Kim Jong-un North Korea
The triumph of Kim Jong-un
By Choe Sang-Hun
During the coronavirus pandemic, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, made a teary-eyed apology on national television.
“I am really sorry,” he said. “My efforts and sincerity have not been sufficient enough to rid our people of the difficulties in their life.”
The apology shocked observers. This was North Korea, after all, where the supreme leader is traditionally revered as an infallible, godlike figure.
But times were dire, even in a country used to hardship. The coronavirus, food shortages and international sanctions were all taking a toll. Around this time, reports began emerging from North Korea of a nation sinking into despair — citizens who, as one analyst with internal contacts put it, “saw no way forward, didn’t know how they were supposed to live on.”
Today, Kim is in a very different mood. At his Workers’ Party congress this year, he triumphantly declared that North Korea was in a glorious and prosperous new era, a far cry from his weepy apology in 2020. People can now hope to have “both sweets and bullets,” the party said, referring to its policy of seeking both economic recovery and military prowess. North Korea is a de facto nuclear power, and Kim is viewed as the country’s most powerful leader to date.
And he couldn’t have done it without the war in Ukraine.
A surprising opportunity
The economic tailspin of the pandemic era was partly the result of Kim’s own actions.
Kim used the pandemic to tighten his grip on North Korean society. He shut down the border with China, clamping down on trade and smuggling. He targeted the informal markets where many once eked out a living trading Chinese goods and foreign entertainment smuggled in on thumb drives; the penalties for those consuming and distributing what he deemed anti-socialist content included execution by firing squad.
These moves helped stamp out foreign influence. They also meant that what few economic opportunities ordinary North Koreans had disappeared.
“We were not allowed to make money,” one defector, who fled to South Korea in 2023, told me. “He tightened the noose on his people, as if he didn’t want them to have a better life.” Lire la suite »