Analysts at the CIA and other agencies have warned that his demise could destabilize the country and make it more dangerous.
“This brings extraordinary change and uncertainty to a country that has seen little change in decades,” said one U.S. official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “South Korea’s concern is warranted, frankly, because an insecure North Korea could well be an even more dangerous North Korea.”
For almost two decades, South Korea and the United States have discussed contingencies in the event of Kim’s death — and North Korea’s collapse. If the Korean Peninsula were to be unified, millions of impoverished North Koreans could flood the border into the South. The cost of unification, according to one major study, could exceed $1 trillion, and last year President Lee Myung-bak proposed a “unification tax” — not yet put into place — to prepare for such a moment.
The White House issued a statement late Sunday acknowledging Kim’s death: “The president has been notified, and we are in close touch with our allies in South Korea and Japan. We remain committed to stability on the Korean peninsula, and to the freedom and security of our allies.”
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton was briefed on the reports of Kim’s death, a department spokesman said.
Clinton has increased the pressure on the North Korean government in recent weeks, traveling to Burma last month in a bid to drive a wedge between Pyongyang and one of its few customers for nuclear technology. After the trip, there was speculation that she might follow her Burma visit with a trip to the North Korean capital. Clinton also appointed a new U.S. envoy last fall to make a new push for a diplomatic breakthrough on North Korea’s nuclear program.
Especially in the past two years, North Korea has depended for much of its security on China, which supplies Pyongyang with much-needed aid and investment. China has also used its influence to block U.N. measures against North Korea, and U.S. officials have called on China to use its influence to encourage North Korea’s liberalization.
Almost nothing is known about how Kim Jong Eun, if he successfully takes power, will run the country.
Before his death, Kim Jong Il had been grooming his third and youngest son as his successor. Kim Jong Eun studied for a time in Switzerland at a German-speaking high school in Liebefeld, a suburb of the Swiss capital, Bern. Former classmates remember a shy but determined boy obsessed with American basketball and expensive sports shoes. They say he spoke passable German and made some local friends but was monitored closely by staff members s from the North Korean Embassy in Bern.
He vanished in the middle of the school year in 2000, apparently to return to Pyongyang, and had not been seen in public since until he emerged at his father’s heir apparent last year. A campaign of hagiographic propaganda hailed him as the “Dear Young General,” but it is unclear how much support he has within the armed forces or the ruling party, both of which are dominated by far older men. His mother, a former dancer, died in 2004.
Staff writers Greg Miller and Joby Warrick in Washington and staff correspondent Andrew Higgins in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
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