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A Gamble for North Korea’s Young Leader Public Ouster in North Korea Unsettles China
(about 4 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — In the most dramatic fall from power North Korea has ever revealed, its government on Monday televised images of Jang Song-thaek, the once-influential uncle of the leader Kim Jong-un, being escorted out of a party meeting in which he was stripped of all titles of power and expelled from the ruling Workers’ Party. BEIJING — North Koreans had long known Jang Song-thaek as the No. 2 figure in their country, the revered uncle and mentor of Kim Jong-un, the paramount leader. Then on Monday state-run television showed two green-uniformed guards clutching a glum-looking Mr. Jang by the armpits and pulling him from a meeting of the ruling party after he was denounced for faction-building, womanizing, gambling and other acts as dozens of former comrades watched.
Mr. Jang’s purge was highly unusual for North Korea not only because its victim was a man long considered a core member of Mr. Kim’s inner circle but also because of the way the regime abandoned its customary secrecy about internal politics and publicized the purge — through front-page coverage in the North’s state-run newspapers and through the televised spectacle of party secretaries, some tearfully, attacking a man who was until recently the North’s second most powerful figure. The spectacle of Mr. Jang’s humiliating dismissal and arrest was a highly unusual glimpse of a power struggle unfolding inside the nuclear-armed country. But the major impact may be outside, and nowhere is the downfall more unnerving than in China.
In an unusual and extended Sunday meeting of the Political Bureau of the Party Central Committee presided over by his nephew, Mr. Jang was condemned for womanizing, drug abuse, “wining and dining at back parlors of deluxe restaurants,” gambling in foreign casinos at the party’s expense, and above all, nurturing his “politically motivated ambition” by building up a “faction” to challenge against Mr. Kim as the “unitary center” of the ruling party, state media reported. North Korea’s longtime protector and economic lifeline, China has considered strategically close relations with North Korea a pillar of foreign policy and a bulwark against the United States military presence in South Korea. Despite Chinese irritation with North Korea’s nuclear tests and other bellicose behavior, China had built a good relationship with Mr. Jang as the trusted adult who would monitor Mr. Kim, who is less than half his age.
Images released Monday by the North’s Korean Central Television showed two uniformed officers from the Ministry of People’s Security, an agency once said to be loyal to Mr. Jang, escorting the disgraced official from the meeting. Any shift by China concerning North Korea has the potential to significantly alter the political equilibrium in Asia, where the divided Korean Peninsula has been a fact of life for more than 60 years. While there is no indication that the Chinese intend to change their view, it seemed clear that even Beijing’s top leaders were surprised by Mr. Jang’s abrupt downfall on Sunday, and even more on Monday by the North Korean state television broadcast.
He had been seen as a regent for a young nephew who was catapulted into the top leadership following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in late 2011. Mr. Kim’s rise coincided with a seemingly unbridled expansion of power for Mr. Jang, whose posts included a seat on the Political Bureau and vice chairmanships of the Central Military Commission and the top government organ, the National Defense Commission. “Jang was a very iconic figure in North Korea, particularly with economic reform and innovation,” said Zhu Feng, professor of international relations at Peking University, and a specialist in North Korea. “He is the man China counted on to move the economy in North Korea. This is a very ominous signal.”
Political purges are common in North Korea, where Mr. Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, and his grandfather, the North’s founding president, Kim Il-sung, used them to remove potential threats to their power and intimidate the elite. Mr. Jang’s dismissal was a shock not only because he had long been considered a core member of the country’s ruling elite and a regent and confidant of Mr. Kim, who only assumed power two years ago upon the death of his father, Kim Jong-il. The way that Mr. Jang was dismissed also was considered extraordinary, as the North Korea government has almost always maintained secrecy over its inner workings, power struggles and skulduggery during the more than six decades of rule by the Kim family.
But these often bloody machinations almost always take place behind the scenes, and it was highly unusual for the North’s leaders to convene an extended party meeting on a Sunday to condemn the victim and immediately publicize his “crimes,” analysts said. “Kim Jong-un was declaring at home and abroad that he is now the truly one and only leader in the North, that he will not tolerate a No. 2,” said Yang Moo-jin, an analyst at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, South Korea.
“Kim Jong-un was declaring at home and abroad that he is now the truly one and only leader in the North, that he will not tolerate a No. 2,” said Yang Moo-jin, an analyst at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul. Mr. Jang had visited China on a number of occasions and had been considered the most important advocate of the Chinese style of economic overhaul that the government in Beijing has been urging North Korea to embrace.
By removing his uncle, long considered his caretaker, and openly conducting his regime’s biggest political purge, Mr. Kim was “demonstrating his confidence that he can stand alone without help,” said Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea analyst at Dongguk University in Seoul. At 67, Mr. Jang is of the same generation as China’s leaders. Unlike the 30-year-old Mr. Kim — who has not been to China and who remains a mystery despite the lineage to his grandfather, North Korea’s revolutionary founder, Kim Il-sung — Mr. Jang was seen by Beijing as a steady hand and a trusted conduit into North Korea’s top leadership. He was one of China’s few high-level North Korean interlocutors.
Mr. Kim, 30, has been consolidating his power faster than most analysts had expected. But in Pyongyang’s opaque political world, cloaked in secrecy and often fertile ground for speculation, things are often not as they appear, analysts said. That the video of Mr. Jang’s arrest on Sunday at a Politburo meeting by military officers was released to the North Korean public, replete with tearful underlings shown denouncing him, was particularly unsettling for China.
If the charges against Mr. Jang are true, they essentially mean that Mr. Jang was able to build his own faction unchecked in the supposedly monolithic leadership. Alternatively, Mr. Jang may have lost a power struggle within Mr. Kim’s inner circle — a confrontation serious enough to compel Mr. Kim to publicize Mr. Jang’s ouster as a warning to the rest of the elite, rather than send him into silent isolation. Mr. Jang went to Beijing in August 2012 for a six-day visit and met with President Hu Jintao and Prime Minister Wen Jiabao. Special economic zones, where Chinese and other foreign investors would get preferential treatment in North Korea, were high on the agenda.
“What we can say, by North Korea’s own admission, is that there have been serious power struggles since the death of Kim Jong-il and that the apparently rather smooth transition has been anything but at the highest levels of leadership,” said John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul. Just last month North Korea’s official media announced that 14 new special economic zones would be opened, and although they were relatively small, they were seen as a sign of fruition of some of the reforms China has advocated.
Mr. Jang’s downfall triggered a flurry of speculation among analysts and officials in the region over how it might affect the stability and policies of the regime, which has defied the United Nations Security Council on tests of nuclear devices and long-range missiles. Some analysts said they feared that the North might attempt to try to create external tension with a military provocation in order to divert attention from the internal turmoil. “Those zones were a consequence of Jang’s efforts,” Dr. Zhu said. “It’s possible Jang went too far on decentralizing and that threatened Kim Jong-un’s position.”
“It’s difficult to predict, but we are watching with all possibilities open,” said Kim Eui-do, a spokesman for the Unification Ministry, the South Korean government agency in charge of relations with North Korea. China’s official media gave prominent attention to the accusations against Mr. Jang, including some of the florid language used in North Korea’s own state-run news media that recited the litany of his newly disclosed transgressions at party expense: womanizing, gambling, drug abuse, “wining and dining at back parlors of deluxe restaurants,” and perhaps most important, a politically motivated ambition to challenge Mr. Kim as the “unitary center.”
Hong Lei, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, reaffirmed that Beijing’s traditionally friendly ties with Pyongyang would continue and called Mr. Jang’s purge “an internal matter” for the North. But also among the crimes that Mr. Jang was said to have committed was selling resources cheaply, an accusation that appears to have been aimed directly at China, the biggest buyer of North Korea’s iron ore and minerals.
Some South Korean officials who have met Mr. Jang and analysts who follow developments in the North compared him on Monday to a North Korean Rasputin who had implanted loyalists in key party posts while helping his inexperienced nephew through the period of transition, setting the stage for Mr. Jang to challenge him. Soon after assuming power, Mr. Kim complained that North Korea’s resources, one of its few sources of outside income, were being sold too cheaply. He demanded higher prices for minerals, rare earths and coal, exported by the growing number of joint ventures between China and North Korea.
Others described Mr. Jang as shy and easygoing, though a hard drinker, who was keenly aware that his position was precarious in a totalitarian state where all agencies of power compete to demonstrate loyalty to the top leader, often by plotting against one another. Mr. Kim’s complaints were widely reported in China and angered bargain-conscious Chinese mine operators, several of whom abandoned their North Korean operations.
But both camps agreed that Mr. Jang was among the moderates in North Korea and a backer of investment from China. He was also seen as a leading proponent of curtailing the North Korean People’s Army’s power, primarily by limiting its ability to trade in minerals or take part in other lucrative business deals. Now, the climate for Chinese investment in North Korea, which was not particularly good, would be likely to worsen, said Andrei Lankov, author of “The Real North Korea” and professor of history at Kookmin University in Seoul.
Choi Jin-wook, a senior analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, a top government-financed research group in Seoul, said it was possible that Mr. Kim’s move against Mr. Jang had been orchestrated by the army. China’s Foreign Ministry offered restrained comments on Monday regarding Mr. Jang’s dismissal, calling it an internal affair of North Korea.
“We will have to wait and see whether Kim Jong-un has stabilized his regime or become a figurehead with the removal of his uncle,” Mr. Choi said. “It’s still unclear whether Jang’s downfall was Mr. Kim’s own scheme. If it was engineered by the military, it could mean that Kim Jong-un has lost a key force of check-and-balance within his regime.” “We will stay committed to promoting the traditional friendly, cooperative relationship” between China and North Korea, said the Foreign Ministry spokesman, Hong Lei.
Mr. Jang’s faction was accused of various crimes, including “disobeying the order issued by the supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army,” a statement that analysts said may reflect the army generals’ rising influence in the Pyongyang regime. South Korean news media have reported that Mr. Jang had clashed with hard-line generals by opposing the North’s launching of a long-range missile last December and its nuclear test in February. Mr. Jang’s demotion raised the possibility of further instability in North Korea at a time when China is already confronting increased tensions with two of its other North Asian neighbors, Japan and South Korea.
Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at Sejong Institute in South Korea, said the events could signal more internal strife. “Given the extremely harsh stance against Jang and his followers,” he said, “a round of bloody purges will be inevitable as the regime roots out poisonous weeds from its leadership ranks.” An overriding fear of China’s is the collapse of the government in North Korea, an ally dating to the Korean War, which could lead to the reunification of the Korean Peninsula under a government in South Korea allied with the United States.
It was not clear what had become of Mr. Jang’s wife, Kim Kyong-hee, the sister of Mr. Kim’s father. “China worries about instability which might be provoked by such acts” as Mr. Jang’s dismissal, Mr. Lankov said.
People considered closely associated with Mr. Jang include Ji Jae-ryong, the North Korean ambassador to Beijing, and the current prime minister, Pak Pong-ju, an economic technocrat. But the North Korean announcement on Monday indicated that Mr. Jang and Mr. Pak may be rivals rather than allies. It said Mr. Jang’s faction had abused its power to affect economic policies, “making it impossible for the economic guidance organs including the cabinet to perform their roles.” Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at Sejong Institute in South Korea, said the dismissal could signal more internal strife. “Given the extremely harsh stance against Jang and his followers,” he said, “a round of bloody purges will be inevitable as the regime roots out poisonous weeds from its leadership ranks.”
Mr. Pak was one of those who delivered speeches at the party meeting on Sunday. He was shown on North Korean television weeping as he condemned the man once considered to be his patron. Another concern for China was the question of whether Mr. Kim would conduct a new nuclear test, said Roger Cavazos, an American expert on North Korea, who is currently visiting Shanghai.
In February, in an act of open defiance to the Chinese, Mr. Kim authorized the country’s third nuclear test. The Chinese had urged the new North Korean leader not to risk open confrontation with the United States by detonating the weapon. Shortly afterward, in a rare public criticism, China’s president, Xi Jinping, accused North Korea of creating regional instability for “selfish gains.”
“Every Chinese I have spoken with were worried that Kim Jong-un would test soon,” said Mr. Cavazos, a former United States army intelligence officer who is now at the Nautilus Institute, a group that studies international security.
Mr. Cavazos said Chinese academics were concerned that Mr. Kim was “more and more out of control.” He added, “Every nuclear test by North Korea puts China in a bad position.”
That is in large part because as North Korea gets closer to demonstrating that it can miniaturize a nuclear weapon to fit atop a missile, the more the United States will increase its missile defenses in Northeast Asia.
As Mr. Kim rearranged the top echelons of the government, it was possible that the military would emerge the winner, said Cai Jian, deputy director of the Center for Korean Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai. It was likely “the military forces will become stronger” and that the “hard-liners will become more hard-line.”
Mr. Cavazos agreed. “The military was demonstrating its loyalty to Kim Jong-un, and Kim Jong-un was demonstrating his loyalty to the military.”

Jane Perlez reported from Beijing, and Choe Sang-hun from Seoul, South Korea. Bree Feng contributed research from Beijing.