Kim Jong-il's Successor Dilemmas, Washington Quarterly

- Scott Snyder

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• Three major challenges that any leadership in North Korea faces

1. Political realations with major powers including US with a nuclear weapon
2. Economic reform
3. Globalization - penetration of information and marketization

Challenges to the Third Kim Generation

1. Problem with the institutional context

• Famine - structural failure(1.Public Distrubution System, PDS, broke down irreversiverly / 2.Insufficeinecy of self-production efforts in the absence of significant external fertilizer inputs)
• Rather than relying on an endorsement from the Korean Workers Party to legitimize his succussion, as had been the case in other socialist system, Kim Jong-il established the National Defense Commission and made it the central vbehicel to exercise power in the DPRK's revised 1998 constitution, which consolidated his rule.
• Sungun先軍(Military first) policy prioritized military institutions over those of the party and the government.
• the conetral government's role in providing food was irreversibly broken and replaced by private markets and the monetization of North Korea's public economy.

2. information flows between NK and the outside world have become more frequent and active in recent years.

• The availability of external information that might challenge the legitimacy of succession arrangements may make the task of managing a stable transitino more difficult.

3. Since 1994, NK is increasingly vulnerable to economic leverage from external parties, especially China and South Korea, which may expose the DPRK to greater volatility when it is necessary to ensure a stable succession.

NK's institutional resiliency and most effective mechanisms for enforcing political will on the North Korean people have declined since the famine and loss of control by the central government.