North Korea poised to name new leader

[muriel_volestrangler]

Source: UK Channel 4

North Korea's ruling party is set to hold its biggest meeting in decades to pick a new leader, state media reports, as current leader Kim Jong-il's health deteriorates.

Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, is set to be anointed at the meeting of the Worker's Party on 28 September.


Kim has reportedly sped up his succession plans. The 68-year-old is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 and has become extremely reclusive ever since, although the North Korean leader did visit China in August this year.

North Korean news agency KCNA said the conference would be held in Pyongyang "for electing its supreme leadership body".

Read more: http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/politics/international_politics/north+korea+poised+to+name+new+leader/3771482

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See, the difference between a monarchy and a 'Democratic People's Republic' is that a monarchy hands the hereditary leadership to the oldest son. In the DPRK, it can go to any son. That's progress!

[Ken Burch]

1. ...uh, will Diebold count the votes?

n/t.

[jobycom]

2. They are a Republic, for people who like to quibble over that distinction.

The difference between a monarchy and a Republic is that the whole basis for leadership in a monarchy is bloodline, whereas in a Republic the basis for leadership is consent of the people. While the result is the same in places like North Korea, the difference is still there. In a monarchy, the leader is the law because the whole concept of political authority is based on the bloodline, and no elected official or consent of the people can ever override that basis. In a Republic, political authority comes from the people, so in theory even the leader has to follow a law outside of his own whims, because his authority comes from the law, not from within him. It's a very narrow distinction in North Korea, but I guess it at least holds the possibility of change one day.

A leader and the government in a Republic can be chosen any number of ways, from a representative democracy like the US to a narrow group of insiders whose choice is very predictable, like North Korea, as long as the justification for the leader and the government is the consent of the governed, and not the bloodline of the leader or a ruling class. The people who say "We are not a democracy we are a Republic" are wrong. We are a Republican form of government chosen by a Representative Democracy--the two terms don't exclude each other.

[14thColony]

4. Or perhaps a glimpse at evolution caught in the act of speciation?

I understand the distinction you make, it's just that I would tend to doubt any senior leaders in North Korea would care. Using "democratic (people's) republic" as a suffix to a country's name was as much a matter of fashion in the 1950s/1960s as any conscious desire to establish a true representational democracy/republic form of government, probably moreso.

I'd suggest what we might be seeing here is a hybridization of good old hereditary monarchy with NK's already-hybridized brand of Marxist-Stalinist-Maoist communism -- a "hereditary totalitarian communist monarchy" perhaps? New political forms have to evolve from somewhere -- there was a time when there was no fascism for instance, so perhaps this just might be evolution in motion, creating a new species of political system before our eyes.

[Jkid]

6. What consent?

A leader and the government in a Republic can be chosen any number of ways, from a representative democracy like the US to a narrow group of insiders whose choice is very predictable, like North Korea, as long as the justification for the leader and the government is the consent of the governed, and not the bloodline of the leader or a ruling class. The people who say "We are not a democracy we are a Republic" are wrong. We are a Republican form of government chosen by a Representative Democracy--the two terms don't exclude each other.

In North Korea, there is no such thing as consent of the governed. Any opposition to the regime will be, and is, dealt harshly.

[Posteritatis]

7. Yeah no, North Korea is a monarchy that claims to be a republic, nothing more. (nt)

[Ter]

3. Who's running against him in the general election?

:)

[COLGATE4]

5. Lyndon LaRouche????? n/t

[Ter]

8. Ahh, a Stalinist vs. a total nut

:)