North Korean House of Cards

2. The Personal Secretariat under Kim Jong-un
As noted above, before Kim Jong-il died, he took great measures to revive
the Party apparatus in order to create a formal leadership environment for his son.
The Party gives legitimacy to Kim Jong-un’s status as Supreme Leader. It also
provides formal mechanisms through which Kim can steer and execute policy. What
Kim Jong-il allegedly left to his son to accomplish was the construction of his own
Personal Secretariat. Because of the sensitive nature of this institution, the Leader
must be directly responsible for choosing its members. Loyalty and long-standing
relationships are critical to its mode of operation.
According to some Pyongyang-watchers and senior-level defectors, Kim
Jong-un began to construct his Personal Secretariat soon after he became heir
apparent in 2009. 338 For the next few years, his apparatus was closely tied to the
SOCC. 339 This makes sense because Kim Jong-un would increasingly be given access
to the reports coming and going from Kim Jong-il’s office. After Kim Jong-un
became the official heir apparent in the wake of the Third Party Conference in 2010,
he was given more situational awareness and allowed to receive reports as they made
their way to his father. Some Pyongyang-watchers have speculated that Kim Jong-un
not only received these reports, but also was allowed to make comments as they were
processed so that his father would understand his point of view on matters of state. 340
Kim Jong-un’s Personal Secretariat most likely played an important role in assisting
the heir apparent in understanding the reports and putting them in context. 341
Sometime shortly before or after Kim Jong-il’s death in December 2011,
Kim Jong-un’s Personal Secretariat began to separate from his father’s apparatus.
Descriptions of this new office are quite different from ones of his father’s Secretariat.
While Kim Jong-il’s Personal Secretariat has been described as huge, numbering
nearly 300 members at one point, Kim Jong-un’s office has recently been described
as more intimate, numbering fewer than fifty core members. 342 Its role, function,
338 Author’s discussions with senior-level defectors in Seoul, 2009 and 2010.
339 Ibid.
340 There is some debate among Pyongyang-watchers in Seoul over what types of reports Kim
Jong-un was allowed to see. Some contend that his access did not extend to reports pertaining to the
military or foreign affairs, but he was allowed to access these reports later.
341 Author’s interviews with numerous senior North Korean defectors in Seoul, 2002 to 2010.
This picture of how Kim Jong-un’s Personal Secretariat functioned early on stands in stark contrast to
defector reports of how Kim Jong-il used his Personal Secretariat. By the late 1980s and early 1990s, Kim
Jong-il’s apparatus was reportedly bugging Kim Il-sung’s offices and determining which reports the Suryong
would see. In this way, Kim Jong-il was increasingly responsible for running the regime while limiting Kim
Il-sung’s situational awareness.
342 Author’s interview with a defector who has ties with the regime, April 2013.
Ken E. Gause
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