nuclear weapons, ballistic missiles, and tanks. The imagery suggests that like a child he is prone to tantrums and erratic behavior, unable to make rational choices, and liable to get himself and others into trouble.
A corollary assumption stemming from his youth was the idea that he was a reformer at heart and that because of his age his approach to the outside world could be shaped by external powers through engagement. When Kim Jong Il ascended to power in the early 1980s, the outside world had also speculated that he might be a reformer interested in modernizing his country. Citing an East German embassy assessment from 1982, Don Oberdorfer, a Washington Post reporter and author of the book The Two Koreas, wrote that Kim endorsed more fashionable clothing choices and greater consumption of alcohol. These early signs turned out to be merely cosmetic changes, not indicators that the regime was looking to make fundamental reforms.
There were more tantalizing signs that Kim Jong Un yearned to integrate North Korea into the international community and free his country from the isolation that the regime had deepened over sixty-five years. Unlike his grandfather and his father, Kim had been educated for a few years in Switzerland. North Korean media released a video that showed him at a concert in Pyongyang in which Disney characters romped around the stage while video clips of Dumbo and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs were projected onto massive screens, and a group of skimpily clad women played the violin. He also appeared in public with his wife, Ri Sol Ju, a first for a North Korean leader; Kim’s father and grandfather avoided being seen in public with their wives or revealing too much about their personal lives. Each of these gestures was interpreted as a hopeful sign that Kim wanted to take North Korea in a new direction. His engagement with China, South Korea, and the United States since January 2018 has revived this line of thinking, even amid fresh reports about North Korea’s progress in its ballistic missile and nuclear programs. Observers find the cognitive dissonance of Kim’s actions both disconcerting and promising.
But pitted against this hope is the sense that we are certainly heading toward catastrophe. When one considers the frighteningly rapid advancement of North Korea’s cyber, nuclear, and conventional capabilities, the countless rows of soldiers marching in impossible unity at military parades, and the belligerent threats, Kim is suddenly no longer the crazy fat kid but a ten-foot-tall giant with untold and unlimited power: unstoppable, unpredictable, undeterrable, omnipotent. His intercontinental ballistic missiles can reach Los Angeles. He threatened to turn the Blue House, South Korea’s presidential residence, into a “sea of fire.” He has a million-man army ready to march south to force reunification. He has dozens of nuclear weapons at his disposal. He called the U.S. president “mentally deranged” and threatened nuclear war.
KIM THE ENIGMA
Just as the drumbeat of a potential second war on the Korean Peninsula reached a crescendo in late 2017, following North Korea’s brazen testing of intercontinental ballistic missiles, its largest ever nuclear test, and the ensuing war of words with President Trump, Kim decided to pivot toward diplomacy in 2018. Even as he vowed to mass-produce nuclear weapons in his annual New Year’s address, he also expressed an interest in attending the Winter Olympics. For the first time since the division of the peninsula in 1945, a Kim family member set foot in South Korea—his sister, Kim Yo Jong. That breakthrough quickly set in motion a series of high-level summits with President Xi Jinping of China, President Moon Jae-in of South Korea, and President Donald Trump of the United States—the first between a North Korean leader and a sitting U.S. president.
In his pivot to engagement—and under intense media scrutiny of his every move—Kim transformed himself from a ten-foot-tall baby to a real, live human being, who walks, talks, and goes to meetings like everyone else. As we glean new insights from observing him without the soft, propagandistic filter of North Korea’s media, the Kim puzzle pieces multiply. There he is sipping tea with President Moon, listening intently to President Xi, and delivering remarks to reporters in Singapore while sitting next to President Trump, as if he had been doing it all for years. He has a sense of humor. He dines with his wife like any other husband. He goes sightseeing in Singapore and takes selfies. He talks about wanting peace and prosperity for his people and the