North Korean House of Cards

However, Ko Yong-hui died of breast cancer in 2004 at a hospital in Paris.
Within a year, Kim Jong-il put a halt to any discussion of succession within the
regime. This decision was largely driven by two considerations: 1) his desire to avoid
the creation of a second center of power and 2) the need to prevent the growth of
factions within the military and Party centered on potential successors. It was
apparently his fear that the eventual heir apparent could become mired in regime
politics, compromising his ability to consolidate power.
Simply stopping these discussions within the regime would not be enough.
Regime dynamics in the mid-2000s were unbalanced in favor of a politically active
OGD and a military leadership that was becoming increasingly powerful under
“Military First” (Songun) politics. Kim Jong-il decided to deal with the situation by
resorting to one of his preferred strategies—creating a counterweight. In order to
keep the military and the OGD in check, he reached out to the part of the Kim
family that had competed with Ko Yong-hui, namely Kim Kyong-hui and Jang
Song-taek. First, he brought Jang Song-taek back from political exile in 2006 and
shortly thereafter made him the head of the newly created KWP Administrative
Department, which had been carved out of the OGD. 103 This not only weakened
the OGD as an institutional actor, but also created a blocking mechanism within
the Central Committee apparatus to keep the OGD in check. 104 Second, Kim
Jong-il elevated Jang to Vice Chairman of the NDC and authorized him to oversee
and restructure the military’s trading rights. This move gave Jang the authority he
needed to build his own economic empire, at the expense of many existing military
hard currency operations. Finally, Kim turned over the responsibility for overseeing
the eventual transfer of power to Kim Jong-un to Kim Kyong-hui and Jang Song-taek,
essentially sanctioning what Ko’s allies secretly tried to do just years before.
With this authority, Jang Song-taek’s influence began to grow within the
regime. In addition to his oversight of the internal security apparatus, he also played
an increasingly important role in managing relations with China within the regime.
This became clear shortly after his return to power in 2006, when he led a delegation
to China to observe the special economic zones (SEZs) Kim Jong-il had visited
three months earlier. The delegation was entrusted with the mission of formulating
policy alternatives to address the economic difficulties in North Korea. The trip
prevented the gathering of senior leaders without Kim Jong-il’s authorization. According to some sources,
Ri Je-gang engineered Jang’s removal from the center of politics in 2004.
103 The KWP Administrative Department had once been an independent Central Committee
department before it was absorbed into the KWP OGD in the early 1990s.
104 While on the surface this seemed like a typical power move on the part of Kim Jong-il to
balance power within the Party apparatus, in truth, it was a very sensitive move that by weakening the
OGD risked undermining Kim’s own control on power.
Ken E. Gause
47