On December 17th, it will be two

years since the death of Kim Jong Il.

Jang Sung Taek’s downfall was predictable.

It should not have come as a huge surprise. Following Kim Jong Eun’s

confirmation as anointed successor in September 2010, a number of seminars

focusing on the “post-Kim Jong Il structure” took place. Many people, myself included,

asserted that internal power struggles would occur within a year or two of Kim’s

death.

There was no particularly insightful reason

for that. Simply, it is how things go in North Korea. In such an “absolutist

Suryeongist dictatorship,” power is consolidated in one person, and to totally

consolidate power requires monolithic leadership.

In

April 1974, Kim Jong Il stated that the

formation of such a monolithic leadership demanded idolization, unconditional

loyalty, and complete obedience. There is no room for a second-in-command; only the absolute leader can hold power.

Anyone found acting against the regime’s system of strict ideological and organizational

regulation must be attacked; securing power is the first and greatest priority. All other priorities are entirely insignificant when compared to this, even the starvation

of a million or more civilians. Faced with insecurity in the system of power, issues

such as the fate of 13 economic development zones take on a trifling

irrelevance.

These are the core, the very DNA, of the North Korean system. The problem is that while the DNA remains the same, our observation of it is continuously tainted by the fervent hope that the DNA could be changing. This is perhaps why many of our prognoses about North Korea are wrong.

▲ What lies in store for Jang Sung Taek?

It seems clear that Lee Yong Ha and Jang

Soo Kil have been executed. Kim Jong Eun did so to extract the sting from Jang’s

power. For ready comparison, think about the following situation.

Toward the end of the 1960s, a power struggle

erupted between Kim Yong Ju and Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Il gained the upper hand

using the idea of a “Kapsan faction” to purge Kim Yong Ju’s key allies, Kim

Do Man and Park Yong Guk, thereby completely undermining his support base. Once

Kim Jong Il had been appointed Kim Il Sung’s successor in 1974, Kim Yong Ju was exiled

to Jagang Province, where he remained until 1993. Then, his usefulness somewhat restored, Kim Jong Il appointed him

to the post of Vice-Premier and recalled him to Pyongyang, though without allotting him any real power.

Jang’s fate could generally mirror this. Kim Jong Eun will probably not execute or exile him, or indeed ship

him off to a political prison camp. Equally, he will not be sent overseas, as

happened to Kim Pyong Il, since Jang appointed many of his loyal associates to

overseas postings during his time as head of overseas operations for the

Organization and Guidance Department of the Party, and Kim Jong Eun may fear that sending him overseas would enable him to form a viable power base there. In toto,

Kim will not completely eliminate Jang, preferring to put him in a position

from which a political comeback will prove almost impossible.

However, doubts remain over whether the Kim regime has the freedom to put in place a mid-term plan to deal with the fallout of the Jang purge. It depends whether Jang is the only one to have outlived his usefulness.

Power struggles in Soviet countries

tend to take the form of battles between political lines, and most are resolved through

extended periods of blood-filled, deep-set purging. Examples include the Gang of Four,

Liu Shaoqi, and Deng Xiaoping during the Cultural Revolution in China, as well Khrushchev

and his two rivals after Stalin’s death in the USSR.

North Korea also went through something

similar in 1956, after members of the “pro-Soviet

faction” of the Workers’ Party plotted Kim Il Sung’s downfall. They had wanted

to emulate the Soviet system of oligarchy under Khrushchev, it is said, replacing Kimist

absolutism. Kim Il Sung’s extended purge of this faction continued through the

end of 1958. The 1960s Kapsan faction purge also required the purging of approximately

two-thirds of mid-level regional cadres.

If this was a simple case of Jang outliving his personal usefulness to Kim Jong Eun then analysis is simpler; however, if it was a battle between political line that incited the purge then the situation is sure to be more complex.

Under the North Korean political system,

with power comes everything, and everything goes when power is lost. Fall out of favor with the Suryeong and you lose not only the house, but also the office,

secretary, desk, telephone, and even the right to state distribution. This is then followed by immediate exile to the provinces

with nothing more in hand than a spoon and pair of chopsticks. This is no

“earthly paradise”: unlike the South, North Korea does not allow one to become a

part-time university lecturer after losing a parliamentary election, or to

secure a bank loan with one’s possessions as collateral. The person who falls from

grace is penniless. Everyone who holds political power knows it.

If Jang, as a main channel to China, had been promoting a policy of

Chinese-style reform and opening with a reformist faction in active support, and if the extreme conservatives of the military were now to be destroying this group from the top down, then hereafter the

situation could develop very differently. Jang Sung Taek spent the forty years from the 1970s developing his ties in the military, Party, Cabinet and overseas. His network is broad, and runs deep. We cannot see it yet, but the battle may not go according to plan. This is what we must watch out for.