North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been given the title of ‘marshal’, state media has announced.
The move followed a high-level military reshuffle in which army chief Ri Yong-ho was removed ”due to illness” and a little-known general promoted.
Marshal is the highest military rank and would cement Mr Kim’s control over the army, reports say.
The more they stay the same.
North Korea is simply going to get left behind. A mid-20th century totalitarian anachronism in the 21st century.
All the rest of the world can do is pity the North Koreans.
Justin McCurry in Tokyo
guardian.co.uk, Friday 20 July 2012 07.42 EDT
North Korea’s sudden dismissal of its military chief this week was designed to remove opposition to major economic reforms about to be initiated by the country’s leader, Kim Jong-un, it has been claimed.
Citing an unnamed source with close ties to the governments in Beijing and the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, Reuters said Ri Yong-ho had been sacked for opposing plans to seize control of economic policy from the military.
Ri had been one of the regime’s most enthusiastic champions of the “songun” military-first policy pioneered by the country’s former leader, Kim Jong-il, who died in December.
The state-controlled Korean Central News Agency had said illness had been behind the decision to relieve Ri of all of his posts, including the influential role of vice-chairman of the ruling party’s central military commission.
His removal was the clearest signal yet that Kim Jong-un – Kim Jong-il’s youngest son – is determined to implement long-overdue reforms to save the economy and prevent the regime from imploding.
The source said a special cabinet had been created to take over control of the decaying economy from the military, which boasts 1.2 million troops.
The military’s mishandling of the economy has been blamed for a crippling famine in the 1990s from which the country never properly recovered.
“In the past, the cabinet was empty with no say in the economy,” the source said. “The military controlled the economy, but that will now change.”
Analysts have long wondered how long it would take the impoverished north to attempt to emulate the stunning economic growth achieved by its neighbour and only remaining ally, China.
To that end, Kim Jong-un has formed a group inside the ruling party to look into agricultural and economic reforms that will borrow heavily from China’s experience, the source added.
Beijing is said to have pressed for swifter economic reforms, fearing economic collapse in North Korea could send a flood of refugees over the border and end the north’s role as buffer state against the south, home to 28,000 US troops.
Reuters said the source, who requested anonymity, had predicted other pivotal moments in North Korea’s recent past, including its nuclear weapons test in 2006 and the rise of Kim Jong-un’s uncle and close confidante, Jang Song-thaek.
The personnel changes at the regime’s apex could be a forerunner to the most ambitious economic and agricultural reforms North Korea has seen for decades.
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…what happens if it fails? As the article highlights, the last time they tinkered with things economically and it didn’t go well, the guy involved got two in the back of the head. It goes unmentioned that that was also around the same timing as the attack on the South Korean patrol boat (public apology for the economic unrest was issued in February and the patrol boat was hit at the end of March).
“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you and you can change it, you can influence it, you can build your own things that other people can use.” ~ Steve Jobs
The Atlantic Wire
It appears Kim Jong-un’s consolidation of power this week was far more turbulent than outsiders were led to believe. How much more turbulent remains subject to dispute.
On Friday unconfirmed reports emerged from South Korea of a gun battle between North Korean soldiers over the ouster of army chief Ri Yong-ho. According to the South Korean daily The Chosun Ilbo, soldiers led by Vice Marshal Choe Ryong Hae attempted to detain Ri after he was dismissed from his position on Monday. According to South Korean government officials, that’s when guards protecting Ri opened fire on the soldiers in a gun battle that left 20 to 30 North Korean soldiers dead. The source also said “We cannot rule out the possibility that Ri was injured or even killed in the firefight.” Backing up that story, an official at South Korea’s Ministry of National Defense told The Korea Times that the order may have been an attempt to suppress a military coup. “It is highly likely that Ri’s security squad engaged in a firefight with troops deployed to execute the leadership’s instruction to unseat him and prevent a possible coup against the top military official,†the official said. Western news agencies have been unable to confirm any details of the supposed gun battle, but one thing is becoming increasingly clear: Ri’s departure was not due to an “illness.”
That point was cemented today in a blockbuster report by Reuters Benjamin Kang Lim, who cited a source “with ties to both Pyongyang and Beijing” saying that Ri was purged after he opposed Kim’s attempt to takeover the North Korean economy, which has historically been under the control of the military. Lim reports that Kim sought to impose a series of agricultural and economic reforms that Ri opposed:
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