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Rivalries Within North Korean Elite Led to Purge, South’s Spy Chief Says Korea Execution Is Tied to Clash Over Businesses
(about 11 hours later)
SEOUL, South Korea — South Korea’s intelligence chief said Monday that Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, who was executed this month, apparently had not plotted a coup as Pyongyang had said, but had fallen victim to intrigue within the country’s elite over lucrative business deals, according to lawmakers in Seoul. SEOUL, South Korea — The execution of the uncle of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, had its roots in a firefight between forces loyal to Mr. Kim and the man who was supposed to be his regent over who would profit from North Korea’s most lucrative exports — clams, crabs and coal — according to accounts that are being pieced together by South Korean and American officials.
Mr. Jang, 67, who was once believed to be the second most powerful man in North Korea, was executed on Dec. 12 on charges of plotting to overthrow his nephew’s government, four days after he was hauled out of a meeting of the ruling Workers’ Party at which he was stripped of all titles. The highly unusual public purge and execution of a member of the North’s ruling family has set off widespread speculation about the possibility of a power struggle within the secretive regime. North Korean military forces were deployed to retake control of one of the sources of those exports, the rich crab and clam fishing grounds that Jang Song-thaek, the uncle of the country’s untested, 30-year-old leader, had seized from the military. In the battle for control of the fishing grounds, the emaciated, poorly trained North Korean forces “were beaten — very badly — by Uncle Jang’s loyalists,” according to one official.
During a closed-door meeting Monday of the South Korean National Assembly’s intelligence committee, Nam Jae-joon, director of the National Intelligence Service, disputed Pyongyang’s assertion that Mr. Jang had tried to usurp his nephew’s power. Rather, he said, Mr. Jang and his associates had provoked the enmity of rivals within the North’s elite by dominating lucrative business deals, such as the sale of North Korean coal to China. The rout of his forces appears to have been the final straw for Mr. Kim, who saw his 67-year-old uncle as a threat to his authority over the military and, just as important, to his own family’s dwindling sources of revenue. Eventually, at Mr. Kim’s order, the North Korean military came back with a larger force and prevailed. Soon, Mr. Jang’s two top lieutenants were executed.
“There had been friction building up among the agencies of power in North Korea over privileges and over the abuse of power by Jang Song-thaek and his associates,” Mr. Nam was quoted as saying. The two men died in front of a firing squad. But instead of rifles, the squad used antiaircraft machine guns, a form of execution that according to South Korean intelligence officials and news media was similar to one used against some North Korean artists in August. Days later, Mr. Jang himself was publicly denounced, tried and executed, by more traditional means.
Mr. Nam’s comments were relayed to the news media by Jeong Cheong-rae and Cho Won-jin, two lawmakers designated as spokesmen for the parliamentary committee. It was through Mr. Jeong and Mr. Cho that the National Intelligence Service on Dec. 3 released the news of Mr. Jang’s purge. Given the opaqueness of North Korea’s inner circle, many details of the struggle between Mr. Kim and his uncle remain murky. But what is known suggests that while Mr. Kim has consolidated control and eliminated a potential rival, it has been at a huge cost: The open warfare between the two factions has revealed huge fracture inside the country’s elite over who pockets the foreign currency — mostly Chinese yuan — the country earns from the few non-nuclear exports its trading partners desire.
Mr. Nam, according to the lawmakers, said that Mr. Jang’s rivals had gone to Kim Jong-un with accusations of corruption on the part of Mr. Jang and his circle. When Mr. Jang’s associates, perhaps too confident of Mr. Jang’s influence with Mr. Kim, resisted the top North Korean leader’s order to give up some of their business arrangements, Mr. Kim saw it as a challenge to his authority, according to Mr. Nam. Only a few months ago Mr. Jang was believed to be the second most powerful man in North Korea. In fact, American intelligence agencies had reported to the White House and the State Department in late 2011 that he could well be running the country behind the scenes — and might edge out his inexperienced nephew for control. In part that was based on his deep relationship with top officials in China, as well as his extensive business connections there.
“It appears that there is no big problem with Kim Jong-un’s grip on power, because the purge of Jang Song-thaek was not the result of a power struggle,” Mr. Nam was quoted as saying. His highly unusual public humiliation and execution on Dec. 12 set off speculation about the possibility of a power struggle within the secretive regime. But in recent days a more complex, nuanced story has emerged.
Still, Mr. Nam said, the fact that such behind-the-scenes squabbling had spun out of control, to the point that Mr. Kim ordered his own uncle’s execution, raises questions about the regime’s internal unity. “The fissure within the regime could accelerate if it further loses popular support,” the lawmakers quoted Mr. Nam as saying. During a closed-door meeting Monday of the South Korean National Assembly’s intelligence committee, Nam Jae-joon, director of the National Intelligence Service, disputed Pyongyang’s assertion that Mr. Jang had tried to usurp his nephew’s power. Rather, he said, Mr. Jang and his associates had provoked the enmity of rivals within the North’s elite by dominating lucrative business deals, starting with the coal badly needed by China, the North’s main trading partner.
Mr. Nam did not reveal the sources of his agency’s intelligence, but he said his spies had learned of Mr. Jang’s detention as early as mid-November. “There had been friction building up among the agencies of power in North Korea over privileges and over the abuse of power by Jang Song-thaek and his associates,” Mr. Nam was quoted as saying. Mr. Nam’s comments were relayed to the news media by Jeong Cheong-rae and Cho Won-jin, two lawmakers designated as spokesmen for the parliamentary committee.
Mr. Jang was the husband of Kim Kyong-hui, the only sister of Mr. Kim’s late father, the longtime North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. He appeared to have rapidly expanded his influence since Kim Jong-il suffered a stroke in 2008, and he and his wife were widely seen as caretakers for the family regime as it groomed Kim Jong-un as heir. In interviews, officials have said that the friction described in general terms to the South Korean parliament played out in a violent confrontation in late September or early October, just north of the western sea border between North and South Korea.
Mr. Jang’s rising profile coincided with the purges of top generals and the curtailing of the military’s lucrative rights to trade in coal, iron ore and other natural resources, exports of which to China have become the biggest components of North Korean trade with the outside world in recent years. There, the North harvests one of its key exports: crabs and clams, delicacies that are also highly valued by the Chinese. For years the profits from those fishing grounds, along with the output from munitions factories and trading companies, went directly to the North Korean military, helping it feed its troops, and enabling its top officers to send cash gifts to the Kim family.
The official verdict against Mr. Jang on Dec. 12 hinted at the business deals in which Mr. Jang and his associates were involved, saying that he had “instructed his stooges to sell coal and other precious underground resources at random.” South Korea was a major market for the North’s mushrooms, clams, crabs, abalones and sea cucumbers until South Korea cut off trade with the North after the sinking of a South Korean Navy ship in 2010, forcing the North Korean military to rely on the Chinese market.
Mr. Nam told the committee Monday that Mr. Kim’s aunt had retained her position in the North Korean hierarchy, while the purge of Mr. Jang’s other associates continued. But he denied news reports in South Korea and Japan that some of Mr. Jang’s associates were seeking political asylum in Seoul and Beijing after fleeing the purge at home. But when Mr. Kim succeeded his late father two years ago, he took away some of the military’s fishing and trading rights and handed them to his cabinet, which he designated as the main agency to revive one of the world’s most sanctioned, moribund economies. Mr. Jang was believed to have been a leading proponent of curtailing the military’s economic power.
Mr. Nam pointed to Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, the top political officer in the North Korean People’s Army, and Kim Won-hong, the head of the North’s secret police and its intelligence chief, as the regime’s new rising figures since Mr. Jang’s execution, according to the two lawmakers. Mr. Jang appears to have consolidated many of those trading rights under his own control — meaning that profits from the coal, crabs and clams went into his accounts, or those of state institutions under his control, including the administrative department of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, which he headed.
Last Friday, Ahn Hong-joon, the chairman of the South Korean parliamentary committee in charge of diplomatic and North Korea-related issues, said that Kim Jong-un was a figurehead, “a symbolic godlike figure,” and that Mr. Choe pulled the strings behind the scenes, including the masterminding of Mr. Jang’s downfall. But earlier this fall, the long-brewing tensions that arrangement created broke into the open. Radio Free Asia, in a report last week that cited anonymous North Korean sources, reported that Kim Jong-un saw North Korean soldiers malnourished during his recent visits to islands near the disputed western sea border with South Korea. They say he ordered Mr. Jang to hand over the operation of nearby fishing grounds back to the military.
Mr. Jang had earlier engineered the purge of Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho in July last year to curtail the military’s power, Mr. Ahn said, without revealing the source of his information. According to accounts put together by South Korean and American officials, Mr. Jang and his associates resisted. When a company of about 150 North Korean soldiers showed up at the farm, Mr. Jang’s loyalists refused to hand over the operation, insisting that Mr. Jang himself would have to approve. The confrontation escalated into a gun battle, and Radio Free Asia reports that two soldiers were killed and that the army backed off. Officials say the number of casualties are unknown, but they have received similar accounts.
In a sign of Mr. Choe’s rising influence, the North’s main party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, carried a lengthy article on Friday lionizing Mr. Choe’s late father, Choe Hyon, as a fighter who had fearlessly defended the Kim family. Choe Hyon, who had been the North’s armed forces minister, was so loyal to the Kim regime that he never stepped on Kim Jong-il’s shadow, the newspaper said. It is hard to know exactly how large a role the incident played in Mr. Jang’s downfall — there is more money in coal than seafood — but Mr. Kim was reportedly enraged when he heard of the clash. Mr. Nam said that by mid-November his agents were already reporting that Mr. Jang had been detained. The Dec. 12 verdict noted that Mr. Jang “instructed his stooges to sell coal and other precious underground resources at random.”
Also Monday, the former basketball player Dennis Rodman left Pyongyang, where he had arrived Thursday to conduct tryouts for a North Korean basketball team. At the Beijing airport, reporters asked Mr. Rodman, who had visited the North before and says he considers Kim Jong-un a friend, whether he was disappointed not to have met with Mr. Kim on this trip. “Nope, I don’t worry about it,” Reuters quoted him as saying. “I will see him again.” Mr. Nam said the fact that such behind-the-scenes tensions had so spun out of control that he had to order his own uncle’s execution raised questions about the regime’s internal unity.
Mr. Rodman has said he hopes to bring other former N.B.A. players to Pyongyang for an exhibition game against the North Korean team on Jan. 8 to mark Mr. Kim’s birthday. “The fissure within the regime could accelerate if it further loses popular support,” the lawmakers quoted Mr. Nam as saying.
Mr. Jang was the husband of Kim Kyong-hui, the only sister of Mr. Kim’s father, the longtime leader Kim Jong-il. Mr. Nam told the committee Monday that Mr. Kim’s aunt had retained her position in the hierarchy, even while the purge of Mr. Jang’s other associates continued. But he denied news reports in South Korea and Japan that some of Mr. Jang’s associates were seeking political asylum in Seoul and Beijing.
Mr. Nam pointed to Vice Marshal Choe Ryong-hae, the top political officer in the North Korean People’s Army, and Kim Won-hong, the head of the North’s secret police and its intelligence chief, as the regime’s new rising figures since Mr. Jang’s execution, the two lawmakers said.

Choe Sang-hun reported from Seoul, and David E. Sanger from Washington.