Has Power Transition Begun in NK?
By Jung Sung-ki
Staff Reporter
The eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has returned home after living overseas for years and taken up a key post in the Stalinist state's ruling Workers' Party, a news report said Monday.
North Korea watchers say the return of Kim Jong-nam, 36, who had been living in Macau for the past few years, is expected to influence Kim Jong-il's succession plans in the future.
The power transfer is one of the top secrets in the reclusive North. Kim has two other sons _ Jong-chul, 26, and Jong-un, 24.
Some experts anticipate that middle son Jong-chul is likely to inherit the leadership, while others say the Stalinist state will likely introduce a collective leadership led by the military elite if Kim were to die suddenly.
According to the Chosun Ilbo quoting an unidentified intelligence source, Jong-nam is working at the party's Organization and Guidance Department, a division where his father began work in 1964 and later headed.
The department is said to be the most powerful government post in charge of all state affairs including political and military affairs, it said.
Jong-nam, who was living seemingly in exile in Macau, returned to Pyongyang around June, when the North's $25 million in funds frozen in a Macau bank was released, the report said.
Jong-nam had long been thought to have fallen out of Kim Jong-il's favor. In 2001, he was deported from Japan for trying to enter the country with a fake passport to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
He was caught on camera in Beijing in February, where he said he was on his way back to Pyongyang for his father's birthday.
``Kim Jong-il cannot not ignore the existence of his eldest son Jong-nam,'' Nam Sung-wook, a North Korea expert at Korea University in Seoul, was quoted as saying. ``It seems that Kim Jong-nam is being given new weight, so North Korea has apparently entered a new phase in choosing Kim Jong-il's successor.''
Jong-nam's decision to return home came as his supporters in Pyongyang gained more power after the death of Ko Young-hee, the mother of the two other sons, in May 2004, the report added, quoting an unidentified official from the National Intelligence Service.
Jong-nam's mother Sung Hae-rim, a former actress, died in May 2002.
The reclusive state's succession plans have gained attention amid a series of reports about the North Korean leader's health problems.
In June, the Daily Telegraph of the United Kingdom reported that Kim Jong-il has heart disease, so he cannot walk more than 30 yards without a rest.
Other reports said a German heart surgery team treated Kim, who also suffers from diabetes, in May.