Jong-un’s brother warns economy may end regime

THE eldest brother of North Korea’s new leader says reforms needed to avert the collapse of the country’s economy will lead to the end of its Stalinist regime.

Kim Jong-nam, the half brother of Kim Jong-un who took control of the state on the death of their father last month, says the military has become so powerful it will step in and take over.

The comments come in a book by Yoji Gomi, a Japanese journalist who says he built a relationship with Jong-nam after the pair met in Beijing in 2004.

My Father Kim Jong-il and Me will be published in Japan by Bungeishunju on Friday.

“North Korea is very unstable,” Jong-nam told Gomi, who interviewed him at length in the Chinese territory of Macau last year.

“My father governed the country with the backing of the military, but the power of the military has become too strong,” he said.

“If the succession ends in failure, the military will wield the real power for sure.”

“It is obvious that [the] economy will collapse without reforms, but the reforms will lead to a crisis of the collapse of the regime,” Jong-nam said.

He also claimed his inexperienced brother Jong-un would merely be a symbol the ruling elites use to keep their grip on power.

“Anyone with normal thinking would find it difficult to tolerate three generations of hereditary succession,” he wrote in an email, which Gomi says was sent on January 3.

“I question how a young heir with two years [of training as a successor] would be able to inherit... absolute power,” he said.

Jong-nam has lived in virtual exile in China for many years after falling out of favour with his father.