(by Lee Yun-keol,Transl. by Ruth Kim, NKSIS Week 4)
With the official emergence of North Korean 3rd generation power succession system at the end of last year, the attention has been put on who will come into Pyongyang key power. On Jan. 23, according to a well-informed source, the center force of Kim Jong-un now goes by the name of ‘Mt. Ami range’.
Mt. Ami, a not-so-high mountain at 156m above the sea, is located among Seosung Area, Yongsung Area, and Daesung Area in Pyongyang. Both Party’s Central Committee, the North Korean core body, and Kim Jong-il’s No. 21 residence are located in Changgwang-dong of Central Area near those Areas. The source explained “The Areas in which Kim Jong-il’s residence and key bodies are located are so important that they are all connected to underground channels directly”, adding “Their security level is always the highest and public access to them is also strongly limited.”
Around Mt. Ami, furthermore, with Kim Jong-un’s No. 55 residence as the center, there are Presidential Security Command 1, 2 in the South, National Security Agency in the Southwest, People’s Safety Agency in the Northwest, and Defense Security Ministry in the East.
In this way, such North Korean key security bodies which will control the public with an iron fist in order to stabilize the 3rd generation succession of power are concentrated near Mt. Ami. “The executives of the bodies in their 40s~50s under the rule of Kim Jong-un are called as ‘Mt. Ami range’ said the source.
Kim Jong-un also reportedly turned out to take over Kim Jong-il’s army, mostly a young group. For this reason, some of the junior members publicly said “Mt. Ryongnam is already worn off and the tide has turned in our Mt. Ami favor.” mentioned the source.
There was a similar situation in the past. It is common knowledge in North Korea that Kim Il-sung accomplished a one-man rule after the 8.15 liberation, based on some 100 persons of the 6th division, 2nd Army of North East Anti Japanese United Army, so-called ‘Mt. Baekdu range’.
Besides, Kim Jong-il had political base called ‘Mt. Ryongnam range’. It refers to a few people he met at Kim Il-sung University during 1960~1963. More specifically, the then secretaries of party cells(the primary party organization) of each department and major of the campus, and chairmans or members of Chosun Democratic Youth Alliance (CDYA) were included, with who Kim Jong-il had a relationship as the chairman of Kim Il-sung Univ. CDYA.
These people very close to Kim Jong-il, so important members of the North’s power enough to be received kindly treated by Personnel Department of Central Committee of the party, were involved in wide range of activities. However, the Mt. Ryongnam range is recently doomed to going downhill as Kim Jong-un has become the new center force of the North Korea, said the source.
Meanwhile, the graduates of ‘Red Flag Mangyondae Revolutionary School’, where the families of revolutionary patriots usually go, were also classified as Kim Jong-il’s mainstream members. However, only a few of them moved up the position of core figures in Army and most of them were eradicated as Kim Jong-il seized the supreme power by reason that they didn’t directly belong to Kim Il-sung’s troop but to other anti-Japanese united armies.
It needs to follow closely what role this ‘Mt. Ami range’ of Kim Jong-un era will play in the future.
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Leonid Petrov's KOREA VISION 
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