and all the people” to “become human bulwarks and human shields in defending Kim Jong-un unto death.”
The birthday documentary had a decidedly optimistic tone, and a sense that its youthful protagonist would, by the sheer force of his confidence and masculine vigor, propel the country toward a socialist—and nuclear—paradise. This confidence was his natural right, given that the blood of Kim Il Sung coursed through his veins. Rooted in the ideological and institutional structures of the regime, it was advanced by the propaganda machinery that created a hero and lauded his every move. Unburdened by the historical experience of colonization, war, and famine, or any sense of affinity with Beijing and Moscow, which had figured so prominently in the consciousnesses of his grandfather and his father, Kim Jong Un was positioned to believe that he could create history himself.
SWAGGER
Elder brother and erstwhile successor Kim Jong Nam told a Japanese journalist soon after his father died that dynastic succession is “a joke to the outside world” and that his half-brother would be “just a nominal figure, [and] the members of the power elite will be the ones in actual power.” He prognosticated that North Korea would collapse without reforms. “The Kim Jong Un regime will not last long,” he added ominously, claiming that China did not in fact welcome the hereditary succession but merely acknowledged it for the sake of maintaining stability. Jong Nam was openly voicing what most outside observers thought and some insiders probably suspected. How could a twentysomething with no known experience in governing a country, much less a nuclear-armed nation with a moribund economy under the tightening noose of sanctions, possibly survive?
Instead of timidity, there was swagger. Right out of the gate, Jong Un started to poke and prod, test and push the bounds of international tolerance, calculating that he could withstand almost any punishment. Perhaps he felt he had no choice but to push. The East Asia specialist Kongdan Oh Hassig points to “an inferiority complex”: “He is trying to show that he has a strategic mind, that the military stands behind him and that no one stands against him.” He chose to double down on his nuclear weapons program, despite the financial consequences and international isolation. For the first six years of his rule, Kim kept the world on edge with his belligerent rhetoric while accelerating the demonstration of his nuclear and missile capabilities. To a large extent, he has maintained his initiative, to the frustration of the United States and his neighbors. At the CIA, where I was a lead political analyst at the time, that meant providing the analysis for a seemingly never-ending series of National Security Council policy meetings, producing President’s Daily Briefs—our signature product designed to support the president, the cabinet, and other senior officials—and spending lots of late nights at the office.
On leap day in 2012, after two years of bilateral negotiations, North Korea agreed to a deal with the United States that called for a suspension of uranium enrichment, international inspections, and a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests in exchange for 240,000 tons of food aid. A mere two weeks later, the new Kim regime announced its intention to conduct a space launch banned by U.N. sanctions. North Korea had long insisted on its right to peaceful use of outer space and claimed that it wanted to send satellites into orbit to better predict the weather and harvest yields, but international voices argued that this was simply a cover and that the regime intended to test ballistic missile technology. The April 13 launch failed and earned a fresh round of U.N. sanctions. Washington called the test a violation of the leap day agreement and suspended its plans to deliver the food aid. But surprisingly the regime admitted its failure rather than push out propaganda that it had succeeded, as it had done for the previous failed launch in 2009. It was the first sign for many of us in Langley that Jong Un might be a different kind of leader, more transparent and more willing to take risks and see failure as an opportunity to improve and learn. Within hours of the launch, regime media reported, “Scientists, technicians and experts are now looking into the cause of the failure.”
The admission of failure was also striking given the fact that the most important day in North Korea—the hundredth anniversary of Kim Il Sung’s birthday, April 15, 2012—was just a couple of days away. One would have thought