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BEIJING -- Professor Zhao Huji, a North Korea specialist at the Central Party School in Beijing, said Thursday that North Korean generals and high-ranking officials are deserting the crisis-plagued state as a mirror of growing instability and its leader's waning authority.
"These high-ranking defectors aren't leaving because of material want, but because these feel chaos within the Kim Jong-il regime... High-ranking administrators like military officials have visited China several times and are well connected there, and because they have money, they have many chances to defect to China," said Zhao.
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North Korean border guards take a break while out on patrol on the frozen Tumen River. Behind them can be seen a portrait of Kim Il-sung.
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North Korea experts calculate that 130 North Korean generals have defected to China, some of whom may have entered the Chinese military, as reported in a recent edition of the International Herald Tribune.
However opinion is divided, with other specialists arguing that the removal of Kim Jong-il's portraits from public buildings in Pyongyang and the continuing exodus of defectors does not signify a loosening grip on power by the North Korean leader.
Peking University professor Cui Yingjiu, who studied with Kim Jong-il at Kim Il-sung University and had until recently kept in contact with the North Korean leader, said, "Kim Jong-il has a stronger grip on power than Mao Zedong in China during the 1960s ... In North Korea, there are no people like Liu Shaoqi or Deng Xiaoping [who challenged Mao] to compromise Kim Jong-il's authority."
Cui added that China has less influence over North Korea than is widely believed.
(englishnews@chosun.com )
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