ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the elites and their changes during the Kim Jong Il regime from the mid-1990s to early 2010s. After the death of Kim Il Sung, North Korea fell into an economic crisis. To cope with the crisis, Kim Jong Il assumed the ‘military-first strategy’ which mobilized the military for regime stability and enhanced the status of the military. There was also a social purge in the late 1990s. Another factor affecting the regime’s elite policy in this period was the second patrimonial succession from Kim Jong Il to Kim Jong Un, which was fully fledged in the late 2000s and strengthened the patrimonial characteristic of the regime’s power. Kim Jong Il seems to have employed descendants of the first-generation elites, which we term the ‘patrimonial elite,’ to implement the second patrimonial succession. This chapter discusses the social purge in the post-Kim Il Sung era, the military-first strategy, and the succession policy, examining the main elite figures and other elite issues in the Kim Jong Il regime.
