Glyn Ford says the West must stand ready to act supportively as the reign of Kim Jong-il may be drawing to a close

ALL the evidence is that someone is still in charge in Pyongyang. Since August’s speculation that Kim Jong-il had serious health problems, North Korea has first announced that it would start to rebuild its nuclear reactor facilities at Yongbyon. The cooling towers had been blown up in June in front of the world’s press to fulfil North Korea’s pledge to move away from nuclear power. However, the United States failed to keep its side of the bargain. It wanted its inspection and interrogation regimes to be based on the Iraq model and failed to remove North Korea from its list of “terror states”.  It was on the list ostensibly for harbouring a group of Japanese hijackers from 1970.

Then, when George Bush’s administration finally accepted that its inspection and interrogation requirements had been dealt with to its satisfaction and took North Korea off the terror list, giving it access to World Bank and International Monetary Fund cash, Pyongyang withdrew the threat about Yongbyon. It also allowed International Atomic Energy Authority inspectors onto the reactor site.

Kim may be ailing, but unless everyone has got their lines of control wrong, he is still calling the shots.

Yet for the first time, there are signs of emerging plans and programmes for a new North Korean leadership. There seems to be a strengthening of the party’s role within the state. The future ruler of North Korea could be a collective leadership. Its public face would still be a member of the Kim clan. However, the party and the military would be controlling things behind the scenes. There would be a renewed enthusiasm for economic – but not political – reform, leading to a variant of Chinese market Leninism.

Rudiger Frank, professor of East Asian Economy and Society at the University of Vienna, has pointed to the unprecedented prominence given to an October 8 editorial in Rodong Sinmun – the official party newspaper. Entitled “Monument to Party Founding Draws Endless Crowd of Visitors”, it discussed the 4.2 million domestic and 200,000 overseas visitors, including 2,000 military personnel daily, to the said monument and the practice of bowing down in front of it after being briefed on its history and significance.

The editorial signified an important break with past practice. It is the first time that the anniversary of the party’s foundation on October 10 has been celebrated with coverage of visits to the monument, erected in 1995.

The editorial is also a break with reality that would have been obvious to any Pyongyang resident. I was there for two weeks in August, passing the monument many times and spending a couple of hours there on one occasion. There was no sign of the near quarter of a million visitors expected at a rate of more than 1,000 an hour. The most seen at any one time was two. Nor was there any evidence of the apparatus necessary to handle the alleged flood of pilgrims and the briefings given to them. The function of the editorial was to assert restored primacy for the party after its neglect since Kim replaced his father in 1997.

Meanwhile, Chang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il’s brother in law, Kim Pyong-ill, his half brother, and Kim Jong-nam, his eldest son, seem to be colluding to isolate Kim Ok, Kim Jong-il’s second wife. She has been acting as his secretary, treasurer and gatekeeper. Simultaneously, the family trio is building support among the military with the intention of putting together a collective leadership to take over towards the middle of next year, when they believe Kim will no longer be able to remain in control.

All three have chequered histories. Chang Song-Taek (62 this year) was vice-director of the party’s organisation and guidance department, while the others were prominent in the military. All three were dismissed in February 2004 and the party restructured by Kim because of policy clashes between Jang, playing a conservative role, and Pak Pong-ju, the then Prime Minister promoting economic reform.

Chang took heed and learned his lesson. Repentant and reformed, he was rapidly rehabilitated, re-emerging as first director of the party’s department of working people’s organisation and capital construction. In March 2006, he led a

30-strong delegation on an 11-day visit to Wuhan, Guangzhou and Shenzhen. This was charged with learning from China’s reform process.

Kim Pyong-il (54), the half-brother, has previously been considered by Kim Il-sung as his possible successor. His mother, Kim Song-ae, promoted his cause. A graduate of the military academy, he had support within the army.  At one time, Kim Il-sung seemed to favour putting Kim Pyong-il in charge of the party chief, although not the military. In the end, this never happened. Kim Il-sung decided against a job share. Whether to stop him creating trouble or keep him out of it, Kim Pyong-il was despatched to Hungary as ambassador in 1988. Further postings followed in Bulgaria, Finland and, most recently, Poland.

Kim Jong-nam (37) the eldest son, and an obvious possible successor to his father, developed a reputation as a bit of a playboy from his forays into Europe and Asia. After he was arrested at Narita Airport, following a CIA tip-off, in May 2001 attempting to enter Japan on a Dominican Republic passport accompanied by his four-year-old-son and two women to visit Tokyo Disneyland, he seemed to have been sidelined. He was spending increasing amounts of time abroad.

However, more recently, he has made a comeback. He returned to Pyongyang in February 2007 for his father’s 65th birthday celebrations, sparking speculation at the time that Kim was gravely ill. Kim Jong-nam was photographed in Paris last month, seemingly involved in a much-reported “health mission” with a French neurologist on behalf of his father.

If the trio gain control of North Korea, they are likely to follow a path midway between that of Deng Xiaoping, who in the 1980s and ’90s brought China’s economy “from the plan to the market”, and Vietnam’s “doi moi”  (change and renewal) reforms instituted in the mid-1980s.

Political reform was not on the agenda in either case. In China, state-operated enterprises were matched by new industries run, not so much by individuals, but by local government – villages, towns and cities – as contractors for the centre. In Vietnam, the farming industry was allowed to do as it would in an increasingly decentralised – and privatised – global economy.

In China, where the poverty rate fell from the 53 per cent of the Mao era to 12 per cent in 1981, one of the key motors of economic reform was the special economic zone in Shenzhen – cheek by jowl with Hong Kong. Some commentators think North Korea’s Kaesong industrial complex, abutting South Korea, may be capable of playing a similar role in the future.

North Korea may also rely on the European Union’s negotiating tactics with South Korea with regard to the Free Trade Agreement. What is clear is that the EU needs to be ready to underpin any changing regime in North Korea by providing assistance in terms of short-term humanitarian aid and help for further industrial restructuring. Neither North Korea being backed into a corner nor any forced regime change will best serve the interests of the Korean peninsula in particular or the world in general.

Glyn Ford is Labour MEP for South-West England and Gibraltar