Dangerous Scent of Decay in a Troubled North Korea : Signs of national decline shadow leader’s birthday

All of North Korea, according to its government-run press, is today celebrating with delirious joy and heartfelt tributes the 54th birthday of its Great Leader, Kim Jong Il. The exuberance of the festivities, however, is shadowed by a passel of unpleasant facts the world’s last Stalinist regime prefers not to advertise. For example, that official incompetence has exacerbated the food shortages caused by natural disasters, threatening hundreds of thousands of Kim’s subjects with famine. Or that North Koreans in growing numbers are risking hellish imprisonment and even execution by trying to flee the country. Some have been able to make their way to South Korea, many more have crossed into China, some--among the lucky few allowed to travel abroad--have requested asylum farther afield. Among the latter is said to be Sung Hye Rim, Kim’s castoff first wife and the mother of his eldest son and presumed dynastic heir. Embarrassments like these can take the fun out of any birthday party.

Kim Jong Il himself, rarely seen and never heard, remains a mystery. July 8 will be the second anniversary of the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, the founder of the North Korean state. Since the elder Kim’s death the North Korean press has spared no ink in trying to transfer to his successor the cult of personality built up for decades around the father. What hasn’t been transferred yet, and no one is sure why, are the late Kim’s key titles of state president and general secretary of the Workers’ (Communist) Party. What this indicates is that Kim Jong Il is far from having the near-absolute influence wielded by his father. He has been confirmed as head of the military. That is his essential prop, but it has been obtained at a price. Some unusually candid recent comments from North Korean officials suggesting military opposition to soliciting food aid from abroad indicate that the military’s influence on policy may now be stronger than ever.

A country that has suffered three or four straight years of negative economic growth, that cannot feed its people and whose vast shortcomings are emphasized by the political and economic successes of the rival South Korea is a country whose leaders can only feel acute anxiety and fear. Some U.S. experts, reluctant in the past to forecast events in North Korea, are now talking about its potential for collapse within two or three years. What concerns American and South Korean officials is that as this possibility deepens, Pyongyang’s leaders could be driven to take desperate measures to survive, the most dangerous of which would be a military attack on South Korea--to whose armed defense the United States is committed.

It’s hard to see how a North Korea now largely denied the economic support it could once count on from Moscow and Beijing can turn around its rapidly declining fortunes. As in Eastern Europe in 1989, a process of political self-destruction may have begun, one that could imperil others as it unfolds.