Kim Jong-un signals early hard line

Kim Jong-un, second from left, visits the Seoul Ryu Kyong Su 105 Guards Tank Division of the Korean People’s Army in Pyongyang. North Korea called on its people to rally behind the new leader as he works to solve food shortages by upholding the policies of his late father. [Reuters]

The confirmation in power of Kim Jong-un as ruler of North Korea brings the possibility of great opportunity, but also great danger to the nations of Northeast Asia.

On the positive side, the wave of official statements hailing the young Kim as the successor of his father, Kim Jong-il was remarkable for its frankness in admitting even to the 25 million people of North Korea the country’s dire economic straits.

“The food problem is a burning issue in building a thriving country,” an annual New Year editorial carried by the state-run Korea Central News Agency acknowledged on Jan 1. Power shortages should be solved “at all costs,” it said.

South Korean analysts have claimed this unusual frankness is a deliberate ploy meant to attract rapid aid from South Korea and the West.

However, that theory is undermined by the ferocity with which Northern official spokesmen attacked President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and his government.

Statement critical of South Korea

Pyongyang’s National Defense Commission issued a statement published by the official [North] Korean Central News Agency on Dec. 30, the day after the end of the 12-day mourning period for Kim Jong-il.

“The veritable sea of tears shed by the army and people of the DPRK [Democratic People’s Republic of Korea] will turn into that of retaliatory fire to burn all the group of traitors to the last one,” the NDC claimed. “The DPRK will have no dealings with the Lee Myung-bak group of traitors forever.”

In an intelligence analysis of the North Korean statement, South Korea’s Unification Ministry noted that for the first time in four years, the NDC statement demanded the eviction of U.S. forces from South Korea. This could mean young Kim is embracing the views of hardline army leaders much more uncritically than his father did.

North Korea quiet on U.S.

However the new North Korean leadership’s outburst against South Korea has not been accompanied so far by any revival of direct insults or accusations against the United States. On the contrary, statements from the North have been scrupulously proper and cautious toward Washington.

The most likely explanation for the confused mixture of signals coming out of Pyongyang is that they reflect the indecision of the new leader and the debates among his advisers.

Kim Jong-un is only 28 years old. He has never served in the armed forces, but was catapulted to the rank of four-star general a year before his father’s death. He has been confirmed as supreme commander of the armed forces. But his lack of experience and youth may make him vulnerable to the temptations of recklessness and sudden reversals of policy, in contrast to his father and grandfather.

Kim Il-sung, the founding father of communist North Korea, plunged into the 1950-’53 Korean War with his attack on the South and had to be rescued by a full-scale Chinese military intervention at the end of 1950. He never again made the mistake of risking the outbreak of full-scale war until his death in 1994.

Kim Jong-il, as leader of the country, continued his father’s cautious policies.

Kim Jong-un is far younger and less experienced than his two predecessors were when they took power. And he has even less experience of traveling and assessing the power of the outside world.

Diplomatic relations important

This suggests the most important priority for U.S. and Asian diplomats may be not to pressure Kim Jong-un to make human rights concessions unilaterally, but to establish effective personal relations with him to reduce the barriers of distrust.

The new Kim may also be sincere in proclaiming his commitment to try to ease the trials of his long-suffering people: According to United Nations estimates, more than a third of North Korea’s children are experiencing serious malnutrition and that number is rising. In November, U.N. experts warned that as many as 3 million people – 12 percent of the North’s entire population suffered from malnutrition. North Korea’s main food aid donors have suspended programs over the past two years in an effort, so far unsuccessful, to get Pyongyang to abandon its nuclear weapons development program.

Food aid still needed

However, without outside food aid, especially from South Korea, the new Pyongyang leadership’s prospects of improving living conditions appear dim.

So far, Kim Jong-un remains committed to juche, the economic ideology of total national self-dependence. His uncle, 65-year-old Jang Sung-taek, administered North Korea’s special economic zones for many years under Kim Jong-il. But initial signs suggest he may have been sidelined, or worse, by his nephew. Nothing has been heard of him in the official published statements since Kim Jong Il’s death.

The North Korean New Year statement gave an initial insight into Kim Jong-un’s views. It called for the development of new coal fields and the building of more hydroelectric power stations. It urged administrators and farm managers to radically increase grain yields.

The statement could have been copied word-for-word from some of Josef Stalin’s statements during the years of collectivization and mass famine in the Soviet Union in the early 1930s. Despite Kim Jong-un’s education at a boarding school in Switzerland, it showed no awareness of the importance of relatively open markets, good communications and transportation systems as incentives to produce food and transport it quickly to where it was needed.

Kim Jong-un also appears committed to be continuing his father‘s songun, or military first policy, which gives the armed forces first priority calls on all national resources. This policy, if maintained, also looks certain to maintain and intensify food shortages.

Worse yet, North Korea’s domestic economy is rapidly deteriorating.

North Korea publishes no information on its Gross Domestic Product or general economic performance. But South Korea’s central bank has published estimates that the North Korean GDP is only 2.5 percent the size of South Korea’s and that it has fallen four of the five years through 2010. This assessment estimated North Korea’s GDP as only 30 trillion won, or $26.5 billion in 2010.

South Korean President Lee offered a renewal of food aid to the North in his own New Year statement, but only if the North would agree to rein in its nuclear program. Since there has been no indication so far that Kim Jong-un and the hardline army leaders around him will accept this, North Korea’s economic woes look likely to get worse. And if they do, the danger will increase that the new inexperienced and insecure government in Pyongyang may provoke or stumble into a serious security crisis with South Korea or with the United States.