By It’s convention time in North Korea:
Huge posters plastered across the North Korean capital hailed the nation’s biggest political convention in 30 years as a historic event as the world watched Monday for signs that the country’s next leader was making his public debut.
Party delegates from all corners of North Korea were gathering in Pyongyang, state media said. Thousands practiced waving pink and red plastic flowers in a weekend rehearsal of celebrations at Kim Il Sung Square, China’s Xinhua news agency said.
The capital was festooned with posters urging North Koreans to “make this a festive event that will shine in the history of our country and people.” One North Korean professor told broadcaster Associated Press Television News the party meeting marked a “turning point” for the communist nation.
However, there was no confirmation Monday that the convention, slated to take place in “early September,” had begun, with the timing kept secret as is typical of the North Korean regime.
The gathering is the Workers’ Party’s first major meeting since the landmark 1980 congress where Kim Jong Il made his public debut as North Korea’s future leader. He took over after his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, died of heart failure in 1994 in what was communism’s first hereditary transfer of power. [Associated Press]
I guess we will have to wait and see what happens, but even if Kim Jong-il’s son Jong-un is announced as the next leader of North Korea it could still be a number of years before he takes over if his father stays healthy. It would also give the regime time to create the propaganda with its own people to justify the succession of Kim Jong-un who has little to no accomplishments to speak of.
6:29 pm on September 6th, 2010 1
I'm making a bold prediction: KJI is gearing KJU up for Chinese-style reforms.
9:53 pm on September 6th, 2010 2
#1: either gearing up for…or being forced into. I saw how the Norks are now praising the Chinese economic model, so you may be onto something here. NK will surely wither away and die without it's prop-up from China, and I'll bet some mandatory economic reforms come attached with the next big aid package…
11:28 pm on September 6th, 2010 3
#1
You may be right, but I wonder how cathartic it will be.
North Korea's leadership system is very different that what existed in China before their reform. Mao had himself placed on a high pedestal, but he wasn't made out to be quite the demi-god that Kim Il Sung was.
When China went trough its reform, they had to admit mistakes were made in the past. They had to admit that during the cultural revolution, the people were misled and misinformed about why all the suffering and persecutions were necessary for progress and success that never came about. After the reforms, the new Central Committee had to point out culprits in the older leadership who were deemed to be the perpetrators of the deception. So, old Cultural Revolution members, including
Madam Mao, were hauled through court, blamed for all past wrongs, then executed.
I think this process of identifying mistakes of the past, and publicly having those accused to be responsible face justice, was necessary for reform to proceed as relatively smoothly as it did in China.
Is KJI and his son really prepared to do any of that? No. But at some point, the North Korean people are going to start asking loudly, 'Why have we been punished and made to suffer so much for attempting to do these things you now tell us we should be doing?'
3:41 am on September 7th, 2010 4
Jinro, if I'm right, then I don't think they're being "forced into it." If you follow my link above, you'll see the post about North Korea's attempt at making a SAR eight years ago, which was quashed by Beijing. I think this is something they want to do, and I'm starting to feel that that was part of what was behind the Northeast China visit.
JoeC, I don't know if such cathartic declarations of mistake-making are necessary for economic reform to go forward or proceed, but the fact is we have already seen the Pyongyang regime admit major mistakes recently with the disastrous currency reform, mistakes over which high-ranking politicos were supposedly executed.
If you read the KCNA reports from time to time, you can see that they do talk about "new challenges" in the face of new technologies and what not, so a narrative of changing strategies would not be alien and unacceptable to the masses.
10:23 am on September 7th, 2010 5
Read 1984 by George Orwell. Their society is setup in such a way that Mr. Kim need only change the songs and textbooks and *poof* instant reform with no questions asked.
10:48 am on September 7th, 2010 6
We've always been at war with Eastasia
10:54 am on September 7th, 2010 7
Kushibo #1 If the NK had any sense at all & were willing to think rationally then hopefully you would be correct. That's one hell of a big IF. In the former Soviet Union in 1921 Lenin started the New Economic Plan which allowed a limited amount of free enterprise. In Red China Deng Xiaoping started their march to where they are now. Of course Gorbachev tried the same thing in the former Soviet Union. There were other experiments in former communist Eastern Europe. Just look at Vietnam now. If the NK want to survive then this will happen but again I say it's a big if.
4:43 pm on September 7th, 2010 8
Tom Langley, you make some good points, but I would submit that no two countries are going to have that close of a similar origin. The Chinese had the Great March, the Vietnamese had whatever they had, and the North Koreans had their Korean War… but all could be capable of similar market-oriented reforms within a communist or socialist structure.
At any rate, my theory is not so much what I think they should do or even what I want them to do, but rather, what I am gathering from KCNA reports what they are setting out to do.