Gamal Nkrumah probes perils of Pyongyang's political permafrost in the wake of Dear Leader's demise and prospects of his Great Successor and precarious peace in Northeast Asia The "Great Successor" as Kim Il Un was ceremoniously christened by his Communist compatriots wrung the most mileage from the dependency syndrome his father "The Dear Leader" cultivated with the omnipotent People's Republic of China. The "Great Successor" only corralled the confirmation of the close relationship between Beijing and its proxy Pyongyang in Northeast Asia. The "Dear Leader", Kim Jong Il, allowed his favourite and youngest son to freely recycle the oldest trope: an insatiable susceptibility to Chinese capitalism, or market socialism. One that proved to be sturdier than adherence to the "Marxist" monarchy, the dynastic succession. The 28-year-old Kim Il Un, like his father and grandfather Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, presumably permits cult of the personality to control the contemporary Korean narrative. Indeed, in command of the army and the ruling Workers' Party of Korea, he in all probability will improve upon them. He controls, after all, no less than 70 nuclear warheads. He also towers above a host of 60-70 years old aging generals and 60-80 years old party stalwarts in a rubber-stamp parliament. He heads a million-strong army, the world's fifth largest. With such a formidable force at his disposal, the construct of the "Great Successor" is old enough to have a mythical equivalent -- his grandfather, the "Great Leader". Diligent as ever, the "Dear Leader" died ostensibly of "physical and mental overwork" according to a statement broadcast on the state controlled television. The "Dear Leader" dismissed his elder son Kim Jong Chul as an avaricious virago, "too effeminate in character" to assume the mantle of leadership. The "Great Successor" was appointed heir presumptive after another half-brother Kim Jong Nam had been sidelined. The irony is that the personal chef of the late "Dear Leader", the Japanese national Kenji Fujimoto, added a rousing fillip and described the diabetic "Great Successor" who also suffers from hypertension as "exactly like his father, strong and manly". The cast off and dejected brothers and those of the ruling clique who disapproved of the designs of the dying "Dear Leader" did their best to spin the underhanded provocation of the powers that be in Pyongyang. The funeral of the "Dear Leader" is scheduled to be convened on 28 December, and Kim Jong Un would undoubtedly head the funeral committee. It promises to be replete with pomp and aplomb. The jettisoned elder brothers are equally right to keep their heads low for the time being because in a contest of political disingenuousness they could not rival their more politically savvy sibling. The winter in Pyongyang will most likely pass in a fever pitch of political inertia. It is difficult to escape the impression that the "Great Successor" has no desire for an epic battle or confrontation with his Western and Japanese adversaries. As far as the domestic and South Korean front is concerned, the air is pulsed with implausible contentions and hearsay. With Beijing as powerbroker it is easier to elicit the kinds of omens or political scenarios that Pyongyang prefers. China, after all, has the longest borders with North Korea. Beijing is Pyongyang's biggest trading partner by far. Beijing bestowed upon the late Kim Jong Il, the "Dear Leader", unprecedented accolades. He visited China twice this year and in sharp contrast to the "Great Successor" he was schooled and groomed for leadership. His political debut coincided with his officiating over his ailing father's 80th birthday in 1992. Kim Jong Il assumed office in 1994. When the name of the Kim Jong Un was mooted as a successor to his father at the helm of North Korea military and political apparatuses, some worried that such a youthful leader would throw geopolitical restraint to the wind and let his formidable army train day and night. Critics said much the same about the "Dear Leader" two decades ago. How wrong they were. The real worry in Pyongyang is the eruption of an "Arab Spring". Pyongyang, or rather the political establishment of North Korea shares much in common with the ousted regimes of the Arab world. North Korea is a totalitarian, authoritarian, one-party state. The "Great Successor" like his predecessors, may be disciplined to an excess and clamp down hard on all forms of dissent. Unlike Arab strongmen, however, the "Great Successor" cannot pretend that chaos would ensue if he steps down. The Workers' Party of Korea does not just represent the proletariat, rather it encompasses the entire Korean society in a manner more akin to populist "national socialism". The ruling clique do not only claim to represent the interests of workers and peasants, but to uphold the very soul of the Korean nation, thus winning the hearts and minds of not just North Koreans but possibly a sizable minority of South Koreans. This perhaps explains why the North Korean peasantry suffered recurrent famines and economic hardship with such stoicism. Pyongyang is a bastion of Communist dictum and a Marxist-inspired regimen. The "Dear Leader" from his stronghold in Pyongyang peddled this line and there is no reason to assume that the "Great Successor" will not enthusiastically peddle this very same strait-laced line as puritanically as his predecessors. There are those in the West who believe that his job is to show independence from his predecessors, and above all from fellow Communist China, otherwise he will be laying the tinder for civil war in the Korean Peninsula, prompting a NATO intervention this time with Japanese participation. Northeast Asia is one of the most politically volatile regions in the world. Korea is in the heart of this strategic region where the territorial powers of China and Russia converge, and the island-nation of Japan is too close for comfort as far as the Chinese and Russians are concerned. The United States of America is a superpower that is quite capable of setting the region alight. The Chinese have a saying that China and Korea are as close as gums are to teeth. For decades North Korea has contended that the US plotted to destroy it. There is another consideration as well, a spectre that no one involved in the Korean deliberations should ignore -- once again, Japan. US President Barack Obama expressed his anxiety over the peripheralisation of Japan. Japan, after all, remains Washington's most reliable ally in Northeast Asia. "The president underscored the US commitment to the defence of our close allies, including Japan," read a recent White House statement. The main problem with Washington is that too few Asian countries fear it. Yet, compliance with Washington's Asian policy is non-negotiable as far as the US is concerned. South Korea is a different kettle of fish. There is a serious risk that the bitter ideological divisions that have scarred inter-Korean politics since World War II and the Korean War and throughout the Cold War could be reactivated. Where Kim Il Un stands on this particularly prickly point is unclear. The prospect of Korean reunification at any rate is one guaranteed to make the "Great Successor" groan. For the time being, in Pyongyang further privileges have rained down on the "Great Successor". Despite the Hermit Kingdom's attempts to keep the outside world at bay, the Western-educated "Great Successor" is more likely to conduct government business using a private e-mail and a sophisticated style unheard of since the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (North Korea) was proclaimed. The young and inexperienced Kim Il Un has been catapulted into the seat of power in Pyongyang, and Seoul is likely to try to use the opportunity to press for the reunification of Korea. The unexpected, or rather the inevitable, occurred sooner than anticipated. Kim Jong Il is gone and his body is now draped in crimson silk and laid in state alongside that of his late father, North Korea's founding president Kim Il Sung. The North Korean public, many women in particular grieving hysterically, paid their last respects to the ruling clique headed by the self-possessed "Great Successor" in Pyongyang's sumptuous Kumsusan Memorial Palace that was a favourite residence of Kim Il Sung. "Comrade Kim Jong Un is the unwavering spiritual and ideological pillar of our people," the official North Korean state television declared. Significantly it was also announced that Chinese President Hu Jintao paid his condolences to the North Korean embassy in Beijing in person -- a singular honour and a signal of the high esteem in which China holds Pyongyang. President Hu Jintao will be the only foreign dignitary to attend the state funeral of the late Korean leader Kim Jong Il. Neither South Korean President Lee Myung Bak nor Japanese Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda was invited for the solemn occasion. The declaration could not have been unexpected. The Communists of Korea and their Chinese benefactors are at least for now obligatory allies. To complicate matters, and parsing Seoul's motives even further, South Korean economic aid to North Korea has been a hopelessly thankless task. Pyongyang appears to be far more beholden to the Arab states that had in the past done brisk business with North Korea. Egypt under ex-president Hosni Mubarak was one of the closest military collaborators with North Korea in spite of the fact that Cairo was among Washington's chief Arab allies. The secret of Cairo's friendship with Pyongyang was Egypt's quest for nuclear-headed missiles. Washington turned a blind eye to the question of nuclear proliferation when it came to Cairo's flirtatious military ventures with Pyongyang. Mubarak sought the services of Pyongyang's military expertise and flew in North Korean pilots to train their Egyptian counterparts. The two countries cooperated militarily around the time of the October 1973 Arab-Israeli War. Egypt imported Soviet-era missiles from North Korea after the fall of the Soviet Union. Mubarak visited Pyongyang no less than four times during his presidency. Between 1983 and 1990, Mubarak was feted by his North Korean hosts as Mubarak's Egypt sought desperately to construct its own version of North Korea's SCUD-C missiles which can fly up to 600km depending on the payload. Egypt collaborated with Argentina and its old military associate North Korea on developing Argentina's Condor II and Egypt's Badr 2000 solid fuel, two-stage missile designed to fly 1,200km with a 500kg payload. Still Egypt cultivated economic ties and stronger diplomatic relations with Seoul with which it established full diplomatic relations in 1995. To meet surging commercial demands between Egypt and the rising economic power of South Korea, Egypt was forced to increasingly turn to South Korea, driven by Seoul's high-tech boom. Mubarak's Egypt, disappointingly, neither caught up economically with South Korea or was able to pull off the Great Successor trick by installing heir-apparent Gamal Mubarak. Typical of Communist Pyongyang's double dealing with capitalists, Egypt has emerged as one of the largest foreign investors in North Korea thanks in large measure to the assiduous efforts of one man, Egypt's wealthiest tycoon Naguib Sawiris, chairman of the Orascom Telecom group. Sawiris met Kim Jong Il and leading North Korean officials at the World Economic Forum convened in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh's in 2006. Intent on a mission that would secure him a deal that would provide North Korea with its first mobile phone network, KORYOLINK, Sawiris paid a visit to North Korea in January 2010 and had a private meeting with the Kim Jong Il. So, thanks to Orascom and Egypt's industrious telecommunications mogul the two countries have much in common both before and after the Mubarak era. Both Seoul and Pyongyang claim to be striving for reunification, so it's probably in the cards. Korea's key neighbours -- China and Japan -- will no doubt welcome such an important evolution of northeast Asian political economy as it would open up the North Korean economy to capitalist development. The Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) forecast a 3.8 per cent hike in per capita gross domestic product for South Korea -- an OECD member state -- in 2012. Seoul has embarked on an "aggressive FTA strategy aimed at expanding its world market share", noted the Financial Times. So certainly economically, the South will be in the driver's seat, though Beijing will issue the license. But if the German reunification experience is anything to go by, the economic prosperity that South Koreans enjoy will suffer a set-back, at least in the short run, if reunification becomes a reality. South Korea will bear the brunt of the prospective Korean reunification costs. The South Korean electorate is already fretting about increasing income inequality in an unabashedly capitalist economy controlled by the giant conglomerates, or Chaebol. And there are burgeoning signs that Chaebol-bashing is on the rise as in Occupy Wall Street anti-capitalist style. So a delicious irony would be if the South ends up adopting socialism at the same time as it swallows up its poor northern Communist brother.
