Factional in-fighting has broken out between Chang Song-taek, the rogue state's second-in-command, and a group of senior reform-minded officials, according to a source who has recently met people at the highest levels of the North Korean government.
| What's the difference between a 'hard-liner' and a 'reformist' in a genocidal state -- how quickly they work people to death? |
The battle between the two sides comes as Kim Jong-il, the 68-year-old "Dear Leader", is in frail health and no concrete succession plan has yet to emerge.
| Dr. Steve mentioned something about dialysis sometimes leading to sepsis... and then there's years of excessive cognac and the Dear Leader's private collection of pretty girls, the occasional one which he married. |
Chang, 64, is married to Kim's sister and "always believed the crown would be his [one day]", according to the source. His ambition may yet be fulfilled, since many observers believe he could take charge of North Korea as a regent while Kim's third son, the 28-year-old Kim Jong-un, gains experience.
| Last year Daddy gave Kim the Youngest the secret police to play with. I wonder how that went... |
However, Chang has recently seen his hardline views being challenged by a group of reformists, bent on opening up the North Korean economy to Chinese-style capitalism.
"There are normal people who know which direction they have to go in," said the source,
| Is this normal as the world defines such things, or normal for North Korea, where excessive paranoia is a perfectly reasonable response to the environment? |
who was approached by top North Korean officials and asked to invest in the country. "The government does want to open up, and the only thing stopping them from doing so is Chang," he added.
| And the Dear Leader himself, one presumes, as he's never before even hinted at an interest in being even slightly less closed on his countrymen's behalf, although there are areas of openness he's been very happy to explore for himself. |
The split in the Workers' Party, which echoes the division in the Chinese Communist party between hardliners and reformists during the 1970s and 1980s, may have prompted the recent two-week delay of the first party conference for nearly 45 years.
| Lots of people died as a result of that split in China, as I recall... |
The conference is now due to begin next week.
The in-fighting could also explain Moscow's bleak assessment of relations between North and South Korea, with Alexei Borodavkin, the deputy foreign minister, saying on Thursday: "Tensions on the Korean Peninsula could not be any higher. The only next step is a conflict."
| Civil war in the North? Because it seems that neither the politicians of South Korea nor the almost-lame-duck rulers in Washington are likely to seek open conflict with the north if there's any way they can find to avoid it. |
The views of the army high command could be critical in the struggle in North Korea and the source said Mr Chang had recently been attempting to bolster his support in that area. "The army has to throw its lot in [with one of the groups] and I don't think it has made its mind up yet," he said.
| The army may have noticed that the nail that sticks up gets hammered down, and in North Korea that means the entire extended family of the nail ends up in North Korea's famous concentration camps. where there is even less to eat than North Korea's civilian rations. |
Meanwhile, the reformists have been bolstered by the return of Pak Pong Ju, the 71-year-old former North Korean premier who previously advocated economic liberalisation.
Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, said: "More people may be thinking that they don't have a choice but to use more flexible policies to fix the economy. Pak may have been seen as the hands-on person to fix its problems." |