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Richard
12-26-2011, 12:54
In the DPRK, one always has to wonder, "Who's on first..."

Richard :munchin

The Generals Who Will Really Rule North Korea
Time, 22 Dec 2011

The policy under Kim Jong Il, North Korea's late Dear Leader, could not have had a name that was more straightforward: "military first politics." For most of Kim's 17-year reign as dictator, North Korea's military — the Korean People's Army, or KPA — got pretty much whatever it wanted. Even during the crippling famine, which killed tens of thousands in the late '90s, food was diverted to the military. Better a soldier with a full stomach, even if almost everyone else were starving, Kim seemed to think. "His position toward the military was one of weakness," says Christopher Hill, formerly the chief U.S. negotiator to the six-party nuclear talks.

Little wonder, then, that nearly everyone who tries to figure out what is happening in the world's most isolated regime believes that, in the wake of Kim's sudden death on Dec. 17, it is the military brass who will be firmly in control of the country, even as the young Kim Jong Un formally becomes what the Koreans call the suryong (supreme leader). "The military," says Hill, "will clearly be a critical factor in determining whether the [Kim] family dynasty survives."

Some analysts have argued that the North Korean brass were already deeply resentful that Kim Jong Un, in his late 20s, was last year given four stars and a position as vice chairman of the Central Military Committee "without having served a day in the military," as Victor Cha, who ran Asia policy on George W. Bush's National Security Council, recently put it. "Such a system," Cha says, "simply cannot hold."

This may overstate the regime's fragility, precisely because it underrates just how deeply rooted the Kim family dynasty is in North Korea and how deeply the KPA's interests are aligned with its continuation. The key man to watch, analysts say, is Vice Marshal Ri Yong Ho, chief of the General Staff in Pyongyang and, like Kim Jong Un, a chairman of the Central Military Committee, the key military policymaking body in the country.

(Cont'd) http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,2102985,00.html?xid=newsletter-weekly