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Execution Raises Doubts About Kim’s Grip on North Korea
Execution Adds to Power Mystery in Seoul
(about 9 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — Perhaps one of the most intriguing details in North Korea’s announcement of the execution of Jang Song-thaek, the uncle and presumed mentor of the leader Kim Jong-un, was what its state-run news media reported that Mr. Jang said while confessing to plotting to overthrow Mr. Kim’s government.
SEOUL, South Korea — As he was confessing to crimes that would lead to his execution, the doomed uncle of North Korea’s leader suggested that he hoped the country’s many economic woes would drive the military to overthrow the Kim dynasty, the state-run news agency said.
“I was going to stage the coup by using army officers who had close ties with me or by mobilizing armed forces under the control of my confidants,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency on Friday quoted Mr. Jang as having said on Thursday during his court-martial. “I thought the army might join in the coup if the living of the people and service personnel further deteriorate in the future.”
The statement, if true, was shocking for a country that normally hides any hint of disloyalty, has not publicized a coup attempt in decades and has not released a detailed explanation of a purge to its people — much less to the world. But even if the uncle, Jang Song-thaek, did not utter such treason, the laundry list of alleged crimes the North Koreans published is notable for its admission of instability in the hermetic nation and suggests that at least some see flaws in its debilitated state-run economy.
It could not be independently confirmed whether Mr. Jang, long considered a champion of a Chinese-style economic overhaul in North Korea, actually made such a statement or whether the government made up the assertion to justify his execution. But the long list of crimes that Mr. Jang and his followers were accused of having committed was tantamount to a highly unusual admission of what analysts said could be a serious and bloody power struggle over economic and other policies inside the impoverished but nuclear-armed country.
“I was going to stage the coup by using army officers who had close ties with me or by mobilizing armed forces under the control of my confidants,” the North’s Korean Central News Agency on Friday quoted Mr. Jang as having said during his court-martial. “I thought the army might join in the coup if the living of the people and service personnel further deteriorate in the future.”
The speed with which Mr. Kim — or whoever else was engineering Mr. Jang’s downfall — hurried to execute him and make it public was a sign of instability and a lack of confidence in Mr. Kim’s grip on power, the analysts said. Normally, North Korea hides any signs of disloyalty to the Kim dynasty.
As analysts scrambled Friday to make sense of the execution — many had doubted that the leader, Kim Jong-un, would kill a relative — and the highly unusual way the news rolled out, they advanced myriad theories for why Mr. Kim killed the man who was supposed to be his mentor. The biggest divide was whether the purge suggested Mr. Kim had fully taken charge of his country two years after his father’s death or, instead, was severely weakened by the reported betrayal.
“If Kim Jong-un was sure of his control of power, he would not have needed to execute his uncle,” said Lee Byong-chul, 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.”
Most officials and experts cautioned that the opaque inner-workings of the North Korean government were notoriously hard to analyze. Still, many of them said the demise of Mr. Jang, considered a champion of Chinese-style economic reform, could set back such efforts. And they said that nuclear-armed North Korea appeared to be mired in an intense power struggle over economic and other policies that could become bloodier if Mr. Kim turns his ire on those referred to in the North Korean report as Mr. Jang’s “followers.”
On Friday, North Korea hinted at such purges by condemning “undesirable and alien elements” in “important posts of the party and state,” in “ministries and national institutions,” and in agencies dealing with foreign trade. It also indicated that a purge might reach the North’s military and secret police, saying that Mr. Jang has worked to “stretch his tentacles even to People’s Army.”
“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.”
Mr. Jang, 67, was executed Thursday immediately after being convicted on treason charges, North Korea said. Suh Sang-kee, a senior governing party lawmaker in Seoul, quoted South Korean intelligence officials as saying that Mr. Jang was likely executed by a machine-gun firing squad.
On Friday, North Korea hinted at such retaliation by condemning “undesirable and alien elements” in “important posts of the party and state,” in “ministries and national institutions,” and in agencies dealing with foreign trade. It also indicated that a purge might reach the North’s powerful military and the secret police, saying that Mr. Jang had worked to “stretch his tentacles even to People’s Army.”
Long thought to be the second most influential man in the North, Mr. Jang was the most prominent North Korean purged and executed under Mr. Kim, who South Korean officials said was resorting to “a reign of terror” to consolidate his power. Mr. Jang was the husband of Kim Kyong-hee, a sister of Kim Jong-il, Mr. Kim’s late father, who ruled the North before his son. The fate of Ms. Kim was not known, though analysts say it would be unlikely for Kim Jong-un to harm a blood relative. In the North, all immediate family members of a traitor are often executed with the criminal. Mr. Jang’s execution, and the government’s silence about his wife, appeared to confirm what defectors from North Korea have often said: In Pyongyang’s family dynasty, which emphasizes the “blood line” above all else, in-laws were often treated as expendable “branches.”
Mr. Jang, 67, was executed Thursday immediately after being convicted of treason, North Korea said. Suh Sang-kee, a governing party lawmaker in Seoul, quoted South Korean intelligence officials as saying that he was likely killed by a machine-gun firing squad.
“The way they dealt with Jang Song-thaek was highly unusual and unprecedented in North Korean history,” said the Unification Minister Ryoo Kilj-jae, South Korea’s top North Korea policy maker. “We are watching the recent series of developments in the North with a deep concern.”
According to the North Korean state news agency, Mr. Jang had built a “little kingdom” of his own in the ruling Worker’s Party. Mr. Jang dreamed of first becoming premier “when the economy goes totally bankrupt,” then solving “the problem of people’s living at a certain level” by spending an enormous amount of funds he had stashed away, the report said.
The State Department said Thursday that it could not verify the execution, but a deputy spokeswoman, Marie Harf, said that if it did happen, “this is another example of the extreme brutality of the North Korean regime.”
“Jang dreamed such a foolish dream that once he seizes power by a base method, his despicable true colors as ‘reformist’ known to the outside world would help his ‘new government’ get ‘recognized’ by foreign countries in a short span of time,” it said.
Kim Kwan-jin, the South’s defense minister, said that the South Korean military was being extra vigilant as it feared that the North might attempt a military provocation against the South to defuse what might be a domestic political crisis.
The state-directed economy has been falling apart for years, especially since the Soviet Union collapsed and stopped propping it up with subsidized fuel and other aid. Mr. Jang was considered a force behind new efforts to open up special economic zones that would give preferential treatment for Chinese and other investors.
“The North Korean military may make a wrong decision for various reasons,” he said. “There may be a competition within the military to show loyalty to Kim.”
Some experts say Mr. Kim, or hard-liners influencing him, might have worried about giving away too much to China, even though the country is the North’s benefactor, or about Mr. Jang and his allies cashing in on the growing trade with China; Mr. Kim has indirectly criticized selling North Korean minerals too cheaply to China.
Mr. Jang had been a fixture in the North Korean elite for the past 40 years, serving in major party posts under Kim Jong-il and gaining more power under his son, Kim Jong-un. During a party meeting on Sunday, North Korea stripped Mr. Jang of all his powerful posts and expelled him from the ruling Workers’ Party, calling him an “anti-party, counterrevolutionary factional leader.” On Monday, state-run television showed the spectacle of the once-powerful man being hauled off from the party meeting by uniformed guards.
Analysts said it was possible for the North to have faked or exaggerated the charges against Mr. Jang to keep him from posing a challenge to Mr. Kim’s power. But they also noted how unusual it was for the ruling family to pull back the curtain on its machinations.
Analysts said it was possible for North Korea to have faked or exaggerated the charges against Mr. Jang, whose corrupt lifestyle may have made him a valuable scapegoat for Mr. Kim. But they also noted that Mr. Jang’s case was the first time in recent decades that the North revealed what it purported was an attempt to overthrow its leadership and the first publicly announced execution of a member of the ruling family.
“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.”
“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 in New York and the author of “Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992.”
“This seems to indicate the divisions within the Kim regime were more serious than previously thought,” Professor Armstrong said.
“This seems to indicate the divisions within the Kim regime were more serious than previously thought,” Professor Armstrong said. “Jang was particularly close to China and was pushing North Korea toward a more Chinese-style economic reform. His ouster could reflect the reassertion of control by hard-liners who want to distance North Korea from China and slow down the reform process.”
Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul, said the 30-year-old Mr. Kim had declared an end to his father’s era with the execution. “And he did it with a bang, sort of a shock therapy against anyone who still might have doubts about his authority. The speedy way he did it actually shows his daring and confidence.”
China, the North’s longtime patron, was also unnerved by growing evidence of an internal power struggle that could destabilize its already troublesome ally and possibly increase the American military presence in the region.
But other analysts had lingering questions about who was running the country behind Mr. Kim.
Since Mr. Kim took power after his father’s death in December 2011, he has been enforcing a generational change in the party, government and military leadership, retiring figures from his father’s days and replacing them with people loyal to him.
Mr. Jang “was the Kim family regime’s No. 1 revenue generator,” said John S. Park, a Northeast Asia security specialist at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, adding that that revenue “went directly into Kim family slush funds.”
“With Jang’s execution, Kim Jong-un is declaring an end to his father’s era,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Dongguk University in Seoul. “And he did it with a bang, sort of a shock therapy against anyone who still might have doubts about his authority. The speedy way he did it actually shows his daring and confidence.”
Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University, said Mr. Jang was “the only one in the North who could talk about economic change.”
But analysts had lingering questions about who was running the country behind Mr. Kim.
“So, when I heard of Mr. Jang’s execution, my first thought was that it was a death notice for those of us who have hoped for economic reform in the North.”
“If it has been another group — most likely, conservatives within the North Korean regime — that has engineered Jang’s removal, then they could now control what Kim Jong-un sees, hears and says,” said Chang Yong-seok, a senior researcher at the Institute for Peace and Unification Studies at Seoul National University. With Mr. Jang, who was something of a moderate, gone, Mr. Kim could find it hard to control the hard-liners, Mr. Chang added.
The North Korean announcement suggested that Mr. Jang had started nurturing his own political ambitions even as Mr. Kim’s father began grooming his son to succeed him. At the time many analysts believed Mr. Jang and his wife had been handpicked by Kim Jong-il to help his young and inexperienced son navigate the North’s treacherous politics and carry on the family dynasty. The younger Mr. Kim took over the leadership of the country after his father’s death in late 2011, making him the third generation to run the state.
While Mr. Kim was inheriting power, his uncle built a “little kingdom” of his own in the party, with his followers calling him “No. 1 comrade,” North Korea said on Friday. Mr. Jang dreamed of first becoming premier “when the economy goes totally bankrupt” and then solving “the problem of people’s living at a certain level” by spending an enormous amount of funds he has stashed away, it said.
“Jang dreamed such a foolish dream that once he seizes power by a base method, his despicable true colors as ‘reformist’ known to the outside world would help his ‘new government’ get ‘recognized’ by foreign countries in a short span of time,” it said. That was tantamount to trying to overthrow North Korea by “ideologically aligning himself with enemies,” North Korea said.
Mr. Jang’s execution means the demise of an influential voice for economic overhaul in North Korea, analysts said.
“He has been the only one in the North who could talk about economic change,” Mr. Chang said. “So, when I heard of Mr. Jang’s execution, my first thought was that it was a death notice for those of us who have hoped for economic reform in the North.”
