that the new leader would want to use the occasion to highlight his success. On that day, Kim presided over his first military parade and again, departing from received practice, delivered a twenty-minute speech, unlike his father, who had avoided public speaking during his entire seventeen years of rule. As six road-mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles—some or all of which might have been mock-ups rather than the real thing—rolled by, provoking concern about North Korea’s increasing capabilities and intentions, Kim saluted, clapped, and waved.
The speech itself wasn’t special, but the event was still captivating. Kim swallowed hard before he uttered his first words, shuffled his feet as he spoke, and had his eyes glued to his notes, revealing considerable nervousness. In that first public address, he was at once affirming the legacy of his grandfather and his father and upholding his father’s military-first policy. But with the first nuclear test in 2006 and improved development of ballistic missiles notched in his belt—as the road-mobile ICBMs showed—he proclaimed that “the days are gone forever when our enemies could blackmail us with nuclear bombs.” In veering away from his father’s customary practice of avoiding public speaking, Kim Jong Un’s decision to address the people in this massive plaza on the most important day of the year also reflected his different approach to leadership. As longtime North Korea expert Cheong Seong-chang from South Korea’s Sejong Institute put it, “Kim Jong Il was behind mysterious curtains, refrained from making public speeches and gave orders through the party.” As a result, Cheong added, “the public feared him….But Kim Jong Il was never loved by the public.” Jong Un, on the other hand, seems intent on creating that personal bond with the people and linking the regime’s powerful rhetoric to himself. The young general was undoubtedly claiming ownership of North Korea’s security and showing off his full control of the military to an outside world that was still snickering and taking bets on how long he would last, and to the home audience he wanted to assure and warn that he was here to stay.
Eight months later, in December 2012, North Korea announced its intention to launch another “satellite,” despite Washington’s admonition that it would view the launch as “a highly provocative act.” And launch they did, on December 12, 2012—12-12-12—and earned another set of U.N. sanctions. In television coverage, the regime portrayed Kim Jong Un as a hands-on leader who personally ordered the launch from a satellite command center, smoking a cigarette while looking at the data and results, in an attempt to frame the young man as bold and action-oriented in the face of widespread international censure. Two months later, in February 2013, just a little over a year into Kim’s rule, North Korea conducted its third nuclear test, and Kim’s first. Director of National Intelligence James Clapper testified in his annual threat assessment for the Senate Committee on Armed Services that the satellite launch of December 2012, the ballistic missiles previewed at the parade, and the February 2013 nuclear test “demonstrate North Korea’s commitment to develop long-range missile technology that could pose a direct threat to the United States, and its efforts to produce and market ballistic missiles raise broader regional and global security concerns.” His statements reflected the growing uneasiness in Washington about the North Korean threat.
Under Kim, North Korea codified its status as a nuclear-armed state by inscribing that description into the constitution it revised in 2012, seemingly drawing strength from the growing list of sanctions and U.S. and regional warnings. Posted on its Web portal, the document’s preamble credited Kim Jong Il for “turn[ing] our fatherland into an invincible state of political ideology, a nuclear-armed state and an indomitable military power, paving the ground for the construction of a strong and prosperous nation.” It also reinforced Kim Jong Un’s role in advancing these nuclear capabilities, further solidifying his authority over their use. But while Pyongyang in a 2013 law declared North Korea a “full-fledged nuclear weapons state,” it asserted all the while that its weapons program was intended for deterrence to underscore that it would be a responsible nuclear power.
Regime propaganda kept pace with the developments in North Korea’s strategic arsenal, further linking Kim Jong Un to the growing size and sophistication of the nuclear weapons program. There is Kim smiling broadly as the regime conducts a ballistic missile test from a submarine, his hair blowing in the wind, a cigarette held casually in his hand against the backdrop