Special to WorldTribune.com
By Donald Kirk, East-Asia-Intel.com
SEOUL — North Korea is playing a skillful game of funeral diplomacy and politics that’s dividing South Koreans and leaving everyone to wonder who’s doing what to whom in the corridors of power in Pyongyang.
All North Korean strategists have had to do is issue a huge welcome to all those down here who would like to join “condolence delegations” for the funeral next Wednesday for the late lamented “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-Il. As far as the would-be hosts in the North are concerned, they can even come by road through the truce village of Panmunjom rather than make the circuitous, and expensive, journey by air via Beijing.
The notion of opening up the border crossing for travel to the funeral upsets South authorities who see North Korea as carefully playing upon pro-condolence and anti-condolence sentiments here. Korean conservatives believe President Lee Myung-Bak has gone far enough in approving a message of “sympathy to the people” of North Korea — well short of condolences — while permitting those who wants to send their own condolences to go ahead and do so.
At the same time, North Korea’s official web site, Uriminzokkiri, assured those who might have trepidations about the welcome they’re likely to receive, promising “the convenience and safety of South Korean condolence delegations will be fully guaranteed.”
All of which creates a problem for South Korean authorities who have refused to send an official delegation, have banned opposition politicos from doing so either and don’t appear interested in opening up the Panmunjom crossing. All they’ve agreed on so far is to permit two widows whose husbands had unique, tragically interwoven records in pursuing rapprochement between South and North to lead their own “condolence delegations.”
First is Lee Hee-Ho, the widow of Kim Dae-Jung, the president who articulated a “Sunshine policy” of reconciliation with North Korea after his upset election in December 1997, flew to Pyongyang for the first inter-Korean summit with Kim Jong-Il in June 2000 and won the Nobel Peace Prize six months later. Lee accompanied her husband to Pyongyang for what was to be the crowning moment of both their lives — all enshrined in photos of Kim Jong-Il with both of them in Pyongyang.
Second is Hyun Jeong-Eun, widow of Chung Mong-Hun, who was chairman of Hyundai Asan, the Hyundai group company responsible for realizing the dream of his legendary father, Chung Ju-Yung, for opening up North Korea for business and tourism. Asan was the name of the village near the east coast of North Korea, a few miles above the Mount Kumkang region, from which the elder Chung fled at the age of 18 after stealing one of his father’s cows to seek his fortune in the South.
Chung Mong-Hun was in the retinue of the 130 top bureaucrats, politicos and business leaders who accompanied Kim Dae-Jung on that historic flight from Seoul to Pyongyang. It was through Chung and his father that North Korea had first signaled interest in an inter-Korean summit.
There was, however, one catch that was not revealed until long after the summit — South Korea had to transfer at least half a billion dollars into North Korean coffers to grease the way to Pyongyang, and Hyundai Asan was the principal conduit. Chung Mong-Hun, committed suicide in August 2003 two months after his indictment for his role in the payoff. His father, Chung Ju-Yung, who had died in March 2001, had presumably urged him to assist in expediting the bribe.
The widow Hyun Jeong-Eun’s misfortunes were far from over after she inherited what was left of “the Hyundai group” after Chung Ju-Yung left the most prosperous entities, including Hyundai Motor and Hyundai Heavy Industries, the ship-builder, to Mong-Hun’s brothers.
Hyundai Asan lost its billion-dollar investment in the Kumkang tourist zone after the North took it over this year and asked the Chinese to operate the tours. The reason was that President Lee had cut off all tours to the zone after a North Korean guard three years earlier shot and killed a South Korean woman who had wandered outside the carefully delineated tourist area to look at the sunrise. Lee adamantly refused to countenance resumption of tours until the North agreed to permit the South to investigate the tragedy — something the North was not about to do.
For Hyun Jong-Eun, a show of mourning at Kim Jong-Il’s funeral is to be a public relations gesture that she has to believe will support her dream of recovering the Mount Kumkang tourist complex. In any case, she has another reason for courting North Korea — Hyundai Asan still operates the industrial zone at Kaesong just across the line in North Korea next to Panmunjom. Nearly 100 small and medium South Korean enterprises now run factories in Kaesong staffed by about 50,000 North Koreans — the harbinger perhaps of more operations in the North and more business for Hyundai Asan.
Quite aside from the question of condolences from South Korea, the greatest question surrounding the mourning will be the roles of Kim Jong-Il’s offspring other than his anointed heir, third son Kim Jong-Un. His playboy eldest son Kim Jong-Nam has been living it up in Macao for years. Once a likely successor, Jong-Nam lost out after he was nailed by Japanese immigration officials in 2001 trying to get through Tokyo’s Narita airport on a fake Dominican passport.
All Kim Jong-Nam, wanted to do, he said, was take his son to Tokyo Disneyland. Among details that are coming out about Kim Jong-Il’s family is that Jong-Nam, the son of the Dear Leader’s first wife, and his two younger half-brothers had been to Disneyland as kids. All of them were traveling to Japan on phony foreign passports with the mother of the younger brothers, Kim Young-Hee, whom Kim never married before she died in 2004.
Just how Jong-Nam, now 40, got along with them is not clear, but one thing seems certain. The inner core of strategists in Pyongyang don’t want him getting close to Kim Jong-Un, the “great successor” who at the age of 28 or 29 has to give the appearance of leading the country. Attendance at the funeral would be not so much an embarrassment as a potential threat to Jong-Un’s new role.
Under the circumstances, it’s not clear if the middle of the three brothers, Kim Jong-Chol, will be visible at the funeral either. Jong-Chol, now 30, has been living quietly in Pyongyang, not viewed as real competition since his father passed him over as effete, possibly effeminate, but will probably remain unseen on television even if he’s somewhere close by. As for the daughter whom Kim Jong-Il had by his second wife, and a much younger son he’s also rumored to have had, it’s assumed they won’t be visible either.
The non-role of the siblings, however, may be less significant than the roles of all the other power players. It’s assumed all manner of maneuvering is going on for who goes to the funeral, where they’re placed and what they do in the ceremony.
Kim Jong-Un nominally heads the funeral committee, but it’s not at all likely he had much to do with the selection of its 230 or so members.
All one knows is that Jang Song-Thaek, a vice chairman of the national defense commission that Kim Jong-Il served as chairman, seems to be the regent. That has a lot to do with the influence of his wife, Kim Kyong-Hui, Kim Jong-Il’s sister. No one is likely to know where they really stand, however, until the transition shakes down — and other faces possibly emerge as contenders.
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