Kim Jong-nam is continuing to make headlines with his new book:

When North Korean leader Kim Jong Il died in December, his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, was quickly named as his replacement — fait accompli by all appearances.

But the elder Kim might not have wholeheartedly supported this all-in-the-family succession. At least, that’s the contention of the deceased leader’s eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, said Yoji Gomi, a Tokyo-based journalist and author of the just-released “My Father, Kim Jong Il and I: Kim Jong Nam’s Exclusive Confession.”

Kim Jong Nam has lived in China since 1995 in a self-imposed exile.

During a talk this week at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan, Gomi, through an English translator, quoted Kim Jong Nam: “My father was more opposed to the third-generation hereditary succession than anybody, and it must have been internal factors that forced him to change his view.”

The eldest son said that his father likely changed his mind because the “North Korean people are so used to obeying orders solely based on the belief of bloodline that they may have trouble accepting any successor outside of that bloodline,” according to Gomi.

Masayuki Suzuki, a professor at Shobi University in Saitama, said that a transfer of power outside of family would have been “unthinkable” because bloodline is the only legitimacy the regime possesses.  [Stars & Stripes]

Unless Kim Jong-il was losing his mental capacities after his stroke I find it hard to believe he was against the succession of one of his sons.  He had to have understood that the “Cult of Kim” that has been built up over the decades in North Korea was integral to the legitimacy of the ruling regime.  It just seems to me that Kim Jong-nam is trying to create a small seed of doubt about the legitimacy of Kim Jong-un while at the same time setting himself up as the alternative if he fails as the leader of North Korea.  Considering Kim Jong-nam’s close ties with the Chinese government he is probably their leadership Plan B if there is any instability in North Korea they may need to respond to.