Kim Jong-un’s ten years in command of North Korea are marked by the development of nuclear weapons and his confrontation with the United States.
After 10 years in power, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un became one of the world’s most experienced leaders And, at 37, he can continue to defy the West for decades with his nuclear arsenal, according to analysts.
His first ten years of mandate allow a glimpse of his future trajectory, betting on the development of nuclear weapons to move from isolation to make a place on the international geopolitical board with the most powerful leaders in the world.
“North Korea is going to maintain its confrontation with the United States and the harassment by challenging it tactically, but making sure not to cross the line so as not to completely derail relations,” Kim, a researcher at the Institute for National Unification of Korea, told AFP. Jin-ha.
For more than six years, after inheriting the power of his father and predecessor Kim Jong-il at the age of 27, who died on December 17, 2011, Kim did not leave his isolated country or meet with any foreign head of state.
Initially seen as a puppet of North Korean generals and Labor Party bureaucrats, Kim brutally consolidated his authority in 2013, executing his uncle Jang Song-thaek for treason.
He was also singled out for the murder of his older half brother Kim Jong-nam at the Kuala Lumpur airport. At the same time, Kim accelerated North Korea’s banned nuclear program.
Four of the six nuclear tests carried out by the country were under his mandate. And in 2017 it launched ballistic missiles with the capacity to reach the entire territory of the United States, defying the increasingly severe sanctions of the United Nations Security Council.
For months, he exchanged fierce messages with US President Donald Trump, fueling fears of an armed conflict.
But then he declared the country’s nuclear arsenal “complete” and knocked on the door of the outside world.
Cumbres con Trump
With the help of pacifist South Korean President Moon Jae-in, in 2018 Kim became the first North Korean leader to meet with an American president in office at a summit in Singapore.
Soo Kim, an analyst at the RAND Corporation, says it was Pyongyang’s nuclear arsenal that made the meeting possible.
“North Korea’s development of its arms program, the credibility of the nuclear and missile threat and the fortuitous convergence of leaderships (Trump, Moon and Kim) helped prepare the conditions,” says this expert.
Historic handshake between Donald Trump and Kim Jong Un
After the first meeting, Trump said he had established “a special bond” with the person he had previously called a “little rocket man.” That same year, Kim had contacts with Moon and several meetings with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Pyongyang’s main ally.
“The cruel, comic-looking dictator had become a reformist, pacifist and responsible manager of nuclear arsenals and gulags, possibly bent on denuclearization,” says Sung-yoon Lee, professor of Korean Studies at Tufts University.
But the romance was short-lived: a second summit between Trump and Kim in Hanoi failed over disagreements on the withdrawal of sanctions and the concessions Pyongyang would make in return.
Trump flew out of the Vietnamese capital and Kim caught a 60-hour train ride home. A later encounter in the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean peninsula did not serve to break the blockade..
“Common adversary”

Senior managers and analysts assure that Kim he was never willing to give up his nuclear arsenal entirely, for which North Korea has worked for decades at a high cost in resources and isolation, and which is still in development.
“He cannot feed his people, but he manages to maintain the political survival of the regime” with their guns, says Soo Kim of RAND Corporation. “And that’s more important to Kim,” he adds.
And with the United States and China heading for a long period of tensions, Kim has a chance to emulate his grandfather Kim Il-sung. The founder of North Korea took advantage of the tensions between Moscow and Beijing to confront the two communist countries.
The links between Pyongyang and Beijing forged when they joined forces in the Korean War were “a love-hate relationship between two friend-enemies,” said Professor Lee.
“Neither adores the other, but recognizes that the other is their best ally in terms of strategy, ideology, history and in containing the United States, the common adversary,” he added.
“Considerable success”

Although the North Korean dynastic regime bases its legitimacy on nationalist and arms issues, Kim only has to look beyond the border with China to see how economic prosperity can boost the popularity of a one-party country.
But to Beijing’s frustration, the North’s nuclear development stands in contrast to the mismanagement of its economy, even before sanctions. which has led its population to suffer from chronic food shortages.
With a vulnerable healthcare system, last year it closed its borders after the coronavirus emergency in China, a self-imposed blockade that is still in place now.
Although many analysts doubt it, Pyongyang assures that it did not register any case of covid-19. Yet Kim has recognized the resulting adversities and prepares his population for the “worst-case scenario ever.”
“Economically, North Korea is at the rear of the international order,” says Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University in Seoul. “But with its nuclear arsenal, it is able to exert its influence between two world powers, the United States and China,” he adds.
“I would call it a considerable success for Pyongyang,” he says. (I)

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