North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un’s volatile temperament continues to keep him in international focus. Whether testing ballistic missiles, conducting nuclear tests, or spewing venom against South Korean or American leaders, he remains in the limelight.
But now, just around thirteen years since coming to power, he is suddenly cutting loose from his father and grandfather’s legacy and charting his own course. He has suddenly turned North Korea’s traditional policy on its head.
Kim ordered the removal of a monument that his father, Kim Jong-il, had built in the capital city of Pyongyang, as a symbol of people’s aspiration for a strong united Korea. Kim called it an eyesore. Reunification was an integral part of state policy and has now been abandoned. He simultaneously announced that three departments of the government that worked on ties with South Korea and reunification would be wound up.
Kim now wants North Korea’s constitution, which was brought in by his family, to be amended. Kim’s family had ruled North Korea since the end of the Second World War and Korea’s liberation from Japanese colonial occupation. His grandfather Kim il-sung started the dynasty in 1948 and ruled till his death in 1994. He was succeeded by Kim Jong-il and after he died in 2011, his 28-year-old youngest son Kim Jong-un took control. Like his father and grandfather, Kim also rules with an iron hand and does not tolerate opposition. He had made sure that his father and grandfather were honoured and deified by people.
This change of course has come like a bolt from the blue. He now advocates that the country’s "primary foe and principal enemy" is South Korea. In a speech to the Supreme People’s Assembly, the North Korean version of Parliament, Kim was quoted as saying by KCNA, the government-controlled news agency, "We don't want war but we have no intention of avoiding it." And in the event of a war, he thundered, North Korea should plan for "completely occupying, subjugating and reclaiming" and South Koreans should also no longer be referred to as fellow countrymen. He also called for severing all ties with South Korea. Going against well-known facts and the history of the country, he now claims that North and South Koreans are two distinct people and are not of the same race.
“Today the Supreme People’s Assembly newly legalised the policy of our Republic toward the South on the basis of putting an end to the nearly 80-year-long history of inter-Korean relations and recognising the two states both existing [on] the Korean Peninsula,” Kim remarked.
“It is the final conclusion drawn from the bitter history of [. . .] inter-Korean relations that we cannot go along the road of national restoration and reunification together with the ROK clan that [. . . dreamed] of the ‘collapse of our government’ and ‘unification by absorption,’ and lost compatriotic consciousness, getting more vicious and arrogant in the madcap confrontational racket,” Kim said.
Why and what brought about this radical change in policy is unclear. North Korea is a poor undeveloped nation and largely isolated from the rest of the world. The brief flirtation with the US under President Donald Trump in 2018, and the much-awaited meeting between Kim Jong-un and the US leader did not produce any results. China had been a consistent friend but since the Ukraine war, Pyongyang and Moscow’s relations have leapfrogged. According to the US and Western powers, North Korean ballistic missiles and launchers are being used by Russia against Ukrainian targets with deadly effect. As North Korea is under UN sanctions, Russia is being accused of going against the UN mandate. North Korea’s foreign minister Choe Son-hui was in Moscow this week for talks with her counterpart Sergei Lavrov. She also got to meet with President Vladimir Putin, understanding the significance Russia attached to the visit.
Lavrov expectedly thanked DPRK for supporting Russia’s 'special military operations' in Ukraine. He criticised the US and its ''regional satellites’’ (South Korea, Japan) for "creating security threats for DPRK" and said that Russia would call for rejection of any steps that would lead to escalation of the situation in the Korean Peninsula. And while he was at it, Lavrov also criticised Washington for ''creating bloc-based formats’’ in the Asia Pacific and ''expanding NATO infrastructure’’ in the area and undermining the ASEAN‘s ''universal mechanisms’’, according to AP, quoting from the opening remarks of Lavrov during the meeting.
The Kim Jong dynasty has always been smart. In 2006, Pyongyang went nuclear and took the sting out of Western threats. Its nuclear weapons have acted as a deterrent against South Korea and the US.
What a North Korea-China and Russia axis would mean remains to be seen. Kim is certainly emboldened by his newfound friendship with Putin and is likely to be much more belligerent towards South Korea.
The international community will be watching Kim Jong-un’s latest move against reunification closely. Whether he has a plan up his sleeves or wants to merely break away from the family’s traditional stand is difficult to gauge.
But across the world, Kim Jong-un’s shenanigans are watched with keen interest. When he first burst on the scene of his father’s death in 2011, he was just about 28 or 29 years of age. He was the youngest of three sons of the late Kim Jong-il but was his father’s favourite. The father refused to promote his oldest son Kim Jong-nam from succeeding him because ''he is like a little girl". But it is more likely that he fell out with his father after he was caught travelling to Japan on a false Dominican passport in 2001. He was arrested at Narita International Airport when he landed there to visit Disneyland. This embarrassed North Korea, and he quickly fell out of favour.
Soon after Kim succeeded his father in 2011, stories about the young cherubic-faced youth and his cruelty flooded the media. There was talk of him getting his uncle jailed, tortured, and killed so there was no one to question his accession to power. The aunt, who had once played an important role in politics also disappeared from sight. She has since made peace with Kim and has been rehabilitated. How far these were rumours or if there was any basis for them are not known, but there was evidently a power struggle from which Kim emerged on top.
Yet after coming to power, Kim Jong-un did not spare his brother Kim Jong-nam, suspecting him of a plot to murder him. In February 2017, Kim Jong-nam was killed in a bizarre incident. He was attacked by two women allegedly with a VX nerve agent that killed him in Malaysia’s Kuala Lumpur airport. Kim Jong-un is alleged to have ordered the murder.
One time Kim disappeared for months, leading to speculation that he was dying of some mysterious illness and leaving the reins of the state to his sister. Some said he was out of public view as he had a liposuction surgery to get rid of his ample weight. But he was back in public view after a gap. Now there is much speculation of his 10-year-old daughter lately seen accompanying him to public events.
