After a decade in power, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has become one of the world’s most experienced leaders and, at 37, he could continue to challenge the West with his nuclear arsenal, according to analysts.
The first 10 years of his government provide a glimpse of his future trajectory, betting on the development of nuclear weapons to leave isolation and achieve a place on the international geopolitical chessboard with the most powerful leaders in the world.
“North Korea will continue the confrontation with the United States and the harassment, with a tactical challenge, but with care not to cross the line so as not to derail relations,” said analyst Kim Jin-ha, from the Institute for the National Unification of Korea.
For more than six years, after inheriting power at the age of 27 from his father and predecessor Kim Jong Il, who died on December 17, 2011, Kim did not leave the country isolated or meet with another head of state.
Initially seen as a puppet of North Korean generals and Labor Party bureaucrats, Kim brutally consolidated his authority in 2013 with the execution of his uncle Jang Song Thaek, accused of treason.
He was also singled out for murdering a nervous agent of half brother Kim Jong Nam at Kuala Lumpur airport.
At the same time, Kim accelerated North Korea’s banned nuclear program.
Four of the country’s six nuclear tests have taken place under his mandate. And in 2017 Pyongyang launched ballistic missiles with the capability to reach the entire US territory, defying the UN Security Council’s increasingly severe sanctions.
For months, he exchanged sour messages with then-US President Donald Trump, which fueled fears of armed conflict.
But then he declared the country’s nuclear arsenal “complete” and knocked on the door of the outside world.
– Meetings with Trump –
With the help of pacifist South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in 2018 Kim became the first North Korean ruler to meet with an incumbent US president at a summit in Singapore.
Soo Kim, an analyst at RAND Corporation, says Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal was what made the meeting possible.
“North Korea’s development of its weapons program, the credibility of the nuclear and missile threat and the fortuitous convergence of leaders (Trump, Moon and Kim) helped to prepare the conditions,” explains the analyst.
After the first meeting, Trump claimed to have established a “special bond”, including using the word “love”, with the person he had previously called “little rocket man”.
In the same year, Kim maintained contacts with Moon and several meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Pyongyang’s main ally.
“The ruthless, comical-looking dictator had turned into a reformer, pacifist and responsible administrator of nuclear arsenals and gulags, possibly willing to accept denuclearization,” summarizes Sung-yoon Lee, professor of Korean Studies at Tufts University (USA) .
But the romance was short-lived: the second meeting between Trump and Kim in Hanoi ended in failure over differences over the end of sanctions and the concessions Pyongyang would make in return.
Trump left the capital of Vietnam on a plane and Kim took a train for the 60-hour trip back to Pyongyang.
A later encounter in the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean peninsula did not help to break the blockade.
– “Common opponent” –
Senior officials and analysts say Kim has never been willing to completely give up his nuclear arsenal, for which North Korea has worked for decades at a high cost in resources and isolation, and which continues to develop.
“It cannot feed its population, but it manages to maintain the regime’s political survival with its weapons,” explains Soo Kim. “And that’s more important for Kim,” he adds.
And with the United States and China in a period of tension, Kim has the opportunity to emulate his grandfather Kim Il Sung.
North Korea’s founder took advantage of tensions between Moscow and Beijing to confront the two communist countries.
The ties between Pyongyang and Beijing, forged when they joined forces in the Korean War, were a “love-hate relationship between two friend-enemies,” said Professor Lee.
“None loves the other, but recognizes that the other is their best ally in terms of strategy, ideology, history and in containing the United States, the common adversary”, he adds.
– “Considerable success” –
While North Korea’s dynastic regime bases its legitimacy on nationalist and weapons issues, Kim only needs to look beyond the Chinese border to understand how economic prosperity can increase the popularity of a one-party country.
But to Beijing’s frustration, the North’s nuclear development contrasts with the mismanagement of its economy, even before sanctions, which has left its population suffering from chronic food shortages.
With a vulnerable healthcare system, last year the country closed its borders after detecting the coronavirus in China, a self-imposed blockade that remains in effect.
While many experts doubt it, Pyongyang says it has not recorded any covid-19 cases. Even so, Kim recognized the resulting adversities and prepares his population for the “worst case”.
“Economically, North Korea is at the end of the international order,” said Park Won-gon, professor of North Korean Studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul.
“But with its nuclear arsenal it is able to exert its influence between two world powers, the United States and China”, he adds.
“I would call Pyongyang a considerable success,” he says.
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