Recently-released images of North Korean heir apparent Kim Jong-un, which reveal his boyish looks, may be raising doubt among citizens in the North over his ability to succeed his father, defectors here said Sunday. The North’s state media released last week the first verifiable images of an adult Kim, the youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, during a rare party meeting that elevated him to high posts, paving the way for his eventual succession. Believed to be 27 years old, the junior Kim appeared portly, with a youthful face. “They’re not complaining about it openly, but in truth, North Koreans have little faith in Kim Jong-un after seeing the photographs because he still appears too young and because he lacks experience,” Seo Jae-pyong, head of Seoul-based activist group North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity, told The Korea Times, citing contacts there. The North Korean defector estimated that only 20 percent of the population supports the heir apparent, compared to a much higher level enjoyed by Kim Jong-il when he took the reins from his own father, country founder Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994. Experts say Kim Il-sung was well-loved among the people, and that Kim Jong-il’s popularity fell as the North’s centralized economy crumbled in the 1990s. Kim Seung-min, a representative of Free North Korea Radio, said defectors here generally believe that those in the North will view Kim Jong-un as too young and that his weight could be a turn-off as well. “I think it was a mistake to show the pictures, because he looks too well fed and well off. This may make some North Koreans uncomfortable, as they have been suffering for many years from starvation and poverty,” he said. The economy promises to be one of the main challenges for Jong-un if he manages to succeed his father. Though the details of the succession process remain veiled, analysts expect a gradual shift of responsibility from father to son, with Kim Jong-il remaining in control until he dies. But a lack of popularity among the populace could prove to be a stumbling block for the process, said Brian Myers, an expert at Busan’s Dongseo University. “This (Jong-un’s appearance) is going to add to the propaganda apparatus’ main problem, which is countering the perception among North Koreans that Kim Jong-un was born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” he said. Kim Jong-il faced a similar problem, the expert said, but 20 years of apprenticeship allowed time for a personality cult to be built around him. Jong-un is not expected to have nearly as much time, with leader Kim’s health faltering after a reported stroke in 2008. Myers said if the regime loses popular support, it would have difficulty maintaining a stable population, saying it could lead to a greater number of defections through a porous border with China. “So far the North has lost virtually none of its elite or even the middle class to defections, but if this changes, there could be a snowball effect,” he said. An increase in propaganda extolling Kim Jong-un’s work ethic and how well he has taken care of his father, should be expected, he said, though he doubts whether it will be sufficient and expects to see a “general increase in disillusionment with the regime.” At least one defector, however, assessed the images in a light more favorable to the regime. Kim Heung-kwang of the intellectuals group, who in the North was a professor at a communist party university, said video footage of Jong-un shows he has successfully adopted the manners of the North Korean leadership, including how to applaud properly. Public support for the new leadership now depends on the regime’s ability to “market” Jong-un, defector Seo said, adding that Kim Jong-il will have to implement positive policy changes to prove the family can manage the country properly.
The problems of succession are at least problems we can recognize. It's a narrative that can be understood. Succession has been one of the dominant themes of Western storytelling for millennia – the major question behind Shakespeare's history dramas, for example. To a strangely precise degree, the succession of Kim Jong-un follows the pattern of Prince Hal in the Henry IV plays.
Shakespeare wrote the Henry IV tetralogy of plays against the political backdrop of another cult of personality. Queen Elizabeth I was in the middle of turning herself into Gloriana, the Virgin Queen – compensating for her failure to marry and produce an heir with an iconography of her own permanence and power. In the 1570s, the threat of civil war from religious differences in England and from political faction at court were so significant that the Queen appointed specific homilies to be read by law in every church in England every Sunday (and church attendance was mandatory). One of the major themes of the homilies was how, no matter how unjust the leadership of the sovereign, no man could stretch a hand “against the Lord's Anointed,” a phrase that might have been culled from North Korean propaganda.
The Wars of the Roses, which Queen Elizabeth's grandfather, Henry VII, had ended, made natural material for Shakespeare. The greatest character in these plays is Prince Hal, later Henry V, whose succession consumes the bulk of the action in Henry IV, Parts One and Two. Prince Hal employs a succession strategy that was entirely Shakespeare's invention. He avoids court and consciously leads a wild youth so as to surprise his subjects when he does emerge.
So, when this loose behaviour I throw off,
And pay the debt I never promised,
By how much better than my word I am,
By so much shall I falsify men's hopes.
Hal's elaborate plan – to hide himself, to appear outside the law so that he can more fully represent the law – is also the plan of the North Koreans in choosing Kim Jong-un. His elder brother, Kim Jong-nam, was the heir apparent until he was caught travelling to Japan under a fake passport to see Tokyo Disneyland. Not only was that journey embarrassing, but it also provided too much information.
Like Hal, Kim Jong-un is a perfect blank. Nobody even knows how old he is. Also like Hal, he represents exactly the opposite of what one might expect of a next “Dear Leader.” We know so little about him that every scrap of knowledge rings with significance. We know that he is young. We know that he was educated outside North Korea, in Bern, Switzerland. And we know that the state is promoting his computer knowledge, sometimes addressing him as CNC, or Computer Numerical Control.
All three descriptions represent the antithesis of the North Korean system. Alongside its Stalinism, North Korea has preserved a strong Confucian streak, with its inherent respect for age. (When Kim Jong-il took over the country, he refrained from using his own name for three years, following Confucian practice.) The country's official policy is juche, self-reliance. And it does not permit access to the Internet for any but the top party officials. In other words, Kim Jong-un, the pre-Leader – young, educated abroad and computer-savvy – represents exactly the forces that he will repress as Leader.
Hal became Henry V, one of England's greatest kings, the man who led his people to victory at Agincourt. Kim Jong-un will inherit a country so steeped in ruin and starvation that its inmates experience Chinese prison camps as liberation. Both have to handle succession the same way, by standing outside the system they will some day inherit.
Stephen Marche is a novelist and the culture columnist for Esquire magazine.