Dear Comrade

Dear Comrade Leader, Episode 345

In any case, the reason why these hypotheses that seem a bit astral are constantly being raised was that the people with whom Kim Jung-hwan was hanging out in Japan at the time were people in a dark world, in other words, people who smelled a lot of ‘bad’.

Heo Young-jun, who appeared earlier, was a yakuza, an organized criminal, and Japanese politicians such as ‘H. Nakao’, who had a relationship with Kim Jeong-hwan at the time, were at the center of various corruptions that were strongly suspected of collusion such as the privatization of NTT at the time of the bubble.

Heo Young-jun (Criminal): If you don’t want to believe it, don’t. Actually, I was the master at that time… … No, is it Shogun-sama? After all, watching the magic of the young general from the side, it was almost unbelievable. I still miss those times sometimes. Except for threatening to throw me into Tokyo Bay from time to time.

In any case, Kim Jung-hwan, who had accumulated funds in this way, succeeded in elevating his position by lobbying members of the Central Party, such as Jang Sung-taek and Hyun Young-suk, who were always under pressure from Kim Jong-il to obtain foreign currency. He succeeds in returning to his homeland by becoming the material manager of the Ryugyong Hotel, which was a national project.

And then, an incident that changed the fate of Kim Jung-hwan himself, North Korea, and even the entire Korean Peninsula occurred.

2.4. Early in power: Pyongyang Frunze coup d’etat in 1988 and becoming general secretary. and the Tiananmen Square incident.

Induction of the voluntary collapse of the Ryugyong Hotel in 1988 – For the case of the Pyongyang Frunze coup, see the respective section.

The detailed background of the case, the people involved, the propensity of the Frunze clan and the consideration of Kim Jung-hwan’s position in it, the aftermath and the timeline are described in detail in the relevant section.

Due to the above incident, Kim Jeong-hwan had heard about the faction’s full story and ultimate purpose from Yoo Hye-rim, a member of the Frunze clan and now a faithful comrade, and, in collaboration with them, eventually became general secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea. ascend

At that time, the coup d’état was superficially ‘made up by Kim Young-ryong at the time to assassinate Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung’, but since the server of this wiki is located in Seoul, it describes the details of the incident relatively freely from censorship or vandalism. [16]

[15] It is presumed that they had already developed into a romantic relationship at the time.

[16] Even to this day, the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) maintains this stance, albeit passively, but now it does not punish or censor those who spread this fact like Kim Jung-hwan did during the reign of Kim Jong-hwan.

The incident is still one of the most sensitive topics of discussion within the former North Korean region and is also a rebellion of the Workers’ Party of Korea, but not a small number of Pyongyang’s citizens are still involved in the accident, or, in the case of the bombing, family members, relatives, or themselves. It is because the experience of experiencing great damage is still vivid.

Although it appears in the ‘negative evaluation’ of Kim Jeong-hwan/evaluation item, which will be described later, criticisms such as ‘would I have chosen a method that resulted in so many innocent civilian casualties’ and ‘we had no choice but to be surrounded by walls of escorts, where even a single failure was not tolerated’ The theory of advocacy coexist on the North Korean web.

Sometimes, these advocacy theories do not lead to the level of coining, saying, ‘Kim Jeong-hwan is a rogue who assassinated my half-brother and father and took power illegally. There seem to be not a few people these days claiming that they must have lost, [17]

Considering the propensity and abilities of Kim Jong-il during his lifetime, which can be seen in the ‘Kim Jong-Il/Life Behavior and Post-Post Evaluation’ section, the general consensus is that such a possibility was slim.

In any case, Kim Jeong-hwan, who came to power in this way, announced the three new routes and succeeded in supporting the people’s livelihood with the funds obtained from China and restoring and rebuilding urgently needed infrastructure. [18]

And the situation of the Tiananmen Square incident and the death of the so-called Tank Man, which occurred just a year later, also gave a boost to North Korea’s economic growth. It also played a role in bringing China to a standstill for a while, which was ahead in all aspects, such as attracting investment and investment. [19] [20]

[17] However, apart from the unrealistic nature of the opinion itself, some view the emergence of these discussions positively as evidence that the concept of freedom of expression is currently established in North Korea. In fact, even during Kim Jung-hwan’s reign, discussions that attacked the legitimacy of the regime itself, not just social dissatisfaction, were thoroughly controlled.

[18] This was a necessary measure for the North Korean economy, which had been stagnant since the late 1970s and went from stagnation to regression in the early 1980s.

[19] Of course, this is only true from the point of view of North Korea, and the deaths of General Secretary Zhao Ziyang and the Tankman, who were moderate members of the Chinese leadership at the time, bring about the butterfly effect of the resignation of Deng Xiaoping, who up until then had dared to compare himself to Mao Zedong. .

[20] In fact, it is widely believed that if it were not for the betrayal of his concubine Jiang Zemin and the resignation of Deng Xiaoping, the time when China’s full-fledged entry into the international community (at that time, Afghanistan and the Middle East) would have been delayed by 10 years.

Source: ‘Let’s clean as if nothing happened – what happened in Tiananmen that day’ by Dr. Dongwook Kim

The external conditions to run for the reform and opening that had been dreamed of during the two-year period were prepared.

However, when the time came, the remnants of the past caught Kim Jung-hwan’s ankle.

This was because the power of the new general secretary Kim Jung-hwan had not been firmly established until this time, but the Frunze factions such as Hong Gye-seong and Baek Seung-cheol, who still dominate the military, were alive and well, and Kim Jeong-hwan’s awareness of the people was still minimal.

Above all else, North Korea at the time was in a difficult situation to attract foreign capital, which was most needed by other developing countries in the early stages of economic development. Before the pro-Soviet tendency, the anti-US line in North Korea at the time was nothing more than a semi-national poem after the ‘South Korean Liberation War’ [21].

[21] Although the name Kim Jung-hwan himself has now abandoned, it was called the Korean War at that time.

His father, Kim Il-sung, who is the beginning and symbol of national poetry, was still alive, and around him, old servants of Kim Il-sung, who looked at Kim Jung-hwan’s recent steps toward system change with great displeasure, gathered around him. there was.

Although he was already old and debilitated and he was half-dead, Kim Il-sung was still like a living god in the republic (regardless of his reality), and he was nothing more than the center of all forces blocking the road to the new republic that Kim Jung-hwan had dreamed of. .

And here, Kim Jung-hwan is lucky again, but whether this is really pure luck is still controversial and the document is long, so it is described in a separate article again.

2.4.1 Kim Il-sung passed away and became supreme leader

See the relevant article on the assassination theory of Kim Il-sung

Along with the ‘random collapse of the Ryugyong Hotel’ in the paragraph above, it is the main breadcrumb of Kim Jung-hwan’s opponents in the North.

The common argument of those who claim this theory is that at the time of the first voluntary collapse attack, Kim Jung-hwan’s target was Kim Il-sung, but when it failed, the son and orthodox successor Kim Jong-il, who was desperately trying to protect his father, and Kim Young-ryong, the security chief, were disturbed, and they were removed as traitors first. In other words, after the people’s interest had cooled to some extent, even his father, his first goal, was removed with poison.

In fact, the first goal of the uprising of the Frunze faction, which was the executive unit that colluded with Kim Jeong-hwan and seized the military power, was to ‘overthrow the leader’s hereditary dictatorship’, and its leader Baek Seung-cheol [22] was usually outspoken about his dissatisfaction with Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. There is no such possibility that I have been talking to them.

[22] He was later appointed as a lieutenant in the Korean People’s Army by Kim Jeong-hwan. Although it is now gone, in North Korea at the time, it was equivalent to the rank of a western commander.

This hypothesis also claimed that Kim Jung-hwan actively advocated the removal of his father and that he was only pushed by the pressure of the Frunze factions to remove Kim Il-sung. Although the assassination itself is divided into the ‘posthumous report’,

However, it seems that Kim Jeong-hwan’s position in the rebellion had a certain weight, such as having Jang Seong-taek, then deputy head of the youth business department, almost arbitrarily appointed him as the head of the organizational leadership department immediately after the party convention. Is there?

Most scholars believe that ‘even if Kim Jung-hwan did not directly kill Kim Il-sung, the so-called last will of Kim Il-sung, which came out immediately after that, calling for improvement in relations with the United States, was almost certainly fabricated’. [23]

[23] However, the above theory of assassination of Kim Il-sung and the falsification of a will have been raised by political groups with far-left authoritarian tendencies, which are currently reacting in North Korea with unemployment, large corporations, antipathy against large capital, and reaction against the far-right National First Party. It is often abused as their propaganda, so be careful with citations and research.

Either way, thanks to the fact that Kim Il-sung and his legacy died at the same time through the above process, even the last obstacle for reform and opening-up and incorporation into the global trade system has been removed. It was a situation where there was only a plausible reason.

And once again, thanks to Kim Jung-hwan’s luck, a large-scale event that can solve all these problems at once occurs: Another Iraqi dictator, Saddam Hussein’s invasion of Kuwait, and the resulting Gulf War.

2.5. Early in power ~ Stabilization of power: Participation in the Gulf War and a dramatic declaration of pro-US diplomacy.

Refer to the section on ‘Activities of the Korean People’s Army’ in the Gulf War section

When North Korean workers working in British-owned oil fields in Kuwait were detained by Iraqi forces, Kim Jeong-hwan had a justification for opening the war and participating in the multinational forces.

Some critics of Kim Jung-hwan also raise conspiracy theories that Kim Jung-hwan, who was crazy about diplomatic relations with the United States at the time, purposely sent his workers to a dangerous area where there is a high possibility of being detained by Iraqi forces. Since it was an unexpected, improvised idea of Hussein, it would be impossible unless Kim Jung-hwan had foresight.

Regardless of the process, Kim Jung-hwan’s ability to seize opportunities that came his way was once again revealed, and he made a splendid debut in the international community by dispatching a contingent composed mainly of special warfare units such as the maritime sniper brigades, as well as the successive George Herbert It even led to a meeting with then-US President Walker Bush. [24]

[24] In addition, the dispatch served as a shock therapy that indirectly gave a great shock to the North Korean generals who were still tainted with the doctrines of the former Soviet Union.

See the relevant chapter in Baek Seung-cheol’s autobiography, ‘Holding the Red Star’.

For reference, the description of the meeting in his autobiography by then-President George Herbert Walker Bush and the portrayal of Kim Jung-hwan he met at the meeting is very meaningful.

‘Clearly competent and exceptionally insightful, a friend who would have been highly likely to have failed if he had been a politician in a democratic country elected by collecting votes and having a fixed term.’

‘A young leader reminiscent of a scientist who seems to be experimenting with the theory for a long time in a country under his own unique political philosophy and theory rather than a politician in the traditional sense’

… … to be.

Anyway, Kim Jung-hwan succeeded in persuading Bush at the meeting, and later on the geopolitical value of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in Northeast Asia.

In the background of China’s ‘factoryization of the world’ and investment attraction temporarily suspended due to the Tiananmen economic sanctions, North Korea began in earnest from the meeting of the two leaders who reached an agreement guaranteeing accession to the WTO and several trade agreements. start the economic leap.

However, up to this point, North Korea was just a former communist country that had just started economic development, and the economic gap with South Korea and South Korea, which were the arch-enemy, had already widened.

In fact, up to this point, in Seoul, the idea of ‘Let’s break down the North Korean barrier and achieve unification by absorption with our advanced capital and economic power’ was coming out in Seoul about the reform and opening up of North Korea. I didn’t feel threatened.

At least that was the case until the subsequent North Korean defection of the modern group and the great inter-Korean compromise to be reached six years later.

In particular, in the case of the Great Inter-Korean Compromise, it appears at the bottom due to the chronological description of this wiki, but it is said that Park Han-cheol, the son of former President Park Yi-sam, who made the decision at the time, took 100 million dollars from North Korea. (!) [25] It is an incident that still left a shock to the Korean people to the extent that rumors circulated that Park Yi-sam was under pressure in the dark.

[25] As you can see if you refer to the item of the person in question, even if it is not this problem, he is a person who is often referred to as the “small president” because of the tyranny of many things, such as the Hanbo incident. There must have been a number of reasons for such derogatory rumors to circulate.

#writer’s words

I don’t know why the life part is so long;

I am trying not to just summarize the contents, but this is true;

You can think of it as part of such an effort to turn it over in the form of a ‘refer to the relevant item’ in the middle… … .