A Japanese newspaper reports that China has initiated big shipments of rice to the Hermit Kingdom in recent days, something it agreed to do only after the Dear Leader departed.

The Tokyo Shimbun reported that China's president and others decided in late December to begin massive food shipments to North Korea in the wake of Kim Jong Il's death. AFP says shipments were made over 10 days earlier this month, before the Chinese New Year.

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It's unclear how Kim's son and successor was involved in making the deal with China for food aid, but one of China's interests doesn't seem to have changed. With its own political power transition afoot, China remains set on maintaining stability in North Korea and preventing a flood of refugees.

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Following large-scale North Korean refugee incursions during recent famines, the Chinese government has made a practice in recent years of returning North Koreans to their country when they're caught here. Returnees faced punishment and possible death back home, and China's unspoken policy seems to have stemmed the tide of North Koreans.

Rice shipments might ensure that fewer people feel compelled to leave during the leadership transition. 

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It hardly comes as a surprise that the passed-over eldest son of Kim Jong Il has been criticizing hereditary succession.

In a soon-to-be-published book, “My father Kim Jong Il and Me,” Kim Jong Nam reportedly rails against the system in North Korea and calls his half-brother and current ruler, Kim Jong Un, a pawn of the ruling elite.

The book is based on a collection of interviews and emails between Jong Nam and Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi, who told the Telegraph that he built a relationship with Jong Nam after the pair met in Beijing in 2004.

GlobalPost in-depth series: After Kim Jong Il

Jong Nam has been spotted from time to time in Macau, where he lives in exile, and elsewhere in China. Usually, his name appears in the press next to the word "playboy."

Jong Nam reportedly told Gomi before Kim Jong Il passed away that North Korea was stuck. It needed economic reforms to survive. But those very reforms would lead to the collapse of the Kim dynasty.

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He wrote to Gomi on Dec. 17:

It is obvious that [the] economy will collapse without reforms, but the reforms will lead to a crisis of the collapse of the regime.

On Jan. 3, Jong Nam wrote more specifically about Kim Jong Un, who he said was merely a figurehead.

I question how a young heir with two years [of training as a successor] would be able to inherit ... absolute power. It is likely that the existing power elites will succeed my father by keeping the young successor as a symbol.

Sour grapes?

Word on the street is that Kim Jong Nam was once first in line to succeed his father, as birth order would suggest. But it wasn't meant to be.

In 2001, Jong Nam fell out with his father following an incident at Tokyo's Narita airport, where he was nailed for trying to get through on a fake Dominican passport. Jong Nam fled to Macau and has been living it up ever since.