for a country that loves numerology, 10-10-10. It was the sixty-fifth anniversary of the establishment of the Korean Workers’ Party and the day that Kim Jong Un made his debut at a massive military parade, standing next to his father, who had taken his usual spot on the observation platform high above Kim Il Sung Plaza. The elder Kim was walking a bit tentatively, holding on to the rail for stability, suggesting that he was still feeling the effects of the stroke in August 2008 that had kept him out of the public eye for several months. He appeared more fit than when he’d shown up at a parliamentary meeting in April 2009, looking wizened and weak. Next to his then twenty-six-year-old son, who was robust and portly and sporting a simple, dark Mao suit like his grandfather used to wear, Jong Il looked old and frail.
Side by side, the two watched the spectacular event, the largest military parade in the country’s history. Waves of goose-stepping male and female soldiers marching to the music of brass bands, long-range missiles, and tanks carrying rocket-propelled grenades paid tribute to the Dear Leader and his heir apparent. Military officials bedecked with an impossible number of medals saluted as they marched or rode by. Banners about defeating the United States festooned the parade. The streets were lined with cheering crowds who were yelling with full-throated fervor—as they were supposed to do—“Kim Jong Il! Protect him to the death!” “Kim Jong Il, let’s unite to support him!” The military vice marshal Ri Yong Ho spoke at the event with a blustery call to arms: “If the U.S. imperialists and their followers infringe on our sovereignty and dignity even slightly, we will blow up the stronghold of their aggression with a merciless and righteous retaliatory strike by mobilizing all physical means, including self-defensive nuclear deterrent force, and achieve the historic task of unification!”
Eager to promote the display, the regime took the unprecedented step of inviting scores of foreign journalists, even providing them with Internet access to ensure that the coverage of Jong Un’s debut reverberated beyond the physical location to the virtual world. The message? To show the world that Kim Jong Un had the full support of both the party and the North’s mighty military, plus the nuclear weapons to ensure yet another hereditary succession within the Kim family. Following the parade, a senior party official gave an interview to the Associated Press. “Our people are honored to serve the great president Kim Il Sung and the great leader Kim Jong Il,” he said. “Now we also have the honor of serving young general Kim Jong Un.”
For Jong Un, the parade capped a series of events aimed at bolstering his new status. A few weeks earlier at a rare party conference—the first in thirty years—Jong Un was appointed the vice chairman of the Central Military Commission and to the party’s Central Committee, putting him at the epicenter of power. And despite never having held a previous military rank, he was made a four-star general, highlighting not only the absurdity of North Korea’s system but also the importance of stamping the heir with bureaucratic titles to reinforce his position in the existing hierarchies.
The successor clapped and saluted appropriately and stood at attention on a platform alongside officials three or four times his age. But some of his movements indicated a level of uncertainty and nervousness. His salutes and clapping sometimes started a split second after his father and the others began. He glanced backward at one point as if slightly startled by an unexpected movement behind him, significant only because North Korean events are so highly orchestrated and ritualized. Nevertheless, the enormous display of revolutionary fervor, the impressive, though aging, military arsenal—much of it was refurbished from the Soviet era—and the thunderous chants of the mass of people beneath him must have made his heart pound in excitement. It was quite a meteoric rise for someone who, just ten years earlier, had been playing basketball in Switzerland.
But in fact, Kim was made for this moment, having been nurtured into his elite status. The generals had been bowing to him since he was a young boy; now they were doing it publicly for all the world to see. As the journalist Mark Bowden wrote in a 2015 profile, “At age five, we are all the center of the universe. Everything—our parents, family, home, neighborhood, school, country—revolves around us. For most people, what follows is a