Kim jong-un

As a birthday treat, a good father might take his ten-year-old daughter to the ballet or a Disney movie. Three years ago, North Korea’s ruling dictator Kim Jong-un (a.k.a. ‘Brilliant Comrade’) took his ten-year-old daughter Kim Ju-ae to the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. It was her first public outing. Subsequent kiddie treats have included visits to the mausoleum that houses the bodies of her grandfather, Kim Jong-il (‘the Dear Leader’), and great grandfather, Kim Il-sung (‘the Great Leader’). She also got to stand at military parades, inspect nuclear facilities and make an official visit to Beijing. In the North Korean media, Kim Ju-ae is referred to as the supreme leader’s ‘beloved’ or ‘precious’ daughter.

The United States only has one president at a time. Until January 20, that’s Joe Biden. But President-elect Donald Trump and his skeleton foreign policy team are waiting in the wings, plotting policy behind the scenes on issues — Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, Middle East peace — that have stymied the Biden administration for the last year. In fact, Trump is already influencing the respective calculations of allies, partners and adversaries before he even steps foot in the Oval Office. And Biden’s advisors seem perfectly fine with it. Trump fancies himself as a master negotiator, somebody who’s inherently skilled at poking, pressuring and sweet-talking the opposite side of the table until he gets what he wants.

Last summer, US Army soldier Travis King ran across the Korean Demilitarized Zone into the arms of the North Koreans. It wasn’t because of some mental break or as part of a spy operation. North Korean state media claims he was motivated by racism and mistreatment — of course they would. The DPRK’s outlets have previously criticized the US for its treatment of African Americans, around the same time they compared former president Barack Obama to a “wicked black monkey.” Like the six American servicemen who crossed the DMZ before him, King probably had a mixture of reasons for his flight. Unlike in the previous cases, however, King’s detention was a short one.

A US soldier, Private Second Class Travis King, entered North Korea through the Joint Security Area (JSA) today for currently unknown reasons. “It's clear that he willfully, of his own volition, crossed the border,” State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said in a briefing Tuesday afternoon. According to the Wall Street Journal, King apparently had “served time in detention” in the South and was heading back to the US when he decided to participate in a tour of the JSA. Another individual on the tour says that King laughed as he crossed into the North. The reasons for King’s actions are still not clear. US soldiers have deserted and defected to North Korea before, often to get out of service, but it is an exceedingly rare occurrence.

While the world is captivated by all things Omicron and Russia, North Korea is once again back on the world stage. And that can only mean one thing: bigger and badder missile tests. None of this should come as a surprise. North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, has announced to the world on numerous occasions that he will continue to test such weapons, even as his nation suffers from a “food problem.” Kim, his father, and his grandfather have been marching towards a fully viable nuclear deterrent for decades now. What is new is that Kim has declared that he will not abide by the promise he made to not test certain weapons platforms that directly threaten the US homeland — what drove the near-nuclear showdown with President Donald Trump back in 2017.

Kim Jong-un is focused first and foremost on managing his country’s lingering food crisis. But that doesn’t mean the thirty-seven-year-old dictator has any intention of siphoning off resources from North Korea’s weapons programs. He made that abundantly obvious this week, when Pyongyang conducted its second ballistic missile test using hypersonic technology in four months. According to North Korean media, the missile traveled 435 miles to the east, hitting the designated target. The response to the latest test was predictable. South Korea called an emergency meeting to discuss the launch. The US State Department quickly issued a statement to reporters reminding them that the tests are a violation of multiple UN Security Council Resolutions (as if North Korea cared).

If you don’t follow North Korea for a living as I do, you likely have forgotten all about the so-called hermit kingdom and its portly pariah of a leader, Kim Jong-un. Sure, there are the occasional headlines. Kim has lost a whole bunch of weight. The country is locked down as it has no way to combat Covid-19 and would never let in the international community to distribute vaccines. And, of course, there was last night's missile test. But even then the media does not seem to care much when it comes to North Korea. The reasons are quite obvious: with the Omicron variant sweeping the world, even a regime such as North Korea's has trouble breaking into the news cycle.

Ten years ago today, at noon on 19 December 2011, the veteran newsreader and ‘Pink Lady’ Ri Chun-hee, donned an unusual black hanbok. Struggling to hold back her tears, Ri announced that North Korea’s Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il – a recluse workaholic who had led the country for 17 years – had died. On the same day, his twenty-something second son, Kim Jong-un, was duly anointed as the ‘great successor to the revolutionary cause’. Today’s anniversary does not reflect well on Kim’s legacy as leader of North Korea. He now rules a state crippled by economic problems, beset by factionalism in the ruling party, and which has sour relations with both the US and South Korea. After ten years in power, how did it all go so wrong for Jong-un?

During the Trump years, North Korea was hardly ever out of the news. From the US President’s threats of ‘fire and fury’ against the rogue state, to dramatic meetings with Kim Jong-un in Singapore and Hanoi, the world’s attention was firmly focused on Pyongyang. But with Trump out of office, the chaos of Covid-19, and the fall of Afghanistan, North Korea has fallen off the agenda. That could well be a terrible mistake, considering the state’s pressing humanitarian crisis. Following the coronavirus outbreak last January, North Korea shut its borders almost completely. As a result trade with China, by far its biggest economic partner, has decreased by at least 80 per cent.

Let’s be honest. If North Korea didn’t have nuclear weapons and missiles to carry them to targets as far away as the US homeland, you would not be reading this article. In fact, the national security establishment would most likely consider North Korea, a nation that can no longer feed itself with a GDP smaller than Rhode Island's, to be a joke. And yet the so-called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) keeps cranking out ever-more advanced weapons platforms that drive headlines and clicks the world over. North Korea’s most recent test, a submarine-launched ballistic missile, seems at least on the surface to be pretty threatening. Yet a more sober analysis suggests that such a weapon, at least by itself, is no major threat to anyone, and for the foreseeable future.

North Korea now possesses a nuclear weapons arsenal that could kill millions of people in minutes. Our media, rushing to create the simple but misleading narrative that President Joe Biden has ended America’s supposed longest war, forget that Washington technically has been at war with North Korea for 71 years. It's Pyongyang, not Kabul, that will be the real test of Biden's foreign policy — and the real opportunity. A few months back, the Biden administration named that conflict its top national security priority. Yet Team Biden has done little to work towards ending what can only be described as the ultimate forever war. And, just like clockwork, Pyongyang seems to always remind us that its deadly atomic arsenal is growing by the day.

For years, the West has tried to cajole the North Korean regime using sanctions, much to the frustration of Kim Jong-un. But now in the era of Covid, Pyongyang has been forced to inflict greater economic harm on itself, entrenching its international isolation and the suffering of its people. The hermit kingdom was one of the first countries to close itself off. The border with South Korea is already one of the most fortified in the world, while the northern Chinese perimeter, a vital point of trade, was sealed in January 2020 before many in the West had even heard of Covid.