North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

ombardment and military occupation in the 1940s and remains one of the symbols of Japanese
national power and unity today.
It is no wonder that despite traditional Korean-Japanese animosity, Kim Il Sung is said to
have advised Kim Jong Il repeatedly to step back from the domestic political arena and economic
policy-making and leave both to the party and government officials, while concentrating his
energy on cultivating national military power, advancing the international interests of the DPRK,
and acting as a symbol of national unity, sovereignty, and dignity before the North Korean
people and the world. If Kim Jong Il succeeds in redefining and re-legitimizing the constitutional
space for his absolute monarchy through bold constitutional compromises, and insulates it from
political and economic processes pressuring the North Korean society from inside and outside
through radical administrative reforms without undermining its charismatic legitimacy, then he
may be able to extend its life for generations to come.
The wild card is the set of pressures and incentives presented by the international
community in the years to come and the possible reaction of the North Korean national security
establishment to these changing external circumstances. If the continuous survival of the Kim
Jong Il clan eventually becomes an obstacle and a serious threat to the preservation of the
DPRK’s national sovereignty and independence for whatever reason (for instance, the threat of
the use of force against the regime is substantiated and becomes a “clear and present danger,” or
the increased possibility of Kim Jong Il’s “sell-out” with a “golden parachute” by striking a
behind-the-scenes deal on reunification with the ROK leaders, or the uncontrolled escalation of
internal civil and political strife fuelled by foreign penetration), then one cannot exclude the
possibility that the national security establishment, the primary guarantors and main beneficiaries
of the territorial integrity and national sovereignty of the DPRK, may orchestrate a swift palace
coup against or another car crash accident involving Kim Jong Il and his clan.
They witnessed what the Gorbachev reforms did to the old Soviet Union, which is no
more. They observed the chaos and destruction that took place under the liberal democratic
Yeltsin regime in the new Russia. Neither alternative is acceptable to them. But, the rise of
previously unknown foreign intelligence operative Putin from the bowels of the former Russian
KGB monster to unexpectedly take over the helm of the sinking Russian Titanic as a result of the
“Grey Colonels coup” inside the Kremlin, and his imposition on Russian chaos of a nationalistic
militaristic bureaucratic regime, spear-heading the state-capitalist development and restoring
Russia’s great power status may well appeal to their imagination.
In order to preserve the national sovereignty against the looming threat of the South-led
absorption and abolition of the North Korean state, fraught with the likely decapitation of the
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