The Two Koreas_ A Contemporary History - Don Oberdorfer [195]
The actions and statements of Kim Young Sam's government, at a time of intense mourning in the North, generated bitter resentment in Pyongyang. North Korean authorities resumed virulent antiSouth propaganda, which had been suspended by agreement in preparation for the summit, and they began refusing to accept official telephone messages from Seoul. Privately Kim Young Sam was unconcerned, since he was convinced that without its longtime leader, North Korea was on its last legs. The South Korean president's national security assistant, Chung Chong Uk, told his U.S. counterpart, Anthony Lake, in a telephone conversation that North Korea would collapse within six to twenty-four months. This conviction made Kim Young Sam more inclined to undercut than to accommodate the new leaders in Pyongyang.
THE SUCCESSION OF KIM JONG IL
The plump, bespectacled, moon-faced man who stood apart and ahead of all others at the state funeral and the memorial service in Kim II Sung Square was the most important mourner. Despite some expectations to the contrary, however, the eldest son and political heir of the Great Leader said nothing about his father, his loss, or his priorities for the country. Rather, he looked on enigmatically as others spoke in praise of the Great Leader, and of the ordained succession process that had been established more than a decade earlier.
In many respects, father and son were a study in contrasts. Kim Il Sung was a guerrilla fighter, the founder of the state, and a charismatic, outgoing, outspoken figure until the day he died. Kim Jong Il grew up in privilege from his teenage years, had never served a day in the military until he was named supreme commander of the People's Army in December 1991, wore his hair in an artsy pompadour, and was notably uncomfortable amid the roar of the crowd. Even when important pronouncements were made in his name, they were read by an announcer while he remained out of sight. As this is written, the only time the North Korean public has heard the voice of Kim Jong Il was in April 1992, when he uttered a single sentence during a ceremony marking the army's sixtieth anniversary: "Glory to the people's heroic military!"
A great deal about North Korea and its unique and inwardoriented system is mysterious; whatever pertains to Kim Jong Il is typically the most mysterious of all. His rise to power and selection as his father's successor were unacknowledged for many years, and his activities were masked under the vague euphemism "the party center." Since emerging from anonymity in 1980, he has rarely seen foreigners and is known to have traveled outside the country only twice: in 1983, when he toured Beijing and other Chinese cities for ten days; and in 1984, when he turned up briefly and unannounced in his father's entourage in Berlin. On the latter occasion, East German officials confirmed his presence only by studying photographs taken aboard Kim Il Sung's special train.
According to North Korean propagandists, Kim Jong Il was born in a log cabin on Mount Paekdu, the legendary birthplace of Tangun, the mythic father of the Korean people. More objective sources say the younger Kim was born on February 16, 1942, in a Russian military camp in the Far East, where his father's guerrilla band had taken refuge from the Japanese. After the Japanese surrender, at age three Kim Jong Il moved to Korea with his father but was evacuated to China at age eight during the Korean War. In his early years, a younger brother accidentally drowned, and his mother died while giving birth to a stillborn child, leaving Jong Il and a younger sister. Kim Il Sung remarried in the early 1960s and had two sons and two daughters by his second wife, Kim Song Ae.
North Korea has been aptly described by historian Bruce Cumings as "a corporate state and a family state." Kim Jong Il's sister, Kim Kyong Hui, is director of light