North Korea's Kim Makes Powerful Juche Step as Pyongyang Suffocates

The visit of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Il to China surrounded by a veil of secrecy triggered a wave of various theories in the media. Meanwhile, the media of the DPRK have not reported on the Beijing visit of Kim Jong Il.

The KCNA agency noted on Thursday that the leader of the country supervised the work of one of Pyongyang industrial enterprises on-site, while no specific dates were named. Chinese media and official sources also remain silent about the arrival of the leader of DPRK to China. The fact of the Pyongyang visit of the leader to Beijing is based solely on the assumptions of South Korean analysts, who likely based them on the dispatches of his agents to the DPRK.

According to South Korean news agency Yonhap, the armored train of the chairman of the Defense Committee of the DPRK and the top leaders of the country crossed the border with China at dawn, but it got there not through the usual route via the border cities of Sinuiju and Dandong, but through the city of Manpho in the mountainous province of Chagang and went to the province Jilin.

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There are indications that Kim Jong Il traveled to China. What exactly was the purpose of the visit and the destination, and where the North Korean leader had arrived, is currently being investigated, said a source from Yonhap agency.

According to South Korean TV channel YTN, which refers to a source close to the president of South Korea, during his visit to China Kim Jong Il was accompanied by his youngest son, Kim Jong Un.

The latter information immediately raised a number of theories that the “beloved leader” decided to show his “elder brothers” in Beijing his new North Korean dauphin, who will inherit unlimited full power of his parent. Sam Kim Jong Il, as we know, also received it from his father, the “Great Leader,” the first head of the North Korean state and the founder of the Workers' Party of Korea Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994.

According to the line of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK), the revolution cannot be completed within one generation, and management of this process should be transferred to the next one. According to the DPRK, it is best when the power is transferred from father to son, to avoid the consequences of the regime change that have been observed in China and the former Soviet Union. However, until recently, all the assumptions about the transfer of power in Pyongyang to one of the sons of Kim Jong Il were based on mere guesses.

Kim Jong Il, in spite of media reports on the deterioration of health appearing from time to time, is firmly holding the reins of power in the DPRK.

North Korean leader rarely leaves his country. The last time he was away from Pyongyang for a visit to China in early May. The extraordinariness of the current visit to China causes analysts to link this trip to the first North Korea Conference of representatives of the Workers' Party of Korea in the last 40 years. This is the place where in early September a smooth transfer of power to the new “beloved leader” may occur.

However, there is not a word about it in the lead story of Rodong Sinmun newspaper. Instead, the chief party organ of the WPK emphasizes: “The monolithic unity around Kim Jong Il's ideological purity, organizational integrity and unity of action – that’s the revolutionary character of our party, which will be even more clearly demonstrated at the party conference.” So the demonstration of the North Korean Dauphin is only one theory of Kim Jong Il's visit to Beijing.

Among other theories, the Director of the Center for International Development and Cooperation of South Korea's Institute of Foreign Economic Policy Cho Myong Chol named the desire of North Korean leader to obtain military aid of Beijing in the face of threats from Washington, Tokyo and Seoul.

According to South Korean TV and radio channel, currently joint training Chhunmu-9000 is held by the United States and the Ministry of National Unification of South Korea. Their purpose is “working out military option of surrender of North Korea, which will require joint efforts to stabilize the North.” In particular, employees of government departments in South Korea are preparing for the transfer of management of the governmental structures of the DPRK and the integration of population after the end of the stabilization measures. Currently the exercises that have been held under the maneuvers “Eulji - Freedom Guardian” since August16 involve, according to the media, 30,000 U.S. military.

Increased military maneuvers obviously disturb the North Korean leaders, who until recently threatened to give “strong physical response” to South Korean militarists. But to perform this in practice, and not just words, Pyongyang requires both military and political support of Beijing. In addition, the country is now in dire need of economic aid from its northern neighbor after the devastating floods this summer.

Another theory, which analysts do not rule out, is the possibility of resuming negotiations on the denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. If Kim Jong Il is indeed in China, experts say, this topic may be again touched upon during the negotiations with the Chinese leadership.