Where the Hell Is Kim Jong Un's Eric Clapton-Obsessed Brother?
Where and why has North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s older half-brother, Kim Jong Chul, disappeared? Considering the persistent doubts about the health of Kim Jong Un and his own habit of vanishing for weeks at a time—that question assumes some urgency.
If 37-year-old Kim Jong Un were to die, Jong Chul, 40, never an active contender for power, would be a prime candidate to take over.
“In a succession scenario, his name would surely be on the table,” Greg Scarlatoui, executive director of the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, told The Daily Beast. The multi-tentacle Organization and Guidance Department (OGD) of the Workers’ Party—of which Kim Jong Un is chairman—would decide on a successor, leaving it to the coterie of generals and top party officials now surrounding Kim Jong Un to decide on policy.
There would, said Scarlatoui, “be pluses being a direct descendant of the Paektu bloodline”—a reference to the Korean peninsula’s highest peak where Kim Jong Il, by North Korean mystique, was born in 1941 in a log cabin—“and minuses, his apparent ‘weakness’ compared to his brother.” That said, he observed, “There has always been a symbiosis between the Workers’ Party and the Kim family regime.”
“Jong Chul has an honorary position in the Organization and Guidance Department, but no reporting has ever demonstrated he contributed to a political action or decision,” Robert Collins, author of a book on the OGD after spending more than 30 years analyzing North Korea for the U.S. Command in Seoul, told The Daily Beast. “Kim Jong-un obviously tolerates his existence as long as he stays out of the way.
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