Beyond the Bubble

On Sept. 30 the citizens of the world’s only totalitarian state were able to view the individual who will likely succeed their current dictator. Through a low-resolution image fed to the state-run national newspaper, they saw a round-faced young man in between his father and a general, unsmiling and with his hair combed straight back.

That young man is Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of North Korea’s current dictator Kim Jong Il.

Last Thursday, following the nation’s largest Workers Party gathering in 30 years, the dictator announced the appointment of his son as a four-star general of the Korean People’s Army. Jong-un was also named to the Military commission of the Worker’s Party. While these titles mean little to many in the West, they represent a significant shift in the power structure in the impoverished nation.

Analysts believe that the appointments indicate that Kim Jong-un will succeed his father as the dictator of North Korea, whereby extending the family’s control over the impoverished nation to its third generation. Analysts note that the current dictator likely felt the necessity to begin to create a succession framework following a “stroke-like illness” two years ago.

Though the international community has long suspected that Jong-un would succeed his father, the announcement was a monumental, as censorship in the country pervades to such an extreme that the North Korean public had never before heard the young man’s name.

According to the New York Times, Kim Jong-un is either 27 or 28. The Washington Post noted that he spent a year studying in Switzerland at some point during his adolescence. CNN also stated that he has allegedly performed “some duties at the national defense commission,” and that he speaks English and German.

The BBC added further weight to the claim of succession when noting that the government has also begin writing songs and creating poems in honor of the new leader. They also reported that some 10 million portraits of the young man have been created, and are now ready to be hung alongside the pictures of his grand father and father all around the nation.

With such a limited range of experience and training however, regardless of when the young man actually takes the role of dictator, it is suspected that much of the control of the nation will actually rest on the shoulders of Jong-un’s uncle, Jang Song Taek. Taek is the wife of the current dictator’s sister, Kim Kyung-hee, who also received the title of four star general on Thursday. Taek is believed to be Kim Jong-il’s closest aid and ally within the government.

With a government whose values are so deeply entrenched in its totalitarian framework, it is difficult to see how the installment of a new leader will mean anything more than a change in the size of a military tracksuit (that Jong-il has made so widely-recognized in recent years). It seems apparent that the state, so fuelled by aggression and a dictatorial mentality will be difficult to stop in its progression towards a totally self-sufficient socialist system. As history has shown us, often it takes some sort of catastrophic political, economic, social or military event to dislodge a dynasty such as this. Let us hope that it does not come to that, and both the starving people in the North Korean countryside and the international community at large can be spared the worst of this totalitarian state’s wrath.