Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power - North Korea's Coming Out Party

Part IV - North Korea's Coming Out Party

Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump walking together during the 2018 Singapore Summit. Image Credit: Shealah Craighead, June 12, 2018, official White House photograph.

 

Introduction

Hosting the Olympics for the first time is usually regarded as a country’s “coming out party”, letting the world see that they are capable of massive and complex infrastructure projects as well as having developed the diplomatic skills necessary to coordinate an event with tens of thousands of participants and countless visitors from around the world.

This was the case for South Korea in 1988 and China in 2008.

For North Korea, many view their coming out event as the year 2018 itself. In 2018, North Korea attempted to woo their southern cousins during the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics at the beginning of the year and followed it up with a summit in Singapore with the United States on June 12. For the first time in history, a sitting North Korean leader and a sitting American president sat across from each other at the same table. However, when Kim Jong-un first ascended to power, few thought such a meeting would ever be possible.

Kim Jong-un had very little diplomatic experience during his short grooming period and the North Korean diplomatic corps was, naturally, dominated by those who had served exclusively under Kim Jong-il. Making matters more difficult is the very limited range of independence North Korean diplomats have to adapt to what the moment requires. Rather, they’re often limited to repeating talking points and must seek authorization for even minor changes.

This has handicapped the vast majority of exchanges with North Korea and has often led to the collapse of talks. Regardless, an election in the U.S. and the openness of South Korean president Moon Jae-in created the opportunity for Kim Jong-un to engage with the world much more than his father, the insular-looking Kim Jong-Il.

And so, the world witnessed something of a miracle in 2018, but that year has become bookended by assassinations and nuclear tests before and aggressive stances and missile tests since. How the miracle year came about and where things seem to be going in the aftermath is what I hope to share in this article.

 

Early Moves, Fire & Fury

Early diplomatic outreaches by Kim Jong-un’s new regime followed long-established cycles of provocation followed by promises to talk in exchange for aid or sanctions relief, only to be followed by a period of provocation again. This was the case with the ‘Leap Day’ deal reached on Feb. 29, 2012 that would have allowed inspectors into the Yongbyon nuclear research site. However, the agreement was discarded a few weeks later as North Korea announced they would launch a satellite into space which the United States viewed as a violation of the agreement.

This cycle continued through to the election of Donald Trump in Nov. 2016. Although, while still firing missiles and testing nuclear weapons, the election seemed to provide Kim Jong-un with an opening to reach out to the U.S. as Trump relied more on his personal relationships with people than he relied on previous policy decisions or protocol. President Trump had also made it clear that he was willing to talk to anyone, including Putin and Xi Jinping, regardless of human rights abuses, if it meant improved bilateral relations and avoiding greater conflicts.

However, this opening appeared to slam shut for Kim Jong-un following the assassination of his half-brother Kim Jong-nam. The 45-year-old Jong-nam had been living in self-imposed exile for years and spent most of his time visiting casinos in Macau, going to concerts, and living in luxury apartments. As Kim Jong-un took power, Kim Jong-nam began to openly criticize the hereditary succession and called on North Korea to reform its practices. This placed Jong-nam in the very dangerous position of being a possible locus of dissent for unhappy elites in Pyongyang who may also want the country to reform.

After Kim Jong-un had solidified his power within the country, he made the decision to take out this threat. On February 13, 2017, Kim Jong-nam was passing through the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia where he was assaulted by two women, with one splashing him with a liquid and the other covering his face with a cloth.

The women were from Vietnam and Malaysia and had been told they were taking part in a TV prank show, but it was no prank. They had unknowingly exposed Jong-nam to the deadly and banned chemical weapon VX. He died soon after despite medical treatment.

The resulting backlash led to multiple countries (including Malaysia) recalling their ambassadors and closing embassies, leaving North Korea more isolated than ever.

But while the world looked on in horror at the assassination, it was North Korea’s weapons testing that really got under President Trump’s skin.

Kim Jong-un tested four nuclear devices between 2013 and 2017, with each device being more powerful than the next. The United States’ intelligence community eventually assessed that Pyongyang indeed had the capability to produce a miniaturized nuclear warhead that could be mounted on a missile.

Following up on two nuclear tests in 2016, North Korea conducted a series of missile tests in 2017 that culminated in the successful testing of the Hwasong-14 on July 4 and a second test on July 28. The Hwasong-14 became North Korea’s first missile capable of hitting nearly all of the continental United States.

Celebrating the July 4 test, Kim Jong-un called the launch a “gift [to the] American bastards…” for the U.S. Independence Day holiday and told officials to “frequently send big and small ‘gift packages’ to the Yankees”.

These tests brought the North Korea crisis to a boiling point and serious discussions were held about attacking the country or conducting a ‘decapitation strike’ against Kim Jong-un. President Trump summed up his feelings on August 8, 2017 declaring, “North Korea best not make any more threats to the United States…they will be met with fire and fury like the world has never seen.” And, partially in response to the killing of Kim Jong-nam with a chemical weapon in a third-party country, the U.S. also relisted North Korea as a state sponsor of terrorism that November.

It was under this shadow that South Korea prepared to host the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in the city of Pyeongchang. It was also at this point that back-channel discussions were ongoing to set up a new round of talks or even a summit to defuse the situation and avert war. After some uncertainty in 2017, North Korea had reached an agreement to participate in the 2018 Olympics on Jan. 9, 2018, but Pyongyang’s other aggressions were continuing and such a breakthrough event as a summit had yet to be formally agreed to by the time of the Games.

  

Onward to Pyeongchang

Kim Jong-un’s sister, Kim Yo-Jong, sits next to South Korea president Moon Jae-in during a performance of the North Korean Samjiyon Orchestra in Seoul. Image source: Korean Culture and Information Service, CC 2.0

Although Kim Jong-un said in his 2018 New Years’ Address that “North Korea's participation in the Winter Games will be a good opportunity to showcase the national pride and we wish the Games will be a success”, their participation was still up in the air after North Korea had failed to meet a deadline, but then a final agreement was reached on Jan. 9.

North Korea’s agreement to take part in the games and have both country’s athletes walk in the opening ceremony together under the Unification Flag was a great step toward rebuilding trust and cooperation between each side of the DMZ.

At the same time, as during the 1988 Summer Olympic Games that were held in Seoul, it was also feared North Korea might seek to either co-opt the events or cause major disruptions. In the case of the 1988 Games, this took the shape of bombing Korean Air Flight 858 in the runup to the Olympics that killed 115 people. For 2018, Japan’s Foreign Minister Taro Kono warned Seoul to be warry of any “charm offensive” coming from Pyongyang and there was even some backlash among South Koreans, as the Moon administration signaled that it was willing to give into North Korean demands including things that could be seen to intrude on South Korea’s own rights as a sovereign nation and on civil liberties.

Thankfully, the worst that happened was North Korea condemning the continued U.S. military presence on the peninsula and the military cooperation between Washington and Seoul. However, a kind of co-opting did happen in the form of Kim Jong-un’s sister – Kim Yo-jong.

The announcement that Kim Jong-un’s younger sister would serve as his envoy during the games helped to turn opposition into curiosity as a central member of the Kim family would be visiting South Korea in one of the biggest diplomatic moves since the Korean War.

Kim Yo-jong’s ‘cool personality' and appearance played well with the South Korean public and was evocative of the ‘Kim Jong-il mania’ that swept the country in 2000 following the first inter-Korean Summit as a result of South Korea’s Sunshine Policy that saw a dramatic, though temporary, rise in pro-North sentiment among the general public.

In this sense, Yo-jong helped open the door for future discussions and meetings between the two countries that would pave the way for the inter-Korean summit between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in on April 27, 2018. This move also built up her own public name recognition globally and improved her growing standing within the North Korea elite as one of the few people Kim Jong-un trusts the most.

As part of the 22-member government delegation sent to South Korea, Yo-jong was also joined by Kim Yong-nam, the President of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly (SPA). A number of civilians were also sent including the Samjyong Orchestra, which was formed to perform in South Korea as part of the overall celebrations.

During the period of the Olympics, Yo-jong attended the opening ceremony, watched a hockey match, and met with several South Korean dignitaries including President Moon Jae-in himself, during which she delivered Kim Jong-un’s invitation for him to travel to Pyongyang. And while Yo-jong did not attend the closing ceremony, SPA Presidium member General Kim Yong-chol did, continuing the highest levels of North Korean representation throughout the events.

In contrast to Yo-jong’s engaging behavior, U.S. Vice President Mike Pence was noted as looking “stony face” during the opening ceremony, perhaps reflecting the Trump administration policy of ‘maximum pressure’ toward North Korea. However, relations would soon begin to thaw.

 

After a flurry of lower-level meetings in March and early April, on April 27 the first inter-Korean summit in eleven years took place. It was the first meeting between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in and the summit gave rise to the Panmunjom Declaration for Peace, Prosperity and Reunification of the Korean Peninsula.

The Panmunjom Declaration was largely a reiteration of the goals found in previous agreements, with some previsions recalling the 2000 June 15^th North–South Joint Declaration and the 2007 North–South Summit Declaration, namely to seek reunification on joint Korean terms, end hostilities, engage in economic cooperation, and develop a step-by-step process toward further cooperation and peace.

The Panmunjom Declaration did make some progress, however, in that it directly called for an official end to the Korean War (which is technically still ongoing) and gave a more detailed outline for how to accomplish the broader goals of the agreement. This included the creation of a North-South liaison office in Kaesong and connecting the countries through the Donghae and Gyeongui railways.

Additionally, both sides agreed to remove loudspeakers along the DMZ that have blasted propaganda into each country off and on for decades, and they agreed to put an end to sending balloons across the DMZ which is something North Korea, in particular, has long complained about.

The move against balloons, which are often sent across by South Korean civilian groups, would expose the South Korean government to considerable criticism by civil rights activists as the government signaled its willingness to prosecute citizens for sending anything over the DMZ, including money and USBs of popular television shows.

But while the domestic political issues took on a life of its own, both Koreas continued their engagement and two more inter-Korean summits were held in 2018.

At the same time, efforts were underway to bring an end to the rising antagonism between North Korea and the United States.

 

Working Toward a Summit

North Korea’s participation in the Olympics and the Panmunjom Declaration created an opportunity for North Korea and the United States to begin a period of détente. After the bellicose heights of “fire and fury” the year before, a South Korean delegation met with Kim Jong-un in Pyongyang on March 5, 2018 to negotiate future moves toward peace.

Mere days after the Pyongyang meeting, South Korean officials were at the White House where President Trump met with South Korea national security adviser Chung Eui-yong and National Information Director Suh Hoon to discuss their meeting with Kim Jong-un. They then presented Trump with an invitation by Kim Jong-un to eventually meet, with the likely timeframe being in May.

However, as Ankit Panda laid out for the BBC, “There was something profoundly odd about the optics of this announcement. Three South Koreans… stood shoulder-to-shoulder speaking to eagerly-gathered reporters outside the West Wing. Without any American officials present, it very much placed this entire diplomatic initiative in South Korea's hands. One could easily walk away sensing that the United States wasn't entirely enthusiastic about this endeavor.”

This framing of the U.S. mood was indeed correct. Although President Trump accepted Kim Jong-un’s invitation “on the spot”, as the details of the meeting began to be planned, the United States reiterated its policy that North Korea must take “concrete and verifiable steps” toward denuclearization prior to any summit and that sanctions against the country would remain in place until an agreement is made between the two countries.

Kim Jong-un appeared to have foreseen these demands and preemptively placed a self-imposed moratorium on further nuclear tests and agreed it would dismantle certain missile and nuclear sites including at the Sohae Satellite Launching Station, a test stand at the Iha-ri military base, and close the Punggye-ri nuclear test site. The moratorium had already been agreed to back on March 5, but Kim Jong-un didn’t make a formal announcement until April 20 saying, the country is doing this to “prove the vow to suspend nuclear [testing]”.

While this gave Pyongyang an air of sincerity as a good-faith actor, eager to follow through with the summit just a few weeks away, some analysts felt that the move had more to do with the fact that North Korea simply didn’t need to conduct any more nuclear tests as it had already accomplished what it needed.

 

During this time, South Korea was also meeting with China and Japan to continue laying groundwork and working out the ultimate details of the summit.

As opportunities grew through the Olympics and into March, Kim Jong-un held a clandestine meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping on March 25-28, marking his first visit with the Chinese leader. During the two-day meeting, the leaders discussed matters of denuclearization and improving ties between the longstanding allies. This meeting was followed by others, all publicly announced, which ended up bringing China into helping to orchestrate the future Trump-Kim summit.

This was an important development as the Trump administration had insisted since the 2016 presidential campaign that China take a more direct role in resolving the nuclear issue and in upholding United Nations’ sanctions against North Korea.

Despite the trepidation on behalf of some in the administration, the U.S. began to take a more active role in setting up a summit. On April 1, 2018, then-CIA Director Mike Pompeo went on a secret meeting in Pyongyang to talk about the nuclear issue and to help clear the way for the Trump-Kim summit expected in May or June as South Korea announced back in March. Of particular interest for the summit was trying to agree on a location. The Trump administration had offered four politically neutral sites, Ulaanbaatar, Stockholm, Geneva, or Singapore. It was also floated that Seoul, Pyongyang, or Panmunjom on the DMZ could host the summit.

 

Things seemed to be moving in a generally positive and forward motion until on April 29, 2018, U.S. National Security Advisor John Bolton referenced Libya as a model for how to deal with North Korea, as Gaddafi had given up Libya’s nuclear program for sanctions relief in 2002-03. Bolton had long been hawkish on foreign policy regarding North Korea and other “rogue nations”, and generally preferred military action to continued diplomacy.

Bolton’s hawkishness meant that his statement toward North Korea carried with it overtones of a threat, as despite the denuclearization agreement by Libya, less than a decade later, Gaddafi was under air attack by NATO forces as the Libyan Revolution raged on in 2011. He was eventually shot and sodomized in a drain culvert by opposing forces while trying to escape after the Battle of Sirte.

Pyongyang has often referred to Libya as an example of why one should never relinquish nuclear weapons and why North Korea can’t trust the United States, as the U.S. and the West eventually facilitated Gaddafi’s disposition and death (along with Saddam Hussein’s) despite their nuclear and WMD capitulation.

Indeed, Dr. Guo Yu, principal Asia analyst at the global risk consultancy Verisk Maplecroft said that Kim Jong-un has learned this lesson well, “We see in Libya and Iraq countries who gave up their WMD programs, and foreign power campaigns that led to a regime change,…To safeguard against that, North Korea [is] firmly in the belief that they need to have credible nuclear deterrent…”

So, whether or not Bolton’s comments were an unforced error or a less-than-subtle attempt to derail the summit process is up for debate. Regardless, with pressure from China and after some substantial “explanations” by the Trump administration, saying that Bolton was only referring to the positive outcomes of 2002-03 and not ultimately to regime change, the summit process was back on track.

This was especially true as tensions eased further after North Korea released three American prisoners it had been holding for as long as 31 months. Kim Dong-chul, Kim Sang-duk, and Kim Hak-song were released to the newly confirmed Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State and landed at Joint Andrews Airforce Base in Washington, DC on May 10.

Despite the summit preparations having resumed, the risk of cancelation was always near the surface. In yet another ‘unforced error’, on May 17 President Trump threatened North Korea with “Libya’s fate” if a deal wasn’t made. Unlike Bolton’s comments earlier in the month, Trump’s comments weren’t a subtle or oblique threat to regime change. It was directly threatening war.

Trump’s words could easily be seen as hyperbole and another example of him not thinking before he spoke, but a few days later U.S. Vice President Mike Pence, who was seen as a more thoughtful and reasoned person also echoed the threat, “this will only end like the Libyan model ended if Kim Jong-un doesn't make a deal”.

This incensed the North Koreans and vice foreign minister Choe Son-hui said that the comments were threatening a nuclear showdown. Then on May 24, Trump called off the summit citing North Korea’s “open hostility” in a letter to Kim Jong-un. However, he also left the door open for continuing talks of a summit if Kim were to “change [his] mind”.

Ironically, May 24 was also the day that North Korea demolished the tunnel entrances to the Punggye-ri nuclear test site.

By any historic standard of dealing with North Korea, this would have ended the entire thing. But North Korea almost reached out immediately, with Kim Jong-un saying, “We would like to make known to the US side once again that we have the intent to sit with the US side to solve problem(s) regardless of ways at any time”.

In another high-level meeting, vice chair of the Central Committee of the Workers' Party of Korea, Kim Yong-chol, met with Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in New York City on May 30 to further negotiate the summit issue. He was the highest-level official to travel to the United States since 2000.

Then on June 1, President Trump announced that the summit would happen after all, following the "very nice statement" by North Korea sent to President Trump and other overtures. The location and date would be the same as announced (back on May 10) prior to the cancellation: Singapore on June 12.

How much of a problem the week-long cancellation caused to setting up the summit isn’t known, but both sides began final preparations without skipping a beat the moment the announcement to resume was made.

 

Singapore and Hanoi

Trump and Kim shaking hands on June 12 just before the start of their one-on-one meeting. Image source: Dan Scavino.

 Having the idea for a summit is one thing but planning it and figuring out how Kim Jong-un could physically get to the chosen location was quite another. Aside from the fact that Kim is a named individual targeted by sanctions and has been blamed for massive human rights abuses by the United Nations (which could prevent any ordinary person from traveling internationally), the DPRK national airline, Air Koryo, isn’t allowed to operate in the majority of international airspace due to safety concerns and international aviation regulations.

Although Kim has the use of a Soviet-era Ilyushin-62M passenger jet as a kind of “Pyongyang One”, the plane has been retired by all other national operators except for use in carrying cargo. Its age and the extreme distance of 4,700 km meant that Kim needed a different way to get to the summit.

After some negotiations and China playing on Kim’s fear of long-distance flights, it was decided that Kim would borrow a much more modern and safe Boeing 747 owned by Beijing, with the Ilyushin-62M traveling along as a transport for Kim Yo-jong and other officials. An Ilyushin-76 also traveled from Pyongyang carrying food and other items.

Venue scouting, security, deciding where the media events would be held, and other logistics were all finalized in June and included substantial assistance from the government of Singapore including the government’s agreement to pay for the hotel bills of the North Korean delegation. In the end, it is estimated that Singapore paid a total of $11.9 million to host the summit.

 

Kim Jong-un was the first to arrive, landing in Singapore in the afternoon of June 10. He was followed by President Trump who arrived in Singapore at 8:20 pm after having left the G7 meeting earlier than planned that was happening in Canada. Trump was excited for the summit and tweeted out, “It will certainly be an exciting day and I know that Kim Jong Un will work very hard to do something that rarely been done before. Create peace and great prosperity for his land.”

Before both men retired to their respective hotels, Kim at the St. Regis and Trump at the Shangri-La Hotel, Kim met with Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong and Trump met with him that Monday for a working lunch.

Monday saw a series of meetings between U.S. and Singapore officials and between North Korea and Singapore, as well as several press briefings. Kim Jong-un also took this opportunity to tour the city with his sister. Kim has been known to take part in the leisure and touristy facilities available in North Korea, like enjoying rides during the opening of the Rungna Peoples’ Pleasure Grounds in 2012 and visiting the country’s ski resorts. So it was little surprise that he would want to take one the rare times he left his homeland to play tourist for the day, as the following day would be all about business.

That Tuesday began with the sun shining and both men traveling to the summit venue at the Capella Resort amid heavy security. The official start to the proceedings was at 9:05 am and they met and shook hands for the first time. Afterward, a one-on-one meeting between the leaders was held followed by an expanded meeting involving various officials from both countries.

After the expanded bilateral meeting, the two men joined each other for a working lunch and then took a walk around the grounds of the resort where President Trump briefly showed off ‘the Beast’ to Kim who seemed very interested in the presidential limousine as US Secret Service agents tried to limit access to photographers from seeing too much of the notoriously classified interior.

Soon after, Trump and Kim sat down to sign a joint statement. Part of the statement reads, “President Trump committed to provide security guarantees to the DPRK, and Chairman Kim Jong Un reaffirmed his firm and unwavering commitment to complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.”

It also included four provisions:

1. The United States and the DPRK commit to establish new U.S.–DPRK relations in accordance with the desire of the peoples of the two countries for peace and prosperity.
2. The United States and the DPRK will join their efforts to build a lasting and stable peace regime on the Korean Peninsula.
3. Reaffirming the April 27, 2018 Panmunjom Declaration, the DPRK commits to work toward complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula.
4. The United States and the DPRK commit to recovering POW/MIA remains, including the immediate repatriation of those already identified.

Although the statement didn’t bring about any brand new agreements and wasn’t legally binding, it was nonetheless an “epochal event of great significance in overcoming decades of tensions and hostilities between the two countries and for the opening up of a new future”.

The summit closed with a U.S. press conference where President Trump called the meetings a success and unilaterally announced the end of joint military exercises with the South Korean military without first consulting South Korea. He also expressed a desire for the eventual removal of all U.S. military personnel on the peninsula. These two things have long been sought after by North Korea but the U.S. had always resisted the moves until after a denuclearized North Korea. Trump, it seems, was about to give away the store.

However, despite the overall positive nature of the summit and the excitement for the future it generated, once Trump was back in Washington, the pragmatic realities of the situation sank back in.

Although claiming victory and tweeting that North Korea was no longer a nuclear threat to the United States, his official actions told a different story. He extended Executive Order 13466 because “the current existence and risk of the proliferation of weapons-usable fissile material on the Korean Peninsula constitute an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security and foreign policy of the United States, and I hereby declare a national emergency to deal with that threat.”

Continuing with the undertakings, Mike Pompeo met with WPK vice chairman General Kim Yong-chol in Pyongyang in July, but according to the North Korean’s, U.S. demands displayed a “gangster-like attitude”. Negative assessments of future negotiations that were held with Pompeo and other officials would continue to be made by North Korea, revealing deep differences between how each side viewed the proceedings and how they thought denuclearization should take place.

Concurrently, the regime still publicly claimed to hold out hope for a peace brokered directly between the two leaders.

Despite knowing that coming to peace with North Korea wasn’t actually going to be as simple as a summit and a few tweets, both men did heavily rely on their developing personal relationships with each other to try to keep the process moving forward. Trump and Kim exchanged a series of letters with Trump even exclaiming that they “fell in love” during one political rally. Analysts often say that Kim Jong-un was playing on President Trump’s ego through effusive praise and using honorifics such as “your excellency”, nonetheless, the letters did seem to extend the life of the peace negotiations.

Still, more was needed. To try and avoid having the process stall out, plans for a second summit were confirmed by the White House on Sept. 11, 2018 to be held in the “not too distant future”.

Kim Jong-un had been pushing for sanctions relief and disagreements with the U.S. over how much relief and when repeatedly became a key issue. The U.S. was also becoming frustrated by North Korea’s concessions to dismantle one nuclear or missile facility while continuing work at multiple others, all despite also saying that they no longer wished to test nuclear weapons.

These contradictions caused lower-level meetings to be canceled only to later be rescheduled. Even so, Kim said during 2019 New Years’ speech that he was willing to again meet with Trump anytime. Soon after, vice chair Kim Yong Chol traveled to D.C. to meet with Secretary of State Pompeo and President Trump.

Two months later, Trump told the world during his 2019 State of the Union address that a second summit would be held, this time in Vietnam on February 27-28.

Like his father, Kim Jong-un prefers to travel in one of his six armored trains. After the embarrassment of needing to borrow a Chinese jet to get to Singapore, Kim opted to use this slower (but far more luxurious method) of travel to Hanoi. He arrived at the Đồng Đăng railway station on Feb. 26.

The summit was held at the Metropole Hotel in Hanoi on Feb. 27-28, with a one-on-one meeting held first followed by a dinner. While it seemed to have some initial success on the first day, it was abruptly ended on the second day with no further agreements reached.

Concessions, like shuttering the nuclear facility at Yongbyon, was sought by Trump and offered by Kim but the U.S. would not offer to do anything upfront, only after North Korea carried out its part of the agreement, leaving Kim with even less leverage should the administration choose not to end sanctions.

Contradictions in Trump’s demands and other statements had further added Kim Jong-un’s growing loss of patience, especially after Trump had also acknowledged North Korea’s ‘good behavior’ back in 2018, “The hostages are back. There have been no tests. There have been no rockets going up for a period of nine months, and I think the relationships are very good, so we'll see how that goes.” That good behavior had largely continued throughout 2019, so North Korea would naturally see itself as abiding by previous agreements.

The administration’s demands, however, were not viewed by Kim to be followed up with ‘corresponding measures’ such as permanently ending joint military drills with South Korea or easing specific sanctions. And it must be said that North Korea, whether earnestly seeking peace through denuclearization or not, did actively concede far more than the U.S. ever did.

Hanoi also underscored the fact that North Korea’s definition of “denuclearization” is somewhat different than America’s, with North Korea including the removal of nuclear-capable bombers from the peninsula, a nuclear no-first-use guarantee by the United States, and the quick removal of U.S. personnel from South Korea – all prior to North Korea giving up its last remaining nuclear bomb. And it underscored that the administration didn’t seem to realize North Korea viewed the world in different terms.

It can’t be said that the summit failed just due to the Trump administration, as North Korea’s public words and covert actions rarely lined up together, but the possibility of a summit without any new agreements could, in the words of Ankit Panda, be seen a mile away exactly because of these misunderstandings and lop-sided actions.

The view that total disarmament before sanctions relief was doomed to failure (and that an incremental arms control policy would bear more fruit) was echoed by Doug Brandow, a former special assistant to President Ronald Reagan, who said that “[Trump] apparently pushed for the full monty, an all nukes for all sanctions deal, which was never realistic.” And then he compared the US-DPRK summits to that of the US and the USSR at Reykjavik in 1986 saying, “A failure to agree does not doom the relationship. Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev did not join in Reykjavik to eliminate nuclear weapons. But they ultimately agreed to other arms limitations and ended the Cold War.”

Making matters worse, it was later revealed by John Bolton that Trump had given Kim a note during the second day telling him to surrender all of his nuclear weapons and nuclear fuel to the United States before any sanctions relief. It was at that point that Kim Jong-un canceled the rest of the summit.

The Party Ends, Back to Isolation

In one last attempt at getting things back on track, Kim Jong-un sent Trump another letter. North Korea’s Foreign Ministry also released a statement calling President Trump the “supreme leader of the United States”; once again playing to his ego. Through these overtures, Kim asked for another meeting with Trump.

The final Trump-Kim summit was held on June 30, 2019. This trilateral meeting involved President Trump, Kim Jong-un, and South Korean president Moon Jae-in, but it was little more than a photo opportunity as President Trump stepped over the military demarcation line (the de facto border) at Panmunjom into North Korea. No further deals were made and the meeting only lasted a few hours.

Symbolically, this gave Kim Jong-un an enormous domestic boost as this was the first time a sitting American president had been on North Korean soil, but nothing of substance was achieved.

With Kim walking away with greater domestic legitimacy (having been the first North Korean leader to bring the Yankees to heel) and with denuclearization becoming an intractable issue yet again, the gulf between the two countries became even more clear.

Momentum toward a substantial, enforceable agreement began to stall even though lower-level talks continued, and as domestic forces in South Korea and the U.S. started to draw attention away onto other matters.

Even after President Trump eventually fired John Bolton, citing his Libya comments, tensions still rose. North Korea conducted missiles tests in August 2019 for the first time since November 29, 2017 and joint US-ROK military drills also began again.

But despite relations cooling between Pyongyang and the rest of the international community, the situation didn’t immediately devolve into disaster. Some of the agreed upon measures between North and South Korea were still carried out including the establishment of the Inter-Korean Liaison Office in Kaesong and on Nov. 24, 2018, the United Nations greenlit the inter-Korean joint field study on connecting the two countries via rail. The project’s groundbreaking followed on December 26 (although, there has been little additional progress).

And in one of the more visually dramatic moves of the 2018-2019 peace process, both countries carried out the demolition of several guard posts along the DMZ in late 2018 as a gesture showing their commitment to eventually dismantle the Demilitarized Zone.

 

Although bilateral relations between North and South Korea have improved in the last few years, particularly as Moon Jae-in has sought to maintain a personal relationship with Kim, things have not been without substantial controversy that could usher in more opposition politicians as elections are held in South Korea.

Creating particular consternation within South Korea has been Moon’s willingness to step on freedom of speech and other civil liberties in an attempt to appease Kim Jong-un. This includes banning sending balloons and leaflets across the border and cracking down on human rights activists. This has created a lot of internal pressure to change tactics regarding North Korea and made it more difficult for Moon to carry out his preferred policies toward the DPRK.

 

Evidence of continued hostile feelings and cracks in the process were obvious even throughout the summit process. Even though Kim Jong-un held three summits with President Trump and three with President Moon, the threats coming from North Korea didn’t stop. And sometimes, they were quite severe.

Following the summits, this boiled to the surface. As part of Kim Jong-un’s pressure campaign on President Moon, he had Kim Yo-jong write on June 13, 2020 what can only be described as an op-ed in her own name (an extremely rare occurrence in North Korea) threatening to pull out of the 2018 Panmunjom Declaration if activists weren’t stopped from sending balloons over the DMZ. This was followed up a day later by a statement from the Workers’ Party of Korea in support of the threats.

Another one of the threats was to shutter the Inter-Korean Liaison Office located in the Kaesong Industrial Region that had been established in 2018.

Establishing the office, which had been placed inside of an existing building, cost South Korea $8.6 million in renovation expenses and was meant to serve as a de facto embassy as neither country has formal diplomatic relations with the other.

The threats were soon seen through when on June 16, 2020, an explosion rocked Kaesong. The Inter-Korea Liaison Office had been blown up. The demolition occurred on what was the 20^th anniversary of the first inter-Korean summit.

While South Korea said it would “respond strongly” if North Korea continued to raise tensions, nothing of note actually happened in retaliation.

And in protest to joint South Korea-U.S. military exercises that began on August 16, 2020, Kim had the Seoul-Pyongyang Hotline cut in September. The phone line connects the two countries and is also supposed to allow for direct communication between both leaders in the event of an emergency. It wasn’t until October 4 that the hotline was confirmed to have been restored.

 

Rising tensions on the peninsula are only one facet of North Korea’s slide back toward belligerence and isolation.

North Korea has tested missiles 39 times since the start of 2019, returning to the pre-2017 era when Kim Jong-un had tested more missiles than Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il combined. Reports on their nuclear facilities at Yongbyon, Kangson, and Pyongsan all prove that North Korea’s nuclear program is still very much active. And the United Nations has released multiple Panel of Expert reports detailing North Korea’s illicit trade activities ranging from smuggling in oil to selling coal and counterfeit goods.

North Korea also took an active role in isolating itself further in response to COVID-19. Scores of diplomatic staff and their families have been forced to leave the country, even via hand-powered, open-topped rail trollies in freezing weather.

It has been theorized that the real reason behind this expulsion of foreigners is to further limit the flow of information into the country which strengthens the regime. Additionally, Pyongyang has engaged in crackdowns on “non-socialist behavior” as several new restrictions, particularly aimed at North Korean youth, have been implemented since the start of COVID.

COVID also provided a raison d'etre to further attack market activities and strive for greater centralization, with Kim reversing his more open attitude toward economic activity in his early days.

Even the World Food Program left the country, leaving North Korea with no UN or NGO workers in the country and almost no foreign nationals of any kind.

While 2021 has provided minor hope that the ‘blockade’ of trade and travel won’t last forever, as preparations are being made to resume limited trade with China, there are no signs that North Korea will soon return to a pre-COVID state.

 

Conclusions

Stories of national salvation have helped propel and preserve the Kim family’s power. Kim Il-sung saved the country from the Japanese and later from the Americans. Kim Jong-il saved the country from being overrun during its weakest point since the Korean War as a result of famine and the collapse of international communism. Kim Jong-un, it would seem, has been attempting to save the country for its own future. He has focused on ‘moving the revolution forward’ to create a North Korea capable of standing alone on the world stage with both military credibility and diplomatic credibility.

He has thus far accomplished this through parallel tracks of weapon development and diplomatic maneuvering; however, the lasting effects of Pyongyang’s engagements are in question. Although Kim did manage to buy time and to bully South Korea into passing some very undemocratic laws, he seems to have squandered much of the goodwill and international willingness to cooperate through his actions since the summits.

While the country is preparing to resume trade with China as the threats posed by COVID-19 wane, the broader international community appears to be even less willing to engage as Pyongyang’s illicit activities have been described in ever greater detail and as North Korea gets back to missile testing.

Despite the initial promise of the summits with South Korea and the United States, North Korea seems to be just as isolated as a decade ago.

Complicating matters has been that the new Biden administration has been slow to develop its own North Korea policies and didn’t appoint a special representative for North Korea until May 21, 2021. This limits Washington’s ability to engage with the country and made high-level talks far less likely for the near future. This leaves Kim up to his own devices to drive events, as he continues to search for ways to bring the U.S. back to the table in the hopes of ending sanctions and gaining other concessions.

~ ~ ~ ~ 

I have scheduled this project to run through to the end of the year, with a new article coming out roughly every 10 days or so. If you would like to support the project and help me with research costs, please consider supporting AccessDPRK on Patreon. Those supporters donating $15 or more each month will be entitled to a final PDF version of all the articles together that will also have additional information included once the series is finished. They will also receive a Google Earth map related to the events in the series, and can get access to the underlying data behind the supplemental reports.

Supporters at other levels will be sent each new article a day before it’s published and will also receive a mention as seen below.

I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters: Amanda O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, Rinmanah, Russ Johnson.

--Jacob Bogle, 11/30/2021
AccessDPRK.com
JacobBogle.com
Facebook.com/accessdprk
Twitter.com/JacobBogle

Kim Jong-un's First Decade - A Decade of Monument Growth

This is the second of the supplemental articles for the Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power series. It details the hundreds of monuments built under his rule.

The 20-meter-tall bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il standing in front of the mural wall of the Korean Revolution Museum. The statues were unveiled in 2012. Image source: Commons/by Nicor/CC 3.0

Every country has monuments and what they decide to build monuments to can tell you a lot about the place and time in which they were erected, along with, of course, what the country finds important.

North Korea is no different. There are monuments to great battles, the founding of the country, and to important figures in national history. But what makes North Korea different than any other country is both the number and variety of monuments and the government-enforced ideology that goes along with them.

No one is forced to travel to see the Washington Monument, there is no requirement to take full photographs of the Victoria Memorial in London, and even in China people can give voice to a certain level of ideological debate in front of the giant portrait of Mao hanging above the Forbidden City.

While the Juche Tower, Workers’ Party of Korea monument, the giant bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, and the Kumsusan Memorial Palace mausoleum may receive the most photographs and the most mention in the press (whenever the topic arises), those grand edifices only make up part of the crown of North Korean monuments, while there are literally thousands of others that dot the landscape and provide an inescapable reminder that this is solely the nation of Kim Il-sung, his descendants and their ideas.

 

North Korea’s cult of personality surrounding the Kim family had its roots prior to the official formation of the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea in 1948, with the adulation of not only Kim Il-sung but of other revolutionary leaders and anti-Japanese guerillas, but after he became the clear leader of the nation, the cult began to take on new dimensions. In the decades since, it has become tradition for each new generation of Kim to expand the cult of his father while establishing one of his own.

Kim Jong-il secured his position as heir by building up the cult surrounding Kim Il-sung to religious levels and tying the legitimacy of government to the Kim family itself. After Kim Il-sung died in 1994, thousands of tower monuments to his “eternal life” were erected in every town and village. And from there, the physical and permanent manifestations of the cult were impossible to miss no matter how rural the area.

However, Jong-il allegedly told officials that he didn’t want massive or hundreds of monuments built to him while he was alive and while the people were still struggling with food shortages. While this would give him the image of a caring leader, more concerned about the peoples’ needs, it is also just as likely that he wanted to avoid internal dissent as the masses would be required to help fund and build monuments to a living “supreme leader” all while the state routinely failed to provide adequate food, medicine, and shelter to millions.

Regardless of the real reasons, it did set a precedent. The bulk of monuments relating to Kim Jong-il during his lifetime are those erected at factories and other locations that he visited while giving “on the spot” guidance tours, they aren’t mega statues.

Kim Jong-un has maintained this tradition.

Prior to Kim Jong-il’s death in December 2011, there were at least 10,000 stone and bronze monuments in North Korea. The vast majority were dedicated to Kim Il-sung while a small but important minority had been erected to Kim Jong-il and to his activities, as well as few in honor of other members of the family.

After his death, particularly between 2012 and 2016, Kim Jong-un embarked on a major construction program to enlarge Jong-il’s cult and to help establish his own. In keeping with tradition, permanent monuments to the living leader are less numerous than the ones built in honor of the previous one.

As such, Kim Jong-un replaced every mural of Kim Il-sung in the center of each county seat with a set of joint mosaic murals, each now featuring Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il. He also ordered that the text on every Tower of Immortality be modified to include the now “eternal general” Jong-il (to go along with the “eternal president” Kim Il-sung). To understand the scope of that change, it required alterations to at least 5,260 Towers.

The massive Mansudae bronze statue of Kim Il-sung in Pyongyang was also replaced with a new one, now joined by a statue of Kim Jong-il. The smaller bronze statues in each provincial capital were likewise replaced with the pair of them.

Smaller monuments dedicated to locations where Kim Jong-il had visited or gave “revolutionary guidance” in the last year of his life were also erected after his death.

Bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-in on horseback on the grounds of the Mansudae Art Studio. Image source: Commons/by Nicor/CC 3.0

One of the grand monuments constructed under Kim Jong-un in honor of his ancestors is the bronze statues of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-un riding horses on the grounds of the Mansudae Art Studio. The studio is the only organization with permission to depict the Kim family and they are responsible for every important statue and mosaic mural of the Kims in the country.

The monument depicts Kim Il-sung on horseback, both the man and the horse exuding confidence and stability. Next to him is Kim Jong-il, his horse almost bursting with energy as the Dear General led the country “forward” and “applying his unique 'military first' policy to turn our country into an invincible one that can never be defeated and has a nuclear deterrent in the face of the deadly pressing offensive of imperialists,” in the words of Kim Yong Nam who served as President of the Presidium from 1998 to 2019.

Unveiled in 2012, the monument was cast and finished in just two months according to North Korean sources and was one of the very first major works to show Kim Jong-il.

With Kim Jong-un having solidified his link to past leaders and sufficiently glorified them, he also began work on his own cult. As statues of himself are taboo, the first glimpse of his megalomania was seen in the 560-meter-long slogan sign on the hill overlooking the Samsu Hydroelectric Dam. Declaring, “Long live Songun Korea's General Kim Jong Un!” the sign was actually built before his official transition was over. A decade later it still stands, the only change being to reflect his own changes in policy; the word “Songun” has been replaced with “Juche”.

 

The locations of monuments in and around the city of Sariwon. Based on research done for the AccessDPRK project.

 

In all, under the rule of Kim Jong-un, the AccessDPRK project has located 867 monuments that were built from 2012 onwards. This represents 7.3% of all monuments in the country and new ones are erected every year.

Of that number, 31 are joint statues and 281 are joint murals. There are also at least 5,260 Towers of Immortality in the country. And aside from the alterations to the thousands of existing Towers, Kim has had a further 103 erected around the country.

In addition to the 867 that are currently known to have been built by Kim Jong-un, scores of others (in addition to the Towers) were renovated or remodeled in some way.

 

The 312 joint statues and joint murals are indeed new monuments, but most (a few were totally new constructions) were additions to sites that had already existed prior to Kim Jong-il’s death. Of the other ones, new Towers, new guidance commemorations, new murals of other kinds, for which I have a certain year of construction, there were 25 totally new monuments built in 2012, 36 built in 2013, 56 built in 2014, 55 built in 2015, 87 built in 2016, 82 built in 2017, 73 built in 2018, 52 built in 2019, 16 built in 2020, and two are known to have been built in 2021. Once satellite images are updated for other parts of the county, the 2020 and 2021 figures will certainly rise.

All of this new construction means that there are at least 11,755 monuments in North Korea. And between building new ones and renovating existing monuments, I estimate that at least $1 million a year on average is spent on this aspect of the personality cult. There have been tremendously greater expenses in the past (such as the Kumsusan Memorial Palace), but those are relatively few and far between.

Another way to quantify the scope of monuments in North Korea is to look at how much land they occupy. After doing a representative survey of the different types of monuments, totaling 10% of all monuments in the country, I estimate that the paved (e.g. non-landscaped) area of all of the monuments in the country occupies approximately 350 combined acres of land. Another way to look put it, is that they take up the same amount of land as 198 standard UK football pitches. However, if you were to add in the landscaping and wider public parks dedicated to key members of the family, the total area of the country involved in commemorating the Kim’s grows considerably. The land area of the Kumsusan Memorial Palace alone is nearly 90 acres and there’s over 80 acres dedicated to the Kims in the city of Hoeryong. 

 

While knowing that acres and acres of land are being used to glorify such a family instead of being used for better purposes helps us conceptualize the scope of monumental construction, knowing the types, numbers, and dates of construction does offer additional benefits for those interested in the topic.

The vast majority of guidance visits are publicized in DPRK media, but they are vague on the exact locations of the places visited. So, we can correlate the construction dates of monuments and their types to then help identify the locations of formerly unknown places, as these smaller commemorative monuments are usually built within a few months to a year of the visit. A good example of connecting monument construction with Kim visits can be seen in the elite KPA Farm No. 1116, where monuments and a museum have been built in response to multiple visits by Kim Jong-un.

The edification of the Kim family goes well beyond stone monuments in village squares. There are hundreds of museums in the country, many of which have been renovated under Kim Jong-un. From the expansion of the Korean Revolution Museum to the reconstruction of the Sinchon Museum of American War Atrocities, scores of buildings that either directly enforce the ideologies of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il or that promote the regime’s narrative of history have either been remodeled or placed under construction.

With monuments in every village and scattered throughout larger towns to the Juche ideological study halls to Kimilsungism-Kimjongilism rooms inside of high schools, and to revolutionary museums being located in every county seat, no one is far removed from visible reminders that North Korea is Kim’s Korea.

Add to this that the only official sources of information come from the state and that the regime has taken great steps under Kim Jong-un to limit outside information from breaking the ideological blockade, this layered approach to propaganda bolstered by a decade of new monuments has continued to shape the world view of 25 million people and it will be a monumental task in itself to overcome three generations of indoctrination if reunification ever comes.

 

~ ~ ~ ~

I have scheduled this project to run through to the end of the year, with a new article coming out roughly every 10 days or so. If you would like to support the project and help me with research costs, please consider supporting AccessDPRK on Patreon. Those supporters donating $15 or more each month will be entitled to a final PDF version of all the articles together that will also have additional information included once the series is finished. They will also receive a Google Earth map related to the events in the series, and can get access to the underlying data behind the supplemental reports.

Supporters at other levels will be sent each new article a day before it’s published and will also receive a mention as seen below.

 

I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters: Amanda O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, Rinmanah, Russ Johnson, and ZS.

--Jacob Bogle, 9/28/2021

AccessDPRK.com
www.JacobBogle.com
Facebook.com/JacobBogle
Twitter.com/JacobBogle

Kim Jong-un's First Decade in Power - Entering The Family Business

Kim Jong-un with his wife, Ri Sol-ju, at the opening of the Rungra People's Pleasure Ground on July 25, 2012. Image via KCNA.

Part II - Entering the Family Business

Death and a Funeral

Kim Jong-il died on December 17, 2011, at the age of 70. Official reports say he died from a heart attack at 8:30 am while on his armored train touring sites in Pyongyang. Outside reports claim that he died in a “fit of rage” over serious construction issues with the massive Huichon hydroelectric power station. While this story hasn’t been confirmed, it is known that the Huichon power station (the primary hydroelectric dam in a series of dams and power plants on the Chongchon River) took much longer to build than anticipated and was beset by complications over the years.

It is interesting to note that Kim Jong-un did not attend the opening ceremony of the dam in April 2012. The dam was a major national project that saw Jong-il visit the site eight times during construction, and for Kim Jong-un to not take part could suggest that he was still upset over the circumstances that led to his father’s death.

As with the embellishment of Kim Jong-il’s birth, the North Korean version of his death was just as colorful and improbable, declaring that "the sky glowed red above the sacred Mount Paektu" and that the ice covering the crater lake at the summit cracked so loudly it "[shook] the Heavens and the Earth."

Official reporting of his death didn’t occur until 51 hours after the event. What palace intrigue went on at the time isn’t known. Despite any grumblings about another generational succession, and even though Kim Jong-un didn’t have decades to construct a solid power base, he had nonetheless been publicly “crowned” as the next leader and he did have powerful people working on his behalf. There would be no discarding the hereditary succession process that had held North Korea up for generations.

Removing any doubts as to which Kim family member was now in charge, Kim Jong-un was listed as the first person on the list of the official 232-member funeral committee. In traditional communist practice, the higher your rank in a funeral committee, the higher your rank is regarded in the ruling party and government. This was the case for Stalin during Vladimir Lenin’s funeral and it was the case for Kim Jong-il during the funeral of Kim Il-sung.

Of note, Kim’s uncle Jang Song-taek was listed as #19. Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho was No. #4. As we will see later, both men would play important roles in the transition and both men would come to regret it.

Absent an immediate coup, as some tabloids considered possible, Kim Jong-un carried out his familial and state duties to hold a funeral for his father which took place on December 28, 2011.

With all of the somber pomp and circumstance Pyongyang could muster, thousands stood out in the snow as Kim Jong-il’s coffin was carried on top of a US-built 1976 Lincoln Continental, with Kim Jong-un walking alongside with seven other high-ranking officials who were known by the foreign press as the "Gang of Seven".

The official mourning period lasted for three years and at the end of those three years, Kim would have to emerge as the undisputed leader of North Korea if the dynasty was to survive.

Completing the Transition

In the three years leading up to his death, Kim Jong-il had to focus more and more of his time on creating a transition plan for Kim Jong-un. Balancing the competing factions of the military and Workers’ Party and trying to manage smaller poles of influence within the Kim family and general leadership harkened back to the 20-year succession orchestration he himself had to go through before Kim Il-sung’s death. If it failed now, no one could predict what might happen.

Undoubtedly, there were those who wanted to influence the young Kim Jong-un. His uncle, Jang Song-taek, was the most powerful relative in the country and he had his own views on how the country should move forward. There were also older generals and traditionalists who wanted to ensure the dynasty’s continued rule through absolutism, and who rejected any notion of Chinese-style reform, as they saw it to be a threat to their own survival.

Many outside commentators questioned whether Kim Jong-un would be able to control the country and wondered if the regime might even collapse.  National Committee on North Korea founding member Dr. Alexandre Y. Mansourov said, “They believed Kim Jong Un’s young age and inexperience would make it easier for the time-tested party apparatchiks and Songun (military-first)-accustomed generals to manipulate the young ruler, to influence his decisions, and to control his policies from behind the scenes.”

However, we know that in the time before Kim Jong-il’s death, that there were purges and even executions to shore up Kim Jong-un’s support among the military, with younger generals being promoted up the ranks as they would be more loyal than those who served for decades under previous regimes. And we know that every diplomatic effort was being made to ensure a successful transition to Supreme Leader, including through seeking Russia’s and China’s buy-in for the move.

Jang Song-taek became a crucial link connecting Kim Jong-un with the various economic and trade organizations within the country and would also help him in the realm of foreign policy. It is suspected that Jang was actually in charge of DPRK policy regarding the United States at the time. Additionally, Jang had oversight of the various internal security agencies that would be essential for a smooth ascension to power.

Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho, chief of the North Korean Army's general staff, helped orchestrate the elevation of loyal officers within the military. He appeared with Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong-il prior to his death, and he continued to serve by Kim Jong-un’s side after his succession on several occasions to tour military installations and related sites.

Jang, Ri, and others formed a kind of guiding committee while Kim’s grooming was ongoing and then went on to head an informal collective leadership throughout the transition post-2011.

As part of the pre-transition plan, Kim Jong-un was created Vice Chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC) at the Third Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea on September 28, 2010. This firmly placed him in the “No. 2” position within the military. He was also appointed to the Central Committee of the Workers' Party.

After Kim Jong-il’s death, Kim was not immediately proclaimed chairman of this or that for each of the multiple positions he was set to inherit. He did gain several key titles soon after, but the full title collecting process was a byzantine operation that occurred over the following couple of years, with each new position signaling his increasing grasp on power. And that would signal to those now holding his hand that they may not always be required.

The next procedural step was for Kim to become the First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea, to which he was elected on April 11, 2012. It was at this Fourth Party Conference that Kim was also officially made the Chairman of the CMC, a position which had been left vacant after the death of Kim Jong-il. Later in the year, Kim was also given the title of Marshal of the DPRK and Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces.

Regarding attempts to influence Kim Jong-un, one year after his rise to power Dr. Mansourov said, “[t]hese predictions proved to be close to the mark on the family side, only partially correct on the party side, largely wrong on the government side, and absolutely wrong on the military side.”

Though Kim was managing to collect all of the necessary titles and positions needed to be the sole leader of the DPRK, he needed more than just a long list of appellations after his name. He needed to consolidate real power from those who wheedled it in the past, and to put an end to any possible competing claims to his authority.

With the official process of transition nearing an end, it was time to become a dictator.

 

Consolidating Power

Jang Song-taek handcuffed in court. Screenshot from KCTV news report.

Although the ruling Kim is supposed to have absolute power, as in any functional system, working power is dispersed among individuals, factions, and agencies. There remains a singular “font of power” – an individual in whom all authority is technically vested – but no individual can successfully run a nation on their own.

North Korea may be set up to have an all-powerful dictator, but the realities of governance and inter-personal rivalries will always mean that power becomes dispersed among different branches of government and those who lead them. Higher ranking elites can therefore gather considerable influence over policy and can seek to control the national leader himself.

As such, relying solely on his family name to press his legitimacy and to shield himself from threats was not enough. Kim had to engage in harsher measures when suspicions (real or imagined) arose about others who might threaten his direct rule.

Within two years of Kim Jong-il’s funeral, five of the “Gang of Seven” senior officials who walked with Kim Jong-un beside the hearse were purged.

Among those were Kim Jong-un’s uncle Jang Song-taek and Vice Marshal Ro Yong-ho.

Jang Song-taek married Kim Il-sung’s sister in 1972. As part of the inner family, he was able to amass considerable influence over the decades, and by the time of Kim Jong-il’s death, he was the Chief of the Central Administrative Department of the Workers' Party of Korea, had been created a general, and became 2^nd Vice Chairman of the National Defense Commission. Jang also held multiple other posts and oversaw various economic and trade interests. All of this gave him access to nearly every sector of the North Korean government and economy, but also enabled him to build relationships with foreign countries, particularly China.

Jang was one of several high-ranking officials charged with assisting the young Kim during his short apprenticeship and was supposed to help maintain stability during the transition after Kim Jong-il died. Throughout this time, Jang was able to secure ever-greater positions within the government, rising from #19 in the funeral committee to #5 among the Party’s Central Committee Politburo Standing Committee in less than a year.

His activities exposed him to criticism regarding his own apparent autonomous level of influence, and also placed him in the middle of internal power struggles between military-controlled enterprises and those government-controlled enterprises headed by Jang and his allies. This and his alleged sympathy for Kim Jong-nam created the environment for his downfall.

Hints of cracks in the relationship between Jang and Kim Jong-un may have first publicly appeared on Nov. 4, 2012. He was appointed chairman of the newly created State Physical Culture and Sports Guidance Commission. While this may look like yet another promotion superficially, it was actually the first move to sideline him by giving him more responsibilities but responsibilities of little significance.

Then in December, Jang, who was the vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, wasn’t invited to a meeting of top officials to address UN sanctions. During which, Kim Jong-un made the decision to “take substantial and high-profile important state measures” in response to the sanctions.

Making his precarious position even more obvious was when he was passed over by Choe Ryong-hae to be Kim’s first special envoy to China in May 2013. Choe had been a protégé of Jang Song-taek’s.

Although Jang survived previous rounds of purges and demotions, his time was up.

Two of his aides were executed in November of that year and thereafter Jang wasn’t seen in public until he was publicly expelled from the Party on December 8. He was then given a show trial on December 12 and quickly executed. In the 2,700-word official press release regarding his downfall, Jang was accused of everything from embezzling funds to undermining the cult of personality to working with others to effect a coup. Regardless of the veracity of the alleged crimes, his life and legacy were over.

Lest we see Jang Song-taek in a purely sympathetic light, he was likely responsible for the downfall of another, Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho.

Ri had been a leading figure organizing the military’s rallying around Kim Jong-un. He was responsible for numerous promotions of younger officers who would be loyal to Kim, and he had been a close confidant for years.

Ri was relieved from all of his posts on July 15, 2012, during a meeting of the WPK Central Committee’s Political Bureau. A list of his posts included being a member of the Presidium of the Political Bureau, a member of the Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the WPK, and vice chairman of the Central Military Commission.

The official reason given was “illness”, which, according to NK Leadership Watch, can be a euphemism for insubordination or corruption. Ri’s last known public appearance was on July 8 during a visit to the Kumsusan Memorial Palace alongside Kim Jong-un. The exact reason(s) for his loss of favor isn’t known, but it may have been the result of changes in policy and influence between the political leadership and the military leadership. If so, this would also have been part of Kim’s desire to move away from the Songun (military-first) policy and toward a policy that reestablished control of the economy to the WPK. As Ri was a proponent of Songun, he would have been placed in direct political conflict with Kim Jong-un and with Jang Song-taek, who also favored reform (perhaps favored too radical reform as evidenced by his death a year after Ri’s).

Ri's ultimate fate is still not publicly known. It is rumored that he was either killed during a firefight with personnel loyal to Kim Jong-un or that he was executed soon after his dismissal. Either way, he has not been seen since.

Following these actions and the successful December 12, 2012 launch of the Kwangmyŏngsŏng-3 Unit 2 satellite, the closure of the Kaesong Industrial Region in April 2013, and conducting two successful nuclear tests in 2013, along with the economic reforms that moved the country away from Kim Jong-il’s Songun policy to Kim Jong-un’s Byungjin (parallel development) policy (which will be discussed in detail in future articles), Kim Jong-un demonstrated he had gained full authority over the government and military, and that he could freely exercise power.

A New First Family

In any hereditary system, the main business of the family business is having kids. Without heirs to carry on your legacy, the regime collapses and you become the ultimate failure.

Kim Il-sung was married twice. First to Kim Jong-suk who died in 1949 and was Kim Jong-il’s mother. And secondly to Kim Song-ae, who died in 2014. Kim Song-ae was given the official title of “First Lady” in 1963 but that term stopped being used in 1974. The end of the official use of the title corresponds with Kim Jong-il’s own rise in power, as she was not his mother and as he spent years reinforcing his own direct line within the Kim family personality cult. 

Kim Jong-il, who had two wives and two known mistresses, left the position of First Lady vacant and was never seen in public with any female partner; although, the women would occasionally meet with domestic and foreign dignitaries without him. It was Kim Jong-il’s lack of a public family life that helped shield the Korean people from knowledge of Kim Jong-un’s existence for most of his life.

Establishing even more contrast with his father, Kim Jong-un would not shy away from portraying himself as a family man. Kim married popular singer Ri Sol-ju in 2009. Particularly in the first years of Kim's rule, she would often accompany him on guidance tours and gained an international following for her modern fashion style. Ri has been compared to former U.S First Lady Jackie Kennedy.

She gave birth to a son in 2010 and then finally, in 2018, she received the long-dormant title, “Respected First Lady”. She received this title soon before attending the DPRK-ROK summit that year and became the first Kim spouse to meet a foreign head of state, South Korean president Moon Jae-In.

The daily activities of Kim’s family are unknown. Ri is seen less often than in the past, likely busy being a mother, and she is rarely away from her husband when she is seen. And when not on "On the Spot Guidance" tours, Kim is known to spend a lot of time at the family palace in Wonsan. 

This compound was Kim’s favorite during childhood and offers a wide range of leisure activities. He also renovated the large Ryongsong palace complex in Pyongyang, which is the official family residence constructed by Kim Il-sung in 1983. Changes, including the addition of horse-riding tracks, have also been noted at other less frequented villas around the country.

Doing her duty to provide an heir and spares, Ri gave birth again in 2012, this time to a girl named Ju Ae. And a third child was born in 2017 according to South Korean intelligence reports. During Dennis Rodman’s 2013 visit to North Korea, he claimed to have met their daughter Ju Ae and said that Kim Jong-un was a “good dad”. Of course, the value judgments of a man who has spent very little time with Kim and who seems to willingly ignore the country’s vast prison system can only be given so much weight.

While still too young to rule if Kim Jong-un died today, these children do provide a future lineage for the regime and help give a sense of stability among the elites in Pyongyang.

It is likely that these children, who are not seen in public, will one day be sent to Switzerland (or perhaps Russia or China) for their educations and that they will experience their formative years in a manner similar to that of their father’s. Afterward, they will attend elite institutions within North Korea before being given roles in government and beginning their own grooming processes as the next generation.

Growing the Cult

Kim Jong-un receiving the crowd’s praises from the observation pavilion overlooking Kim Il-sung Square during the September 2021 parade celebrating the 73^rd anniversary of the founding of the Democratic Republic of Korea. Image via KCNA.

North Korea’s cult of personality is the most pervasive and advanced expression of a personality cult in modern history. The roots of a nascent cult can be traced back to before the founding of the state, but it really began to take hold after Kim Il-sung’s victory over “factionalists” within the government through the 1950s and 1960s. Kim Jong-il was able to clinch the role of successor by further expanding the cult and creating a legal system and culture that deified his father.

Today, it is not unreasonable to say that the existence of the government is predicated on the existence of the Kim family. The highest body of law isn’t the constitution but the Ten Principles for a Monolithic Ideological System which explicitly demands loyalty to the Kim family above all else. But even the national constitution itself places Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il in the role of “eternal leaders” and asserts that North Korea is based on the ideologies put forward by the Kim family.

While the blind adulation of the masses may indeed decline with each generation, the heir of the Mt. Paektu bloodline is still the supreme ruler. He is father, mother, and the source of all power in the country.

Extreme stories about the people believing the Kims can read minds or don’t require unseemly bodily functions may make for interesting headlines, but the reality is clear enough without the need for embellishment: without the Kims, there is no North Korea.

And so, it has been imperative that Kim Jong-un not only find his place within the existing cult that surrounds his grandfather and father, but that one is established for himself.

One thing commentators immediately remarked on regarding Kim’s appearance is how much he looked like a young version of Kim Il-sung. Connecting the young Kim to the nation’s father has been of paramount importance to bolstering his otherwise thin resume. As defector Kim Kwang Jin discussed in his 2011 paper for the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea, “Acting in his father’s name, Kim Jong-Il was able to seize and retain power. His son, Kim Il-Sung’s grandson, must now do the same thing. The regime knows that this basis for power succession cannot be used so easily again, and is rushing to tie the young man to his grandfather’s political legacy.”

Kim Kwang Jin went on to say, “To facilitate the transfer power to Kim Jong-Eun, Kim Jong-Il again sought to gain legitimacy for his son from Kim Il-Sung…Every image of Kim Jong-Eun was deliberately designed to imitate his late grandfather.” And that this manufactured image of Kim Jong-un as a kind of Kim Il-sung Version 2.0 “had the effect of pre-empting any opposition, since the second incarnation of Kim Il-Sung cannot be challenged.”

From his dress and outward style to his public persona, Kim Jong-un has done just about everything possible to remind North Koreans that he is indeed the direct descendent of Kim Il-sung.

To further enhance Kim's position within the cult, over the years, his mother has been given various titles such as "The Mother of Pyongyang", and "The Mother of Great Songun Korea”, elevating her within the family pantheon. She was also the subject of at least one state-sponsored documentary The Mother of Great Songun Korea.

Kim himself has received multiple titles and epithets such as Dear Respected Comrade, Brilliant Star, Beloved Father, Peerlessly Great Man, and has been described by the state as “the only and unique successor and leader of the Juche Revolution”.

One of the first physical manifestations of the cult came ca. 2012 in the form of a 560-meter-long sign on a hillside above the Samsu Hydroelectric Dam which proclaimed, “Long live Songun Korea's General Kim Jong Un!” The word “Songun” was later changed to “Juche” in 2020, as a reflection of the change in Kim’s policies away from Songun.

Other earlier works to build up his own cult revolved around elevating ancestors and reinforcing his connections to Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung. These took the form of airing documentaries, giving even more titles to Kim Jong-il (like making him Eternal General Secretary of the Party and updating the constitution to include Jong-il as one of the “eternal leaders of Juche Korea”), and requiring the people to attend ideological lectures. Through this, Kim Jong-un’s own position was magnified and his legitimacy to rule the country became even more unquestionable. After all, who could oppose the anointed son of eternal beings?

To reinforce this in a way inescapable to people’s daily lives, he had murals of Kim Jong-il erected in every county seat, bronze statues of Jong-il added next to the ones of Kim Il-sung, and he had the text on thousands of Towers of Immortality changed to reflect the “eternal life” of Jong-il as well. 

Kim Jong-un’s cult has been established, books have been commissioned, songs have been written, and people swear fealty to the man not to the constitution or rule of law, but in keeping with tradition, we shouldn’t expect large monuments to him in any great number until after his own death. For now, he is a living deity and continually studying his words will be the primary form of (required) “worship” for every man, woman, and child for years to come.

Developing His Own Style

Every new leader, elected or otherwise, tries to leave their own mark on the role and differentiate themselves from the previous ruler in one way or another.

While still being a ruthless dictator, it must be acknowledged that Kim Jong-un has taken up the role of “Kim Il-sung 2.0” seriously. Unlike his father, he does not shy away from public speaking, and he has done something his father never explicitly did, admit when there have been failures.

Doing this creates a beneficial situation for Kim whereby officials and bureaucrats can be more easily scapegoated for failures and Kim can remain above the fray as the caring leader. Together with visiting the sites of natural disasters (such as after the summer floods of 2020), this gives him the public image of a concerned and accessible leader, which then reinforces the cult of personality’s assertion that the Kims are fatherly figures who labor day and night over the cares of the common man.

As Atsuhito Isozaki, Faculty of Law at Keio University, noted in his 2020 article Characteristics of Kim Jong-un’s Leadership, Kim has proven himself to be pragmatic when it serves the regime, continually calling for the rejection of “formalism”, and has demonstrated a contempt for the overly rosy government reports of the past in favor of greater directness and accuracy.

He also seems to understand the fact that genuine loyalty and devotion to the Kim family has waned over the years. By channeling Kim Il-sung and making himself repeatedly available in times of crisis, he can inculcate in the people a deeper sense of loyalty and willingness to obey the latest Supreme Leader.

 

He began demonstrating this new leadership style almost immediately. His first attempt at a satellite launch failed, a failure Pyongyang admitted, and he didn’t shy away from criticizing past policies that left people hungry. He has carried on with this policy of relative transparency through to the present day.

During the 8^th WPK Congress in January 2021, Kim told the assembled delegates that “though the period of implementing the Five-Year Strategy for the National Economic Development ended last year, almost all sectors fell a long way short of the set objectives” and that officials should “be bold enough to recognize the mistakes, which, if left unaddressed, will grow into bigger obstacles.”

He has further acknowledged corruption within the government more than once and made mention of ongoing food shortages.

While honesty and transparency are typically seen as good qualities of government, within North Korea, they raise the risk of highlighting contradictory realities. The government reality of a “strong and prosperous nation”, with occasional difficulties vs. the reality experienced by most people of never-ending privation with occasional benefits. This could lead to a greater awakening of the people of the state’s failures to provide even the most basic necessities that all people expect of their governments.

Regardless, Kim seems confident enough in his approach and has taken steps to quell any internal dissent as well as to end the flood of outside information that was unleashed after the breakdown in order following the 1994-98 famine.

Defections are at all-time lows since the famine and the border has been sealed more tightly than at any point in the country’s history. Kim has also directed the government to take measures against foreign cultural influences.

Despite some positive habits, Kim’s dictatorial nature extends far beyond punishing teens for watching South Korean dramas.

Not only did he execute his own uncle, but he also went after his half-brother Kim Jong-nam.

Kim Jong-nam had been seen by some as a possible replacement to Kim Jong-un should a coup or regime change ever happen, and these things were openly discussed in foreign media. Making matters worse, Jong-nam had publicly criticized the North Korean government and Kim Jong-un.

In a move of ultimate confidence, Kim Jong-un ordered the public assassination of Jong-nam using a banned chemical weapon, through foreign agents he had recruited to carry out the killing all while Jong-nam was in another country – Malaysia.

On February 13, 2017, a group of women from Vietnam and Indonesia were tricked into placing a cloth covered in VX nerve agent onto Kim Jong-nam’s face while he was at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Within minutes, he collapsed into unconsciousness and died soon after. The event shocked the world due to its brazenness and cruelty.

According to Professor Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, in Kim's eyes, killing his half-brother and uncle placed him on the same footing as his father and grandfather, and it demonstrated his "strategic intention" to strengthen one-man rule in the country.

 

Despite hopes that his exposure to Western education and to the ideals of capitalism, human rights, and the rule of law would have given the world an “enlightened” ruler of North Korea, it has become clear that he has taken the lessons of the modern world only to modernize systems of oppression.

By the time of the 7^th Congress of the Workers Party of Korea in 2016, Kim Jong-un had not only managed to successfully complete the transition and emerged as the country’s true supreme leader (with any remaining rumors of a de facto regency or of him not having the skills required fully squashed), he also oversaw substantial progress over the country’s nuclear and ballistic programs, embarked on billion’s worth of construction and tourism projects, successfully established an improved relationship with South Korea through the 2012 Olympics (an improved relationship South Korea would work hard to maintain), and he would be confronted with new challenges on the international stage as the United States elected a president viewed by many as just as brash as Kim Jong-un.

With ten years of rule to look back on, no one can doubt that Kim has created a leadership style far different than that of his father’s. And that he has taken well to the family business, as whatever real improvements have been seen, the core of the regime remains violent and willing to dispose of anyone deemed a threat. 

~ ~ ~ ~

I have scheduled this project to run through to the end of the year, with a new article coming out roughly every 10 days or so. If you would like to support the project and help me with research costs, please consider supporting AccessDPRK on Patreon. Those supporters donating $15 or more each month will be entitled to a final PDF version of all the articles together that will also have additional information included once the series is finished. They will also receive a Google Earth map related to the events in the series.

Supporters at other levels will be sent each new article a day before it’s published and will also receive a mention as seen below.

 

I would like to thank my current Patreon supporters: Amanda O., GreatPoppo, Joel Parish, John Pike, Kbechs87, Rinmanah, Russ Johnson, and ZS.

--Jacob Bogle, 9/13/2021

AccessDPRK.com
www.JacobBogle.com
Facebook.com/JacobBogle
Twitter.com/JacobBogle