THEY ARE the husband and wife team behind the throne of Kim Jong-il, North Korea’s increasingly frail leader, a power couple who may have edged closer this week to the centre of power in the reclusive Stalinist dictatorship.
While most of the attention this week is on Kim Jong-un, the Dear Leader’s youngest son, who was made a four-star general in the nation’s all-important military, his aunt and uncle are probably being groomed for a role as his mentors.
Kim Kyong-hui (63), who was also given four stars this week, is the ailing autocrat’s only sister and daughter of the country’s founding father Kim il-Song.
Her husband, Jang Song-Taek (64), is now widely considered to be North Korea’s Number Two. They are believed to have survived at least one purge and the death of their daughter, who reportedly took an overdose of sleeping pills after her parents demanded she end a relationship.
The appointment of Kim’s immediate family to senior positions at the ruling Workers Party’s biggest conference in decades is fuelling rumours he is trying to extend the country’s messianic leadership cult for another generation.
Pyongyang watchers are now waiting to see if Jong-un is elevated to the party’s central committee, following in the footsteps of his father, who was elected to the committee in 1972 – the first major step on his road to power.
The combination of political and military punch is the prerequisite for top leadership, say analysts.
Kim Jong-il (68) was also given a military role at the last Workers Party conference in 1980, although he had to wait for his father, Kim il-Song, to die in 1994 before assuming his current role.
In the 16 years since, he has solidified his grip over the country by cultivating a quasi-religious cult around him and his father – the “eternal president”.
The official announcements confirm pre-conference speculation that Kim, who suffered a stroke in 2008, would cement his family’s hold on power before he dies. In June, his Uncle Jang was appointed chairman of the national defence commission, the supreme governing body, making him the country’s effective second- in-command behind the Dear Leader.
Kim himself was yesterday reappointed general secretary of the party with what state media called “the unanimous will and wishes” of the North’s citizens. State-run television said Kim had been “enshrined” by conference delegates, who “enthusiastically gave celebration with a storm of acclaim and the highest respect”.
Russian-educated Jang is widely thought to have been purged by his brother-in-law from 2004 to 2006 – punishment for flaunting his opulent cadre’s lifestyle.
However he has since been allowed back into the Kim family’s inner circle as the leader’s health ebbs and he leans more on family members he can trust.
Jang and his wife met in the 1960s at Kim Song-il University. He was expelled when the relationship became public but the pair continued to date, despite fierce opposition from Kyong-hui’s father, and married in 1972. Both have been at the centre of power in North Korea for four decades.
Kyong-hui is thought to be an economic enforcer for her brother in her role as director of Economic Policy Inspections, which she took over just as the North’s economy was beginning to disintegrate in the 1990s.
Defectors say one of her tasks is factory inspections and ordering the imprisonment and execution of failing managers and officials.
The presence of two powerful and ambitious mentors alongside the young heir Jong-un has raised concerns about a tussle for power.
However the normally well-informed online newspaper NK Daily said this week that Kim’s autocratic leadership made that “impossible,” at least until after he is dead. “Rumours of a full-blooded power struggle are remote and show a lack of understanding about North Korea’s reality,” said the newspaper.
Pyongyang’s neighbours in Seoul, Tokyo and Beijing are watching this week’s conference carefully for signs of who will eventually run the world’s newest nuclear power.
Although few ordinary citizens have seen the young heir, he has been increasingly accompanying his father during his famous “on- the-spot” guidance tours to workplaces and the army.
There are few immediate signs so far though of any softening in the country’s hard-line Stalinist stance. The party’s official newspaper this week said it would continue to stress the importance of Kim’s Songun policy of putting the military first, and his father’s philosophy of Juche, or self-reliance.