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A 1981 photo of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il seated next to his first son Kim Jong-nam. Behind Jong-nam is his maternal aunt Song Hye-rang

Following the recent killing of Kim Jong-nam in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, the reason he was removed from the succession during the life of his father, Kim Jong-il, is receiving a new look.

In its latest edition, Hong Kong-based news weekly Yazhou Zhoukan quoted a high-ranking source in North Korea as saying that Kim Jong-nam had been ousted because he had wanted to promote Chinese-style economic reforms, including opening up the country, to his father. After completing his studies overseas in Moscow and Geneva Kim Jong-nam returned to North Korea and identified the chronic problems with the opening of the country‘s economy during a tour of the country. After this, he strongly urged his father to adopt reforms and. Hearing this made Kim Jong-il wary of Kim Jong-nam, and Kim Jong-nam’s chances of becoming his heir gradually dwindled, the magazine reported.

Kim Jong-nam appears to have actively participated in the discussion of capitalism that gradually arose in North Korean society at the time. In 1996, he even attended an assembly on the topic and proclaimed the need for Chinese-style reform and opening. The magazine said that Jang Jin-sung, a defector poet who reportedly worked for the Korean Workers’ Party’s United Front Department (a North Korean organization dealing with South Korean affairs), corroborated this information. This is what Kim Jong-nam said in the speech that Jang remembers seeing during the assembly in question in Aug. 1996:

“My father has asked me to reorganize the state economy somewhat. I think there‘s no other way to revive the economy than Chinese-style reform and opening. We should first set up corporations and after that set up subsidiaries under them. If we bring about such development, would it not lead to capitalism?”

And less than one week afterward, Kim Jong-nam is said to have created a company he called the “Shining Star General Public Company” around the Taedong River in central Pyongyang.

Regarding Kim Jong-nam’s words and behavior as “ideologically dangerous,” Kim Jong-il took steps to distance his son from economic affairs, the magazine reported. While assigning him to political matters, Kim Jong-il arrested figures close to his son and prohibited related activities. This explains how Kim Jong-nam assumed political positions such as Deputy Director of the State Security Department, but the magazine suggested that Kim Jong-nam was discouraged to learn of his father’s inflexibility and ended up spending his time in other countries.

These observations differ from the standard theory that Kim Jong-nam was removed from the succession after he angered his father by illegally entering Japan in 2001. The magazine also reported that around this time Kim Jong-il’s sympathy had already shifted away from Kim Jong-nam‘s mother, Song Hye-rim, to Kim Jong-un’s mother, Ko Yong-hui, and that this was another reason that Kim Jong-nam was removed from the succession.

By Kim Oi-hyun, Beijing correspondent

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