North Korea's Decade With Baby Dictator

"All people and soldiers should have absolute trust in the general secretary, have their fate and future completely entrusted to him and guard his safety and authority."

"He is, indeed, the greatest man and the great sage of the revolution all the people on this land follow with their deep affection and sincerity."

State Rodong Sinmun newspaper

"He has tried to differentiate himself from the reigns of his father and grandfather. [Including] legitimizing his own leadership by establishing an ideological system of 'Kim Jong-unism'[ that is centered on 'Our People First' 'Our Nation First' and self-reliance."

"At the same time, he has been using the same old brutal playbook to maintain power and control over officials."

Duyeon Kim, adjunct senior fellow, Centre for a New American Security, Washington, D.C.

"To a certain extent, he [has] ruled by fear, as we saw from Jang's brutal execution, and the unusually frequent personnel shuffles in the top echelons of the military in the first few years of his leadership."

"[He is] backed up by a powerful system that has withstood all sorts of storms since the founding of North Korea."

"It also has to do with a clever leadership strategy. This is a man who values pragmatism and understands the importance of keeping up with the times to stay competitive and improve the people's living standards."

Minyoung Lee, Seoul-based non-resident fellow, 38 North Program, Stimson Centre, Washington

Citizens visit the bronze statues of their late leaders Kim Il Sung, left, and Kim Jong Il on Mansu Hill in Pyongyang, North Korea Thursday, Dec. 16, 2021, on the occasion of 10th anniversary of demise of Kim Jong Il.  VOA

 

The tenth anniversary of the death of North Korean former leader Kim Jong-il saw a ceremonial service where thousands of people paid their respects to the former leader, with his son Kim Jong Un in attendance. Footage televised by KCTV showed Kim visiting his father's mausoleum, standing on a platform with crowds of people below, on the palace grounds in Pyongyang.

 

Flags at half mast, the thousands gathered at the annual memorial bowed silent heads, portraits of the country's former leaders, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung facing them. A ten-day period of remembrance for the "Great Leader" was officially ordered, a ban on alcohol, on laughter, on any overt signs of happiness ordered. Police ordered to look for signs of disobedience to the ban and to arrest any that dared to contravene the ban. Involuntary smiles to be suppressed on pain of incarceration.

The occasion of the tenth year since the death of the former leader of North Korea also marks the tenth year of the ascension of his son, Kim Jong Un who assumed the post of supreme leader at age 29 on his father's sudden death of a heart attack. Kim appears to have met all the yardsticks and then some of strong leadership, North Korean-style. Presenting himself as a brutal oppressor, a ruthless tyrant, but a loving dictator to his people.

The internal palace intrigues have presented no problem to this scheming tyrant who hasn't hesitated to order the murder of anyone who he believed to have challenged his authority or nurse aspirations to take his place. He has achieved some milestones beyond what his father and grandfather managed in meeting with a U.S. president, with the president of South Korea, and establishing a personal relationship with Chinese leader Xi Jinping.

Loving his people so deeply he defied international sanctions in his ongoing bid to develop nuclear weapons and long-range ballistic missiles. That the expense involved in these enterprises meant that much of his population lives in poverty and episodes of food and energy scarcity erupt time and again does not appear to give him sleepless nights. 

This loving supreme leader ordered the imprisonment and then the execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek who, with his wife, had avuncularly taken the young Kim under his wing as he ascended to the leadership, guiding and encouraging  him, before he became strangely persona non grata when Kim appeared to view him as an adversarial threat. 

Even his half-brother Kim Jong-nam was not immune to suspicion as a possible usurper of Kim's place as supreme leader. So a rather awkward and amateurish plot to assassinate him with the lethal VX nerve agent was carried out in 2017. Academics studying his regime of 'benevolent' dictatorship give him credit for modernizing state television programming, for introducing economic reforms, and for inclusion in his speeches of the 'people'.

North Korea continues to be a hermit kingdom, one engrossed in building a nuclear stockpile, catering to the neuroses and paranoia of a man fascinated by military weapons of mass destruction and seeing no reason whatever why his impoverished nation should possess such weapons to prove to the world what a global power it represents. While during the pandemic the nation's rudimentary health care system is close to buckling.

 

KCNA