Then the 'Dear Leader' Kim Jong-il scuttled off to Beijing for a visit at short notice for reasons which were about to become clear. His health has been poor for some time and the need to confirm the succession has never been more urgent as the northern economy staggers from the dire effects of a November currency reform, aimed at controlling runaway inflation, which went disastrously wrong. The combination of the devaluation and the rapidly increasing price of vegetables meant that the people were left with worthless currency and accelerating inflation, which wiped out any benefit that might have accrued from the manoeuvre.

Though Kim must have signed off on so drastic a measure it has now emerged that two senior officials paid with their lives for this Stalinistic error. The veteran party man Pak Nam-gi, aged 76, the head of the party's finance and planning department and vice chief of the state planning commission, and his deputy, Kim Tae-young, were reportedly driven, bloodied and bruised, to a shooting range outside Pyongyang and executed by firing squad in mid-March before an audience of senior party officials.  Their crime was 'treason against the people'. Subsequently, faced with the dire outcome of millions of North Koreans holding worthless notes, Kim started a propaganda campaign blaming 'corrupt officials' for the debacle. Hundreds of officials were dismissed. 

Kim has been agonising over the succession for some time as it became impossible to hide his infirmity indefinitely following the stroke that he suffered almost two years ago. The first sign that something was afoot came with the summoning at short notice of the Supreme People's Assembly. The last session of the 687-member body was held only in April and another session was not on the agenda so soon. Ill health had prevented Kim from attending the previous session but there was no way he was going to miss this one which was to approve his successor.

A few days earlier, on June 3, a senior cadre of the KWP had been killed in a traffic accident. It is actually quite hard to have a car accident in North Korea, so few and far between are the vehicles and, given the wide berth that everyone gives to official vehicles, we must assume that this particular 'accident' was no such thing.

The victim was Yi Che-kang, the first deputy chairman of the KWP, who had been second only to Kim in the national hierarchy. There is a history to 'accidents' of this kind in times of political change. The first ones were reported in the early 1970s when the transition from the 'Great Leader' Kim Il-sung to his son was underway — the first dynastic transmission of power in the communist world. Given the untimely demise of such a prominent party figure it is probably safe to assume that this transition is also proving controversial.

Indeed, the rubber stamp Assembly was told that the succession, as has been rumoured, would pass to Kim's youngest offspring Kim Jong-un. At the age of 27 and with no discernible experience of governance except for being part of the ultra-privileged first family and apparently lacking the all-important ties to the military leadership, the new man would appear to have his work cut out.

His father, however, had a plan. He has made provision for a kind of regent to oversee his son's rule as national leader when the time comes for him to depart the scene. That role falls on Jang Song-thaek who just happens to be Kim's brother-in-law. He has been promoted to the post of vice-chairman of the National Defence Commission moving him into a position of power equivalent to that of the late lamented Yi, with the added benefit of being close family. Jang was formerly director of the Organisation and Guidance Department, which, as its title suggests, has enormous power in the party to appoint personnel throughout party, government and military.

So, where does the sinking of the Cheonan come in? At a time of such uncertainty at the top it is clearly beneficial to have the military leadership busy focussing on the possibility of all-out conflict with the South.

The northern leaders knew that they were on fairly safe ground with the Chinese government behind them resolutely refusing to condemn what appeared to be an unprovoked North Korean attack in South Korean waters. That refusal left Seoul looking exposed at a time when the Japanese leadership in the shape of Yukio Hatoyama, the prime minister, was himself at odds with his American allies over the future of an American base in Okinawa, and therefore not in a position to add identifiable support to the equation. Soon enough Hatoyama had to resign over the debacle himself and with the Americans having little to offer but bluster, Pyongyang appears to have got off scot-free again.

Kim knows only too well that no-one wants to risk war on the peninsular,   least of all the Chinese. Conflict would lead to the defeat of the North at the combined hands of the Americans and South Koreans, which would mean a unified and capitalist Korea right on China's border, not to mention the millions of refugees the fighting would generate.

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