hankyoreh

By Choi Hyun-june, staff reporter and Seong Yeon-cheol, Beijing correspondent

After the execution of Jang Song-thaek, former head of the Administrative Department of the Korean Workers’ Party, North Korea has continued to purge people associated with him, sources in Seoul and Beijing have said. They even expect that the follow-up purge and government reshuffle will continue until the Supreme People’s Assembly, which will be held in April of next year.

Appearing before the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee on Dec. 30, Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae said, “We have been seeing indications that people who were closely connected with Jang are being recalled to North Korea and purged. I am not able to provide the specifics. However, we have not observed the purge taking place on a large scale.”

This is the first time that the Unification Minister gave an official response to questions about the continuing purge of people connected with Jang. When asked whether the purge was taking place on a small scale, Ryu said, “That is the assumption we are making. We will have to wait and see how things develop.”

A diplomatic source in Beijing said that associates of Jang had been recalled from overseas postings. Hong Yong, North Korea’s deputy permanent delegate to UNESCO, was recalled via Beijing airport on Dec. 30. On December 27, Pak Kwang-chol, North Korea’s ambassador to Sweden, went back to Pyongyang with his wife. On Dec. 5, Jang Yong-chol, North Korea’s ambassador to Malaysia went back through Shenyang airport with his family. Jang Yong-chol is a nephew of Jang Song-thaek.

There are also some analysts who predict that the purge and the government reshuffle will continue through April. In the Korea Peninsula Report 2013/2014, published by the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University, Lee Mu-cheol wrote, “I expect that the follow-up measures to Jang’s purge and the personnel shuffle will be wrapped up at the Supreme People’s Assembly, in April 2014. Since the Supreme People‘s Assembly holds the right to appoint officials to the National Defense Commission and the cabinet, the reshuffle will be completed there.” Lee is a researcher at the Institute for Studies of North Korean Life at the University of North Korean Studies.

In regard to the stability of the Kim Jong-un regime, Lee said, “In order to manage the group of elites in the system where there’s a supreme political leader, in which the loyalty-reward relationship that is characteristic of socialist systems is clearly manifested, political funds must be used in addition to control and terror. If Kim Jong-un fails to hold these political funds himself and relies instead on his close associates, he is sure to face difficulties in securing political loyalty.”

In a paper titled “The Park Geun-hye Government and Inter-Korean Relations” that appeared in the Korean Peninsula Report, Kyungnam University professor Kim Geun-sik suggested that North Korea could make low-intensity provocations in the short term but that it might make an aggressive bid for dialogue later.

“Since high-intensity provocations such as the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island and nuclear tests would affect Pyongyang’s relations with China and the US, it is unlikely that Pyongyang will do such a thing,” Kim said. “It’s more like that, after creating a low-intensity crisis for internal unity in the short term, the North will become more flexible and open in its foreign relations further down the line in order to erase the impression of cruelty caused by the execution of Kim Jong-un’s uncle.

In related news, Dec. 30 was the second anniversary of the appointment of Kim Jong-un as the supreme commander of the Korean People’s Army, and the North used the Rodong Sinmun and other state-run media to remind North Koreans that Kim Jong-un is to be revered as the sole leader of the North.

In a one-page editorial titled “Let the Whole World Know That It Is an Honor for the Korean People to Serve Our Great Commander in Chief,” the paper called Kim Jong-un’s appointment as supreme commander “a historical necessity and the most felicitous revolutionary event of our country and our people.”

“Kim Jong-un is the only center of unity, the only center of leadership. We must give him the highest respect and we must unite around him even more firmly with dependence on ideology and trust in morality,” the editorial said.

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