The transformation of N.Korean politics through the execution of Jang Song-thaek

After the fall of Jang Song-thaek, many saw the removal of such a ‘powerful’ figure as evidence of Kim Jong-un’s absolute power. But the public purge and execution of Jang Song-thaek at once exposes Kim Jong-un’s lack of powers, as well as the struggle of Kim Jong-il’s associates as they uphold a power structure that lacks a de facto head.

These accounts are based on an understanding of Kim Jong-il era politics from the inside-out and according to its internal structure, rather than its surface manifestations.

North Korea’s Organisation and Guidance Department (OGD) has been and remains the single most powerful entity in the nation’s domestic politics. Not least because it is the channel through which Kim Jong-il consolidated the powers of the Workers’ Party, and also the channel through which he exercised and implemented his totalitarian reach.

Only those North Koreans with first-hand experience of the OGD can testify, in parts, to its compartmentalised structure and central influence; and as analysts and commentators looking from the outside-in have relied on glimpses visible on the surface when modelling North Korea’s power structure (glimpses filtered through and coordinated by highly-centralised propaganda directives), the true shape of the North Korean leadership has kept itself well hidden.

Power and politics in North Korea do not work in the way it is commonly assumed. If it were to do so, entities such as the Politburo would have some say in a policy decision before it were confirmed, but this is not the case. In Kim Jong-il’s North Korea, power was only acknowledged by domestic brokers according to an internal system of loyalties to Kim Jong-il’s person.

Kim Jong-il’s authority was vested to a few who answered to and worked in his name, and these individuals would never hold a corresponding formal or public office while in this role.

Similarly, power and politics in North Korea do not work in the way that state media would have the world believe. Many of the most prominently ranked and publicised individuals as revealed through official presentation in photographs or articles are those who have never been recognised by domestic brokers as a vessel of Kim Jong-il’s authority.

Not only are there fundamental discrepancies between the revealed North Korean power structure and the reality of Kim Jong-il’s closely guarded patronage- and loyalty-based structure, the discrepancies have been consciously and deliberately maintained.

But just as this OGD channeled system was managed by Kim Jong-il to have power and authority begin and end with him, it is currently struggling to adapt to a post-Kim Jong-il era.

In this series, we provide an overview of differences between Kim Jong-il’s power structure and how it manifests itself in the Kim Jong-un era, to help develop a clearer understanding of both. Our first three points focus on the presentational differences between the rule of father and son.

Action-based “side-branch” restriction becomes presentation-based “side-branch” removal.

Jang Song-thaek remained a designated “side-branch” throughout his entire political life. The side-branch designation was inspired by the idea that for a tree to grow well, its side-branches have to be pruned. The side-branch restriction policy became fixed in the internal regulations of the OGD, so that no other member of the Kim family could undermine the Kim family tree itself.

The restriction of side-branch Jang Song-thaek was formally activated by the OGD twice during Kim Jong-il’s rule, which resulted in Jang being removed from his post and being sent for revolutionary re-education.

But restrictions on side-branch designated individuals were not incorporated into the official state history. Nor could a member of the Kim family be publicly designated as an enemy of the state, with internal splintering within the Kim family never revealed to the ordinary North Korean public.

It is in this context that the public purge and execution of Jang Song-thaek is an extreme breaking from the presentation of Kim family unity and infallibility. The projection had never been a true reflection of reality, but nevertheless upheld in the North Korean perception as being so.

Not only did de facto side-branch restriction become a perception-reliant side-branch removal, the audience for the side-branch purge message reached outside the power elite to the wider North Korean public and the international community.

This is a key difference between the basis of power for Kim Jong-il and of Kim Jong-un: while Kim Jong-il’s power was maintained by keeping separate the insider and outsider projections regarding family related power struggles, the acknowledgement of such branching in North Korea’s latest apparent projection of “Kim Jong-un’s power” is an unprecedented anomaly.

Justification for domestic political development released internationally first, domestically second.

In Kim Jong-il’s power structure, not only were high-level purges announced domestically before internationally, no justifications (when given at all) attributed fault to internal splintering. But the purge of Jang Song-thaek was announced first and irrevocably to the international community through the KCNA, and only the next day through the domestic channels of Central TV and Rodong Sinmun.

From an internal perspective, the startling nature of this infringement of institutional procedure cannot be overemphasised.

North Korea’s message to the outside world, on the surface, seems to be that anyone who harms Kim Jong-un’s authority can, and will, be removed without mercy. But in terms of internal North Korean logic, the notion is strikingly discordant: in announcing that there existed a criminal in the heart of Kim Jong-un’s family, the unsullied legitimacy of the Kim family has been harmed.

In the deliberately public demonstration of “Kim Jong-un’s hold on authority”, which exposes the disgrace of a Kim family member and sullies the sanctity of the Kim family, the North Korean elite perceive not the absolute power of a ruling Kim, but an indicator of its confusing absence.

The Politburo symbolises institutionally, not personally vested, power.

North Korea’s Politburo meetings disappeared in the mid-1980s. When Kim Jong-il used the premise of consolidating Kim Il-sung’s authority by means of moving away from a reliance on institutionally sanctioned authority to a cult of the Kim legacy, the Workers’ Party OGD had all rights of personnel appointment and policy ratifications routed through it and to Kim Jong-il. Institutions and formal offices turned into shells empty of actual authority of enforcement or ratification.

The Politburo remained utterly devoid of real powers throughout Kim Jong-il’s rule; and it was only called into service at the end of his rule as part of the symbolic legitimisation of a power transfer to Kim Jong-un. Interestingly, the purge of Jang Song-thaek was announced through this very Politburo. Although Kim Jong-un sat in the centre of the meeting, the fact that the institution of the Politburo was employed as the vehicle of his authority is a direct reflection of the fact that Kim Jong-un does not in the eyes of North Korean elite hold the personally vested power that Kim Jong-il held.

Our next installments will demonstrate how Kim Jong-un was absent from the decision making process behind the purge; and then reveal the key figures who are driving this series of events.