SEOUL, February 16:A top Chinese official has backed ailing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s plans to hand power to his son, the North’s state media said today, hailing the ”successful solution” to allow continued socialist rule.
Meng Jianzhu, China’s public security minister, congratulated Kim’s youngest son Jong-un on his appointment as vice-chairman of the Central Military Commission last year, ”hailing the successful solution of the issue of succession to the Korean revolution,” KCNA news agency reported.
Experts said the term ”succession” did not refer directly to family rule, but was a commonly used expression referring to a continuation of the North’s current political system.
But) we can interpret that as a sign of acceptance on the part of China’s political and power elite with regards to North Korea’s succession,” said Park Young-ho, of the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul.
China’s state Xinhua news quoted Meng, who was visiting North Korea this week, as praising the countries’ expanding economic ties and said their good bilateral relations contributed to regional peace and security.
Kim Jong-un was last year named as a four-star general and given high ranking political positions, signalling the start of the third-generation power transition in the secretive state.
Until the younger Kim’s appointments, state media had never even reported the existence of Kim’s children. Little is known about Jong-un other than that he is in his late twenties and was educated in Switzerland.
China is the North’s main ally and benefactor, and has stood by Pyongyang despite international criticism over the North’s revelations last year of big advances in its nuclear programme, as well as two deadly incidents in disupted territory.
China provides more than 80 percent of the North’s food and oil and has invested heavily in the isolated state in recent years, when Pyongyang has been under international sanctions for nuclear and missile tests.
The North’s reclusive leader, suspected of having suffered a stroke in 2008, visited China twice last year, trips analysts and officials say were mainly aimed at winning Beijing’s support for his hereditary succession process.
Beijing has nudged Pyongyang to change its ways and follow China’s path of economic reform, but its paramount concern is stability and it sees a continuation of family rule as the best guarantee of this.
China worries that any regime change in the North could cause a flood of refugees to cross its border, precipitate reunification of the peninsula on the South’s terms and bring American influence right up to its border.
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Tensions are simmering on the peninsula after talks between the two Koreas broke down last week, while regional powers disagree over how to persuade Pyongyang to halt its uranium enrichment programme.
Analysts say the stalemate raises the chances of North Korea staging another incident, such as an attack or nuclear or missile test, to show it is too dangerous to be not negotiating. Pyongyang wants to resume six-party nuclear talks.
Seoul has vowed it will back hard against the North if there is another attack like the North’s bombardment last November of Yeonpyeong island, and has toughened its rules of engagement and boosted defences in the disputed West Sea area.
At the end of this month, the South will stage annual peninsula-wide joint military drills with the United States, which have already drawn criticism from the North.
An American aircraft carrier will join the exercise, the South’s Yonhap news agency quoted a government source as saying.
Beijing criticised Washington several times last year for sending an aircraft carrier to the drills, saying such big exercises threaten its security and regional stability.
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