North Korea's Dynastic Succession

Extract

In 2012, Kim Jong-il, the “beloved leader” of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, died. As power passed to his son Kim Jong-un (the third generation of the Kim family to exercise dominion over the now impoverished nation), intelligence analysts and media pundits began their inevitable cycle of conjecture, anticipating power struggles and the possibility for a fundamental political realignment in the region. In this essay, Brian Cumings suggests something of the short-sightedness of these speculations, and argues that any effort to understand the political transition in North Korea must take into account long-standing patterns in religion, culture and politics. These patterns represent, not some unchanging template — Kim Jong-un's notable departure from the Confucian mourning ritual observed by his father suggests as much — but a repertoire of authoritative symbols, the materials out of which the regime will construct a “usable past” by which to characterize and respond to the challenges of the present. Awareness of the traditional repertoire that makes up this “usable past” may not allow us to predict with certainty how individuals and societies will behave, but it will certainly help us to understand why they behaved as they did.