Seoul - North Korean leader Kim Jong Il expanded his son's growing portfolio Wednesday, using the country's largest political conference in 30 years to cement his family's role in protecting his reclusive regime.
North Korea's state news agency reported that Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong Eun, took his first positions within the ruling Workers' Party, where he'll need to build a base of support among members who might question his age or experience. He was named vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, which had previously had just eight members, including his father, and to the party's Central Committee.
The jobs, in addition to his appointment to a top military position the day before, underscore the Young General's accelerated rise: This weekend, he had never been named in the North Korean news media. Now, at 26 or 27 years old, he is North Korea's second most powerful man.
One day after Kim Jong Il's son and sister received top military positions, son Kim Jong Eun - further verifying his role as heir - took his first positions within the ruling Workers' Party, where he'll need to build a base of supporters among members who might question his age or experience.
One day after Kim Jong Il's son and sister received top military positions, son Kim Jong Eun - further verifying his role as heir - took his first positions within the ruling Workers' Party, where he'll need to build a base of supporters among members who might question his age or experience.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, in the last two days, has used a national political conference to endow his family members with high-profile jobs. One day after Kim Jong Il's son and sister received top military positions, son Kim Jong Eun - further verifying his role as heir - took his first positions within the ruling Workers' Party, where he'll need to build a base of supporters among members who might question his age or experience.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il promoted his son and his sister to top military positions in the hours before the country's largest political conference in 30 years, demonstrating anew his reliance on family bloodlines to protect his reclusive regime.
But experts say it was the tapping of Kim Jong Il's sister, Kim Kyong Hui, as a military general that offered a glimpse into the North Korean leader's strategy for protecting power as his health declines and his untested son emerges. Put simply, he plans to rely on his family.
Politics is the Kim family business, and staying in business is the family's latest challenge. Though the Kims have always used North Korea as an expansive family headquarters - "the entire bureaucracy is just a personal staff for Kim Jong Il," Seoul-based analyst Park Hyeong-Jung said - experts on Tuesday noted that Kim Kyong Hui's new job reinforces the bloodline-over-party priority. She has no military experience, but she was made a four-star general.
"When things really get tough - when the leader gets ill - it's the family that starts to circle the wagons," said Ken Gause, an Alexandria-based analyst specializing in North Korean leadership.
"We've seen this in Iraq, in the last years of the Saddam [Hussein] regime. And that's the case here. It seems to me not an accident that the day before they make party appointments, they make the bloodline appointments," Gause said. "That is a clear signal to what's happening here: The Kim family is still in control."
Even before Kim Kyong Hui received her new title, the father-to-son power transfer was a family job. Kim Kyong Hui's husband, National Defense Commission Vice Chairman Jang Song Taek, is widely viewed as a regent for Kim Jong Eun. He could also serve as an interim ruler if the Dear Leader dies or falls seriously ill before Kim Jong Eun has adapted to his designated role.
Kim Kyong Hui and Jang Song Taek have been married 38 years, in love despite the objections of her father, the late Kim Il Sung. Some experts think Kim Kyong Hui was promoted to help legitimize her husband; she can act as a prominent link to the Kim blood, if ever Jang needs public support.
Others think Kim Kyong Hui was promoted as a counterweight to her husband, checking him from becoming too ambitious. At Tuesday's party conference in Pyongyang, Kim Kyong Hui retained her Central Committee post, which she has held since 1988, and Jang was named the committee's department director.
Drawing several old allies closer, Kim Jong Il also named four people, three of them older than 70s, as standing members of the Politburo. Previously, Kim Jong Il was its only standing member. The additions of Kim Yong Nam, Choe Yong Rim, Jo Myong Rok and Ri Yong Ho suggest that Kim Jong Il hopes to revive the Politburo as another support mechanism for his son.
"By giving Kim Kyong Hui power, Kim Jong Eun's succession can be solidified," said Cheong Seong Chang, senior analyst at Seoul's Sejong Institute. "She can use her title to persuade the elite power in the military to select Kim Jong Eun as the next leader."
Examining the inner workings of the world's most secretive state requires an element of guesswork, with information based on foreign intelligence, North Korean propaganda and rare accounts from high-level defectors.
Most who analyze North Korea, though, think Kim Jong Il shares a fiercely close relationship with his sister, who is younger by four years. Raised primarily by distant family members and nannies, they spent their childhoods together.
In the past two years, Kim Kyong Hui, now 64, has emerged as her brother's top companion on trips to factories, farms and military camps.
According to a recent essay by Yuriko Koike, Japan's former defense minister, Kim Jong Il once told the Central Committee of the Workers' Party that "Kim Kyong Hui is myself, the words of Kim Kyong Hui are my words, and instructions issued by Kim Kyong Hui are my instructions."
She also heads North Korea's light industry and has previously been involved with aspects of the country's surveillance machine.
During the mid-2000s, Kim Kyong Hui disappeared from public life. North Korea analysts, in a popular but unproven theory, often attribute her absence to a struggle with alcoholism.
Gause said Kim Kyong Hui helped establish a network of contacts in Europe, particularly in Switzerland, that the family used to stash its private millions.
In contrast to his inexperienced son, Kim Jong Il worked for roughly a decade behind the scenes before emerging in the public as his own father's heir apparent. Now, two years removed from a stroke and still dealing with myriad health problems, Kim Jong Il is rushing to reorganize his country so his family can retain power after his death.
"What we can say is, Kim Jong Il is putting his ducks in a row," said Jennifer Lind, a North Korea expert at Dartmouth College. "From the standpoint of this week's events, the regime has taken a step to make itself more stable. It's pretty clear that Kim Jong Il is gathering the people around him who are closest to him."
Special correspondent Yoonjung Seo contributed to this report.
