Who will be the next victim? It will likely be the newly appointed right-hand man of Kim Jong Un. North Korea is notorious for being a country filled with tombs of ‘second-in-place’ leaders. Many second-in-place leaders, including Kim Jong Un’s uncle Jang Sung-thaek, were purged at the hands of the brutal dictator.
Recently, North Korea has reportedly established a role titled the “First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea” that will be directly under General-Secretary, Kim Jong Un.
In January, the 8th Congress of the Workers’ Party amended the party convention and added a First Secretary position. It also stated that “the First Secretary is the representative of the General-Secretary.”
If we look back in the early days of Kim Jong Un’s reign, the First Secretary of the Workers’ Party is also the title he used for four years until 2016 when Kim Jong Un appointed his father, Kim Jong Il, as the “Eternal General-Secretary” in 2012. Thus, the First Secretary of the Workers’ Party is a title that not anyone can have.
In fact, Kim Jong Un’s intention of the creating new position will be clearly revealed depending on who he appoints as the First Secretary, but so far, there has been no official announcement from North Korea.
There are two possible reasons why Kim Jong Un has created the role of the First Secretary under him.
First, the First Secretary of the Workers’ Party can be used as a scapegoat by Kim Jong Un.
Looking back on North Korea’s history, there has never been an eternal deputy leader in North Korea. Every official who was considered as the second most powerful person has become a political victim of the Kim regime.
To better understand, we must be informed of the different styles of leadership between Kim Jong Un and his father Kim Jong Il and the current situation within North Korea.
Under Kim Jong Il’s rule, he appointed close to fifty party members to govern the country while he avoided the public spotlight.
The members were called “weekend party members” and all state-run policies were discussed at a weekend retreat or ‘party’ which began on Friday evening while lasting until Monday morning.
If the policies produced successful outcomes, the achievements would be attributed to General Kim Jong Il’s great leadership. If the policies failed, the members were to blame and therefore faced brutal execution.
A classic example of this leadership style is of North Korea’s 2009 currency reform for which Park Nam Ki was blamed for introducing a total revamp of the nation’s currency denomination policy that ultimately failed.
However, Kim Jong Un, who lacked the ability, knowledge, and experience, ran the country by directly deciding and ordering everything without using any proxies.
As a result, ‘fruitful’ sectors such as nuclear weapons and missile development became great achievements of “General Kim Jong-un,” but other sectors like the economy and improving people’s livelihoods languished or deteriorated and provoked dissatisfaction and criticism from many citizens.
In the past, North Koreans knew that the people’s lives were not improving but did not think to blame Kim Jong Il. Rather, they believed that the fault lay with North Korean officials.
However, they now recognize that Kim Jong Un’s rule isn’t improving their lives. They now understand that the nature of the North Korean regime is wrong.
Also, the internal situation in North Korea is experiencing great hardships like the Arduous March of the past. Kim Jong Un himself announced in April that the nation faces another Arduous March.
The Arduous March in the 1990s was disastrous for North Koreans, during which an estimated 3 million people died of starvation.
If the North Koreans were to experience another Arduous March, Kim Jong Un will need a scapegoat who can be blamed and held accountable for this terrible reality.
Therefore, the position of the First Secretary was not created to pursue the delegation of authority or role-sharing, in order to more efficiently run the country, but to be a scapegoat in place of Kim Jong Un.
If the First Secretary is not a member of the Kim family, it is safe to say that that person will be almost 100% intended to be a scapegoat.
The second possible reason for creating the role of First Secretary is so that Kim Jong Chul, Kim Jong Un’s older brother, can become the next leader of North Korea.
As stated earlier, the position of the First Secretary is a title that Kim Jong Un himself has used for four years since 2012. It is a position that only those of the so-called ‘highest dignity’ can rise to.
There is another person besides Kim Jong-un who can be considered to have the ‘highest dignity’ in North Korea. And that is Kim Jong-un’s older brother, Kim Jong Chul.
Although he was unlucky to have been pushed out by his younger brother in the succession line, he was born to the same mother, Ko Yong-hui, and is the son of Kim Jong Il. Therefore, if something should happen to Kim Jong Un, he can surpass his sister, Kim Yo Jong and become the next leader.
One may have thought that Kim Yo Jong would be next in line for succession, but she is merely considered to be the younger sister of the North Korean supreme leader and won’t be able to overcome the barriers of North Korea’s patriarchal society.
If the North Korean regime secretly puts Kim Jong Chul in the position of the First Secretary and launches him as the successor, this indicates that Kim Jong Un is unable to make moves.
In other words, it is a sign that there is something wrong with Kim Jong Un’s health and that it may be a step to prepare a successor in advance so that nothing is out of place if Kim Jong Un dies.
But because there is no word yet that Kim Jong Chul has become the First Secretary of the Workers’ Party, the theory of Kim Jong Un’s successor cannot be confirmed.
In conclusion, North Korea is a country that has operated with one ideology under a one-man leadership system.
A strong ideology-based, one-man leadership system is at the core of how the Kim regime maintains its power. In a long-term dictatorship like North Korea, dictators have never shared power on their own and will probably never do so.
If power were to ever be decentralized and delegated, the Kim family’s one-man dictatorship cannot be maintained.
It is Kim Jong Un himself who knows better than anyone that he cannot share power. Simply put, the First Secretary of the Workers’ Party could either be Kim Jong Un’s scapegoat, or the newly established role could signal the decline of Kim Jong Un’s health.
Hyun-Seung Lee is a Regional director of One Korea Network. He is a former DPRK businessman and chair of the Kim Il Sung Socialist Youth League branch in Dalian, China. He earned his bachelor’s degree from Dongbei University of Finance and Economics in China. He also served in the Korea People’s Army and was a member of the Korea Workers’ Party. A series of purges by Kim Jong Un forced him and his entire family to defect in late 2014, making their way first to South Korea then to the United States.
