What is Kim Jong Un's motivation?

Great Debates
1

Not sure if this is the best forum, a mod can move this thread if they wish.

Ok so I’ve never read that much about the politics and inner workings of North Korea’s dictator Kim Jong Un and his military leaders. I know obviously they never got over the Korean War. Kim Jong Il, the father, basically brainwashed the populace into thinking he was a deity. He basically had the same militant posturing as his son does now, but I don’t know that he was ever as serious as his son appears to legitimately be, he seemed all bark, no real bite.

If Kim Jong Un was seriously out of control I would think we would see some kind of coup d’etat from the military. Are the military generals the ones really running the show or is it Kim? Are these guys really loyal to him and all those suspected of disloyalty have been eliminated? Are they terrified of him, it seems like it would be easy enough for them to take control. Do the generals just feed him information that makes him paranoid and thus he feels he must ramp up his nuclear ambitions and make threats?

I’ve also never been clear on what the current relationship is between China and North Korea. I’ve heard things like China is really in control of the country, and North Korea is sort of their annoying black sheep that they have to deal with from time to time. Is China just their only trading partner so they will actually listen to them or something?

Please educate this ignorant poster.:smiley:

2

North Korea’s primary objective is survival, and they figure the best way to ensure their survival is to make all the other countries afraid to attack them. That’s why they have big, showy parades for all their military hardware, and make it quite clear everyone KNOWS they’re testing missiles and nukes.

As for how much control China has over them, look at it this way. The U.S. is Mexico’s top trade partner, accounting for 81% of all Mexican exports. How successful has the U.S. been in getting Mexico to stop the flow of illegal drugs, or pay for a wall to stop illegal immigration? For that matter, plenty of people will argue that NAFTA benefits Mexico more than the U.S. If the U.S. has such strong economic influence over Mexico, why won’t they do our bidding?

3

From what I’ve read:

First, don’t assume that Kim (or Saddam, or Gadhafi, or any dictator in a vicious lethal dictatorship) simply snaps their fingers and everyone does what they say. It’s better described as riding a tiger - they have to constantly watch for other people in the power structure are doing, that they are not getting to popular, or making alliances; there’s the perpetual risk that some clique would get together and organize a coup. That’s likely why for example, he offed his uncle (although suggestions he fed him to wild dogs may be an exaggeration). Kim’s dad Kim was nearly blown up when his train was coming back from China a decade ago.

So there’s the suggestion too (always suggestions, it’s difficult to know really what’s going on) that a lot of the crises with the outside world are engineered to keep the local government on it’s toes - they would be too busy running around the country, mobilizing and moving troops, to allow any time for coup arrangements.

Plus, they recognize that being unpredictably dangerous is a good way to keep the other side off guard.

Kim rests secure in the knowledge that:
China would never allow the South or America to invade the North. They do NOT want a united Korea with American troops on the Chinese borer.
The South would never initiate a war - or allow the USA to do so. (Nor would Japan). The risk of nuclear weapons, lately, is also added now to the risk that the North could pulverize Seoul with artillery fire from over 10,000 artillery dug into the hills capable of shelling the South within 30 miles of the capital. As mentioned the other day on CNN, the South is the 11th largest economy in the world, and to have it’s major city pulverized overnight by Kim would be catastrophic.
The North knows they can do marginally provocative acts and spout crazy rhetoric without fear of retaliation.
As long as some (corrupt? complicit?) Chinese are willing to front for the North, and as long as the Chinese government tolerates them, they can bypass sanctions.
They obviously don’t want the Chinese in there to run the country, as Kim and cronies would lose a lot of control.
The Chinese want to stay as far from the mess as possible; but they could see a giant cluster of chaos if there were unrest in North Korea, so they will tolerate and prop up any the status quo.

meanwhile, North Korea keeps building bigger and better missiles and bombs. They have learned from Saddam and Gadhafi the most important lesson - the only way to stop the west from invading is to actually have weapons of mass destruction. They are in no hurry to lose that leverage - the bigger and better and more reliable their weapons, the more it deters an invasion.

they also note the problem that allowing free markets - as China has - introduces a different problem. As people get rich (and some do) they can buy influence, brie others, and possibly buy their way into a coup. So they try as hard as they can to limit free commerce.

So, Kim knows he won’t be attacked as long as he maintains his warlike posture. As the saying goes, “your mouth shouldn’t write cheques your ass can’t cover…” When Trump threatens retaliation, he can safely say “well, maybe we’re gonna bomb Guam. then whatcha gonna do?” Supposedly trump has an answer for that.

4

I’ve heard the saying, “The squeaky wheel gets the grease.” I have to wonder what it takes before this renegade country gets its wheel greased…

5

We don’t know that much about the inner workings of the North Korean government. It appears that Kim Jong-Un is firmly in charge, having carried out executions of prominent members of the government (and his own family). Presumably everyone there is familiar with what happened to the Soviet Union under and after Gorbachev, and part of what holds the regime tightly together against fracture or coup is the fear that the slightest instability or loosening of control will quickly spiral into complete collapse. They have to all hang together or they will all hang separately.

There’s no way to know for sure, but I don’t think Kim is irrational or out of control. The regime has survived for generations now by acting just belligerent and volatile enough to make people fear that they might go berserk against Seoul, and the DPRK has calibrated its behavior skillfully to stay always on the edge of that fear. Pursuing nuclear weapons and a delivery capability is part of that same objective; it expands their reach so that they’re no longer just threatening South Korea but other countries as well (including the US). The North Koreans probably also saw what happened to Libya, where Qaddafi agreed to give up exporting terrorism and pursuing WMD in exchange for the withdrawal of sanctions and international pariah status, whereupon the West bombed his regime out of existence (and got him killed) anyway.

There is international instability now because the nuclear detonation and delivery capability is close at hand but not yet realized. Stopping the regime from acquiring these tools remains a possibility. If and when the DPRK either provably acquires this technology or abandons it, then there will no longer be a basis for conflict. A new equilibrium will be established, and we will all go back to a cold standoff.

China likes having the DPRK as a buffer against South Korea. Without it as a client state, South Korea rises in prominence and influence, and with it the US. North Korea’s conduct of its affairs is sometimes an irritant or an embarrassment to the Chinese, but Beijing’s ability to influence Pyongyang is limited. yes, most of North Korea’s trade is with China, but China cannot tighten the screws too much without risking destabilizing Kim’s regime. The other weapon that Kim has against China is that he could release a flood of destitute refugees into China, a headache that Beijing absolutely does not want.

6

Minor correction: North Korea threatened to bomb Guam before Trump gave his speech. Their news reported the statement shortly after Trump’s speech, but they were reporting on a statement made the day before. A lot of mainstream media sources are getting this wrong, and it’s really bugging me.

7

Ultimately Kim’s regime’s (and Kim’s himself) survival depend on him maintaining the situation where the least bad option for everybody else is to let things sit just as they are.

By reminding each of his external opponents in turn how easily he can make a much more bad situation occur, he keeps them all working for the least bad option: the status quo.

This same logic applies internally. Every dictator sits atop a seething snake-pit of deceit and intrigue. As long as each plotter fears the other plotters and the instability almost as much as they fear Kim, Kim sleeps another night with his crown intact.

8

The mouse that roared. A size 10 Oxford will shut that little shit up real quick.

9

People say (rightfully) that the US is the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons against an enemy. We have a LOT of them and Trump, being the idiot that he is, is falling into Jong-Un’s trap of engaging him in an escalation of sabre-rattling dialogue.

The LAST thing the DPRK wants is to be ignored on the world stage. They want to sit at the big boy table and be perceived as strong and viable, even though most of the world knows what’s up with them (people eating grass to avoid starvation due to sanctions/military spending, a bigger exodus of ex-pats than they are willing to admit, summary executions, etc).

That said, I do believe they are dangerous to the world. Unfortunately, going after them militarily, as overrated as their military is (brainwashed soldiers, outdated equipment, no air force to speak of, completely unreliable missiles, etc) is extremely problematic from an international relations standpoint (China) and logistically speaking.

We should do everything we can to NOT engage them in…anything. Make them feel stupid and small by not responding to their empty threats. And if they do ever make good on ANY of those threats that creates a situation that rises above “Oh, sorry, that artillery round went off target/we secretly sank your submarine”) then we shoould glass them, regardless of what China thinks.

10

Moved to Great Debates.

Colibri
General Questions Moderator

11

If he’s not crazy, Un knows that any attack on the US will result in retaliation, China be damned, and good luck if he stupidly launches a nuke. So all he can do is rattle his saber, and everyone knows it.

12

The international community exhibits a strange, contradictory behavior: On the one hand, it condemns regimes who develop nukes, yet at the same time confers prestige, respect, attention, fear and a sort of security on those who develop nukes.

Give North Korea every incentive to develop nukes, and yet appear aghast when North Korea does.

13

You have to give him some credit, by joining the nuclear club he has made NK immune from attack, as long as he doesn’t use them.

What seems uncertain is how secure Un’s power is. Do NK generals secretly think he’s off his rocker? If so, dare they even breathe a word of it to anybody? I think not. One roll of the eyes and you’re going to literally be catching flak for it. A coup for the moment is unthinkable, any who try know that failure means death. But the generals are human, they have relatives that are suffering under Un. At some point, they won’t tolerate the status quo. One of these days, Un may get a bullet to the back of the head.

14

From what I have read. Kim Il Sung had run the country into the ground, with the start of the massive famine they suffered. Kim Jong Il, who inherited when the country was more or less at its pits. His main aim was to to recover from the famine, and increase the standard of living. He saw everything, including the nuclear programme as a means to that end.

Kim Jung Un, hard to say. He started off seemingly intent on concentrating economic issues. However he has expanded work on the nuclear program at school breathtaking pace.

15

Strange game.

16

The number one occurrence which appears to me to have driven the North Korean government to behave in such an extreme manner, is the fall of the Soviet Union, and the subsequent end to the flow of Russian support which followed.

That shift also led the Neocon sort of American politicians to hype up their own rhetoric and ambitions, as they got excited at the idea of being able to wipe out ALL of the remaining Communist nations and other ex-Soviet allies in a rush of American power, since for a brief time, we appeared to be the ONLY real world super power. Under Bush Jr in particular, we saw a real effort to isolate, target, and them militarily overthrow government after government, that the Neocons considered to be “the axis of evil” in the world. And their list specifically included North Korea.

The so-called “Arab spring” made things worse again, especially America’s rather naive reaction to it. Just the act of CALLING it an Arab Spring, showed that too many people here really thought that replacing selfish and corrupt dictators with dedicated religiously-guided rulers, would result in happy times for the West.

North Korea has faced an unbroken hostility from the United States and it’s allies, since it came into being. Hardly a surprise, that the more isolated they come to be politically, the more hostile they will feel they MUST be, in order to preserve their existence.

17

Simply stated, his motivation is his own survival. He maintains his tyrannical control of North Korea or dies.

18

The Times has a nice analysis-

Basically, they say that N.K. wants legitimacy and normal relations with the world, without having to change their system. They want Kim to be able to make speeches at the UN and visit the oval office like every other world leader. They think that China achieved this by developing nukes, which made them impossible to ignore and too dangerous to confront, and they want to emulate that success.

19

Plus “Has a credible threat against US agression or dies”

20

The goal of the regime is survival of the regime.

That is about it. The elite in north Korea live lives of privilege and wealth, and any reform will probably see them end up destitute, tortured and executed. Kim doesn’t want to end up like ceausescu, saddam hussein, ghaddaffi, Samuel doe, etc. The elite who help lead the country know their fate would be just as bad under regime change.

They do not want reforms like China had in the 70s or Russia had in the 80s for fear the reforms will snowball into domestic unrest and regime change.

Also nukes make regime change from foreign nations much harder.

Also due to how dysfunctional the North Korean economy is, selling wmd is a good way for them to make money. North Korea isn’t going to nuke anyone, except as a last resort in a war. However they will sell nuclear weapons and nuclear technology to anyone who writes a big enough check.

Having said that, I don’t know about Kim Jong un. Kim Jong IL had been working in government for decades before taking over. Kim Jong un was an appointed 30 year old when he took over. In Korea where they respect elders, having an inexperienced 30 year old in charge is supposedly causing some tension. Kim Jong un keeps purging, killing and moving around the elites. Changing their job titles or demoting them, probably to keep them on their toes. I don’t believe Kim Jong IL has the purges that Jong un does.

But basically, his motivation is to stay in power. Same as the motivation of the rest of the elite class in north Korea.