North Korea is a notoriously difficult nut to crack in terms of getting reliable information. Scholars, analysts, and intelligence officers scouring the country for clues are often relegated to waiting for the Korean Central News Agency, North Korea’s state-run propaganda machine, to churn out a boilerplate story or issue a statement to get a grasp about Kim Jong Un’s whereabouts or the details of a military exercise. Many times, monitoring North Korea from a distance is less about intelligence collection and more about web browsing. The country, in short, is part-black-box, part-bizarro world.
The one predictable thing about North Korea, however, is that the commentariat treats every development inside the reclusive country, large or small, as an event that needs copious amounts of coverage or insight. Journalists have a tendency to take the relatively mundane (like a short-range ballistic missile splashing into the Sea of Japan) as some kind of groundbreaking event that could directly affect the security of Northeast Asia and the safety of people in America. We pontificate about what we don’t know, sensationalize and exaggerate the ordinary, and offer policy solutions that have either been tried a million times before over the previous two decades or are destined to slam against a brick wall.
The bevy of speculation about Kim Jong Un’s health is the epitome of what North Korea coverage in the United States tends to look like. The last 48 to 72 hours have been a whirlwind of the ridiculous, with every TMZ-style report treated as if it’s a Walter Cronkite exclusive. At first, Kim was lying in bed somewhere in a vegetative state after a botched heart surgery. Then, he was actually alive, but recuperating from a stint being placed in his heart. After that, news circulated that the North Korean leader was actually dead, his life habits of endless smoking, eating, and drinking having finally caught up to him. Or perhaps his health condition wasn’t about his heart at all, but rather about a freak injury during a missile test gone awry. What we do know with relative certainty, that the Kim family train is parked outside his Wonsan compound, doesn’t tell us much other than the fact that Kim himself is likely holed up somewhere in the massive coastal estate.
One would think that, after being burned on countless occasions over the past three decades, we would all learn not to jump to any hasty conclusions. The number of times pundits have assumed the worst about this or that North Korean official, only to learn later that the worst-case scenario was pure fiction, is pretty much endless.
There was Kim Jong Un’s aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, who was assumed to be either excommunicated due to her husband’s disloyalty (Jang Song-taek was executed for conspiring to undermine the leader) or killed. Six years later, she made an appearance at a Lunar New Year celebration one seat away from Kim himself, clapping along with her nephew. Kim Yong Chol, an old party stalwart and former military man who led the nuclear talks with the Trump administration in 2018, was thought to be on the outs as well — until he wasn’t, sitting next to Kim Jong Un during a party function. Kim Hyok Chol, Pyongyang’s point man for the nuclear talks, was believed to be executed after the Kim regime suspected him of being wooed by Washington. The rumor of the diplomat’s death was quashed almost immediately. There was a time when even Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, was thought to be killed in 1986. Of course, North Korea’s founder would live for another eight years, ruling the country until he died of old age.
The lesson here is as clear as day: There is no point predicting the internal dynamics of the Kim regime hierarchy. About 99% of the palace intrigue proves to be utter nonsense. Those who confidently assert otherwise are either lying to you or have an ulterior motive (it should be noted that much of the rumor mill is churned by dissidents who have escaped).
Leave the guessing game to the officers and analysts in the U.S. intelligence community, who are actually paid for delivering the best possible assessments to policymakers. For those of us on the outside looking in, it’s best to take the wise and prudent course: don’t get hung up on every report in the South Korean, Japanese, and U.S. media. Because there is a huge probability that it’s totally inaccurate.
Daniel DePetris (@DanDePetris) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. His opinions are his own.
