He has never made a public speech or traveled farther than China, his nation’s patron. His view of the West has been shaped mostly by his library of 20,000 films; he has never met an American. Pyongyang-based diplomats don’t even know where he lives. From what little is known, Kim Jong II comes across as an insecure, quixotic micromanager bereft of his father’s charisma and personal appeal. Nevertheless, his succession to power is preordained, a process that defies both communist orthodoxy and the worldwide collapse of communism. The Dear Leader is a heartbeat away from controlling a renegade state that may be the world’s next nuclear power. And his impending rule comes at a particularly delicate time, with Korean unification talks in the balance. “We know Kim II Sung,” says one Seoul-based North Korea analyst. " We know he’s not crazy. But his son is something else. How would you feel if he were 25 miles up the road with a million men with guns?"
North Korea accuses “criminals” and its rival neighbor of whipping up such speculation. In particular, it points to a book published by two South Koreans who claim North Korean agents kidnapped them from Hong Kong. “In the south, the people make a fuss that I am a vegetable,” Kim Jong II reportedly told Choi Eun Hi, an actress who said she spent eight years in North Korea with her director husband, Sheen Sang Okk. According to the account, he asked her: “How do I look? A chubby fellow who looks like a long, fat poop?” The book describes Kim as a party boy who drinks Hennessy cognac while surrounded by dancing girls and sycophantic aides. A workaholic, Kim Jong II oversees a range of government functions from defense projects to the issuing of passports, Sheen told NEWSWEEK. But his passion is film. After five years, they say, he forced them to work-while stage-managing their productions through a hot line to the set. “He would make a fine director,” says Sheen.
Has Kim Jong II also tried his hand at directing terror? " Everything that any special agent does must be authorized by him," says Kim Hyon Hui, who was convicted of helping bomb Korean Air Flight 858 in 1987; 115 people died. North Korea denies any link to the woman. Even more sensational are accusations that Kim Jong II can be equally ruthless in his personal life. According to Katsumi Sato, a Japanese Korea watcher and editor of “Gendai Korea” magazine, when one actress rejected his advances he accused her of committing an antirevolutionary act–then rounded up the nation’s most famous actors and actresses to witness her execution. “It’s not worthy of comment,” said a North Korean spokesman in New York.
At home, North Korea’s propaganda machine is preparing the way for Dear Leader’s succession. Pilgrims to Mount Paekdu find that tablets formerly commemorating Kim II Sung’s words now attest to the son’s; a star is said to have risen over the peak on the day he was born. Says a Russian diplomat in Pyongyang: “It’s unbelievable how quickly they managed to change one ’truth’ into another.”
It’s an open question whether North Koreans will swallow the new “truth”–or rebel. Sato gives a Kim Jong II administration six months or less. Food shortages, discontent in the military and rising consciousness of North Korea’s relative poverty in the world spell his doom, he says. The Great Leader obviously intends to leave his son an heirloom. But it may be one too fragile to last.
