North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is about to convene the first Workers’ Party national conference in 40 years. There is widespread speculation that he will announce he is designating his third son, Kim Jong-un, to succeed him. Jong-un is only 28 (or 27 – year of birth seems uncertain). His whole life has been rather secretive, but he reportedly went to a finishing school in Switzerland and is fluent in English. (Most NK leaders have never been outside the country.) So: Will this assure a smooth succession and the long-term survival of the DPRK?
The North Korean dictatorship is the most evil and hypocritical dictatorship in the world. A dictator and his cronies live like jet setting multi millionaires in a country where starvation is a leading cause of death. While they do this, they mouth the slogans of a political philosophy based on economic egalitarianism.
According to the CIA World Factbook, the per capita gross domestic product of North Korea is $1,900. In South Korea it is $28,100.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2004rank.html?countryName=Korea,%20North&countryCode=kn®ionCode=eas&rank=189#kn
We don’t know anything about this 3rd generation Kim. How on earth could we know if it will "assure a smooth succession and the long-term survival of the DPRK "?
Can’t say that I think that’s likely. Compared to his father, Kim has done a rush job as far as the succession goes. If he dies in the near future, I don’t think his son would have the independent power base necessary to stand up to the generals if they chose to depose him.
Tumbledown Dick, anyone?
Kim 2 had a long period of transition. He eventually displaced Kim 1 by simply serving as a kind of chief-of-staff, intercepting paperwork before it got to Dad.
Ideally (from the leadership’s point of view), Kim 3 would follow the same way. If Kim 2 has one foot on the banana peel, it might get exciting.
It is worth noting that Kim 2 castrated the Party, preferring to use the military to rule. So gaining the loyalty of a bunch of old generals will be key to Kim 3.
No idea, I don’t know anything about Jong Il’s son, I doubt anyone really does.
Even if he is a reformer who was educated in a more secular, liberal society couldn’t it be like what happened in Syria when Assad took over? I think even if he wanted reform there are too many others who do not. The entire NK establishment which allows the minority at the top to live well is based on keeping the masses ignorant and scared. Any reform could threaten the social order, so even if the son is a reformer who knows if anything could actually get done.
As stated, the son has no power base and no web of relationships with the existing power structure, all of whom are 40+ years older than him. Kim Jong-il spent more than 20 years slowly accumulating power and positioning his allies. His son won’t get anywhere near that time and has no immediate peers in the power structure to support him.
True.
And with NK as unstable as it is…
They’ve been doing some leadership shuffles, presumably to move people who can be trusted to support the younger Kim into positions where they can support him. There’s also this tidbit from a story in the New York Times:
Kim Jong-Un) But Daddy, I wanted to be graphic designer
Kim Jong-il) You’ll be an evil dictator and you’ll LIKE IT!
I thought NK was very stable, considering all the poverty it has survived without collapsing. If it started to grow rich . . . that might destabilize things.
The reins are usually hand down to the eldest son. Its quite possible that plotting to overthrow the younger by the elder sons would be in the wings.
Kim Jong-nam, the eldest son, apparently fell out of favor after he caused an embarrassing incident:
He is now reported to be living incognito with his family in Macau.
As for the middle son, Kim Jong-chul:
I guess we should all thank the Kim family for keeping something of this kind of classical royal-family drama alive in the real world. I mean, this is Romance of the Three Kingdoms-caliber stuff! With nukes! 
Papa didn’t want him to leave because he’s ronery, so ronery 
My understanding was there was more than 1 serious coup in the works during the 90s. But they never succeeded.
Supposedly the famine in the 90s and the proliferation of mobile phones and VHS tapes has really woken people up to how evil, dishonest and full of shit the regime has been.
So I don’t know how stable they are anymore. I’m not an expert, but my understanding is that the cult of personality today isn’t like it was in Kim Il Sung’s days before the famine, Kim Jong Il (who never had the hands on ties to forming N. Korea that Il Sung supposedly had) cell phones and VHS tapes smuggled from South Korea.
Cell phones smuggled in don’t mean shit without infrastructure and local towers. They would be easily tracked and monitored by the government.
Bets that South Korea has installed some mighty fine cell towers, just south of the border?
And China & Russia have some ordinary ones, nearby?
It seems to me that this entire discussion is meaningless, on a practical level.
Simply put, North Korea has done an amazing job of cloaking its true intentions, long-term plans, and present realities from the rest of the world. We can speculate on its future for the rest of our lives, and I am confident that most of the developments will continue to surprise us. For better or for worse, North Korea will continue to follow its own unique path.
What saddens me is the sheer number of posters above arrogant enough to believe that they are privy to definitive information about North Korean politics and society. No, people, you neither know nor cannot know what the nation’s GDP is, whether or not there is a significant famine problem, how the leadership truly lives, or how widespread cell phone proliferation is. What you’re really doing is parroting “facts” fed to you by the Western governments - ones that, you know, have a vested interest in seeing North Korea fall. That is akin to listening to a Neo-Nazi group present “statistics” about a Jewish group halfway around the world (or vice versa) and taking it at face value.