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Reports that Kim Kyong-hui, the powerful aunt of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, is in poor health have raised questions over the outlook of the Kim family dynasty.
As the most powerful living offspring of country founder Kim Il-sung, the 66-year-old helps maintain regime legitimacy, experts said Friday. An inability to fulfill her duties could increase the chances of a power struggle, they added.
A Seoul official speaking on condition of anonymity said this week that reports of Kim Kyong-hui’s ill health appeared to be true. Some reports said she struggled with alcoholism.
Kim, a secretary of the central committee of the ruling Worker’s Party, is said to advise her nephew on statecraft after learning it from her father and brother, the late Kim Jong-il. She holds sway over the elite, including her powerful husband, Jang Song-thaek.
While rumors she is on her sickbed may be exaggerated _ she was recently shown attending a ceremony to fete the country’s “military-first revolution” _ analysts say her absence could have a major impact.
“It would be difficult for Kim Jong-un to control the party elite, relatives and the military,” Baek Seung-joo of the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses said. “In the short-term, he could have a crisis on his hands.”
Baek said Kim would likely rely on Jang, a top policy advisor and Choe Ryong-hae, a vice marshal with close ties to the family. “But he cannot trust Jang as much as his aunt. So there may eventually be tension between Jang and Kim.”
Jang, a likely advocate for reforming the North’s economy, has long held a reputation for being a maverick in the tightly-controlled state. He disappeared from public life between 2003 and 2006 amid rumors his influence had grown too fast.
Kim Kyong-hui is said to play a buffer between the leader and his older brother Kim Jong-nam, who lives in semi-exile in Macau.
Yoo Ho-yeol, an expert at Korea University, said Kim’s role is to maintain the legitimacy of the dynasty long enough for Kim Jong-un to build his personality cult. If she cannot, the elite may agree to support the group of senior officials shepherding the young leader.
“That would signal a new era in North Korea, one of collective leadership,” he said.
Kim is the youngest daughter of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-suk. Her half-brother Kim Pyong-il is the North Korean ambassador to Poland, but is said not to have major political influence.
She began her rise through the ranks in the early 1970s, to become director of the party’s light industry department in 1988. Kim was made a four-star general in 2010, a move that would help Kim Jong-un grasp control over the military.
Experts said that Kim Jong-un’s younger sister, Yo-jong, and his wife Ri Sol-ju could take bigger political roles but they remain too young to control the power base.
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