North Korea Leadership Lineup 2018
On 11 January 2018, the Unification Ministry in South Korea announced major changes in North Korea’s power structure for 2018. The ministry publishes a list of North Korea’s power elite every year. According to the new report, some of those in charge of key agencies in North Korea seem to have been replaced. The personnel reshuffle in key posts merits attention, as it implies a potential change within North Korea and the nation’s future moves. Here is Oh Gyeong-seob, research fellow at the North Korean Studies Division at the Korea Institute for National Unification.
Well-known names such as Kim Jong-un, Kim Yong-nam, Choe Ryong-hae and Pak Pong-ju are included in the standing committee of the Workers’ Party’s political bureau. Hwang Pyong-so is still on the list as well. The committee members are North Korea’s power elite since they decide on important matters. Looking at the power structure, those who play an important role in different departments in the Workers’ Party have been selected or promoted since Kim Jong-un came to power. Therefore, they will likely follow the leader’s existing policies in the future. Without a doubt, North Korea will set its main goal at nuclear armament, which is the nation’s top priority, while focusing on monitoring and controlling key officials and citizens to suppress their political resistance. In the most attention-grabbing change in power shifts in North Korea’s elite, Choe Ryong-hae, vice chairman of the party’s central committee, seems to be leading the party’s organization and guidance department. The director of this department is in charge of overseeing the party’s personnel policy. Former leader Kim Jong-il, the late father of the current leader, took this post in 1973 and kept it until he died in 2011. Now, Choe holds several key posts, including the chief of the organization and guidance department and he is also a member of the standing committee of the party’s politburo, to consolidate his position as the nation’s second-in-command, both in name and reality. The organization and guidance department is defined as a party within the party and above the party. There are about 3 million party members in North Korea, with one party cell consisting of five to 30 members. About 210-thousand party cells are scattered across the nation, and it is the organization and guidance department that manages all those cells. That means this very powerful department controls the entire country systematically. It wields overwhelmingly dominant power right under top leader Kim Jong-un. A generational shift in North Korea’s power structure also deserves attention. For example, Pak Kwang-ho, who appeared for the first time under the Kim Jong-un regime, is regarded as a new influential figure as he is a member of the party’s politburo and the vice chairman of the party’s central committee. It appears that he has also become the chief of the propaganda and agitation department. Pak Kwang-ho’s quick and unusual emergence as a key party official draws attention. It is assumed that he assisted Kim Jong-un’s younger sister Kim Yo-jong as a close aide to her while she was working as the vice director of the propaganda and agitation department, and this led to his exceptional promotion. Pak has often given enthusiastic speeches on the VIP stage at massive public events to praise the leader’s achievement of establishing the country as a nuclear power. On October 8, 2017, for instance, he served as the host of an event celebrating the 20th anniversary of former leader Kim Jong-il’s election as general secretary of the Workers’ Party. He is presumed to have been promoted to the role of vice director of the party’s administrative bureau and chief of the propaganda and agitation department at that time. Now he plays a key role in bolstering the personality cult of leader Kim Jong-un and encouraging the public and the elite alike to support the regime through various propaganda activities. In brief, he is one of the party’s heavyweights. Also, Jong Kyong-thaek replaced Kim Won-hong as the minister of state security, while Shin Ryong-man became the head of Office 39. As the party’s special unit in charge of managing Kim Jong-un’s secret funds, Office 39 has been led by one of the most reliable experts trusted by the leader. Office 39 was set up in the mid-1970s. As an organization that oversees the nation’s foreign currency earnings, it has raised and managed Kim Jong-un’s secret funds. As a means of earning foreign money these days, it has guided various illegal activities, such as drug trafficking, financial fraud, counterfeiting, manufacturing of fake tobacco products and hacking. Office 38, which takes charge of procuring the leader’s governing money from within the nation, has reportedly been integrated into Office 39. Until recently, Office 39 had been led by Jon Il-chun. As he has been blacklisted as part of international sanctions on the North, Jon has been replaced by vice director of the office Shin Ryong-man, who has the full confidence of the leader. North Korea’s Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland seems to belong to the Cabinet now. As the North Korean counterpart of South Korea’s Unification Ministry, the committee led the North Korean delegation that participated in high-level inter-Korean talks on January 9. According to the Unification Ministry, North Korea’s Cabinet, including the Foreign Ministry, uses the word “Republic” when referring to its agencies. The ministry explains that North Korea has used the same term when mentioning the committee in its recent reports, so it seems to be placed under the Cabinet now, although North Korea has not officially announced the change. In June 2013, an inter-Korean meeting was cancelled due to the disagreement over who would lead the South and North Korean delegations to the talks. At the time, North Korea planned to send Kang Ji-yong, chief of the secretariat for the Committee for the Peaceful Reunification of the Fatherland, as the head of its delegation. But North Korea took issue with the head of the South Korean delegation, Kim Nam-sik, who was Vice Unification Minister. The North said that Kim was not at the same level as the chief of its delegation, who it claimed was a minister-level official, and demanded that a minister of South Korea lead the delegation instead. But South Korea said that the chief of the secretariat for the committee cannot be viewed as the equivalent to South Korea’s Unification Minister. To prevent such mishaps from reoccurring, North Korea seems to have upgraded the committee from a subsidiary of the party to an agency under the State Affairs Commission, so the committee will act as a counterpart of South Korea’s Unification Ministry.|
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