The Great Successor

by Fifield, Anna;

  I have my father, Brian, to thank for my love of reading and also my love of travel and other cultures. Once I became a foreign correspondent, he flinched only slightly when I told him I was off to Baghdad or Tehran or Pyongyang. Thank you for always believing in me, Dad. And thank you for your steady support too, Janine.

  When I was offered the job of moving to Japan for the Washington Post, my mother, Christine, left her comfortable life in New Zealand to move overseas for the first time. Through four years in Tokyo, she took loving care of my son, enabling me to travel extensively and write at all hours. Mum, I couldn’t have done this without you.

  Thank you most of all to my son, Jude, who endured my absences while I went off to collect more pieces of this puzzle and my distraction while I was present. May the children of North Korea soon be able to speak as freely, explore as widely, and watch as much Netflix as you.

  Anna Fifield

  Beijing

  March 2019

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  Anna Fifield is the Beijing bureau chief for the Washington Post. She previously spent eight years reporting on North Korea, first for the Financial Times and then for the Post, and has visited North Korea a dozen times. She was a Nieman journalism fellow at Harvard University, studying how change happens in closed societies, and received the Shorenstein journalism award from Stanford University in 2018 for her outstanding reporting on Asia.

  PRAISE FOR THE GREAT SUCCESSOR

  “There is, quite simply, no journalist in any language who has done more to unearth and tell the astounding story of Kim Jong Un than Anna Fifield. The Great Successor slashes through myths to yield the first essential and vivid biography of the man and his era.”

  —Evan Osnos, author of Age of Ambition: Chasing Fortune, Truth, and Faith in the New China

  “Intelligent, insightful, sometimes comic, and also worrying: Anna Fifield has written a vivid, compelling, and, above all, illuminating portrait of a rogue family’s rule over the world’s most reclusive nation.”

  —General David Petraeus (US Army, Ret.), director of the CIA when Kim Jong Un became leader

  “Anna Fifield owns the North Korea story today in a way that few other journalists, myself included, have ever been able to do. She claims mastery over this most elusive subject.”

  —Barbara Demick, author of the best-selling Nothing to Envy

  “With a journalist’s eye for detail and with the gift of a storyteller, Anna Fifield has written the quintessential bible on Kim Jong Un. No one working to solve the North Korean puzzle should let The Great Successor sit on a bookshelf; it’s a must-read.”

  —Ambassador Wendy R. Sherman, former undersecretary of state for political affairs and author of Not for the Faint of Heart: Lessons in Courage, Power, and Persistence

  “An important, riveting, and detailed account of the rise of Kim Jong Un. Anna Fifield, who is an intrepid reporter and a lively writer, breaks important new ground in The Great Successor. Drawing on a broad array of sources, including remarkable defector accounts, she paints a disturbing portrait of a country fueled by heady delusions of military strength; a potent, bizarre ideology; an unflinching devotion to nuclear weapons; and a disturbing addiction to crystal methamphetamine. Spoiler alert: be prepared for a lot of gore.”

  —Evans J. R. Revere, senior advisor with the Albright Stonebridge Group and former senior state department official with fifty years of experience working on Korea

  “I loved reading Anna Fifield when she had the Korea beat for the Post, and now she has outdone herself with the first English-language biography of the most opaque and mysterious leader in the world. Carefully crafted from her reporting with additional research, fieldwork, and exclusive interviews with those close to and in the Kim family, The Great Successor peels back the layers to reveal Kim Jong Un’s psyche and the ominous future of the country over which he presides. A must-read for the general and expert reader!”

  —Victor Cha, Korea chair at the Center for International and Strategic Studies and author of The Impossible State: North Korea, Past and Future

  “The Great Successor shows how a pudgy young heir to tyranny—using fratricide, nuclear terror, crony capitalism, and strategic flattery of a vain American president—has become a sure-footed Machiavelli for the twenty-first century. In this devastating portrait of the latest dictator named Kim, Anna Fifield expertly dissects North Korea’s first family of despotism.”

  —Blaine Harden, author of Escape from Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West

  “The Great Successor is a tour de force of reporting. Anna Fifield has penetrated the secrecy and myths surrounding Kim Jong Un to provide a remarkable, multilayered portrait of North Korea’s youthful and enigmatic leader. The ruler depicted in this book, which is based on Fifield’s interviews with an impressive range of people who have had contact with Kim or experience inside his system, plus insights gleaned from her own travel as a journalist in North Korea, is not the bomb-throwing ‘rocket man’ so often mocked and caricatured. Instead, Kim Jong Un comes across as smart, ruthless, diplomatically savvy, and determined to survive at all costs. An essential guide to understanding the man who could well be in charge of North Korea for decades.”

  —Mike Chinoy, former CNN senior Asia correspondent and author of Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Korean Nuclear Crisis

  NOTES

  CHAPTER 1: THE BEGINNING

  1 Korean Pictorial, January 1986 issue.

  2 Lee U Hong, Angu na kyowakoku: Kita Chosen kogyo no kikai (Tokyo: Aki shobo, 1990), 20.

  3 Descriptions of seeds and agricultural methods from Lee, 32, 118, 168.

  4 Yi Han-yong, Taedong River Royal Family: My 14 Years Incognito in Seoul (Seoul: Dong-a Ilbo, 1996).

  5 Ju-min Park and James Pearson, “In Kim Jong Un’s Summer Retreat, Fun Meets Guns,” Reuters, October 10, 2017.

  6 Kim Il Sung, With the Century, vol. 2 (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1992), 54.

  7 Details about Stalin’s plans for Kim Il Sung, Cho Man Sik, and Kim Il Sung’s banquets come from Blaine Harden, The Great Leader and the Fighter Pilot (New York: Penguin Books, 2015), 64–66.

  8 Details about Kim Il Sung’s return to North Korea and the Soviet view of him come from Bradley K. Martin, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty (New York: Griffin, 2006), 46–52.

  9 Details about Kim Il Sung’s reception at the rally come from Harden, 67.

  10 Martin, Under the Loving Care, 52–53; Andrei Lankov, The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), 6.

  11 Baik Bong, Kim Il Sung, vol. 2 (Tokyo: Miraisha Publishing, 1970), 55–56.

  12 Martin, Under the Loving Care, 67.

  13 Bruce Cumings, The Korean War: A History (New York: Modern Library Edition, 2010), 152.

  14 Blaine Harden, “The US War Crime North Korea Won’t Forget,” Washington Post, March 24, 2015.

  15 Strategic Air Warfare: An Interview with Generals Curtis E. LeMay, Leon W. Johnson, David A. Burchinal, and Jack J. Catton, edited and with an introduction by Richard H. Kohn and Joseph P. Harahan (Office of Air Force History, US Air Force, 1988), 88.

  16 “Record of a Conversation with Illarion Dmitriyevich Pak, Chairman of the Jagang Provincial People’s Committee,” April 13, 1955, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, RGANI fond 5, opis 28, delo 314. Translated for NKIDP by Gary Goldberg. https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/116308.

  17 Suh Dae-sook, Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), 302.

  18 Don Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas: A Contemporary History (New York: Little, Brown and Company, 1998), 347.

  19 “GDR Ambassador Pyongyang to Ministry for Foreign Affair
s, Berlin,” April 14, 1975, History and Public Policy Program Digital Archive, Political Archive of the Foreign Office, Ministry of Foreign Affairs (PA AA, MfAA), C 6862.

  20 Kim Hakjoon, Dynasty: The Hereditary Succession Politics of North Korea (Stanford, CA: Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2017), 87.

  21 Kim Jong Il, Brief History (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1998).

  22 Oberdorfer, The Two Koreas, 341.

  23 David Sanger, “Kim Il Sung Dead at 82,” New York Times, July 9, 1994.

  24 Anna Fifield, “Selling to Survive,” Financial Times, November 20, 2007.

  25 Kim Hakjoon, Dynasty, 131.

  26 Ri Nam Ok, Kim Jong Nam’s cousin, thought that Ko Yong Hui was behind this move. From Imogen O’Neil’s unpublished book, The Golden Cage: Life with Kim Jong Il, a Daughter’s Story.

  27 O’Neil, The Golden Cage.

  28 Kim Hakjoon, Dynasty, 153.

  29 Kenji Fujimoto, I Was Kim Jong-il’s Cook (Tokyo: Fusosha Publishing, 2003).

  CHAPTER 2: LIVING WITH THE IMPERIALISTS

  1 Immortal Anti-Japanese Revolutionary, Teacher Kim Hyong Jik (Pyongyang: Publishing House of the Workers’ Party of Korea, 1968), 93–94.

  2 Yi Han-yong, Taedong River Royal Family: My 14 Years Incognito in Seoul (Seoul: Dong-a Ilbo, 1996).

  3 David Halberstam. The Coldest Winter: America and the Korean War (New York: Hachette Books, 2007), 80.

  4 Robert S. Boynton, The Invitation-Only Zone: The True Story of North Korea’s Abduction Project (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016), 33.

  5 Yoji Gomi, Three Generations of Women in North Korea’s Kim Dynasty (Tokyo: Bunshun Shinso, 2016).

  6 Ko Yong-gi, “A Curious Blood Line Connecting Kim Jong Un and Osaka,” Daily North Korea, December 14, 2015.

  7 Sin Yong Hui’s memoir, cited in the South Korean media, including by investigative journalist Cho Gab-je in a post on chogabje.com on June 26, 2012.

  8 Anecdotes of Kim Jong Un’s Life (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2017), 49.

  9 Details about the houses and provisions come from Imogen O’Neil’s unpublished book The Golden Cage: Life with Kim Jong Il, a Daughter’s Story.

  CHAPTER 3: ANONYMOUS IN SWITZERLAND

  1 According to an author interview with Thomas Bach, former president of the International Olympic Committee.

  2 Guy Faulconbridge, “North Korean Leaders Used Brazilian Passports to Apply for Western Visas,” Reuters, February 28, 2018.

  3 Evan Thomas, “North Korea’s First Family,” Newsweek, July 17, 2009.

  4 Andrew Higgins, “Who Will Succeed Kim Jong Il?” Washington Post, July 16, 2009.

  5 Mira Mayrhofer and Gunther Müller, “Nordkorea: Kim Jong-un Wird auf die Machtübernahme Vorbereitet,” Profil (Austria), September 21, 2010.

  6 According to an unpublished interview conducted by Swiss journalist Bernhard Odehnal.

  7 “Kim Jung-un mochte Nike Air-Turnschuhe, aber keine Mädchen,” Berner Zeitung, October 6, 2010.

  8 Higgins, “Who Will Succeed.”

  9 Interview with Odehnal.

  10 Information from Simon Lutstorf about Kim Jong Un’s basketball games at the high school comes from Titus Plattner, Daniel Glaus, and Julian Schmidli, In Buglen und Kochen eine 4, SonntagsZeitung, April 1, 2012.

  11 “Revealed: Kim Jong-un the Schoolboy,” Al Jazeera English, November 7, 2010.

  12 Atika Shubert, “Swiss Man Remembers School with Son of North Korean Leader,” CNN, Sept. 29, 2010.

  13 Higgins, “Who Will Succeed.”

  14 Colin Freeman and Philip Sherwell, “North Korea Leadership: ‘My Happy Days at School with North Korea’s Future Leader,’” Daily Telegraph, September 26, 2010.

  15 “Kim Jong-Un Mochte Nike Air-Turnschuhe, Aber Keine Mädchen,” Berner Zeitung, October 6, 2010.

  16 Interview with Odehnal.

  CHAPTER 4: DICTATORSHIP 101

  1 Details about songs on the airwaves and speculation in the South Korean press come from Kim Hakjoon, Dynasty: The Hereditary Succession Politics of North Korea (Stanford, CA: Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center, 2017), 156–158.

  2 Anecdotes of Kim Jong Un’s Life (Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 2017), 4.

  3 “Kim Jong Il’s Doctor Opens Up on ’08 Stroke,” Associated Press, December 19, 2011.

  4 Jamy Keaten and Catherine Gaschka, “French Doctor Confirms Kim Had Stroke in 2008,” Associated Press, December 19, 2011.

  5 Lee Yung-jong, Successor Kim Jong Un (Seoul: NP Plus, 2010).

  6 Thae Yong-ho, Password from the Third-Floor Secretariat (Seoul: Giparang, 2018), 280.

  7 According to Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute.

  8 “‘Mother of Military-first Chosun’ Made Public,” Daily NK, July 12, 2012.

  9 Cho Jong Ik, “‘Great Mother’ Revealed to the World,” Daily NK, June 30, 2012.

  10 Christopher Richardson, “North Korea’s Kim Dynasty: The Making of a Personality Cult,” Guardian, February 16, 2015.

  11 Barbara Demick, “Nothing Left,” New Yorker, July 12, 2010.

  12 Demick, “Nothing Left.”

  13 Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Witness to Transformation: Refugee Insights into North Korea (Washington, DC: Peterson Institute for International Economics, 2010).

  14 “N. Korean Technocrat Executed for Bungled Currency Reform,” Yonhap News Agency, March 18, 2010.

  15 Kim Hakjoon, Dynasty, 176.

  16 “Kim Jong Il Issues Order on Promoting Military Ranks,” Korean Central News Agency, September 27, 2010.

  CHAPTER 5: A THIRD KIM AT THE HELM

  1 Ken Gause, “North Korean Leadership Dynamics and Decision-Making under Kim Jong-un: A Second-Year Assessment,” CNA, March 2014, 2.

  2 Gause, “North Korean Leadership Dynamics,” 110.

  3 Gause, “North Korean Leadership Dynamics,” 3.

  CHAPTER 6: NO MORE BELT TIGHTENING

  1 Stephan Haggard and Marcus Noland, Famine in North Korea: Markets, Aid, and Reform (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), 187.

  2 According to Curtis Melvin, a researcher at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins University in the United States.

  3 Benjamin Katzeff Silberstein, Growth and Geography of Markets in North Korea: New Evidence from Satellite Imagery (US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, October 2015), 29–36.

  4 Kang Mi-jin, “Stall Transfers Yield Big Profits at the Market,” Daily NK, May 14, 2015.

  5 Cha Moon-seok, Information about North Korea’s Market: Focusing on Current Status of Its Official Market (Seoul: Korean Institute for National Unification, 2016).

  6 Kim Byung-ro, “North Korea’s Marketization and Changes in the Class Structure,” from The Economy and Society in the Kim Jong-Un Era: New Relationship between the State and Market, edited by Yang Moon-soo (Paju: Haneul Academy, 2014).

  7 Yonho Kim, North Korea’s Mobile Telecommunications and Private Transport Services in Kim Jong Un Era (US-Korea Institute at SAIS, 2018).

  8 Yonho Kim, North Korea’s Mobile Telecommunications.

  CHAPTER 7: BETTER TO BE FEARED THAN LOVED

  1 “N. Korea Requires Students to Take 81-hour Course on Kim Jong-un,” KBS, November 25, 2014.

  2 Helen-Louise Hunter, “The Society and Its Environment,” in North Korea: A Country Study, edited by Robert L. Worden, 79–86 (Federal Research Office, Library of Congress, 2008), 85–86.

  3 James Pearson, “The $50 Device That Symbolizes a Shift in North Korea,” Reuters, March 26, 2015.

  4 Greg Scarlatoiu, preface to Coercion, Control, Surveillance, and Punishment: An Examination of the North Korean Police State (Washington: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012), 5.

  5 Hunter, “The Society and Its Environment,” 79–80.

  6 Andrei Lankov, “The Evolution of North Korea’s ‘Inminban,’” NK News, April 28, 2015.

  7 Andrei Lankov, �
��Daily Life in North Korea,” Al Jazeera, May 21, 2014.

  8 Kang Dong-wan, Hallyu Phenomenon in North Korea: Meaning and Impact (Institute for Unification Education of South Korea), 73–74.

  9 David Hawk, Parallel Gulag (Washington: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2017), 21.

  10 David Hawk, The Hidden Gulag: The Lives and Voices of “Those Who Are Sent to the Mountains” (Washington: Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, 2012), 4.

  11 Hawk, Parallel Gulag, 11.

  12 All descriptions of torture are from the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea Report of Detailed Findings, 2014, 235.

  13 Commission of Inquiry report, 2014, 124.

  14 Hawk, Parallel Gulag, 31.

  15 Anna Fifield, “North Korea’s Prisons Are as Bad as Nazi Camps, Says Judge Who Survived Auschwitz,” Washington Post, December 11, 2017.

  CHAPTER 8: GOODBYE, UNCLE

  1 Milan W. Svolik, The Politics of Authoritarian Rule (UK: Cambridge Studies in Comparative Politics, 2012), 5.

  2 Ju-min Park and James Pearson, “North Korea Executes Defence Chief with an Anti-Aircraft Gun: South Korea Agency,” Reuters, May 13, 2015.

  3 Ra Jong-yil, Jang Song Thaek’s Path: A Rebellious Outsider (Seoul: ALMA, 2016).

  4 Ra, Jang Song Thaek’s Path, 145.

  5 Ra, Jang Song Thaek’s Path, 167.

  6 “Kim’s Niece Kills Herself in Paris,” JoongAng Daily, September 18, 2006.

  7 Andray Abrahamian, The ABCs of North Korea’s SEZs (US-Korea Institute at SAIS, 2014).

  8 Ra, Jang Song Thaek’s Path, 254.

  9 Thae Yong-ho, Password from the Third-Floor Secretariat (Seoul: Giparang, 2018), 328.

  10 Alexandre Mansourov, “North Korea: The Dramatic Fall of Jang Song Thaek,” 38 North, December 9, 2013.