Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, July 10, 1994 TAG: 9407100033
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: TERESA WATANABE LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: TOKYO LENGTH: Medium
He is suspected of masterminding international bombings and kidnappings blamed for killing more than 100 people.
The eldest son of Kim Il Sung, the communist dictator of Pyongyang's grim regime who died Friday, reportedly stages frequent orgies in his palatial villas. He is fearful of germs, a film fanatic with 20,000 videos and an ardent fan of Daffy Duck cartoons.
Such bizarre tales have long filtered out of Pyongyang from diplomats and defectors about Kim, 52, the pudgy, bespectacled scion of the Marxist world's only family dynasty. But whether they are true or false is impossible to say.
The only thing certain about the mysterious prince of Pyongyang is that almost nothing is known for certain about his character, his hold on power or his ability to govern his cloistered country. Nor is it clear how he intends to rescue an economy said to be near collapse, placate a people reduced to eating roots, manage North Korea's military of 1.1 million soldiers - the fourth-largest in the world - or deal with the country's nuclear program.
Only one Westerner is known to have met him, an Italian entrepreneur named Carlo Baeli who was treated to a lobster dinner cruise on one of Kim's pleasure boats in 1992. Kim has made only one known public utterance in his life - "Glory to the heroic Korean People's Army!" - which he shouted at the end of a two-hour military display in 1992. His speeches are read by narrators on television and the radio.
"He is a very mysterious person," said Ahn Byung Joon, a political science professor at Yonsei University. "We don't know much about his character, experience and ability. We know only his appearance and face on TV. For the time being, there is no doubt he will take over, but how long he will be able to rule is very difficult to say."
Clues as to how solid Kim's support base actually is may come during the next several days from the kinds of speeches he makes and policies he announces, said one Seoul-based expert on North Korea. One critical clue will be whether he assumes the three titles of general secretary, president and chairman of the military commission of the Korean Workers' Party - as well as whether he ascends from "Dear Leader," as he is called, to "Great Leader," as his father was known - this expert said.
The younger Kim has been groomed by his father to take over the helm for 20 years. He has aimed to solidify his support base since 1972, when he established the "three main revolutionary squads" to mobilize 40,000 new college graduates a year to build loyalty to Kim in the party, factories and schools.
Kim Jong Il is known to have faced opposition from a "veterans group" within the army. Diplomats say the conflict is generational and that many of the senior officials opposing him have been forced to retire or were reportedly executed.
In addition, analysts say, he is bitterly opposed by his stepmother, Kim Song Ae, and her allies in a long-running drama of palace intrigue. The hatred is said to be mutual: Kim reportedly cuts the face of his stepmother out of every photo in which she appears.
And unlike his charismatic father, who genuinely commanded public adoration, Kim is a recluse who mistrusts everyone and finds it difficult to meet people's eyes, much less make friends, analysts say.
The circumstances of his birth have been rewritten from a mundane event in frozen Siberia to a glorious miracle atop the Korean peninsula's highest and holiest mountain amid bright lights and a double rainbow.
Analysts who monitor North Korea say Kim shows two faces: a ruthless terrorist, and an economic reformist.
The trigger-happy image stems largely from suspicions that he masterminded the 1983 bombing in Burma, now Myanmar, that killed 17 South Korean officials and a 1987 in-air bombing of a South Korean airliner that killed all 115 people aboard.
In addition, he initiated two of North Korea's most recent belligerent acts: the decision to put North Korea on a "semi-war" footing on March 8, 1993, and the stunning announcement four days later that it was pulling out of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.
Some analysts at the time, however, said Kim's move was mainly to show his "boldness" in an attempt to consolidate his rule.
At the same time, he is known to have promoted economic reform. He was behind the establishment of the North's rare free-trade zone in the Tumen River estuary on the Chinese border and other moves beginning in the 1980s to woo more foreign investment and liberalize the economy.
A joint-venture law he supported in the early 1980s produced more than 100 enterprises - many of them financed by North Korean residents in Japan. But only 20 to 30 are still functioning today, said one economic expert.
Memo: NOTE: above