Kim Jong-Il’s two other sons are conspicuous by their absence. They are not listed as members of the official funeral committee and have not been pictured during the mourning period. ”Omitting the other offspring provides a straight and clean succession path from Kim Jong-Il to Kim Jong-Un,” wrote Roger Cavazos, an associate of the Nautilus Institute think-tank.
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Policy Forum 11-45: Nothing Succeeds Like Succession: Chinese Language Perspectives on Kim Jong-Un’s Transition to Power
Roger Cavazos, a Nautilus Institute Associate and consultant on North-East Asia, writes, “The breathtakingl…
Policy Forum 11-44: The Party as the Kingmaker: The Death of Kim Jong Il and its Consequences for North Korea
Ruediger Frank, a Professor of East Asian Economy and Society, University of Vienna and Adjunct Professor, Korea University and the University of North Korean Studies, writes, “The big question now is will the North Korean elite and population accept the Central Committee’s decision, and will they welcome Kim Jong Un as the new leader? History teaches us that things do not always proceed according to plan or conventional wisdom. We cannot exclude the possibility of ambitious individuals testing the opportunities…There are powerful individuals like Choe Yong Rim, Prime Minister; Kim Young Nam, Head of State; Jang Song Thaek, Kim Jong Il’s brother-in-law and alternate member of the Politburo, and his wife and Kim Jong Il’s sister Kim Kyong Hui who is a regular Politburo member and a General…Will they back up Kim Jong Un, or try to manipulate and sideline him?”
NAPSNet 22 December 2011
- DETERRENCE: International humanitarian law and nuclear weapons
- DPRK: Kim Jong Il’s death suggests continuity plus opportunity to engage
- CLIMATE CHANGE ADAPTATION: Progress in natural hazard risk reduction: What hath development wrought?
- ENERGY SECURITY: Pan-Asian energy infrastructure: 2011
- GOVERNANCE AND CIVIL SOCIETY: Death of Kim forces South Koreans to confront class divide
‘Hard Target’ North Korea Poses Challenge to U.S. Spy Efforts, John Walcott, Bloomberg News, 21 December 2011
The Egyptian firm Orascom Telecom Holding SAE (OCIC) is building a 3G cell network in the North, according to a Nov. 1 report by Alexandre Mansourov of the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, a policy research group in San Francisco. The report said that only about 3 percent of the country now has service, although it would become harder to monitor as it grows.
North Korea: Nuclear Ambition, Power Shortage, Marianne Lavelle, National Geographic, 20 December 2011
The best estimates on the extent of that darkness today come from the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability, which has worked for years on the energy situation in North Korea. The latest figures, which soon will be published as an update to a study Nautilus did in 2007 (pdf), show that North Korea currently is consuming about 10.4 billion kilowatt-hours of electricity per year, says Nautilus senior associate David von Hippel. That’s less than the electricity used each year by the city of Washington, D.C. (about 12 billion kilowatt-hours) spread thinly across a country that has almost 40 times as many people as the U.S. capital.
Policy Forum 11-43: Kim Jong Il’s Death Suggests Continuity Plus Opportunity to Engage
Peter Hayes, Scott Bruce, and David von Hippel of the Nautilus Institute, write, “Ironically, Kim Jong Il’s death may make Korea the land of the morning calm for at least a year, during which political transitions will also occur in China, South Korea, Japan, Russia, and the United States… Unless Kim Jong Un throws the nuclear strategy out the window and starts again, the outlines of the engagement agenda are already clear—send the North Koreans energy and food aid to meet both short-term humanitarian and medium/long-term development needs, help them build a safe small light water reactor, and bring them into an international enrichment consortium that would lead them to reveal the sum total of their enrichment program.”
North Korea, in transition, could draw further into shell, Tim Johnson and Lesley Clark, McClatchy Newspapers, 19 December 2011
The Nautilus Institute — a research center with offices in San Francisco, Seoul and Melbourne, Australia — issued a statement Monday saying Kim Jong Un is “likely to be more open to rapid, structural change in the economy. Whether he can bring along his senior advisers in embracing the notion of structural change is another matter.”
Vacuum Left by Kim Jong Il’s Death May be More Dangerous than the Former North Korean Dictator, Lauren Fox, U.S. News, 19 December 2011
Bush and others like Peter Hayes who have worked with the Nautilus Institute to implement creative development programs on the ground in North Korea believe there is always the chance that a regime change could gradually lead to warmer relations with the isolated country.
Kim Jong Un reportedly attended school in Switzerland for a time during his early teens and is said to have both English and German language skills.
“He is a cosmopolitan young man. He could surprise us,” Hayes says. “I think it’s unlikely that North Korea engages fully with the West, but it’s low-lying fruit waiting to be plucked by a new administration.”
Information black hole as North Korean leader dies, Jonathan Hopfner, Reuters, 19 December 2011
In the last couple of years, mobile phone use has “just exploded,” he said, with people often using mid-range, China-made handsets to trade SMS messages, play games and browse weather reports.
The North’s mobile communications industry “has crossed the Rubicon, and the government can no longer roll it back without paying a severe political price,” the Nautilus Institute for Security and Sustainability said in a report last month.