It's not every day that the Kim dynasty kills one of its own, as Kim Jong Un apparently did his uncle and de facto No. 2, Jang Song Thaek. Rarer still is the fact that the official North Korean media publicized the execution and explained some the rationale behind it.[1]
"The tribunal examined Jang's crimes. All the crimes committed by the accused were proved in the course of hearing and were admitted by him," it added.[1]
Of course. Kim always gets his way.
Pyongyang issued an extraordinary announcement describing Jang as a "despicable human being" who was "worse than a dog" and saying he had been shot dead immediately after a military tribunal found him guilty of plotting to overthrow his 29-year-old nephew. [2]
Wow, this sounds very personal.
I was reading this news source. We could be expecting more interesting and exciting news from North Korea in the future.
“If Kim Jong-un was sure of his control of power, he would not have needed to execute his uncle,” said Lee Byong-chul, a senior fellow at the Institute for Peace and Cooperation in Seoul. “There will be big and small bloody purges, and at a time like this, desperate extremists may lash out. Pyongyang is no longer safe.” [3]
“Although high-ranking leaders, including members of the Kim family, have been deposed before, we haven’t seen anything this public or dramatic since Kim Jong-un’s grandfather Kim Il-sung purged his last major rivals in the late 1950s,” said Prof. Charles K. Armstrong, a North Korea expert at Columbia University and the author of “Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950-1992.” [3]
“This seems to indicate the divisions within the Kim regime were more serious than previously thought,” Professor Armstrong said. [3]
reference
[1] http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/northkorea/10517024/Empire-of-horror-North-Korea-faces-worldwide-condemnation-for-execution.html
[2] http://www.koreatimes.co.kr/www/news/nation/2013/12/116_147904.html
[3] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/12/14/world/asia/execution-raises-doubts-about-kims-grip-on-north-korea.html?hpw&rref=world&_r=0
Kim Jnr's uncle was also accused of "dreaming different dreams" which made him worthy of death. If it were fiction and not real life, it would have been like the protagonist in Vladimir Nabokov's 'The Invitation to a Beheading', who is executed for the crime of "gnostical turpitude'. No one could define what the crime was. Probably Kim Jnr can?
ReplyDeleteI think Jnr Kim might have realized that the act of killing his opponents in cold blood to consolidate power may have backfired. That's why the latest propaganda from the North Korean regime seems to be that 'Oh..Kim was very very drunk when he ordered the killing of his uncle'.
ReplyDeleteThat's interesting. I have missed the latest official line about Kim's remorse for ordering his uncle's execution. But whatever that is happening there, one thing is obvious. Things aren't going smoothly with the new Kim. He might as well be the last of the Kims for all we know, given how far the rest of the Communist countries have come. No one believed Cuba would loosen it's grip on state run enterprises (which is basically everything) during the lifetime of Castro brothers. But Castro the younger himself is overseeing the gradual process of change. I think that's what Kim's uncle had in mind: Gradual change to improve the economy, and in doing so, he touched a raw and inexperienced nerve of the nephew who saw it has a challenge to his inherited authority.
DeleteWe kinda have to wait and see how long Junior last. My guess is his 'dynastic' rule will last a few more generations, just like the dictatorship of his father and grandfather. Change can only come when you have some freedom of speeches and free access to TV/Internet/books/travel/communication etc. But that's not the case currently in NK.
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