North Korean Economy Watch

Writing today in the Asia Times, Andrei Lankov offers a survey of the difficulties in collecting and analyzing information on the DPRK. 

Quoting from his article:

The author is not privy to the great secrets of the assorted intelligence services that are trying to penetrate the mysteries of Pyongyang palaces. That said, one cannot completely rule out a possibility that the Dear Leader’s most trusted doctor is actually on the United States Central Intelligence Agency’s payroll, or that a couple of senior North Korean generals report to Seoul on the recent decisions of Kim Jong-il’s inner circle.

Such high-level penetration is not completely impossible – but it is very, very unlikely. It seems that even the most cunning and successful intelligence services are faring very badly when it comes to cracking North Korean secrets. Things might be going relatively well as long as signal intelligence is concerned: satellites do miracles these days. However, satellites and signal interception and other technological gadgetry is good only when it comes to detecting hardware. No satellite or drone can tell much about human plans and intentions, or about the state of society, and this is where the real problems begin.

To start with, the North Korean state is deliberately designed to be a mystery for outsiders. No state is welcoming to foreign spooks, but most states limit their counter-intelligence efforts. After all, perfect secrecy, if achievable, is too expensive because it makes information exchange impossible and hinders economic life. The North seems to be unrestrained by these concerns. Pyongyang believes that total secrecy is the pre-condition of the regime’s survival, and clearly doesn’t worry too much about the economic efficiency of its system.

The major source of information about any country is its media. However, since the early 1960s the North Korean press ceased publishing economic statistics of any kind. All information about economic performance is a closely guarded state secret. Therefore, our knowledge of the state of the North Korean economy is largely based on guesswork.

Still, certain things are known quite well. For example, foreign trade statistics are easily deduced from the trade reports of countries which deal with North Korea. On the other hand, when it comes to even the most basic macroeconomic indicators, estimates vary greatly. North Korean per capita gross domestic product is believed to be somewhere between US$400 and US$2,000. Also, there are some topics which cannot be mentioned in official press or elsewhere, such as the existence of rationing or the need to apply for a permit before travelling outside the county.

North Korean watchers spend plenty of time perusing the Nodong Sinmun and Minju Choson, the two official North Korean dailies which are available overseas. Although boring and repetitive to the extreme – and full of endless eulogies to the ruling family – these newspapers sometimes indicate subtle changes in official policies and ideologies. Still, these are merely hints, and often too vague to be interpreted correctly or expediently.

More direct intelligence has come with great difficulty. The number of foreigners residing in North Korea remains very small. In the mid-1980s, there were some 600-700, over 60% of whom were Russians and Chinese. Today, foreigners remain closely watched and isolated. A foreigner cannot visit the private home of a North Korean even briefly – only institutions which are authorized to deal with foreigners can be visited. A short conversation on the street is possible, but it should not be for too long.

North Koreans allowed to visit “foreigners’ places” are carefully selected and know what not to talk about. Foreigners – even those with Asian features – stand out in North Korea and are carefully watched by a population trained to remain on guard against intrusions of perfidious aliens. Trips outside Pyongyang and a few designated areas remain strictly prohibited; when such a trip is authorized, a foreigner is always accompanied by minders.

The only group of foreigners to enjoy some freedom of movement in North Korea are Chinese – and these are often ethnic Koreans. Chinese authorities probably have the best information about the state of affairs inside North Korea, but their knowledge remains unknown to the outside world.

Despite all the difficulties, the world does know – or believes it knows – something about Pyongyang politics. Until recently, the major source of news and information about North Korea was Japan. This was largely determined by Japan’s some 600,000-strong ethnic Korean community.

Surprisingly, in the 1950s, most ethnic Koreans in Japan chose to side with Pyongyang and even technically became North Korean citizens. Their association, Chosen Soren, became a secretive state-within-the-state, a major source of money and intelligence for North Korean authorities. Leading members of Chosen Soren have always had privileged access to powerful figures in the Pyongyang hierarchy. Understandably, some information was leaked.

However, as a rule most Japanese reports on North Korean politics are well of the mark. In some cases “news” is planted by political interests, other times false reports are honest mistakes. It is even suspected that in some cases journalists have deliberately fabricated stories to increase sales of their papers.

One of the major changes in recent years is that the border between China and North Korea has become extremely porous. Since the mid-1990s, the Chinese border areas have been major windows into the North. There is also a large community of North Korean illegal migrants, whose numbers in the late 1990s probably reached 250,000. Now there are some 30,000-40,000.

Some of these migrants make good money smuggling; others are employed at Chinese construction sites and sweatshops. These migrants stay in touch with their families in the North and the spread of mobile phones has facilitated the instantaneous flow of information.

Such family ties are hardly akin to James Bond-style secrets, but they do transmit handy low-level information about regulations on market trade or rules concerning workers of local factories. Until some 10 years ago, even such basic information usually remained unknown to outsiders.

Some groups have made use of the situation to provide North Korean news to the world. Most prominent of these providers is the Buddhist charity group Good Friends whose staff is permanently stationed in the border cities, where they gather information from visiting North Koreans. The results are published in regular newsletters that are partially translated into English. These newsletters provide invaluable intelligence.

Among other groups using similar strategies, the DailyNK is an online newspaper specializing in North Korean news and has correspondents in the Chinese border cities of Dandong and Shenyang. Their reports are very useful in understanding North Korean society, but seldom deal with high-level politics.

Finally, there is a large and fast growing community of North Korean defectors in the South. In 2000, there were merely a thousand defectors, but today their numbers have reached 15,000. These emigrants are remarkably different from the defectors of Europe’s Cold War era. People who fled from the former Soviet bloc included intellectuals, journalists, scholars and writers. Most of the North Korean defectors were impoverished farmers in the northern provinces. Many fled their starving villages, spent a few years in China and then found their way to the prosperous South. Prominent defectors are few and far between.

Still, all defectors possess useful information concerning daily life in North Korean society. This understanding is the major improvement from one or two decades ago. Observers are aware of how North Koreans make money, what they eat and how much they pay for their groceries.

We should not forget, however, that our knowledge of North Korean politics remains limited. In some cases we know names, but those names are merely empty symbols, without much content. For example, there is much speculation about Kim’s successor. Will it be Chang Song-t’aek, Kim’s brother-in-law? Or will Kim Jong-il choose his firstborn son, Kim Jong-nam? Or perhaps his younger son, Kim Jong-chol? And what about the current ladyfriend of the Dear Leader, a certain Ms Kim Ok?

The fact is we know nothing about these people. We have no idea about their affiliations, their experiences, or their vision for North Korea’s future.

Read the full article here:
Riddles and enigmas from North Korea
Asia Times
Andrei Lankov
11/19/2008

This seems speculative to me, however, the Daily Telegraph (London) is reporting that Kim Jong il’s brother in law, Jang Song Taek, is operating as the de facto decision-maker in the DPRK:

“Chang Sung Taek is now in control and is leading North Korea,” said Choi Jin Wook, of the (South Korean] government-affiliated Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. “Other important figures consulted him, even when Kim Jong Il was OK. He will keep Kim Jong Il’s policy line even if he dies.”

Apart from his family connection to Mr Kim, Mr Chang is a cosmopolitan among North Korean cadres whose career bounced back from the brink of disaster just two years ago.

According to South Korea’s ministry of unification, he was educated at an elite school in Pyongyang, and married Mr Kim’s younger sister, Kim Kyong Hui, after studying in Moscow for three years.

He rose through the hierarchy to become head of the most powerful bureau of the Korean Workers’ Party’s, the “organisation and guidance department”. His older brother was the army general responsible for the defence of the capital itself.

In 2002, two years after a historic summit meeting between North and South, he led a delegation of senior officials on an unprecedented tour of South Korean industrial sites.

The most senior North Korean defector to the South, the former chief ideologue, Hwang Jang Yop, spoke of him as a potential successor to Mr Kim after a coup, and said that he was especially close to Kim Jong Nam, the dictator’s eldest son.

Perhaps because of his growing influence, Mr Chang was abruptly purged in 2004, and sent into internal exile. He reappeared in 2006 and last year a new and powerful post was created for him: head of the Party’s “administrative department”, in charge of the courts, the prosecutors, and the police – including those responsible for internal spying.

And in related news, it appears that the French doctor contacted by Kim Jong Nam (Kim Jong il’s eldest acknowledged son) did in fact visit Pyongyang, although he denies seeing Kim Jong il:

Japanese television identified a French brain surgeon who had recently visited Pyongyang – although he denied having treated Mr Kim. The Government has angrily denied that anything is wrong with him, and has released several photographs of him attending public events, none of which have quelled the growing consensus that he is ill.

If all this is true, and that is a big “if”, then this would seem to indicate that Jang and the Workers Party are set to lead the country when Kim finally reaches a stage where he is unable to make decisions.  

Read more here:
North Korea ‘is being run by Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law’
Daily Telegraph
Richard Lloyd Parry
11/8/2008

UPDATE 2: Hany Farid, professor of computer science at Dartmouth College and author of a June Scientific American article on detecting fake images, argues the photos could be legit in a recent article in Scientific American:

“The BBC pointed to, I think, three or four things that they thought were indicative of tampering. And in the full-resolution image you can see that they’re completely wrong.” (Farid reviewed the photograph at the request of the Associated Press.)

One alleged manipulation was between the shadow cast by Kim’s legs and the shadows cast by the soldiers flanking him—a discrepancy that Farid says can be resolved by accounting for a curvature of the background surface. “If you look closely at the back baseboard, which all the men are standing at, it’s actually curved,” he says. “So what [the news agencies] are assuming is that that backboard is straight. If that backboard is straight and there’s only one light source, they’re right, it’s hard to explain that difference in the shadow.”

But assuming a curvature, the men would naturally cast different shadows. Farid calculates that only a few inches of background difference would suffice: “the sun is at such a grazing angle, so small differences make huge variations in the length of the shadow.”

The BBC also pointed to “apparently mismatched pixels” around Kim’s legs. But Farid says that the BBC “did this thing that is very dangerous, which is they zoom and they say, ‘Oh look, it’s a splice line around his feet,'” indicating that the leader may have been edited in. The problem with such an approach, he says, “is that’s all JPEG compression artifacts, and if you actually do the same thing to anyone else’s feet you see exactly the same artifacts.” Image compression uses a sort of digital shorthand to reduce the size of the files, throwing out certain nuances in favor of approximations that can be somewhat choppy. “What that means is there’s a quite a bit of color artifacts when you zoom in like that. So you completely expect those types of thing.”

“Quantitatively, I ran a number of forensics tools, and there’s no cloning, there’s no color-filtering artifacts, the lighting is completely consistent, you can explain the shadows,” Farid says. “The image was edited, as all images are, because they all get cropped and contrast-enhanced, but other than that, there was just no signs of tampering anywhere.” 

UPDATE 1: In the comments, Neil points to the KFA explanation for the vanishing black line—that it is a “white board” which serves as a place marker where KJI is supposed to stand.  See photos here, here, and here.  This claim, however, does not address the “shadow” and “pixel” evidence. 

According to the Straits Times (Singapore):

Seoul’s main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service (NIS), said yesterday that it believed the latest North Korean photo was real.

‘The possibility of Mr Kim’s photo being forged seems very low,’ said an NIS spokesman, refusing to elaborate.

The South’s unification ministry spokesman Kim Ho Nyoun also said he had no evidence to suggest that the photo had been forged.

ORIGINAL POST: In an attempt to quell speculation that Kim Jong il is suffering from poor health, the North Korean government has released a series of photographs showing the Dear Leader is fit and in control. 

Unfortunately, in true North Korean fashion, the level of competence on display has merely increased speculation that “something is rotten in the Kingdom of Denmark.”

Case1:

Image 1: October 11, KCNA television broadcast of Kim Jong il inspecting a military unit.  Although this effort was likely aimed at quieting rumors among a domestic audience, internationally it met skepticism because Kim is wearing his “summer” clothes and the foliage in the background is too green for the season.  As a result many concluded that this footage was shot before August 2008.

Case 2:

Image 2: November 2, KCNA announces Kim Jong il talks to officials at a stadium where he watched a soccer match between military teams Mankyongbong and Jebi.  KCNA did not state expressly the date the picture was taken.

Although the background and clothing seem to indicate the correct season, I was skeptical of this photo because of previous research I had done on Kim’s penchant for football—he doesn’t seem to have one.  If this story was true, it would be the second match Kim has attended since 1996—the first also being after he allegedly suffered health problems.

The authors of several web pages, however, paid closer attention to the photograph itself and noticed a strange lack of shadows, indicating that the photo was doctored.  

Case 3:

Image 3: November 5, Korea News Service in Tokyo shows Kim Jong Il posing with officers and soldiers with the (north) Korean People’s Army Unit 2200.

The BBC, however, reports that this photo is also doctored:

Quoting from the article:

The image, released on Wednesday, appeared to show Mr Kim in good health while inspecting two military units.

But an analysis by the UK’s Times newspaper highlighted incongruities around the leader’s legs, and the BBC found what look like mismatched pixels.

In the photo, the shadow cast by Mr Kim’s calves runs in a different direction to the shadow cast by the soldiers on either side of him, the Times pointed out. In addition, a black line running along the stand on which the soldiers are positioned mysteriously vanishes on either side of Mr Kim – suggesting his picture may have been superimposed onto the image.

Such a suspicion was reinforced when a BBC designer examined a close-up, and discovered apparently mismatched pixels to the right of Mr Kim’s legs.

[Accordng to Aiden Foster-Carter,] North Korean authorities will now face renewed pressure to prove Mr Kim is alive and not incapacitated.

“If they want to stop speculation, they have to produce him – as long as they don’t, we will still wonder.”

Read more in the following articles:
‘Fake photo’ revives Kim rumours
BBC
11/7/2008

Kim Jong Il: digital trickery or an amazing recovery from a stroke?
Times of London
Richard Lloyd Parry
11/7/2008

Did North Korea fake photos of Kim Jong-il?
Scientific American
11/10/2008
John Matson

UPDATE 2: Below are a list of materials from the US Department of State web site related to the DPRK’s list removal:

1. Existing Sanctions and Reporting Provisions Related to North Korea (thorough, but does not mention that the DPRK never obtained MFN or NTR status with the US, making it subject to the higher column 2, Smoot-Hawley, tarrifs.

2. Briefing on North Korea With Special Envoy for the Six-Party Talks Ambassador Sung Kim, Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs Sean McCormack, Assistant Secretary of State for Verification, Compliance, and Implementation Paula DeSutter, and Acting Assistant Secretary of State for International Security and Nonproliferation Patricia McNerney.

3. U.S.-DPRK Agreement on Denuclearization Verification Measures.

4. U.S.-North Korea Understandings on Verification

UPDATE 1: Since being removed from the list, it is now easier for the DPRK to obtain avian flu vaccinations from the US:

Yet deep inside an 86-page supplement to United States export regulations is a single sentence that bars U.S. exports of vaccines for avian bird flu and dozens of other viruses to five countries designated “state sponsors of terrorism.”

The reason: Fear that they will be used for biological warfare.

Under this little-known policy, North Korea, Iran, Cuba, Syria and Sudan may not get the vaccines unless they apply for special export licenses, which would be given or refused according to the discretion and timing of the U.S. Three of those nations – Iran, Cuba and Sudan – also are subject to a ban on all human pandemic influenza vaccines as part of a general U.S. embargo.

Under normal circumstances it would take at least six weeks to approve export licenses for any vaccine on the list, said Thomas Monath, who formerly headed a CIA advisory group on ways to counter biological attacks. All such decisions would follow negotiations at a “very high level” of government.

That could makes it harder to contain an outbreak of bird flu among chickens in, say, North Korea, which is in the region hardest hit by the virus. Sudan and Iran already have recorded cases of the virus in poultry and Syria is surrounded by affected countries. Cuba, like all nations, is vulnerable because the disease is delivered by migratory birds.(Associated Press)

ORIGINAL POST:
As reported in the Associated Press Saturday morning:

North Korea has agreed to all U.S. nuclear inspection demands and the Bush administration responded Saturday by removing the communist country from a terrorism blacklist. The breakthrough is intended to salvage a faltering disarmament accord before President Bush leaves office in January.

“Every single element of verification that we sought going in is part of this package,” State Department Sean McCormack said at a a rare weekend briefing.

North Korea will allow atomic experts to take samples and conduct forensic tests at all of its declared nuclear facilities and undeclared sites on mutual consent. The North will permit experts to verify that it has told the truth about transfers of nuclear technology and an alleged uranium program.

Verifying North Korea’s nuclear proliferation will be a serious challenge. This is the most secret and opaque regime in the entire world,” said Patricia McNerney, assistant secretary for international security and nonprofileration.

Proponents of de-listing say it is an important step in accomplishing the goals of the six-party talks which are ultimately aimed at realizing a denuclearized Korean peninsula.  Critics of this agreement claim that it addresses only the DPRK’s plutonium program while ignoring nuclear proliferation and uranium enrichment.  

North Korea stepped up the pressure this week barring IAEA inspectors from the DPRK’s nuclear facilities at Yongbyon:

North Korea “today informed International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors that effective immediately access to facilities at Yongbyon would no longer be permitted,” IAEA spokesman Marc Vidricaire said today in an e-mail. The country “has informed the IAEA that our monitoring activities would no longer be appropriate.”

The demand that inspectors leave the whole complex, which is the source of the country’s weapons-grade plutonium, followed a Sept. 24 instruction that monitors quit the reprocessing plant. The new orders will prevent UN personnel from seeing whether North Korea is removing spent uranium fuel rods from cold-water holding tanks. Spent uranium can be turned into plutonium.

IAEA inspectors will remain in the town of Yongbyon until ordered to leave by North Korean authorities, the agency said. (Bloomberg)

UPDATE: According to Reuters, “North Korea said on Sunday it would resume taking apart its plutonium-producing nuclear plant and allow in inspectors in response to a U.S. decision to remove it from a terrorism blacklist and salvage a faltering nuclear deal.”

Despite these recent developments, or maybe because of them, the Bush administration quickly negotiated a de-listing agreement with Pyongyang and spent the last few days selling it to other governments involved in the six-party talks. Though South Korea supported the move, the Japanese government was divided.  Japanese Finance Minister Shoichi Nakagawa (a North Korea hard-liner) called the move “extremely regrettable” as Japan was using US terrorism de-listing as leverage to discover the whereabouts of kidnapped Japanese citizens.  This leverage is now gone since the next president of the US will not likely go through the effort of adding the DPRK to the list again.  Other members of the Japanese government, however, believe there will not be any resolution to this issue until the nuclear issue is resolved. 

De-listing marks the end of the second of three phases agreed to in the six-party talks.  The third stage includes completely dismantling Yongbyon and ending atomic development on the Korean peninsula.  This is likely to be even more difficult than the previous stages. (Bloomberg)

De-listing, however, carries more political than economic significance.  According to the State Department web site (here) countries are added to the list for the following reasons:

Countries determined by the Secretary of State to have repeatedly provided support for acts of international terrorism are designated pursuant to three laws: section 6(j) of the Export Administration Act (which expred in August 2001), section 40 of the Arms Export Control Act (wikipedia), and section 620A of the Foreign Assistance Act. Taken together, the four main categories of sanctions resulting from designation under these authorities include restrictions on U.S. foreign assistance; a ban on defense exports and sales; certain controls over exports of dual use items; and miscellaneous financial and other restrictions.

Designation under the above-referenced authorities also implicates other sanctions laws that penalize persons and countries engaging in certain trade with state sponsors. Currently there are five countries designated under these authorities: Cuba, Iran, North Korea, Sudan and Syria.

As discussed before (here and here), the DPRK still faces a myriad of legal barriers which restrict it from accessing global trade and financial markets, including the US Column 2 tariffs (Smoot-Hawley Tariffs), US Treasury sanctions, bilateral Japanese sanctions (renewed on Friday), and recent UN resolutions 1695 and 1718.  In other words, the DPRK does not have much to gain financially from de-lisitng.

Here is the initial executive order to begin de-listing.  Now that the US terrorism list is one country shorter, who remains? Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan.

Read the full article here:
N Korea off US blacklist after nuke inspection deal
Associated Press (via Washington Post)
Matthew Lee
10/11/2008

N. Korea Removed From U.S. List of Terror Sponsors
Bloomberg
James Rowley and Viola Gienger
10/11/2008

From KCNA:

Kim Yong Nam Receives Credentials from British Ambassador to DPRK
 
Pyongyang, September 30 (KCNA) — Kim Yong Nam, president of the Presidium of the DPRK Supreme People’s Assembly, received credentials from Peter Hughes, ambassador of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the DPRK, at the Mansudae Assembly Hall on Tuesday.

After receiving the credentials, Kim had a talk with the ambassador.

(The Wilson Center’s North Korean International Documentation Project (NKIDP) does innovative historical work collecting, translating, comparing, and analyzing records kept on the DPRK in the archives of formerly (and some currenty) communist countries.  They recently held an innovative conference where they brough in period policy makers to discuss and comment on these archival records.)

NKIDP publishes document reader from international conference “Crisis and Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula: 1968-1969”
September 8-9, 2008

Crisis and Confrontation on the Korean Peninsula: 1968-1969 focused on the two tumultuous years which saw the capture of the U.S. Navy’s intelligence ship USS Pueblo by the DPRK, the North Korean attempt to assassinate ROK President Park Chunghee with a cross-border commando raid on the Blue House, and numerous other provocative incidents.

The conference’s document reader—a 1200 page collection of newly declassified documents from South Korean, American, and former communist bloc archives–is the most comprehensive collection of primary source materials on US-ROK-DPRK relations during the late 1960s ever assembled, and it is now available for download free of charge from NKIDP.

Armed with this document reader, scholars from around the world, and former policy-makers from the United States, South Korea, and the former communist bloc gathered at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington for two days of discussions.

These discussions gave historians the opportunity to interact with the very officials whose reports and memoranda comprised the document reader, and will result in a more nuanced understanding of US-ROK-DPRK relations during the late 1960s.

The Nautilus Institute has published an aritcle by Leonid Petrov on 60 years of Australian/DPRK relations.

Topics covered: on again/off agian diplomatic history, Australian foreign policy, bilateral relations, DPRK engagement with Australia, Pong Su (drug smuggling), denuclearization, economic sanctions, DPRK canberra embassy closing.

You may read the article on line here.

You may download a PDF of the article here: petrov-australia-dprk.pdf

I have updated the list of Congressional Research Service (CRS) reports published on North Korea and posted them here.  I have also added a hyperlink under “pages” on the menu tab to the right.

Updates include:
US Assistance to North Korea: July 31, 2008
North Korean Ballistic Missile Threat: January 24, 2008
North Korea’s Nuclear Weapons Program: January 21, 2008
North Korea’s Abduction of Japanese Citizens and the Six-Party Talks: March 19, 2008
The Kaesong North-South Industrial Complex: February 14, 2008
The North Korean Economy: Leverage and Policy Analysis: August 26, 2008

Choson Ilbo
9/18/2008

Gen. Hyon Chol-hae, the 74-year-old deputy director of the general political department of the North Korean People’s Army (KPA) has been North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s most frequent companion on official occasions. Hyon has accompanied Kim, who is said to be recovering from a stroke, on 32 occasions this year.

In analysis of senior North Korean officials who have accompanied Kim on his inspections of various facilities until Aug. 14, Hyon was followed by Gen. Ri Myong-su (71), director of the administrative department of the National Defense Commission (29 occasions); Kim Ki-nam (82), director of the propaganda department of the North Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) (22 occasions); Pak Nam-gi (74), director of the planning and fiscal affairs department of the KWP (10 occasions); Kim Jong-gak (62), first vice-director of the KPA’s general political department, Pak To-chun, chief secretary of the WPK Jagang Provincial Committee, Kim Kyok-sik, chief of the KPA general staff (seven occasions); Jang Song-taek (62), director of the administrative department of the KWP (five occasions); and North Korea’s first vice foreign minister Kang Sok-ju (67) (five occasions).

During these inspections, Kim has given instructions to military officers, government officials and plant managers. The more often these elderly men accompany Kim, the closer the Unification Ministry, which carried out the analysis, considers them to the North Korean leader. Hyon, Ri, Kim and Pak ranked first through fourth in 2007 as well

Song Dae-sung, a senior researcher at the Sejong Institute, said there is no big change in the ranking order of those closest aides to Kim Jong-il, who are assisting Kim on his sickbed or governing North Korea on his behalf.

Hyon Chol-hae
The KPA’s general political department, which Hyon controls as deputy director, is in charge of the entire KPA organization. A graduate of the Mangyongdae Revolutionary School, which families and descendants of the anti-Japanese partisans attend, he controls the school’s graduates, most of whom serve in the military. During the Korean War, he was Kim Il-sung’s bodyguard. He accompanied Kim junior on his visit to China in 2001.

Hyon stood on the platform alongside other North Korean leaders during a military parade on North Korea’s 60th anniversary on Sept. 9. According to analysts, normally only vice marshals or higher-ranking military officers are allowed to stand on the platform, and Hyon, a general, was an unprecedented exception.

Suh Jae-jean, director of the Korea Institute for National Unification, said, “It seems that Hyon Chol-hae is currently running North Korea behind the scenes. He is expected to play a leading role in laying the foundation for the post-Kim Jong-il era according to Kim’s wishes.” The institute says Hyon also has connections with Kim’s second son Jong-chol (27).

Ri Myong-su
Ri is director of the administrative department of the National Defense Commission, North Korea’s de facto supreme leadership. As the NDC’s administrative department director, he controls inspection and intelligence activities within the KPA. Until last year, he was under Kim Jong-il’s direct command as the director of the KPA’s operations department.

Ri emerged as a strongman in the process of Kim’s succession to power in the 1970s, by displaying loyalty to him. He has been Kim’s second most frequent companion since 2003.

Ryu Dong-ryeol, a researcher at the Police Science Institute, said, “Hyon and Ri directly report to Kim Jong-il.”

Kim Ki-nam
Kim is a well-known figure in South Korea since making an unannounced visit to the Seoul National Cemetery when he was in Seoul as the chief of a North Korean delegation to a “Unification Festival” marking Liberation Day on Aug. 15, 2005. He is Kim’s mouthpiece as secretary for propaganda for the KWP Central Committee. He was the editor-in-chief of the Rodong Shinmun, the organ of the KWP Central Committee, in 1976. In 1985, he was appointed director of the propaganda department of the KWP Central Committee.

Lee Ki-dong, a senior researcher at the Institute for National Security Strategy, said, “Kim Ki-nam will be in charge of publicizing at home and abroad Kim Jong-il’s decision about a successor.”

Pak Nam-gi
Pak is in charge of North Korea’s economy. Since 1976, he has worked as an economic expert as vice chairman of the State Planning Commission, the agency that controls North Korea’s planned economy.

As the first vice-director of the KPA’s general political department, Kim Jong-gak is in charge of propaganda within the military. Kim Kyok-sik assumed the post as the chief of KPA general staff in April last year, and Pak To-chun has served as the chief secretary of the KWP Jagang Provincial Committee since 2005.

Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law, fell out of favor with Kim in May 2004. But he came back in 2006 and has since controlled powerful agencies such as the Ministry of Public Security and the State Security Department, and prosecutors’ offices. He is reportedly close to Kim’s eldest son Jong-nam (37).

Kang Sok-ju played a major role in reaching the U.S.-North Korean Geneva Agreement in 1994.

UPDATE 5: Kim misses Choseuk.  From the AP:

North Korea’s ailing leader remained out of sight Monday, missing another key chance — Korea’s Thanksgiving holiday — to make a public appearance that could put to rest mounting speculation about his health.

North Korea’s main newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, said Monday Kim urged his people to work hard to reap a bountiful harvest, saying the country “should mobilize all available capability for the autumn harvest.” The remarks were published a day after Chuseok, or Thanksgiving, but the paper did not say when Kim made the remarks. (Associated Press)

UPDATE 4: Putting foreigners aside, the DPRK needs to come up with a pretty good reason to explain KJI’s absense from the celebrations for its own people.  A significant portion of Pyongyang’s population was involved in the performances and Kim’s failure to appear will likely fuel the domestic rumor mill.  Has Rodong Sinmun or any of the DPRK’s local publications given an account of his whereabouts for the home crowd?

(update 4a: the rumor mill seems to have started turning)

UPDATE 3: North Korea’s Kim is fine, his deputy says. “(There is) no problem,” North Korea’s nominal number two leader, Kim Yong-nam, told Japan’s Kyodo news agency in Pyongyang. Senior North Korean diplomat Song Il-ho told Kyodo earlier: “We see such reports as not only worthless, but rather as a conspiracy plot.” (Washington Post)

UPDATE 2: Lankov remains skeptical, and I agree:

“He is going to die sooner or later and eventually one of these reports about his health will be true, but this one is probably much ado about nothing,” said Andrei Lankov, a respected Pyongyang watcher and a professor at South Korea’s Kookmin University. He said the extreme secrecy about the North Korean regime made it unlikely that either the United States or South Korea had received reliable intelligence about Kim’s health. (LA Times)

UPDATE1: The Wall Street Journal reports that “US Officials” say Kim Jong il is believed to have suffered a stroke. 

ORIGINAL POST:  Though I personally don’t want to get caught up in endless speculation, Kim’s failure to appear at the mass rallies celebrating the DPRK’s 60th birthday is a significant signal that he is not in good health.  I saw Kim Jong il in 2005 at the mass games celebrating the 60th anniversary of the “defeat of the Japanese colonialists,” and for him not to appear at this more auspicious celebration is certainly noteworthy.  According to Reuters:

North Korea celebrated its 60th birthday with a triumphal military parade on Tuesday just as the hermit state appears to be backing away from a disarmament deal, but leader Kim Jong-il failed to appear, Kyodo news reported.

South Korea’s largest daily, the Chosun Ilbo, said Kim, 66 and suspected of suffering from chronic illness, collapsed last month, citing a South Korean diplomatic source in Beijing.

Kim’s health is one of the most closely guarded secrets in Asia’s only communist dynasty, but Kim himself, at a summit with South Korea’s president in October 2007, dismissed persistent media speculation that he was ill.

“I make a little move and that gets huge coverage,” Kim said in rare comments. “It seems like they’re fiction writers and not journalists.”

North Korean media last reported a public appearance by Kim about a month ago.

Read the full article here:
North Korea fetes 60th birthday
Reuters
Jon Herskovitz and Jack Kim
9/9/2008