By Kim Heung-sook
If you are famous or notorious enough to make news headlines, so will your death. If you are over 60 years of age and have a history of illnesses, chances are that you are already dead in writing. I mean, your obituaries are there in the computers of editors with the age and the cause of death left in blank or in bold to be filled in or revised later.
For North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, there should be a heavy file of death-related articles, comprising straight news and reports analyzing how his death will affect the communist North and its relations with South Korea, and other countries concerned.
Then there will be speculative stories as to who will inherit the hungry nation. Guesswork will be more intense this time than the summer of 1994 when his father died. Kim had been an ``heir-apparent'' for quite a few years before his father succumbed to a heart attack at the age of 82. The age was mature and everybody in and outside the country was prepared for the senior Kim's death.
Kim Jong-il has three sons and many titles, but no one seems to think that the juniors will split power. Kim's titles include the ``dear leader'' of the people, the Chairman of the National Defense Commission, the Supreme Commander of the People's Army and the General Secretary of the ruling Workers' Party. The two eligible sons of the three must each have their promoters and loyalists, and the situation in Pyongyang looks as gripping as a Stephen King novel.
Well-written obituaries should contain all these factors. A politician's death, like his or her life, is more a subject to write about and analyze than something to be lamented. Even the dead man's family has little time to be sorrowful, because there are too many things to consider.
Some politicians die more than one time and Kim is an example of such rumored deaths. Having high blood pressure, diabetes and heart problems, he was reported dead in 1992 and 2004. According to Japanese professor Toshimitsu Shigemura, Kim died in 2003 and was replaced by a body double. The author of ``The True Character of Kim Jong-il'' claims that Kim's diabetes worsened in 2000 and he died three and a half years later.
South Korean media say that Kim suffered a stroke and is recovering after surgery. Won Hye-young, a lawmaker of the opposition Democratic Party, told journalists that he heard about the not so serious condition of the 66-year-old communist leader from Kim Sung-ho, director of the National Intelligence Service, in a ``closed'' session of the National Assembly's Intelligence Committee on Wednesday.
I wonder why a lawmaker would leak something he had learned during a ``closed'' meeting. I also wonder why no one, including the top intelligence official, filed complaint about the leak. But then, that's not the only puzzle I have difficulty understanding. Anyhow, if Kim turns out to have died or is in a critical condition, the world will realize how unreliable the government's intelligence is.
I have never been a fan of the Stalinist state or Kim Jong-il, but I hope he survives yet another international ado about his wellness. I hope he will make all the pre-written obituaries useless and give a grueling hard time to the big mouth officials, politicians and journalists. I hope he will live as long as his father, only as a totally different person from the man he used to be.
I hope the new Kim will unconditionally disable his country's nuclear facilities, receive food aid from South Korea, open up his country to tourists and investors, and its borders for north Koreans who want to leave their native land, and provide a place where families divided between the two halves of the peninsula can meet their long lost kinsmen and kinswomen anytime of the year. He can even meet with South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, whom he apparently dislikes, and attend a dinner at Cheong Wa Dae in the presence of his favorite actors and actresses in Seoul as Chinese President Hu Jintao did last month.
I hope Kim will get better from whatever illness he has contracted recently so that he will encourage others to reflect upon their lives, too. I hope he will live until death stops him and when his departure will be cried over not only by his brainwashed, undernourished populace but also by all sensible people around the world.