Jang Song Thaek Roundup

The purge of Jang Song Thaek has gotten "curioser and curioser"; today, we focus on interpretations of the purge; our synthesis of these theories; the reports of an unidentified aide to Jang who may or may not have escaped to China; and the wider implications.

Interpretations

Last week, we traced Jang's ascent. His ouster was confirmed in a highly unusual KCNA report on an "enlarged" meeting of the Politburo of the Workers Party. The Politburo has just over 30 members; subsequent pictures of the meeting show an audience of over 200 in attendance including a substantial number of uniformed military officers. More surprising than the decision to oust Jang was the publicity with which it was done. These include not only the "report"—reproduced in full below—but an 11-minute TV story broadcast on North Korean television on the meeting, replete with stills of Jang being escorted out of the meeting by security personnel; North Korea Leadership Watch does the Kremlinology. Both KCNA and Yonhap have now run stories confirming Jang's execution; we will review the charges in a coming post.

The function of such humiliation is clear: to send a signal of the overwhelming power of the leadership to fell even the mightiest. His "arrest" at the meeting was almost certainly staged. The question is why it happened and with what implications?

Alexandre Mansourov at 38North provides an excellent recap of Jang's gradual marginalization and an inventory of the dominant theories, of which there are four: Jang's attempt to form a center of power independent of Kim Jong Un; a power struggle between Jang and Choe Ryong Hae and their proxies within the regime (detailed by New Focus International); policy disagreements over nuclear, foreign and/or economic policy; and a purely familial tussle in which Kim Kyong Hui—Jang's wife and Kim Jong Un's uncle—may have played a role. In a new revelation on the family front, the Chosun Ilbo reports intelligence (caveat emptor!) that Kim Jong-chol, Kim Jong Un's older brother, "personally led" a team of soldiers protecting Kim Jong-un in the arrest of Jang and that he was also behind the executions of Jang's close confidants Ri Yong-ha and Jang Soo-kil.

Our Interpretation

These explanations are not mutually exclusive; here is how they fit together. The Politburo report places primary emphasis on "factionalism" and challenges to the "unity and cohesion" in Kim Jong Un's leadership. Jang need not have launched an overt challenge, although in his position as head of the Ministry of People's Security he did manage to purge two high-ranking officials in the competing Ministry of State Security (Ryu Gyong, executed in 2011 and Wu Dong Cheuk, purged in 2012). He needed only to have controlled personnel and material resources that gave him weight within the political system apart from his connection to Kim Jong Un or other core organizations within the party, particularly the Organization and Guidance Department. The Ministry of People's Security provided one such base; control of various state-owned enterprises, including those earning foreign exchange would be another.

We thus discount the idea that principled policy positions were at stake; as we have said repeatedly, reform has proven elusive so it is hard to portray Jang as a reformer. But if he controlled foreign exchange—including through his diplomatic connections with China—and used it to expand his influence within the state, then the report's charges about selling resources on the cheap and ignoring the Cabinet system are wholly disingenuous. The issue is not that Jang did these things, but that they diverted resources that the leadership wanted to monopolize. We therefore predict that there will be little policy change as a result of Jang's ouster. Rather, his networks will simply be taken over by Kim Jong Un loyalists; we report some evidence to this effect below.

It is pretty clear that Jang's ouster is another step in the succession process, indicated most clearly by the fact that he is now being referred to as Great Leader.

The Defector

But in the last few days, an altogether different thread of this saga has surfaced: the possibility that one of Jang's aids fled China in September or October carrying with him highly classified information not only on accounts Jang managed for himself and the regime but on North Korea's nuclear program; Reuters broke this story in English last week, drawing on information from the South Korean cable network YTN. SBS (Seoul Broadcasting System) subsequently elaborated, arguing that the aide was attached to the Central Administrative Department of the Workers Party, that he fled in anticipation of Jang's ouster, and has since been taken into custody by South Korean authorities. But South Korea's Ministry of Unification has denied any knowledge of the individual, let alone custody of him.

This story has since wagged the dog, as revelations of this sort would have wide-ranging repercussions. Here are three outstanding questions (quite apart from whether the defector exists):

Cause or effect? Did the aide flee as his boss went down or did the aide fleeing bring the boss down?

If the Chinese stopped the defector from leaving the country—as has been rumored—how did he end up in South Korean hands? Or did he fall into South Korean hands and then they tried to spirit him out of China and failed? Or have they succeeded and this achievement has just not yet been leaked? What kind of access have the Chinese had? The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs said that the issue was a purely internal matter, but that would not be the case if the defector carried high-level information on China-DPRK relations.

How much does the US know about this or have they even had contact?

Implications

We do not believe that the Jang ouster will bring the regime down; to the contrary, it will become more leaderist in orientation. But the purge will have a number of short-term implications.

Purges and crackdowns. DailyNK is picking up evidence of tightened border controls. The reason: concern that widening purges will drive Jang allies to defect. Purges of individuals of this stature are never solo affairs, but involve getting rid of wide-ranging networks of appointments and loyalists. Municipal and provincial party secretaries and cadres from the judicial and security organs have reportedly been summoned en masse to Pyongyang. Family relatives of Jang's, who had been posted abroad, have reportedly been asked to return to North Korea.

The security situation. In testimony before the National Assembly, intelligence officials noted that Pyongyang has deployed attack helicopters and rockets to an area adjacent to the Northern Limit Line; South Korea responded by promising to increase the positioning of sensors. Our guess is that these moves are defensive, but if North Korea fears that the US and South will exploit domestic vulnerability they may want to send a signal to the contrary (New York Times coverage here). But perhaps the most interesting military news is Chinese and again comes from the DailyNK. China's 39th Army is undergoing "intensive military training" on the border with North Korea, and moved to the Mt. Paekdu region on the 4th.

The elusive quest for reform. If our interpretation is correct, the question is not whether the country will reform more or less with Jang gone, but who will control crucial sources of foreign exchange coming in from Chinese foreign investments and their related exports. The Joongang Daily reported several days ago that the Rason zone has been like a ghost town since the purge. Hankyoreh and the Asahi Shinbun report on particular investments tied to Jang being reversed, including China Merchants Group participation in Hwanggumpyong and Rason. But we expect that these are short-term perturbations and that investors—and particularly those with sunk capital—will have little choice but to make peace with the regime; indeed, the investment zone proposal will require a post-Jang leadership to send signals to Chinese investors of continued interest. This process may have already started—Choe Ryong Hae, not Jang Sung Thaek, made the most recent high-level visit to China.