Kim Jong-il dictatorship could end within days

The dictatorship of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-il could end within days after a leadership conference was called for the first time in nearly 45 years.

Kim Jong-il dictatorship could end within days
From The Daily Telegraph (www.telegraph.co.uk)
By Malcolm Moore in Shanghai
Published: 6:30PM BST 21 Sep 2010:

The country has announced a "great revolutionary surge" as it prepares for a regime change which could see Mr Kim's son, Kim Jong-un, appointed as his successor.

North Korea will hold a party conference of its ruling Workers' Party next week, for the first time since 1966, to elect its "supreme leadership body".

Ostensibly the conference will appoint new blood into the North Korean bureaucracy, but the rarity of the event has convinced experts that Mr Kim, 68, could use the event to unveil his third son as his successor.

The elder Mr Kim travelled to China last month and may have sought China's rubber-stamp over the transfer of power. China remains North Korea's most important trading power and political ally.

If Mr Kim does hand over power, North Korea will continue to enjoy the apparent contradiction of being a centrally-planned Communist state with a hereditary dynasty in charge.

An announcement yesterday (tues) from the Korean Central News Agency, the mouthpiece of the government, said there would be a "new great revolutionary surge" and that all cadres in the country were "single-mindedly united" behind Kim Jong-il, whatever his decision may be.

The regime is "now ready to go ahead with its move to designate Kim Jong-Un as successor", said Yang Moo-Jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. "The son is expected to take a key party post but that will not be made public for a while," he added.

The meeting had been delayed since the beginning of September, causing many observers to wonder whether the elder Kim was facing an internal challenge to his choice of successor.

"It is possible that the North Korean elite is far less united than usually assumed, so some factions are seriously unhappy about the likely choice of successor or the expected composition of the new leadership," said Andrei Lankov, a professor at Seoul's Kookmin University.

Other analysts noted that the delay could have been triggered by the need to plan and stage-manage the succession and instruct cadres, who have been stationed in Pyongyang for two weeks in expectation of the meeting, about their roles in the event.

However, some observers note that the younger Kim, at 28, may not be ready to assume full control over North Korea and has not been groomed in the same way as his father. The younger Kim has instead been fast-tracked to leadership ever since his father suffered a stroke in 2008, leaving a question mark over his continuing rule.

Another possible option would be for Kim Jong-il to pass power to his brother-in-law, Chang Song-taek, as a regent while his son built his own power base. A bureaucratic reshuffling in 2009 helped to promote Chang, and the forthcoming conference could see him given further roles.

He is currently vice chairman of the National Defence Commission, a position considered second only to Kim Jong-il.

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North Korean refugees plead case against Kim Jong-il

Refugees from North Korea are in The Hague in an attempt to convince the International Criminal Court (ICC) to prosecute Kim Jong-il for crimes against humanity.

From NRC Handelsblad, 10 December 2009 17:31:
North Korean refugees plead case against Kim Jong-il
By Harry Meijer

Park Hye-ri (43) cried softly as she removed her artificial limbs in a hotel conference room in The Hague on Wednesday, her black lacquered shoes dangling pointlessly from the flesh-coloured prostheses. The limbs are evidence in a case Park Hye-ri and one of her compatriots came to make on behalf of 150 refugees from North Korea.

Hye-ri reached South Korea, where she now lives with her 19-year-old son, in 2006 at the end of her second escape attempt from North Korea. The first failed when she was intercepted by Chinese police in the border area between Mongolia and China, in 40 degrees Celsius below zero temperatures, and repatriated to North Korea, where she was detained and beaten for months.

"The Chinese sent me back with frozen feet. The North Korean secret police beat me on my feet, and drove a steel pin through them. My legs started rotting away. They only wanted one thing: to hear me confess that I had wanted to escape to South Korea," Hye-Ri told the court.

If al-Bashir, why not Kim Jong-il?

Hye-ri and the other refugees want the ICC's main prosecutor, Luis Moreno Ocampo, to investigate the possibility of indicting the regime of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il for crimes against humanity. The charges include torture, deportation, sexual slavery, rape, starvation and summary executions.

The refugees are supported by a group of South Korean intellectuals and activists. They take courage from the ICC's earlier indictment of Sudanese president Omar al-Bashir for war crimes in Darfur.

If the ICC can issue an arrest warrant for Bashir, then surely it must do the same for North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, said Ha Tae-keung, a South Korean activist who is the driving force behind Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based radio station that broadcasts daily to listeners in North Korea. "The crimes against humanity committed by North Korea are at least as grave as those of Sudan," said Ha.

Stalinist North Korea is one of the most reclusive and repressive regimes in the world. According to human rights organisations, an estimated 150,000 to 200,000 people are detained in political prisoners camps. Prisoners are subjected to forced labour, torture and public executions, claims the file of the refugees before the ICC.

Slim chance

The international community is at a loss what to do with the North Korean leader. US envoy Stephen Bosworth paid a three-day visit to Pyongyang this week in an attempt to persuade North Korea to re-enter talks about nuclear disarmament.

Activist Ha sees a trial in The Hague as another way to put pressure on the regime. "Kim Jong-il will never give up his atom bomb," he said, "but with enough international pressure he might be persuaded to do something about the human rights situation."

Chances that the ICC will prosecute Kim Jong-il personally are slim as North Korea does not recognise the court. The UN Security Council could refer Kim Jong-il to the ICC, but such a move would be almost certainly vetoed by China, an ally of North Korea.

Bill Clinton meets Kim Jong Il in North Korea, 4 Aug 2009

Photo: The former American President Bill Clinton flew into North Korea on a surprise mission to secure the release of two American journalists. He was taken from the airport into a rare face-to-face meeting with the regime's 'Dear Leader', Kim Jong Il. It has raised hopes that North Korea may soon be enticed back to multinational disarmament talks after three months of mounting atomic tensions and provocation. (KRT/Reuters)



Photo: North Korea’s official news agency reported that Mr Clinton and Mr Kim engaged in "sincere and exhaustive discussions" on a range of issues. (KRT/Reuters)



Photo: A South Korean newspaper reports on his visit (Ahn Young-joon/AP/Times Online) Reports suggest that Mr Clinton will use the two-day trip to "negotiate robustly" for the release of Euna Lee and Laura Ling, the two American journalists who are serving 12 years hard labour in a North Korean prison. They were both working for a television company run by Mr Clinton’s former Vice-President, Al Gore, and were arrested for a "grave" though unspecified, crime on the North Korea-China
border earlier this year. (Yonhap/AP)



Photo: South Koreans have been demanding the release of the two women. Here they burn a defaced North Korean flag during a rally. (Ahn Young-joon/AP)



Photo: A defaced portrait of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is placed on the street during the rally in Soeul (Ahn Young-joon/AP)

Source: Times Online, 04 August 2009 - Bill Clinton meets North Korean leader Kim Jong Il for talks

UPDATE:

Within hours of shaking the hands of his reclusive host, Kim Jong Il, North Korea dramatically announced that the journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, were free to go.

“Kim Jong Il issued an order ...on granting a special pardon to the two American journalists who had been sentenced to hard labour in accordance with Article 103 of the Socialist Constitution and releasing them,” North Korea’s official news agency reported.

They were expected to fly back home on board Mr Clinton’s plane.

Full story at Times Online by Leo Lewis in Tokyo, and Tim Reid in Washington 4 Aug 2009:
Bill Clinton secures 'pardon' for imprisoned journalists after meeting North Korean leader Kim Jong Il