By Michael Breen
North Korea's recent belligerence was deliberately designed, Seoul's security officials believe, to smooth a succession plan.
We've had a nuclear test, or some kind of explosion that shook international seismometers. We've had some missile launches. We've had the usual rabid warnings that Pyongyang will consider anything short of us continuing to flip coins into its begging bowl a declaration of war. And, to keep our hawks in their cages, North Korea is holding a South Korean businessman and two American journalists as hostages.
The purpose of all this, we are led to understand, is to aid the roll-out of leader Kim Jong-il's plan to name his third son, Kim Jong-un, 26, his heir apparent.
Actually, we don't know for sure whether this plan is real, let alone if the roll-out happened. South Korea's National Intelligence Service, the country's spy agency, said Pyongyang's overseas embassies were advised of the plan and that loyalty oaths have been made in some organizations in North Korea. There's been nothing about it in the North Korean media.
But let's say it did happen. What was the point of raising tension? Is political dissent not an extinct animal in North Korea? Surely Kim Jong-il could order his generals to dress up in pink frocks and skip along the DMZ if he wanted to? How exactly do nuclear bombs and missiles and fabricated spying charges against foreigners back his power-point presentation about the lad?
I'm wondering if we're missing something.
If we look at previous moments of tension, we can see that it is customary for North Korea's government to blow hot and cold and get nowhere. We know this will not change until Pyongyang drops its militarism and focuses on its economy, and that's not going to happen for as long as the son of founding father Kim Il-sung rules.
If past patterns apply, actual tensions don't last long. We should soon be entering talking-about-talks mode. That's when North Korea eventually gets visited by a suitable go-between who will persuade it into talks on the nukes and bring out the hostages. My money is on Al Gore.
But, this spasm of belligerence is more intense than usual and it may not be over. The defense ministry here believes more tests are imminent. Among the signs, Pyongyang has alerted ships in the East Sea to keep clear.
Some people are predicting DMZ firefights and clashes at sea, enough to keep tensions high without provoking serious retaliation or miscalculation.
If not a succession plan, what could North Korea be trying to achieve with all this? Kim Jong-il must know he has international attention, so if that were the motive, there is no need to throw more missiles around.
He also doesn't need to do it for domestic propaganda purposes. Why waste missiles when an editorial in the Rodong Shinmun, the party organ, will do?
If you strip away these ideas, we are left with the sense that Kim Jong-il is doing what he is doing in order to keep the military busy, to distract them from something. Is it possible that he is far more incapacitated than the propaganda photos lead us to believe? What better way to cover weakness than by appearing strong and sending people running off in the other direction?
I'm not suggesting that this is true. It is a guess. But I note among many North Korea watchers who actually know the place an instinctive sense that something is different this time, and that the succession, whatever form it takes, may loom sooner than we think.
On the other hand, and in figuring North Korea, it's always useful to have two or three ``other" hands, this could be all wrong. Things may be as normal as ever. In Pyongyang in 1989, a foreign diplomat, figuratively lifting his finger from the pulse of the mysterious state I was seeing for the first time, told me, ``The pressure is tremendous. The lid is going to blow off this place any day."
I'm still waiting, and if Kim Jong-un does take over, I may have to wait another 50 years.
Michael Breen is chairman of Insight Communications Consultants and exclusive partner of FD International. He can be reached at mike.breen@insightcomms.com.
