North Korean House of Cards

1. The Personal Secretariat under Kim Jong-il
In the 1970s, as Kim Jong-il was engineering the second hereditary succession,
he began to establish his own personal apparatus with the blessing of Kim Il-sung.
Although he had a personal office since the 1960s when he entered the Central
Committee, the Personal Secretariat that Kim Jong-il established in 1974 was geared
towards assisting him with the succession. During this period, the office was often
referred to as the Secretarial Office of the KWP OGD. This was part of Kim’s strategy
to develop a unified guidance system to solidify his father’s role as the unassailable
leader of the country. It also ensured that opposition to his role as heir apparent was
identified and eliminated.
Kim Jong-il looked to the Party apparatus to nest his Personal Secretariat,
leveraging the KWP OGD, the part of the Central Committee bureaucracy that
already served as his base of power within the leadership. His Personal Secretariat
had a direct tie to the OGD Secretariat, although it was a separate entity. 326 His new
office was staffed by OGD personnel who became known as “secretariat members.”
The original role of Kim Jong-il’s Personal Secretariat was to assist the new
heir apparent in carving out his position within the wider regime. Shortly after
being designated heir apparent in 1974, Kim Jong-il established a reporting system
throughout the regime. According to one source:
Information is power. Kim Jong-il was well aware of this. In order
to establish the unified guidance system, he set up a detailed
reporting-notification system, in which, every large and small matter
that arose in all sectors and units in all of North Korea, would be
quickly reported to him in detail. 327
To maximize situational awareness, Kim authorized his Personal Secretariat,
working through the OGD, to establish the “three-line, three-day reporting
notification system” and the “direct reporting system.” The “three-line, three-day
reporting notification system” referred to the Party organization channel, the
administrative channel, and the SSD channel. Based on this system, within three
326 Kim Jong-il’s Personal Secretariat was often referred to within the leadership as the Secretarial
Office of the KWP OGD. Although the Secretariat and the OGD were located on the same floor of the
Third Main Party Building in Pyongyang’s Central District and worked closely in processing information
to and from Kim’s office, they were distinct organizations.
327 Chong Chang-Hyon, Gyeoteso Bon Kim Jong-il [The Kim Jong-il that I saw] (Seoul: Kimyongsa,
2000). This book is based on interviews with Sin Kyong-Wan, former Deputy Director of the KWP PAD.
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