By Kim Jong-chan
Deputy Managing Editor
As a hearse carrying the body of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il passed through snow-covered Pyongyang, the North's state media praised the deceased “Dear Leader’s” efforts to build a nuclear state.
The Rodong Shinmun, the official organ of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party, lauded the nuclear weapons programs as Kim’s greatest legacy. As a result of his revolutionary legacy, North Korea is now proud of being able to manufacture and launch artificial satellites, and dignified in the world as a country that possesses nukes, the newspaper said.
The praise indicates that “Great Successor” Kim Jong-un, his youngest son, will not abandon the nuclear and long-range missile programs, in defiance of international pressure.
A clear indication that he would inherit his father’s military-first policy came again on the first day of the New Year. He chose a tank division as the venue for his first reported field inspection since the funeral of his father on Dec. 28. The senior Kim used to visit the Army Tank Division 105 around the start of every New Year.
But the mouthpiece of the Pyongyang regime fell short of comments on whether Kim Jong-il saved starving North Koreans during his 17-year rule.
One day during his lifetime, he lamented that he failed to fulfill the teachings left by Kim Il-sung, his father and founder of North Korea, who died in 1994 after a 47-year reign.
In his teachings, Kim Il-sung asked him to give the people boiled rice that wasn't mixed with cheaper barley or other grains and beef soup. He also wanted to provide them with silk clothes and houses with a tiled instead of thatched roof. All of this was a barometer of wealth in an agrarian Korean society decades ago.
North Korea sets the goal of building a strong and prosperous nation by this year, the centennial of the country's founder’s birth, which falls on April 15. Kim Jong-il repeatedly vowed to realize his father’s dream of feeding people well. But it turned out to be a lie for life is still hard in the reclusive North.
According to a letter reportedly sent by a North Korean woman in her 80s to an acquaintance living in Dandong, northeast China’s Liaoning Province, the current situation in North Korea is presumed to be almost the same as it was during decades of Kim Il-sung’s reign.
In the letter written on a piece of nylon cloth, the woman living in North Hwanghae Province complained of a food shortage and asked her acquaintance to send her five $100 notes. She then said she will leave for Dandong in March for a better life.
Her family, if given the money, would be able to make a living without difficulties for some time in the communist state where private markets have reportedly spread since the 2000s.
A year after its founder’s death in 1994, North Korea suffered a severe food shortage. A large number of North Koreans were reported to have died of starvation. Few outsiders know how many people died of starvation as the North strictly limits contact with the outside world.
The economic trouble worsened as Pyongyang drew international condemnation and tightened U.N. sanctions for conducting two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009. Moreover, inter-Korean economic cooperation has been halted since a South Korean tourist was shot to death in North Korea’s Mt. Geumgang tourist resort in July 2008.
North Korea remains in a time-warp. There has been little improvement in recent decades. Kim Jong-un in his late 20s lacks experience. He must learn from his father’s failures. He can learn from Deng Xiaoping, a reformer who led China to become a market economy.
There may be a ray of hope for change in the North as its new leader had more exposure to the outside world than his father. He attended the International School of Berne in Switzerland for four years until 1998 when he was a teenager. He studied English and speaks other languages. His father had traveled to only China and Russia by train for summits with their respective leaders.
Will the young successor sow seeds for such change to save the starving North Korean children?