Trouble in the Red Hermit Kingdom

Kim I, the first Communist King of North Korea.

We've made some snarky comments about Kim Jong-un  here from time to time but most recently mentioned him in connection with the USS Roosevelt, noting that the Stalinist head of North Korea has a habit of creating global problems when the world is otherwise distracted, seemingly constantly wanting the spotlight on himself, and for the wrong reasons.

Well, that spotlight has been trying to focus recently, although not for anything that he's done, but for what he seems to be enduring.

You don't have to be a physician to look at photos of Kim and know that he's not a model of healthy living.  Now there are reports that the murderous dictator may have undergone serious surgery and may not be doing well.

Indeed, that he'd undergo surgery now, at a time at which Coronavirus is stalking the Korean Peninsula, suggests that this procedure wasn't planned.  It's likely an emergency.  And like a lot of emergency procedures, the outcomes are always a bit clouded prior to their known. Clouding the news on this one is that getting anything out of the news black hole that is North Korea is difficult.

So he may be pretty sick.

He might not be sick at all.

We really don't know.

What we also don't know is what happens in the Red Hermit Kingdom if he dies, or rather when he dies.

That North Korea is not a naturally Marxist state is evident from the fact that rule of the country is vested in the descendants of his grandfather, Kim Jon Il-sung.  That despicable Kim was a Soviet protege who arrived back in his own country after a prolonged absence as an essentially Soviet creation.  Indeed, his own command of the Korean language was horrible.  The USSR needed somebody, and Kim had Marxist street cred due to his support of the USSR as a Communist expat with service in the Communist cause in China and an early member of a Communist movement in Korea.  Upon his death in 1994 his position was inherited by his son, Kim Jong-il, setting the state for the ironic creation of a Communist monarchy.

Kim Jong-il ran the country from 1994 until his death, monarch style in 2011.  Upon his death his position was inherited by Kim Jong-un.

That positions are inherited in this fashion is telling.  As the old cliche would have it, blood is thicker than water and the North Korean Communist rulers are apparently so paranoid about passing the leadership baton on that they can only pass it on to their family members, much like monarchs of old did with their leadership, or like Mafia families have always done.  If there's some collective leadership, the thought must be, next thing you know you have Boris Yeltsin leading a charge on the palace.

Of course, the ultimate hypocrisy here would be that a "workers' state" would presumably be lead by workers, which in the antiquated economy of North Korea, shouldn't be too hard to find.  Instead power is completely vested in the hands of a family that not only inherits the position like monarchy, but lives like monarchs as well.  They don't call themselves kings, of course, but they are.

So who inherits the thrown if Kim Jong-un passes untimely passes on?

Nobody really knows but there's wide speculation that it would be his sister Kim Yo-jong.

Kim Jong-un does have children, although the country is so secretive that their number is unknown.  He was married sometime during the prior decade to Ri Sol-ju, about whom nearly nothing is known and whom is believed to be in her early 30s, making her slightly younger than her spouse.  The marriage appears to have been conducted hastily as his father appeared to be near death, once again recalling the habit of monarchy and the regimes need to have heirs.  The couple has had somewhere between one to three children, and it seems the first one was a boy.  Still, even at that, next to nothing, including his name, and if he remains alive, is known about him.  If he is alive, that boy would now be ten years old.  Too young to inherit the throne, at least without a regent.

That regent might be Kim Yo-jong, who is close to her brother.  She could rule until the oldest male in the line of the grandfather is ready to inherit the throne on his own.

Or she could simply take the throne, Saudi style, in the fashion of thrones passing to blood relatives but not necessarily to the next in line. Indeed, this was common for early Medieval monarchs.

But then so was the throne passing to others than the immediate family of the monarch.

All we can really tell for sure is that since 1945 the Communist Party has become incredibly insular and the ruling class works just like that of old style monarchies.  Marriages are almost always within the immediate power circle of real loyalist to the throne and close blood ties have come to exist in the ruling class.  None of the immediate blood relatives of Kim Jong-un will have married outside of the Communist noble circle and everyone at the helm has a deeply vested interest in maintaining the monarchical rule.

All of which means that the system is a house of cards at some point.  But nobody knows where that point really is.