Following Korean, Japanese, and Chinese custom, surnames precede given names unless otherwise noted. There is no established standard on transliteration of the Korean language, which is why there are variations: Kim Jong-il, Kim Chong-il. Per the AP Stylebook, I write North Korean names as three words (Kim Jong Un), while South Korean names are two words, with a hyphen in the given names (Moon Jae-in). In the notes, I use the formulation that appears in the original source.
Even by the standards of North Korea—consummate purveyor of propaganda—one could not have asked for better weather for the staging of Kim Jong Il’s funeral on December 28, 2011. It was cold, bleak, and snowing. The white snow contrasted perfectly with the black of the hearse, the coffin atop it, and the mourners’ attire, matching the melancholy in the people’s hearts as they bade farewell to their beloved leader, who had ruled them since 1994, when the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, had died. As the funeral procession moved through the snow, the North Korean people lining the streets wept, fainted, and convulsed with grief, genuine or otherwise. Men and women, soldiers and workers, the young and the old beat or clawed at their chests and clung to one another for comfort or pounded the ground in anguish. The roar of this collective demonstration of sorrow was deafening, and it probably stirred even those in the crowd who did not feel this passion for the dead leader who had ruled with an iron hand.
Prominently leading the procession was the baby-faced Kim Jong Un—North Korea’s new leader. He kept his composure, walking silently and mournfully, though his tense face and tears betrayed the real grief he must have felt. He was now, after all, an orphan; his mother had died of breast cancer when he was twenty years old.
Kim Jong Il, the dictator, father, and movie impresario, would have been pleased with every aspect of this final production.
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Kim Jong Il’s death on December 17, 2011, from “overwork,” as the North Korean state media described it, was not a surprise. Everyone knew that Kim had health issues—he had suffered a stroke in late 2008—and that the time would probably come when his family’s history of heart disease and his days of smoking, drinking, and partying would catch up with him. His father, Kim Il Sung, had also died of a heart attack. Still, the death was jarring.
At the time of the funeral, I was a relatively new analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, having begun my job there in early 2009, soon after Kim’s stroke. When he had made his first public appearance at the rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly spring meeting, he was shockingly thin, his once plump cheeks now crepey and clinging to his prominent cheekbones. His gait was slow and measured.
When Kim’s death came, a palpable anxiety gripped the world. South Korea convened a National Security Council meeting as the country put its military and civil defense on high alert. Japan set up a crisis management team, and the White House issued a statement saying it was “in close touch with our allies in South Korea and Japan.” At CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, I remember being watchful for any indications of instability in Pyongyang, as I began to develop my thinking about where North Korea might be headed under its youthful and inexperienced new leader.
The North Korean regime was quick to dispel any doubt or confusion about its next ruler. The state media, after dutifully exalting Kim Jong Il’s “brilliant” life and leadership and his role as the “parent of the nation and a lodestar of the fatherland’s reunification,” immediately proclaimed that the future was secure under Kim Jong Un:
At the head of our revolution today stands Comrade Kim Jong Un, the great successor….All of the party members, the men and officers of the people’s army, and the people should faithfully uphold the leadership of Comrade Kim Jong Un, they should firmly defend the single-hearted unity of the party, the army, and the people and should further strengthen it like steel….
The path for our revolution is arduous, and the prevailing situation is harsh, but there is no force in the world that can