Pyongyang gangland

By John Burton

I was recently in Las Vegas, the only major city in the world to have been created by organized crime. There is even a Mob Museum, which chronicles how The Syndicate helped build Sin City. Among its exhibits are graphic photos of the mob hits that were a regular feature of the feuding among the Mafia families.

Reading the various accounts of the execution of Jang Song-thaek, including allegedly being torn apart by hungry dogs or being put to death courtesy of antiaircraft machine guns, invokes the viciousness of criminal whack jobs. Perhaps it might be more appropriate to analyze North Korea and Jang's demise as an example of Mafia politics rather than through the ideological lens of reformers vs. hardliners often adopted by the Western commentariat.

North Korea has often been referred to as a criminal state, with its drug manufacturing and smuggling and the alleged counterfeiting of $100 super-bills. But its parallels with the Mafia extend beyond that, starting with the fact that both U.S. crime syndicates and North Korea are based on family control.

Just as poor Italian, Jewish and other foreign immigrants to the US banded together to engage in criminal activities to ensure their survival, so it is with North Korea's ruling Kim family. It's not Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, it's Don "The Kid" Kim.

In this context, Jang played the role of a Mafia consigliere, the aged, respected veteran who is expected to provide wise and impartial advice to his boss while being devoid of personal ambition.

But the consigliere is also vulnerable to being purged if he oversteps his assigned role. Mafia politics is all about money and Jang got too greedy. According to the National Intelligence Service, Jang's downfall began when his crew engaged in a shoot-out with members of North Korean military forces loyal to Kim over rich crab and clam fishing grounds.

Turf battles over valuable resources have been common among or even within Mafia families. A similar struggle apparently is convulsing North Korea's inner circle over who controls the export of goods to China, which provides the country with most of its vital foreign currency.

Having eliminated the challenge from Jang, Kim has ruthlessly asserted his authority as any Mafia don should if he wants to survive and thrive. Although the announcement of Jang's crimes and his public humiliation were unprecedented by North Korean standards, it fits in well with the Mafia practice of sending a clear message to the boys about who is boss. As Kim described it in his New Year's Address: "We took decisive actions to remove factional filth."

The longer-term challenge for Kim is whether that message sticks while he tries to balance the allocation of who controls what. The Korean People's Army (KPA), which provides the muscle to the Kim family, wants to keep their piece of the action when it comes to trade with China. But those affiliated with the ruling Korean Workers' Party, which included Jang, also want more of a share of the economic rewards from cross-border trade after being relegated under the "military first" policy of Kim Jong-il.

It was the main reason why Jang became the point man on developing economic relations with China. Now that role appears to be assumed by the military under Choe Ryong-hae, the KPA chief, who visited Beijing last May to promote reconciliation after the North's nuclear test angered Chinese officials. Choe could be Kim's new senior capo, or underboss.

The key questions is whether the inexperienced Kim the Kid can prevent further potentially destabilizing power struggles between the military and party over economic assets and strike a balance between the two. He perhaps should take a page from the Mafia handbook when it came to its treatment of Las Vegas.

Las Vegas represented the Mafia's Switzerland, a neutral place where feuds were suspended and all the main criminal families had "points" or shares in the gambling operations, sharing the largesse among them in a practical fashion.

So here's my suggestion. Turn Pyongyang into the Las Vegas of East Asia. After all, it is already halfway there. It has the same grandiose buildings as Las Vegas in a strip along the Daedong River. Pyongyang can go even one better. While the Paris Casino in Las Vegas has a fake plywood Arch of Triumph, Pyongyang has the real thing that is even bigger the French original.

Moreover, the North Korean leadership has the criminal skills and ruthlessness to make it a success, just as the Mob did with Las Vegas, while ensuring that both the military and party get their due. The country has already dappled in running casinos to attract Chinese tourists. It just needs to expand its horizons and the money should roll in, reducing the North's need to sell weapons and drugs to raise foreign currency.

Such a suggestion might offend moral purists. But few Americans remember the seedy origins of Las Vegas, which has now embedded itself in the national cultural landscape as the adult playground with its promises of quick riches, sex and good food.

What's Korean for "fuhgeddaboutdit?"

John Burton, a former Korea correspondent for the Financial Times, is now a Seoul-based independent journalist and media consultant. He can be reached at john.burton@insightcomms.com.

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