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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (43783)	5/12/2004 2:48:13 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793917

msnbc.msn.com The Shadow Son Who's next: North Korea’s leader is preparing to hand power to a son, but no one knows which one. By George Wehrfritz and Hideko Takayama Newsweek InternationalIssues 2004 Kim Jong Chol is a shadow outside his communist homeland. Educated at the International School of Berne in Switzerland, the second son of North Korean “Great Leader” Kim Jong Il reputedly enjoys basketball and pool, and drives friends around Pyongyang in a sporty Jaguar sedan. Yet the most recent published photo captured him some 10 years ago, as a strapping 13-year-old schoolboy. And the best description of Jong Chol in early adulthood comes from the family’s former cook, who recalls a lad so enthralled by “The Matrix” that he coveted sunglasses “like the ones Keanu Reeves wore in the movie.” Could he be North Korea’s next ruler? Until recently, leadership was widely assumed to be his elder half-brother Jong Nam’s birthright. Beneath its communist veneer, North Korea remains philosophically beholden to Confucius, who held that the eldest son must take over the family business. So it went in 1994, when Kim Jong Il inherited dictatorial power after the sudden death of his father. Now, according to a variety of sources, Kim is preparing to break the line and pass the mantle to his second son, Jong Chol. The succession question resonates across Asia because the Kim dynasty remains one of the most powerful clans in Asia. Relatives by birth or marriage control major industries, oversee a draconian security apparatus and orchestrate exports of everything from missiles to drugs and counterfeit U.S. dollars. Everyone who has ever been close to the family and escaped to tell the tale describes a lavish existence replete with palaces, the latest Western movies, CNN, caviar and Hennessy XO, the Great Leader’s favorite drink. Not to mention a motor pool worthy of a Saudi prince. Kim’s boys have lots of goodies to feud over—and feuding they are. Jong Nam—a doughy man with a pronounced double chin who looks a decade older than his 32 years—has watched his star fall precipitously since he was detained while entering Japan in 2001. Traveling under the pseudonym Pang Xiong and carrying a valid Dominican passport, he arrived on a flight from Singapore sporting a diamond-studded Rolex and carrying wads of cash “to visit Disneyland,” he told Immigration authorities. Further investigation revealed that he had entered Japan several times previously to shop, sightsee and indulge himself with hostesses at nightclubs in Tokyo. He was released after three nights in custody and repatriated via China. Intelligence sources say that he has been seen at one of Moscow’s swankiest hotels. Jong Nam’s Tokyo shenanigans were exposed the week his father hosted a delegation of European leaders in Pyongyang, embarrassing the regime deeply. Evidence that the incident had upset the succession plans did not emerge until early in 2003. A leaked 16-page North Korean military directive praised a saintly woman described only as Omonim, or “Respected Mother.” That was not a reference to Kim’s first wife and the mother of his first son. No, the flowery paean to “the most faithful of the faithful” was designed to elevate the status of his longtime paramour, Japanese-born dancer Ko Young Hui, the mother of his second (and third) sons. To intelligence analysts in Seoul and Tokyo, the message was that the No. 2 son is now in line to be the next Great Leader. Nothing is ever clear in North Korea, however. “I don’t think we will see a third generation taking over the throne,” says Kansai University political scientist Lee Young Hwa, who believes that the dynasty won’t last that long. If there is a family successor, he says, it likely will be the first son if only because the others “are too young.” The former cook has doubts, too. In June he published a pseudonymous book, “Kim Jong Il’s Chef: A Close-Up Look at the Man in Power.” Originally hired as a sushi maker for Kim Jong Il, the author also cooked for the boys, taught them to shoot pool and refereed their basketball games. He doubts the Great Leader would ever anoint his second son. “Kim Jong Il used to say, ‘Jong Chol is no good. He’s too much like a girl’,” the cook writes. The cook’s money in the succession race is on Kim’s third son, Jong Oon, a 20-year-old about whom the world knows almost nothing. © 2004 Newsweek, Inc.