hankyoreh

the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il

Kim Jong-nam, the 38-year-old son of North Korean National Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong-il, was relatively friendly to the media in answering questions by journalists in Beijing on Saturday about who will assume his country’s leadership after his father. When he has been spotted by journalists while traveling in other countries in the past, he has rarely answered questions about succession. Many are curious as to why he would start talking now, something ever so unusual and at such a sensitive time, with so much international interest in his father’s health and who will succeed him.

Kim Jong-nam fielded questions from journalists at Beijing’s main airport and at Beijing’s Kunlun Hotel after arriving from North Korea on Air Koryo. As has often been the case in the past, he spoke with a style of Korean that one would assume is from Seoul instead of Pyongyang. He stressed his father’s role in deciding the question of succession, saying “no one is in a position to say” and that “only my father can decide.”

Asked about media reports that his younger brother Kim Jong-un will succeed his father, he said he “has no information whatsoever” and that reporters “should ask my brother directly,” adding that it “would not be good to make suppositions and start imagining before it is decided.” But he also said he has no interest in the issue.

Interpretations abound as to what it all means.

Some say he was just giving polite answers to elementary questions, and that observers risk over-interpreting his comments.

“All he did was state the correct answers he can give in the position he’s in,” said Kim Yeon-cheol, the head of the Hankyoreh Peace Institute. “He emphasized the basic principle that his father decides,” saying it would be hard to view what Kim Jong-nam said in Beijing as being even a roundabout expression of his personal intentions.

Some observers, however, say his responses were significant just for the fact he was talking openly about the issue of succession with the international media at this time.

“Part of this is about how he revealed the position he holds in the whole question of succession just by answering questions,” said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies.

“He says he’s not interested, but goes on to talk about the will of his father,” said Yang. “The way he said it, you can see him as having said that he would not be able to refuse his father’s intentions if they apply to him.”

Still others suggest that he was trying to say, especially to potential competitors like his brother Kim Jong-un, that he doesn’t want the job and that he wants to be left alone.

Yet another interpretation is that at the very least there is enough of a consensus about the succession question within North Korea that he no longer felt the need to run from the question.

Kim disappeared from his hotel on Sunday, leaving behind only statements that leave room for plenty of interpretations.

Please direct questions or comments to [englishhani@hani.co.kr]