North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has reshuffled the National Defence Commission which he heads to strengthen his grip on power in the communist state, news reports and analysts said yesterday. The reshuffle increases the number of full-time senior staff at the commission which has become the North’s most powerful body under Kim’s “army-first” policy, Seoul’s Yonhap news agency and newspapers said.General Ri Myong-Su, formerly armed forces operations director, was recently named to serve exclusively as a standing member of the commission, Yonhap said quoting an unnamed source. It followed the April appointment of Vice Marshal Kim Yong-Chun as full-time vice chairman of the commission after he quit as military chief of staff, it said.
The military top brass of the nuclear-armed nation had previously usually assumed dual posts, both at the commission and with the armed forces.
The National Intelligence Service, Seoul’s main spy agency, refused to confirm the news reports. “We are still checking it,” a spokesman said. Local media said the reshuffle heralds a further strengthening of the already powerful National Defence Commission (NDC).
“The NDC seems to have become, at least externally, the North’s highest decision-making body as a number of top military officials have recently been appointed to permanent posts of the defence commission,” the source told Yonhap. “We believe the NDC may become an actual (properly structured) organisation in the near future with hundreds of resident staff like the other top decision-making bodies” such as the ruling Workers’ Party, the official added.
Nam Sung-Wook, a North Korea expert at Korea University, said the reshuffle was part of KimÂ’s long-standing policy of checks and balances.