9月 01

2018.9

 Article4:
KIM Yeo-jong appeared on TV for the first time on December 20 2011 when KIM Jong-eun was receiving mourning guests at the Kumsusan Memorial

Written by:Professor Ri So-tetsu, Ryukoku University Japan

On September 1 2012, the Korean Central News Agency released a picture of KIM Jong-eun and his wife LEE Sol-ju eating popcorn and walking on Changgwang street, a downtown area of Pyongyang. It was nothing special for a young couple to walk together downtown, but the picture attracted the public attention because they were the national leader and the first lady. Their first public appearance together in the media occurred on July 2012. With folded arms, they were walking in the Nungna People’s Park as they watched the acrobatic show in central Pyongyang. It was noticed that on LEE Sol-ju’s chest, there were no KIM Il-sung and KIM Jong-il badges that all North Koreans were supposed to wear. Instead, she was wearing a shining brooch on her vivid one piece dress, she also carried an expensive handbag. The foreign media made boisterous reports as if a new trend had arrived in such a repressive country. It was later discovered that KIM Jong-eun’s younger sister KIM Yeo-jong was the one who dramatized the first lady’s appearance to show a new taste to the public.
KIM Yeo-jong appeared on TV for the first time on December 20 2011 when KIM Jong-eun was receiving mourning guests at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace (now Kumsusan Solar Palace) where KIM Jong-il’s dead body was enshrined. Not many people knew that the slim young lady, wearing mourning clothes helping KIM Jong-eun was his younger sister. At that time, KIM Jong-nam who was supposed to be the principal mourner as the first son. The second son KIM Jong-chol was not seen at the mourning ritual. KIM Sol-song whom KIM Jong-il loved and trusted so much was not present either. The political implication as to why KIM Jong-eun and KIM Yeo-jong were only present at the official mourning scene will be explained later. According to Fujimoto Kenji, who was KIM Jong-il’s sushi chef for 13 years, KIM Yeo-jong was born when KIM Jong-il was 46 years old. KIM Jong-il loved his youngest daughter and always called her “my beloved princess.”           
KIM Jong-il was generally known to be a blunt and cold-hearted man, but he lavished his love on his children. He sent his first son KIM Jong-nam to Switzerland to study when he was not quite 10 and cried when he talked to him over the phone. However, when his youngest daughter KIM Yeo-jong was born, she started to monopolize her father’s love. When she was studying at an international school in Bern, Switzerland, like her two brothers Jong-chol and Jong-eun had done from 1996 to 2000, she was called Johnson. When she returned home, she attended KIM Il-sung University. When KIM Jong-eun was officially named as KIM Jong-il’s successor in September 2010, she also started her official work as Protocol Section Chief in the party central committee. Her job was to control and schedule the “Number One Activities” including KIM Jong-eun’s locus inspection tours and important meetings that KIM Jong-eun had to attend. 
She was known to be bustling around, sometimes appearing abruptly in an important party cadre meeting to see her brother without prior notice or permission. When Fujimoto Kenji visited North Korea in July-August 2012, he saw her at the Moranbong Concert and said that she looked like a school girl wearing white blouse and black skirt. She squeezed into a seat saying, “Sorry, sorry I’m late.” She was fresh and full of vigor. When LEE Sol-ju performed a role in the premiere of the Moranbong Music Troupe, a group of young girls appeared wearing Mickey Mouse attire or miniskirts to the music of the film Rocky. It was known that KIM Yeo-jong hoped to impress foreign observers that the KIM Jong-eun regime was adapting to a more open policy. She was promoted to the Deputy Chief of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the KWP Central Committee in March 2014. According to YUN Yong-sun (cover name) who defected to South Korea in 2014, KIM Yeo-jong managed to dissuade her brother KIM Jong-eun when he was too harsh on his cadre personnel. From September 2014, KIM Jong-eun started to let her handle all general affairs except sensitive political matters.
There was no one else who could allow LEE Sol-ju to wear a brooch on her chest rather than KIM Il-sung and KIM Jong-il badges. It was also KIM Yeo-jong who released to the media a scene that the young leader and his beautiful wife were eating popcorn and walking together in the street. However, I heard that Yeo-jong was only a field observer. The elder sister KIM Sol-song was the real policy advisor to KIM Jong-eun and KIM Yeo-jong. In June 2014, Ken Goss, Chief of the International Relations Bureau of the US Navy Analysis Center, believed that up until this moment KIM Jong-eun did not commit any serious errors because he was listening to his elder sister KIM Sol-song’s advice who was playing an important role in the Organization Guidance Department of the party. She is 10 years older than KIM Jong-eun. Ken Goss said that she had been helping her father KIM Jong-il since her early 20s and was well-aware of personal backgrounds and political penchant of all important cadre personnel. Thus, she provided her younger brother with sound advice on how to behave and whom to trust.  
The Organization Guidance Department was effective in supervising the organizational life of all party members and punished disciplinary violations regardless of their positions. Even the first lady was not beyond this principle. But it was known that KIM Sol-song (Organization Guidance Department) approved her actions and KIM Yeo-jong (Propaganda and Agitation Department) allowed LEE Sol-ju not to wear the KIM Il-sung and KIM Jong-il badges. Because of this power structure, KIM Jong-il could sustain his position until the end. He always kept the Organization Guidance Department under his direct control because it was the last fortress to protect his power. Before he died, KIM Jong-il asked his daughters KIM Sol-song and KIM Yeo-jong to support and protect his successor KIM Jong-eun. He sent Sol-song to the Organization Guidance Department and Yeo-jong to the Propaganda and Agitation Department, the two most important and powerful organizations in the party. He also asked his sister KIM Kyong-hui and her husband CHANG Song-taek to look after his young nephew, LEE Yong-ho (General Chief of Staff of the People’s Armed Forces), and WOO Dong-chuk (Chief of the National Security Protection Department) to protect his son after he passed away.  
Within three years, however, LEE Yong-ho was replaced, WOO Dong-chuk committed suicide, CHANG Song-taek was executed, and KIM Kyong-hui was ousted. KIM Sol-song also faded away from the power edifice. Among his kin supporters, KIM Yeo-jong is now the only one backing KIM Jong-eun. After KIM Jong-il’s death, KIM Jong-eun seemed to be acceptable, but he purged his father’s confidants.  


About the Author
Ri Sotetsu is professor of sociology at Ryukoku University, Kyoto; his specialty is modern history of East Asia and media history. The son of ethnic Koreans residing in Heilongjiang province, he was born in 1959 and educated in China. He lived in China and worked as a journalist for a time before going to Japan, where he earned a doctorate(Ph.D.) degree in journalism at Sophia University. He is a Japanese citizen. In 1998 he was appointed assistant professor at Ryukoku University and became professor in 2005. He is a prolific writer of articles and books studying the history of journalism in the former Manchuria and in Japanese-occupied Korea and analyzing current affairs in North and South Korea. Among his major works (all in Japanese) are: Kim Jong-Il to Kim Jong-Eun no shotai (On the Identity of Kim Jong-Il and Kim Jong-Eun; Bungei Shunju), Park Geun-hye no chosen: Mukuge no hana ga saku toki (Park Geun-hye’s Challenge: When the Hibiscus Blooms; Chuo Koron Shinsha), and Higashi-Ajia no aidentetei: Ni-Chu-Kan wa koko ga chigau (Identity in East Asia: Here Is How Japan, China, and Korea Differ; Gaifusha).