By Kim Young-jin
A senior Chinese official has expressed support for the power succession underway in North Korea from leader Kim Jong-il to his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, the North said Tuesday amid changes in Pyongyang apparently driven by food shortages.
The show of support came from Meng Jianzhu, Beijing’s state councilor and public security minister who met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, Monday.
Meng congratulated Kim on his reelection in September as general secretary of the ruling Workers’ Party, and Kim Jong-un on becoming vice chairman of its military commission, the Korean Central News Agency said.
In an unusually direct reference to the power handoff, he hailed the “successful solution of the issue of succession to the Korea revolution,” the agency said.
His remarks came as the North prepared elaborate celebrations for the birthday of leader Kim, which falls today, but also continues to struggle with a severe food shortage.
One of the biggest holidays in the North, the birthday is expected to be marked with rallies, mass games and cultural performances.
It is Kim’s first birthday since he tapped his twenty-something son as heir during a rare party conference in September, elevating him to a high party post.
Kim reportedly won China’s support for the succession during two trips there last year. Beijing is Pyongyang’s main political and economic supporter.
Reports indicate the isolated state is scrambling to deal with the growing problem.
Government sources here say the North has redrawn the administrative borders of Pyongyang in what appears to be a bid to cut the costs of feeding residents in the capital.
Citing recent almanacs from the North, the sources estimate that some 500,000 citizens in southern and western areas have been cropped out by the newly-drawn lines. Pyongyang residents, who include the ruling elite, are considered the most loyal to the regime and given greater benefits.
The move coincides with the North reportedly asking the United States and other countries for food aid, while U.N. organizations have begun a mission to the communist country to assess the food situation there.
Other reports have said a number of soldiers in the North have been taken into custody for refusing to obey orders due to insufficient food rations.
Meanwhile, Kim turns 70 today despite Pyongyang’s claim he is turning 69.
The North’s media has kept to its tradition of mythologizing the birthday by reporting strange natural occurrences coinciding with the event.
It said Monday that willow blossoms had blossomed in the Mt. Baekdu region where the North claims Kim was born, nine days earlier than in past years.
The state media last month said a solar halo had appeared above the mountain ahead of the event.
Kim’s official biography claims he was born in 1942 on Mt. Baekdu in the North. Records, however, show he was born a year earlier in a village in the Soviet Union, where his father led a brigade of Chinese and Korean exiles during the Japanese occupation of the peninsula.