Here is a good article from 2009 of what little we know about Kim Jong-Un.
Nicely analyzed. I do think, though, that the leadership is driven in part by a streak of genuine aggression, and not just defensive motivations. The neighborhood is hostile partly because NoKo made it that way. Kim Il-Sung started the Korean War, when (if memory serves) even Stalin didn’t want to. Nothing in NoKo’s postwar conduct suggested that it would refrain from invading again if the American military were to stand down.
Even after it would have become clear that an aggressive invastion could not succeed, the military buildup also served useful domestic purposes for the leadership. Having an external enemy enabled the leadership to distract the population from the failing economy and justify the repressive control.
Finally, I think undemocratic regimes just naturally tend toward war. Consider, for instance, the endless feudal warfare in Western history. The type of person who can fight his way to the top of a dictatorship is likely to be the type of person who won’t have qualms about going to war, and it’s that much easier to do when the populace that will be on the front lines doesn’t have a say in the matter.
I’d caution against anyone thinking that what they think is Kim Jong-un’s inexperience is likely to make him less iron-fisted than his father. I recall when Haez Assad died, and his son Bashar, an optometrist by trade, and not known to have been heavily involved in Syrian politics, took over the Presidency of Syria, people thought things were likely to change. Turns out Bashar Assad knows how to repress a people just as well as his daddy did - the Arab Spring was pretty much crushed in Syria. I’d bet that Jong-un knows quite well what to do to keep hos hold on North Korea.
So nice to try to see things from someone else’s perspective, but this explanation just falls flat.
You’re making it sound like North Korea sees itself as an underdog that sees itself as struggling to survive against the US threat. First, the implication that the US has maintained this threat against North Korea for fifty years completely ignores the fact that US troop levels deminished from 330,000 in the 1950s, to 55,000 in the '60s and '70s, to 40,000 in the '80s, and 35,000 in the '90s, to just more than 25,000 today. US bases are in the process of being closed and the command of allied forces in South Korea is being transferred out of US hands.
Be that as it may, North Korea has not acted like a country under threat. It has carried out assassination plots against South Korean leaders, conducted unprovoked attacks on South Korean targets, test-fired experimental ICBMs over Japan, had troops cross the DMZ to murder a US service member in South Korean territory, and dozens upon dozens of other provocative acts that do not fit with a country that sees itself as having to deal with the threat of a superpower.
Face it: North Korea would have the same bellicose, aggressive military posture whether the US was in South Korea or not. If the US wasn’t demonized, it would be someone else who would be the scapegoat for the xenophobic hate that the spewed from the DPRK’s propaganda organs – and it would doubtlessly be the “threat” of the Japanese that would be the boogeyman.
The whole reason for militarism in North Korea isn’t a reaction to having an enemy present in a neighboring country. It is to enslave, subjugate and control the people of North Korea. Many things in international relations are more complex upon closer examination, but this is one instance where things are actually simpler.
Aggressive regimes don’t just admit to being aggressive regimes; they have to explain how they are entitled to act as they do. The leaders may have even convinced themselves.
In this case, it’s what I call “preemptive retaliation”.
KCNA has two websites, one with the servers hosted in Japan (the one you linked to) and one that is run from Pyongyang : http://www.kcna.kp/. It doesn’t have an English language version (at least not that I can see) but is updated more regularly. It appears to be wall-to-wall Kim hagiography right now.
I’m not an expert, but I’d agree with that assessment. The one major trump card North Korea has over the rest of the world is that they are willing to cause large scale human suffering on civilians (witness how they treat their own people). They have thousands of pieces of artillery pointed at Seoul, which would cause thousands of deaths, and possibly trillions in property damage (I think they’ve got over 10k pieces of artillery pointed at Seoul, and I have no idea what kind of warheads but I know they have various chem and bio weapons, who knows what kind of explosive and incendiary warheads they have). They also have commando forces willing to go into South Korea, Japan and possibly the US to engage in terrorism. They have really not got a lot to fear from the rest of the world, the world isn’t going to risk a war that kills tens of thousands (possibly millions) of civilians.
All pretty much useless without food, ain’t it? What good is an army of soldiers who will surrender – or, even go over – to any enemy who has a better mess tent for POWs than their own side has for troops? Just bombard their formations with chute-dropped snacks, each with a note attached saying, “There’s more!”
Possibly, but you don’t need the entire army to function you just need the artillery and special forces to operate effectively.
That is the line of argument I’ve read, that once North Korean soldiers realize how much they’ve been lied to about the outside world (if war breaks out) they will mutiny or surrender. But you still have 10k pieces of artillery pointed at a civilian heavy city which will give the north major leverage.
Does anyone know what the story is with Kim’s middle son? I’ve read accounts today that described him as “unmanly” and like “a little girl”. Is that a poorly concealed way of saying he’s gay?