General Kim reports

LITTLE ROCK — Gosh, talk about moving up the ladder quickly in the military. This wasn’t even one of those battlefield promotions that commanders have to make on the spot. This was more like something from the Richard Pryor movie The Toy. Anything the kid wants, the kid gets. And that means anything.

Dispatches from the East say Kim Jong Il, that ailing thug of a dictator in North Korea, just promoted his son to four-star general, the highest rank in the North Korean Army. Those who watch politics above the 38th Parallel, like a hawk, say the boost in pay-grade was all part of the plan to have Kim Jong Eun take over from his father when Dear Leader finally assumes room temperature. For some reason, Kim Jong Il also promoted his sister to the generals’ ranks. RHIP and all that.

What are Kim Jong Eun’s qualifications to be a general officer? Well, dispatches say he spent five years in a military academy. Which would be enough in the United States to make a soldier all of a 2nd lieutenant. But Kim Jong Eun knows people in high places, and that never hurts one’s ability to be promoted.

Of course, his father never served in the military-except when he was promoted to chairman of the National Defense Commission, the outfit that controls North Korea. In that country, the military even controls the economy, which may explain a lot. North Koreans who aren’t carrying a rifle and saluting oversized pictures of Kim Jong Il are subject to the occasional mass starvation. Some economy.

There may be some good news on the horizon, however. Especially for the poor people, and we mean poor, of North Korea. Those lucky enough to have recently escaped that prison of a nation say the military is grumbling about the age of Kim the Younger. He’s believed to be only 27 years old. Or so. (In such a place, even the ages of the leaders are state secrets.) Defectors say Kim Jong Eun’s not-exactly-brevet rank is his father’s way of giving him a bit of gravitas. Which means-maybe, perhaps, let’s hope-that Kim Sr. has heard the grumbling about the age of his kid, too. Which would be remarkable, given that he’s running a dictatorship that would make Stalin proud. Are the other generals in his Army speaking their minds? If they grumbled only in private, that would still be a huge gamble. A life-and-death gamble. If somebody is whispering in Dear Leader’s ear, and it’s not just compliments about his golfing game, Kim Jong Il may not have the air-tight grasp on the leadership many of us have assumed. And that would be enough to give the rest of the world hope that the regime could fall. Maybe soon.

Or so we hope.

LITTLE IS known about Kim Jong Eun, other than he attended school in Switzerland and skipped over two older brothers in this communist/absolute monarchy succession plan. (Wouldn’t the Romanovs be surprised?) But word around the campfire is that his father preferred him because Kim the Younger is the nut that didn’t fall very far from the tree. More’s the pity.

One story, however, gives the world a glimmer of hope. Kim Jong Il’s personal chef, who escaped North Korea in 2001, tells of a reflective moment he shared with Kim Jong Eun once upon a time.

One day while living it up, Kim the Younger asked the older chef about the Little People. Apparently he wondered aloud how he could justify eating, drinking and playing sports while the average person in his country worked endlessly and went without.

It may have been a rhetorical question, but at least he’s thinking. How many times have you heard a similar story about his father? You’re much more likely to hear about Kim Sr.’s booze, sex slaves and his supposed ability to control the weather with his mood.

If Kim Jong Eun was educated in Europe, then he knows what a working economy looks like. He cannot believe in the official line that North Korea is a worker’s paradise and the rest of the world has it much worse. When he eventually takes over, he must know that fundamental changes must be made or his people will continue to starve.

Again, so we hope.