home he has done little or nothing to relax the absolute control of the state and party over all aspects of economic life. He has certainly given no sign of considering the decollectivisation of agriculture, which was the foundation of Deng's reforms.
In the time span coinciding with Kim Dae-jung's visit to the North (see the section on international affairs below), however, North Korea introduced a number of economic changes, including price and wage increases. Some analysts said that these measures were designed to lift production and rein in the black market, and possibly presaged a genuine market reform of the state-controlled system. Kim has announced plans to import and develop new technologies and ambitions to develop North Korea's fledgling software industry.
In early 2004 Kim Jong-il, aged 62, appeared still to be firmly in control of the DPRK, and to be grooming his son Kim Jong-chul to succeed him. His eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, was earlier believed to be the designated heir, but he appears to have fallen out of favour after being arrested in Tokyo in 2001 while travelling on a forged passport.
The DPRK did not seem to be in imminent danger of collapse, despite its international and economic difficulties. In these circumstances, Kim could stay in power indefinitely so long as he retained the support of the Army.
International affairs
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Kim Jong-il meeting with U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright
Kim Jong-il's government has made some efforts to improve relations with South Korea, and with the election of Kim Dae-jung as South Korean president in 1997 an opportunity for negotiations was created. In June 2000 a summit meeting was held, the first between the leaders of the two Koreas, and it seemed that a genuine thaw, leading to an influx of desperately needed South Korean aid and investment in the North, was possible. But the two sides were subsequently unable to agree on any substantial (as opposed to symbolic) improvement in their relations.
(For additional details on the June 2000 summit between the leaders of the two Koreas, see Sunshine Policy.)
Kim's relationship with the United States has been equally difficult. During the Clinton administration, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright visited Pyongyang in 2000, and extracted a promise from Kim that the DPRK would not pursue its nuclear weapons program if the U.S. would agree to pay for a nuclear energy facility for the DPRK. The election of George W. Bush led to a sharp decline in relations. Bush declared the DPRK to be part of the "Axis of Evil" along with Iran and (the former regime in) Iraq. The Chinese government has attempted to mediate between the DPRK and the United States.
Kim paid an unofficial visit to the People's Republic of China from April 19 to 21, 2004 at the invitation of Chinese President Hu Jintao (right). Kim also met with former President Jiang Zemin, who heads China's military.
In April 2004 Kim paid an "unoffical visit" to Beijing (though news of the visit leaked out) and met with Chinese leaders who tried to persuade him that a U.S. invasion of North Korea was unlikely and that he should give up the country's nuclear weapons program.
Personal
Before his accession to power Kim Jong-il was frequently accused of corruption, drunkenness, sexual excess of various kinds and even insanity, particularly in the South Korean press. While this is not an uncommon pattern of behavior in the sons of dictators (see Vasily Stalin, Niko Ceausescu, Tommy Suharto and Uday and Qusay Hussein), at least some of these accusations seem to have been fabricated by the Korean Central Intelligence Agency (KCIA), which saw it as its duty to blacken DPRK leaders' images as much as possible.
Some of these stories, however, come from defectors from the DPRK whose accounts have some credibility. Kim's former Japanese chef has said in newspaper interviews that the leader of the impoverished DPRK has a 10,000-bottle wine cellar, likes blonde western women, collects Mazda RX-7 sports cars, stages all-night banquets at which attendance and heavy drinking is compulsory for high officials (this was also a habit of Stalin's), and has a troupe of strippers for his personal entertainment. According to this account Kim once sent his wife and children on a secret trip to Tokyo Disneyland.
An image of a more rational Kim, however, appears from time to time in Western, Japanese, and South Korean media. In an interview with a Japanese newspaper several years ago, South Korea's outgoing President Kim Dae-jung jettisoned decades of South Korean tradition by describing Kim Jong-il as "a pragmatic leader with good judgment and knowledge," a sentiment that has been echoed by other foreign officials including Madeleine Albright. According to the Los Angeles Times, a senior South Korean official says Kim is believed to have a genius-level IQ of 150 or 160. An intelligence source describes him as a "computer wizard" who surfs the Internet, is fascinated with new technologies and is determined to develop North Korea's fledgling software industry.
Some of Kim's eccentricities are well-documented. He has a profound fear of flying, and has always travelled by private train when going on state visits to Russia and China. He also wears platform shoes, apparently to disguise his shortness.
Stories that Kim has had four wives do not appear to be true: he is legally married to Kim Young-suk, a wife reportedly chosen for him by Kim Il-sung, although they have been estranged for some years. He has a daughter, Kim Sul-song (born 1974), by her. He has however had a succession of relationships with women. His eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, was born to one of these, Sung Hae-Rim, in 1971. His current partner is Koh Young-hee, with whom he had another son, Kim Jong-chul, in 1981 or 1982, and there is reported to be a second son as well.