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this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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You make it seem like it's inherently good to elect someone not related to the previous leader, but we need to take a step back and ask why is this desirable? As was explained in another comment, another chairman was elected before Kim Jong Un but he tried to stage a coup after he was retired for his right-wing reforms (speaking relatively here). Outsider does not always mean better.
Also something I haven't seen people touch on yet is that all three Kim's have held different functions. Kin Jong Un is the general of the armies as well as the foreign minister of sorts (closer to the president but for foreign affairs). That's why we see him meet with foreign officials and we see him at weapons tests. I think he goes to factories and such in his capacity as Chairman of the WPK (and leader of the coalition encompassing three parties in the DPRK's parliament).
To add to this, Kim Jong-Un did not run for re-election to the Supreme People’s Assembly in 2019
Is he not in the SPA then? Is he just the party chairman now?
Correct
According to Wikipedia, so take this with a grain of salt, he is “Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army,” “General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea,” and “President of the State Affairs Commission of North Korea.”
Note that I didn't criticize the Kim family specifically.
The whole of North Korean military and governmental high level positions are much more closely related than CPC for example.
Lineal succession of the Kim family is just a visible portion of the inner-circle domination. The Party itself has a problem.
But again, there is no lineal succession. All three Kims held different positions in government.
That is true. I amend my statement to mean top level positions held by Kim Il Sung's descendents.
But then we are back to the first step comrade, what makes it undesirable that members of a family hold different government positions? Especially in socialism, there's no question about capitalism.
My belief is that in a fair socialist society, there would be a constant flow of outsiders because that is the natural order of things if everyone's given fair education and opportunity.
That has been seen in most socialist countries historical and current. If this state of affairs is not true, that implies the existence of formal or informal institutional mechanisms in which connected people are favored. I dislike such mechanisms inherently after decades of living in it.
I don't see how I would suddenly like such mechanism just because it occurs inside a socialist framework comrade. Equal distribution of material goods and services is not the only concern for me. I also favor socialism due to the fact that impoverished peasants can rise to high stations unlike capitalism. Favoritism towards Pyongyang makes such things less likely.
There are 687 seats in the Supreme People's Assembly, of which Kim Jong Un is not a member anymore (having elected not to be on the ballot at the last elections). There are also countless generals in the army, several ministers, several members of the WPK's central committee, and of course local officials as well as party leaders other than the WPK (there's 2 other parties in the SPA forming a front for the reunification of Korea with the three of them).
Of all these officials, the Kim family had 4 members of their family fulfilling governmental positions. The DPRK even had one of the Kims executed for being a CIA insurrectionary.
I get your distrust of such mechanisms where family ties might get you somewhere, but the DPRK is not a capitalist country. I don't think this is a clear-cut area that we can readily criticize the DPRK on. It only strengthens the "DPRK is a monarchy" argument in the average liberal and right-winger; Kim Jong-Un holds 3 positions (chairman of WPK, supreme commander of the armies and president of the state affairs commission). The title of president, which conferred powers as the head of state, was abolished after Kim Il Sung's death (making him the "Eternal Leader" because he was the only one who ever held that title).