The Kim Is Dead! Long Live the Kim!

With the passing of Kim Jong-Il, his son Kim Jong-Un is now the leader of North Korea. His uncle-in-law Chang Sung-taek seems to be a guiding light to the young Kim. (Korean names are a wonderful illustration of the effect of generations of surnames, but at the same time often inconvenient to Western clarity). Kim Jong-Il invested his power in the military, especially after the famine of the '80's, and the military will determine the survival of the Kim Jong-Un regime. It is noticeable that even in a land that started as a socialist state and touts women soldiers, a distaff member of the royal family is not considered worthy of the throne. Caesar and the Praetorian guard are now locked in a holding pattern. The only good I can imagine arising from the stalemate of the elite while the peasants starve is that, when the country opens decades from now, the world will understand what a true scavenging society looks like and prepare for a global future of desperation.

People's Republic of Parasitism

In the course of my daily wanderings, I acquired a New Amsterdam Times. The international section contained an article on the latest shipment of food and aid to North Korea from the South.

The amount of food is paltry compared to the needs of the country, but the international implications disturb me. Ordinarily, I would extol feeding the hungry as a virtue, but the discord between the North Korean philosophy of juche and the begging of the North Korean government is stark. The Kim dynasty uses foreign aid as a way to propagate its regime while claiming self-sufficiency. Although the Christian aid groups behind the food delivery have noble hearts, the North Korean distribution mechanisms ensure that the food will go to those whose loyalty matters rather than those who are the hungriest. The suggestion of localized distribution is ananathema to a regime which believes in power and half-hearted Potemkin villages. Clothe the peasants, not the emperor!

Unto the Third Generation

In light of Kim Jong-Eun's promotion to four-star general and official heir apparent (as official as it's going to get, anyway) and the simultaneous promotion of his aunt, I started thinking about the inherent stability of hereditary tyrannies, of which the government of North Korea is an excellent example, and remain skeptical about the duration of the regime. Regencies are dangerous times for any dynasty, and military support during such times can be a destabilizing force. On the other hand, the North Korea military is in a favored position, so it might contribute to a stable regime.

The history of tyrannies, however, does not inspire optimism. Most tyrannies collapse in the third generation if they have not already been overthrown. There is no chance that the North Korean populace will rebel - in fact North Korea reminds me of Apokalyps - but power struggles are possible even within a one-policy state. The economic structure of the country is so damaged that I suspect it will collapse quickly and messily when the final straw is loaded.

Sic Semper Tyrannis (No, I Don’t Know How To Say It In Korean)

I have been following with the interest the events of the tense succession crisis in North Korea. Kim Jong Il, “the Dear Leader”, has appointed his younger son, Kim Jong Un, as “the Brilliant Comrade”, passing over the elder son, whose name I do not recall seeing. I do know, however, that there is speculation that the elder son was passed over for the dubious honor of leadership of North Korea because he attempted to enter Japanese Disneyland with a fake passport. Such disgraceful behavior is reminiscent of the Athenian suitor for the daughter of the tyrant in Corinth, who drunkenly danced away his chance at her hand and then brazenly claimed he had no regrets. Kim Jong Un’s title as “Comrade”, rather than “Leader”, does not have a precedent in the previous transfer of power; in that case, the government announced the change without any previous suggestion of the ailing health or recent demise of “the Great Leader”. The elevation of “Comrade” to the meaning of “Crown Prince” (the final blow to a title founded in radical egalitarianism) suggests that the Dear Leader is still alive, but incapacitated. How much true power the Brilliant Comrade will wield if and when he becomes the Brilliant Leader is a vexing question, in light of the nuclear tests and the characteristics of the third generations of Kim tyrants. I should pause to explain that my Classical training has taught me to use “tyrant” as a technical political term (rather than a near generic term of political abuse), which indicates a “bad” monarchy, one which has no cultural or historical legitimacy in the country in which it establishes itself. In general, the Greek tyrannies began with an ambitious man who rallied his countrymen under the banner of improving their condition, who overthrew the current government, and who (if fortunate enough to avoid assassination) passed his rule onto his son. Most Greek tyrannies collapsed in the second generation; those which survived did so because they had transformed into pseudo-monarchies. These states remained pseudo-monarchies because they lacked the clear line of succession which (most) monarchies possessed. The third generation was the last for the tyrannical dynasties. Even the Syracusan tyranny, which approached most closely the ideal of monarchy, fell in the third generation, only to be re-established about a century later, and those latter tyrants claimed a descent from the former in imitation of monarchy.


The presence of two brothers in the rising generation is not reassuring. Even in monarchies which had a clear succession, there was often much tension between the Crown Prince and his younger brothers, such as the sons of William the Conqueror, or the Emperor Vespasian; in monarchies which lacked this tradition, such as the Ottoman Empire and the empire of the Mongol Horde, fratricide was a common occurance. A few occurances of happy balance have existed, such as the harmony between Emperor Charles V and his brother, but for the most part history and legend record conflicts such as that of Romulus and Remus, Caracalla and Geta, and the sons of Solomon, allegedly the “wisest” king of all history. Even if the brothers themselves do not seek to quarrel, the internal parties of the state (and they always exist) now have the opportunity to support their own candidate and undermine that of their rival, whereas a lone son can be a puppet in equal measure, but does not provide the same opportunity.


In this age, inimical to the establishment of new pseudo-monarchies and not exactly friendly to the existing established monarchies, I would not expect that the Kim tyranny will survive a third generation. How much the eventual collapse will damage the world, given North Korea’s posturing, remains to be seen.