Kim Jong-eun Takes A Step Forward to the Presidency of NK

The son of the actual president of North Korea has received the backing of the military structure of the country, a very powerful and influential one in this country, for his election as the successor of Kim Jong-il to the presidency of the country.

Kim Jong-eun, the third son of Kim Jong-il, was elected as the representative of the army at the conference of the North Korean Workers’ Party that starts today in Pyongyang, the capital of this Communist country.

After this election, the party’s central committee put out a notice in which they proclaimed Kim Jong-eun “the sole successor” of his father, according to the largest newspaper in South Korea.

Although the state media didn’t give any detail about the conference that is being held in the capital city of the country, the most important one in the last 30 years, they did promise that the outcome of it will be “historic.”

The last such meeting was held in 1980, when Kim Jong-il was appointed as “sole successor” of his father. After 14 years of apprenticeship, Kim Jong-il became the president of North Korea, in 1994, after the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, the founder of the party and even of the North Korean Communist country.

It has been weeks since the international media speculated about the possibility that the same rite of passage may happen at this party gathering. All the signs indicate this, from the “ritual” voyage to China to the propaganda surrounding the personality of Kim Jong-eun.

Thus, in August, Kim Jong-il undertook a secret voyage to China, to the village where his father had attended primary school. Commentators consider that Kim went there in order to create a symbolic linkage to the personality of his father intended to remind the people of NK that the Kim family is the founding family of the country.

In China, South Korean sources report, Kim was accompanied by his son, though it is very hard to assess that given that his son is a perfect stranger, unknown to the people in his country and to the world media, too.

Anyway, it looks like Kim succeeded in convincing Hu Jintao, the President of China, that the succession to the “throne” is a guarantee that the current North Korean policy, especially the one concerning the nuclear program, will remain unchanged.

The next week after the visit, by the time the people of NK were being made aware of the great achievements of their leader in China, Hu Jintao advocated the resumption of negotiations regarding the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.

The gathering of the Workers’ Party was supposed to be held two weeks ago but it was postponed. The official excuse is that the typhoon that hit the country made it impossible for some delegates to attend.

In reality, the typhoon had occurred two weeks before the moment the gathering was supposed to happen. Which made the analysts speculate again that the real reason behind the cancellation of the gathering was that the leader of the party had not come to an agreement on something important, most likely the succession of Kim Jong-eun to the “throne”.

On this occasion the state media announced for the first time the number of victims of the typhoon, unprecedented gesture construed by the experts as a means to cover the real reasons behind the cancellation of the gathering.

In the imagery plan some changes occurred, too. For starters, the son of Kim was introduced in the structures of the party. Then, the official titles concerning the leaders of the party were changed. Thus, the title “eternal president” was lifted from Kim Il-sung’s shoulders and placed upon Kim Jong-il’s, who ceased to be the “Dear Leader,” and became the “Eternal Leader,” while the founder of the country remains simply “The President.”