in Pyongyang that their safety could not be guaranteed, urged foreigners in South Korea to leave the country, declared the Korean War armistice null and void, and restarted the plutonium reactor at Yongbyon, which had been shuttered in 2007. Pyongyang also released a photo of Kim sitting at a massive table, surrounded by three military officials, possibly reviewing martial plans. The most important aspect of this room was a large map titled “U.S. mainland strike plan,” depicting four lines—intercontinental ballistic missile trajectories—coming from Asia and hitting four targets in the United States, including Washington, D.C. The purpose of this propaganda was to showcase Kim’s defiance to the world at the outset of his takeover.
It didn’t seem to matter to the regime that its actions and bluster were undermining its ability to make money. To protest annual U.S.–South Korean military drills and U.N. sanctions that were piling up as a result of North Korea’s nuclear and missile tests, the regime pulled fifty thousand North Korean workers from the lucrative inter-Korean Kaesong Industrial Complex, which was earning the North around $100 million per year. The tension also had an impact on North Korea’s tourism industry, another source of hard currency. Kim’s actions during these first months suggested that he was keenly focused on boosting his military credentials for domestic and international audiences, particularly the much older and more experienced leaders in Washington, Beijing, Seoul, and Tokyo, ensuring that he was not to be taken lightly. Indeed, he deliberately deepened North Korea’s isolation. Having rebuffed U.S., South Korean, and Chinese attempts to reengage, preferring instead to use bluster and bullying to try to get his way, Kim refused to meet with any foreign head of state for the first six years of his rule. He limited his significant foreign contacts to Kenji Fujimoto, the Japanese sushi chef whom he knew in his youth and whom he invited to Pyongyang in 2012, and Dennis Rodman, an American basketball player, who has visited North Korea four times since 2013.
Kim Jong Un was intent on doing things his way.
THE NEW NORMAL
In the intelligence community during these tense years, we started to talk about the “new normal”—in which we saw ballistic missile tests almost every two weeks and heard sustained, alarming rhetoric that most veteran watchers of North Korea agreed was the worst observed in twenty years. The United States and regional allies responded with sanctions and robust shows of force, including sending fighter jets, warships, and bombers to the region, and deploying missile interceptors. U.S. leaders sought to reassure allies about their commitment to the defense of the region and show North Korea that they would not be cowed into engaging on its terms or offering concessions without seeing significant progress on denuclearization, while urging Pyongyang to abide by its international obligations. Chinese leaders continued to make excuses for the regime’s behavior—for example, by refusing to put the blame on Pyongyang for the attack on the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan in 2010—prioritizing regional stability over denuclearization. But China’s new leader, Xi Jinping, elevated to power in November 2012, was not a fan of Jong Un’s impetuous behavior, which triggered unprecedentedly public hints that Chinese leaders were questioning the value of the relationship with North Korea. President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea and his successor Park Geun-hye—whose mother had been assassinated by North Korean commandos in 1974 during an attempt to kill her husband, the South Korean president—were also in no mood to appease Pyongyang and chose to tighten their alliance with Washington, while trying to obtain Beijing’s cooperation to rein in North Korea.
While the overt demonstrations and public pronouncements from Pyongyang were dominating the headlines, eliciting a response precisely as they were designed to do, Kim adjusted his behavior. About a year and a half into his rule, he began showing an ability to calibrate his actions to avoid triggering an unmanageable response from the United States and the region. For example, in April 2013, U.S. and South Korean troops increased alert levels based on signs that North Korea was planning to conduct the first test of its road-mobile, intermediate-range ballistic missile, the Musudan. With a range of between 1,550 and 2,500 miles, the weapon, if operational, would have put all of South Korea, Japan, and the U.S. military base in Guam within range. Washington, Seoul, and Tokyo believed that a test was highly likely and would have taken regional tensions to a new level. China, claiming prescheduled military exercises, conducted live-fire drills