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Significantly, China reacted gingerly to the news of Kim Il Sung's death and barely mentioned the son, even though he had already been named to head the funeral committee -- usually a solid sign in communist successions that the nominee is destined to become maximum leader. From the time Kim Il Sung sent his tanks rolling across the Demilitarized Zone in 1950, precipitating the cold war's first hot conflict and bloodshed on a grand scale, Beijing has been wedded to the fortunes of North Korea's founder, a man Mao Zedong embraced as a strong ally. Over the years the friendship sweetened and soured, but the alliance remained fast. Evidence that Deng Xiaoping's China was withholding approval of the designated heir was a potent signal. Of the dynastic passing of power, a Chinese academic remarked, "China cannot criticize, but we are not accustomed to this method." According to some reports, Deng advised Kim Il Sung in 1992 not to go through with the family legacy.
Was the Great Leader himself having second thoughts before he died? A few signs suggest it -- and some South Korean journalists and intelligence sources did not hesitate to wonder whether Kim Sr.'s death might have been given a helping hand as a result. While no proof of this exists, what is known is that Kim Il Sung emerged from a semiretirement of sorts earlier this year and adopted a stronger public role, not long after the nuclear dispute with the U.S. and other countries began sharpening. At the same time, some North Korean officials had asked Chinese physicians for advice on diagnosis of a peculiar brain injury -- a wound that insiders said Kim Jong Il had suffered in a car crash last September. The fact that the Dear Leader appeared in public and in seemingly fine condition soon afterward hinted at a possible face-saving attempt to sideline him from duty.
Of the official heir, former U.S. ambassador to Seoul Donald Gregg said he | is "a short, unprepossessing kid following a tremendously charismatic, long- tenured father, desperately trying to live up to him." In any case, as former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger noted, the changing of the guard "adds uncertainty at precisely the time we don't need it." Jong Il plainly will find some rough going in acquiring his father's stature. Noted Norman Levin, a senior analyst at Rand Corp. in California: "If Kim Il Sung said white is black, he could make it stick. No one now has that sort of authority."
Which is the big, potentially fateful trouble. North Korea has been organized so tightly into a pyramid of power with Kim Il Sung at its apex that the possibility of a cataclysmic social implosion cannot be ruled out. Not that many years ago, Pyongyang still confidently spread the word that Kim's homeland was a paradise on earth and that South Korea was a brutally poor, miserable place under Uncle Sam's bootheel. "The game is finished," observed one South Korean official. Not only is the South's economy 14 times stronger than the North's, he pointed out, but "the ideological game is also over. The only rational way for the North is to cooperate, save face and gradually integrate."