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Hwang Jang Yop Dies at 87

Hwang Jang Yop survived multiple purges and power struggles, a defection, at least one assassination attempt, and 87 years in some especially cruel places and times. I was ambivalent about Hwang, who became Kim Jong Il’s strongest critic, but who still defended the juche ideology as misunderstood and misinterpreted by its more recent oracles. We can appreciate what Hwang did to expose the system’s ruthlessness, even as we must recognize that he probably stepped on plenty of skulls to ascend to its higher ranks.

When my wife told me that Hwang had died, the first thing I wondered was whether it was of natural causes. Officially, the answer is “yes,” and I see no reason to question that, given Hwang’s advanced age. Still, South Koreans love a good conspiracy theory, or even a bad one. The fact that two officers of the Reconnaissance Bureau of the North Korean Workers’ Party pled guilty to charges of trying to give Hwang the Trotsky treatment just months ago would be as good a basis for a conspiracy theory as, say, any of the completely baseless ones that have caught fire on Naver recently. But because a conspiracy theory’s traction is a function of ideology, rather than plausibility, I’d bet that any conspiracy theories about Hwang won’t likely involve any North Korean agents bearing ice-axes.

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11 Responses

  1. Personally, the recency of the assassination attempt heightens my belief that it was a natural death, for 2 reasons:

    1. nearly being assassinated is *very* stressful. I would expect his health to be badly damaged just by the fearful prospect, constant questioning, the additional protection, etc. It might not have exactly completely upended his life, but the effects could not have been good.
    2. governments don’t launch concurrent assassination attempts; nor do they launch consecutive attempts very quickly. Just a few months since the agents were caught? The NK agencies are probably still doing post-mortems and prepping new agents! (if they aren’t completely busy with Kim Jong-Un-related matters)
    It seems very implausible that they could have prepared agents, infiltrated them in as defectors or something, the agents gotten close, surveiled the subject, and penetrate the security to subtly murder Hwang*. The months after a failed attempt are the worst to launch another attempt!

    For example, look at the attacks on the World Trade Center. The second one came roughly a *decade* after the first attack, and that’s with Al-Qaeda on the loose in Afghanistan and minimal US counter-terrorist efforts. Sophisticated attacks have very long lead times.

    * assuming that SK isn’t covering up something blatant like a sniper blowing Hwang’s head off

  2. I don’t think you need look further than two facts to guarantee that whatever anyone says, the conspiracies will never die. And, frankly, it is hard to completely overlook the below facts and totally buy into the South Korean claims, actually.

    1) He died on the morning of the 10th, Workers’ Party foundation day, literally 10 minutes before Kim Jong Il/Eun stepped onto the podium in Pyongyang for the military parade.

    2) If he was killed by North Korea, I believe South Korea would not be willing, at the moment, to admit it. The consequences of coming out and publicly saying he was murdered would be too horrific to contemplate, given that the people have yet to forget that their government has promised not to allow another provocation to go unpunished, post-Cheonan.

    Also, Gwern, regardless of the above, your comment about consecutive assassination attempts doesn’t hold water in the inter-Korean context. Stalin had to dispatch men far overseas to murder Trotsky, for example, whereas North Korea has an ongoing program of assimilating agents in South Korean society disguised as defectors. There must be tens, at the bare minimum, of sleepers here, awaiting instruction.

  3. In a response to kushibo from the last post (since I don’t know if people retroactively check comments):
    I realize that but at the same time, I heard plenty of reporters being straight up about the North’s blatant propaganda, and regardless, if there aren’t any ballsy reporters, they should not be going in in the first place. It’s a dillema I’m sure at least someone at many news organizations thought of. It involves the willingness to go along with their BS in exchange for a chance to see the country from the inside (albeit an admittedly false impression), vs. the urge to cause a scene or do something that makes the news and possibly risks your own life or safety. Though I’m not in a position to be that person, I would gladly consider this position in my future.

  4. The timing of Hwang’s death is unfortunate to say the least, but keep in mind that people die on significant dates all the time and given Hwang’s advanced age and state of health, the probability that he would die when he did wasn’t as great as one might think. According to WHO statistics, a Korean man between the ages of 85 and 89 has a 56.875% chance of dying during a given year. The probability of dying on any given day (assuming all dates are equally likely) is 1/365 or about 0.002%. So the probability that an 85 to 89 years old man will die during the year AND the probability that he will die on 10/10/10 is given by:

    P(A|B) = P(A)P(B)

    Where:
    P(A) is the probability of an 85 to 89 year old man dying in a year
    P(B) is the probability of dying on 10/10/10

    Therefore:

    P(A|B) = 0.001 or 1/10 of one percent.

    If you’re a gambler, the odds are 1 in 1000. Not terribly likely, but roughly the same odds as dying in a motorcycle crash or drowning, and a lot higher than the odds of winning the lottery or dying in a car crash.

    There have been other such “bad-timing deaths” throughout history and we need not invoke outside forces to explain them. Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of each other on July 4th; British conspiracy to demoralize the nascent American republic or coincidence? Charles Shultz died the day before the last Peanuts comic strip was to be published; revenge by United Media Syndicate for lost revenue or bad timing? Countless people, famous and non-famous, throughout history have died of natural causes on significant dates like their birthdays (Shakespeare, for example), important anniversaries, and so on.

    In Hwang’s case, we can speculate about the possibilities, cover ups, conspiracies and so on, but these will forever remain errant speculation and all equally unlikely given what we know so far. The only evidence we have in the public domain comes from the South Korean police and their hypothesis, given our lack of expertise and access to information, must be held as conditionally true pending more evidence and an autopsy.

    He died on the morning of the 10th, Workers’ Party foundation day, literally 10 minutes before Kim Jong Il/Eun stepped onto the podium in Pyongyang for the military parade.

    His body was discovered at this time. I haven’t seen any information on the time of death. If Hwang’s normal behavior is indication, he probably died a few hours before as he liked to take a bath between 5am and 7am. See here.

  5. the probability that he would die when he did wasn’t as great as one might think

    Should be the probability was as low as one might think.

  7. milton wrote:

    Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams died within hours of each other on July 4th; British conspiracy to demoralize the nascent American republic or coincidence?

    I can’t prove it just yet, but I’m pretty sure Kim Ilsung’s great-great-grandfather had something to do with it.

    I mean, it was the fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. How could they resist?

  8. Hwang’s private guard knew when he entered the bathroom, and found his body at 9:30AM after growing concerned for his wellbeing because he could hear no sounds. I am not sure we need to get into debate about the duration of his ablutions, though; after all if perfection is what the assassin sought, we can say he died at least ten minutes early, too…

    But let’s not go down that road.

  9. jason bastrop speaks of “the urge to cause a scene or do something that makes the news and possibly risks your own life or safety.” He concludes, “Though I’m not in a position to be that person, I would gladly consider this position in my future.” jason should enter North Korea illegally and get arrested by the border patrol. The commenters on this blog will admire him, and they’ll stand in line to buy his book.

  10. chris wrote

    > Also, Gwern, regardless of the above, your comment about consecutive assassination attempts doesn’t hold water in the inter-Korean context. Stalin had to dispatch men far overseas to murder Trotsky, for example, whereas North Korea has an ongoing program of assimilating agents in South Korean society disguised as defectors. There must be tens, at the bare minimum, of sleepers here, awaiting instruction.

    It may be a little *easier* for NK than Soviet Russia, but that doesn’t shift the calculus much. (Soviet Russia had plenty of agents overseas, we now know, even excluding Comintern or Communist Party members.) How many of those tens are highly trained military assassins prepped for the mission and entrusted with such a task? I doubt very many…