Dec 21st 2021

Kim Jong Un’s decade in power: Starvation, repression and brutal rule – just like his father and grandfather

by Sung-Yoon Lee

 

Sung-Yoon Lee Professor in Korean Studies, Tufts University

 

By the grim metric of fatalities in the first 10 years of a dictator’s rule, Kim Jong Un has yet to match the records set by his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, or father, Kim Jong Il – the two tyrants who reigned by terror in North Korea before him.

For now, the number of people Kim Jong Un has personally ordered killed – such as his uncle in 2013 and half-brother in 2017 – is likely to number in the hundreds.

But his decade in power, which began after his father’s death on Dec. 17, 2011, has proved a disaster for people living in the communist nation. The isolationist state has become even more so, as the northern border to China closed during the coronavirus pandemic – cutting off an escape route for those desperate to flee. Meanwhile, food insecurity means that “an entire generation of children” are undernourished, as the United Nations has reported.

Concrete numbers of how many have died from starvation and malnourishment-related conditions such as diarrhea and pneumonia under Kim are difficult to come by. But as a scholar of Korean history, I believe the young dictator – who turns 38 next January – has the capacity to surpass even the ghastly death tolls of his two familial predecessors.

Three generations of misery

Kim Jong Un’s first decade in power has seen a continuation of the deadly repression and failed policies that have kept North Koreans living in fear and under the threat of starvation for the last 70 years.

The Korean War that the current leader’s grandfather started in 1950, just two years after founding North Korea, claimed upwards of 4 million lives – most were North Korean civilians killed by the United Nations coalition that came to defend South Korea.

Once his campaign to take South Korea by force was thwarted by the 1953 armistice, Kim Il Sung turned to purging pro-Soviet and pro-Chinese party officials who had dared to criticize him. The North Korean leader went on a killing spree in which thousands of party officials were from the Workers’ Party of Korea.

His son, Kim Jong Il, inherited power in July 1994 and oversaw a devastating famine in which upwards of 2 million people starved to death.

But instead of buying food, Kim Jong Il sought aid, most of which he diverted to North Korea’s military. At the height of the famine in 1997, the U.S. State Department estimated North Korea’s military budget as US$6 billion. During those dark times, Kim spent over a billion dollars a year on his missile programs alone and over $600 million on luxury goods imports.

He also managed to eke out enough money to build an estimated $800 million mausoleum for his dead father – one in which he himself was entombed in December 2011 after succumbing to a suspected heart attack.

Had he spent just $200 million of his wealth each year on grain and distributed it fairly, no one would have died. Instead, as the 2014 U.N. Commission of Inquiry Report on Human Rights in North Korea alleges, Kim Jong Il committed the “inhumane act of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.”

The same claim could be made against Kim Jong Un during his decade in power. Faminelike conditions have been observed in the mid-2010s and have resurfaced during the pandemic.

Even before Kim sealed the border with China in January 2020, North Korea recorded food shortages of around 1.36 million metric tons in 2018 and 2019. His solution has been to rely on aid and, in October, telling his people to eat less until 2025. Meanwhile, during his 10 years in power, Kim has diverted around a quarter of North Korea’s GDP toward the military.

And under Kim Jong Un it has only become harder for North Koreans to escape chronic hunger. During the famine in the 1990s, many North Korean people were able to escape to China in search of food, despite attempts by Kim Jong Il to block them.

In the first year of Kim Jong Un’s rule, the number of escapees who made their way to South Korea dropped in half from the previous year to approximately 1,500.

And in the past nearly two years of lockdown under Kim, border-crossing has become far more difficult. In 2021, the number is expected to be well below 100.

A deadly legacy

When Kim came to power in December 2011, I predicted his rule would be marked neither by reform nor power-sharing but extreme internal repression and strategic threats against neighbors.

Sadly, these projections have been proved right. The past decade has seen a continuation of the atrocious human rights record of Kim’s predecessors and a great leap forward on the despotic dynasty’s missile programs. North Korea has fired off over 130 missiles over the last 10 years, punctuated by three intercontinental ballistic missile blasts in 2017. Of the four nuclear tests, the last in 2017, was a thermonuclear bomb.

These lethal weapons are custom made for threatening the U.S. with a nuclear war while Kim dangles the possibility of peace, thus compelling Washington to withdraw U.S. troops and strategic weapons from South Korea – as Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, called for in August.

Kim Jong Un’s apparent goal is to render Washington’s longtime non-nuclear ally, Seoul, vulnerable to his nuclear-armed state bent on completing its “supreme national task” of completing the “great Juche Revolution” – the absorption of the south and unifying the Korean peninsula on North Korean terms.

A nuclear war, even if limited, could cause civilian deaths in the millions – a horrendous feat already achieved under the leadership of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.

What is different under Kim Jong Un is that he has built the capacity to inflict much more carnage on the outside world, including the U.S.

 

Sung-Yoon Lee, Professor in Korean Studies, Tufts University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The Conversation

Browse articles by author

More Current Affairs

Mar 18th 2024
EXTRACT: "....the UK’s current economic woes – falling exports, slowing growth, low productivity, high taxes, and strained public finances – underscore the urgency of confronting Brexit’s catastrophic consequences."
Mar 18th 2024
EXTRACTS: Most significant of all, Russia’s Black Sea fleet has suffered significant losses over the past two years. As a result of these Ukrainian successes, the Kremlin decided to relocate the Black Sea fleet from Sevastopol to Novorossiysk on the Russian mainland. Compare that with the situation prior to the annexation of Crimea in 2014 when Russia had a secure lease on the naval base of Sevastopol until 2042." --- "Ukrainian efforts have clearly demonstrated, however, that the Kremlin’s, and Putin’s personal, commitment may not be enough to secure Russia’s hold forever. Kyiv’s western partners would do well to remember that among the spreading gloom over the trajectory of the war."
Mar 8th 2024
EXTRACT: "As the saying goes, 'It’s the economy, stupid.' Trump’s proposed economic-policy agenda is now the greatest threat to economies and markets around the world."
Mar 8th 2024
EXTRACT: "Russia, of course, brought all these problems on itself. It most certainly is not winning the war, either militarily or on the economic front. Ukraine is recovering from the initial shock, and if robust foreign assistance continues, it will have an upper hand in the war of attrition."
Mar 8th 2024
EXTRACT: "...... with good timing and good luck, enabled Trump to defeat [in 2016] political icon Hillary Clinton in a race that appeared tailor-made for her. But contrary to what Trump might claim, his victory was extremely narrow. In fact, he lost the popular vote by 2.8 million votes – a larger margin than any other US president in history. Since then, Trump has proved toxic at the ballot box. " -----"The old wisdom that 'demographics is destiny' – coined by the French philosopher Auguste Comte – may well be more relevant to the outcome than it has been to any previous presidential election. "----- "Between the 2016 and 2024 elections, some 20 million older voters will have died, and about 32 million younger Americans will have reached voting age. Many young voters disdain both parties, and Republicans are actively recruiting (mostly white men) on college campuses. But the issues that are dearest to Gen Z’s heart – such as reproductive rights, democracy, and the environment – will keep most of them voting Democratic."
Mar 8th 2024
EXTRACTS: "How can America’s fundamentalist Christians be so enthusiastic about so thoroughly un-Christian a politician?" ---- "If you see and think outside the hermeneutic code of Christian fundamentalism, you might be forgiven for viewing Trump as a ruthless, wholly self-interested man intent on maximizing power, wealth, and carnal pleasure. What your spiritual blindness prevents you from seeing is how the Holy Spirit uses him – channeling the 'secret power of lawlessness,' as the Book of 2 Thessalonians describes it – to restrain the advent of ultimate evil, or to produce something immeasurably greater: the eschaton (end of history), when the messiah comes again."
Mar 1st 2024
EXTRACT: "The lesson is that laws and regulatory structures are critical to state activities that produce local-level benefits. If citizens are to push for reforms and interventions that increase efficiency, promote inclusion, and enable entrepreneurship, innovation, and long-term growth, they need to recognize this. The kind of effective civil society Nilekani envisions thus requires civic engagement, empowerment, and education, including an understanding of the rights and responsibilities implied by citizenship."
Feb 9th 2024
EXTRACT: "Despite the widespread belief that the global economy is headed for a soft landing, recent trends offer little cause for optimism."
Feb 9th 2024
EXTRACT: " Consider, for example, the ongoing revolution in robotics and automation, which will soon lead to the development of robots with human-like features that can learn and multitask the way we do. Or consider what AI will do for biotech, medicine, and ultimately human health and lifespans. No less intriguing are the developments in quantum computing, which will eventually merge with AI to produce advanced cryptography and cybersecurity applications."
Feb 9th 2024
EXTRACTS: "The implication is clear. If Hamas is toppled, and there is no legitimate Palestinian political authority capable of filling the vacuum it leaves behind, Israel will probably find itself in a new kind of hell." ----- "As long as the PLO fails to co-opt Hamas into the political process, it will be impossible to establish a legitimate Palestinian government in post-conflict Gaza, let alone achieve the dream of Palestinian statehood. This is bad news for both Israelis and Palestinians. But it serves Netanyahu and his coalition of extremists just fine."
Jan 28th 2024
EXTRACTS: "According to estimates by the United Nations, China’s working-age population peaked in 2015 and will decline by nearly 220 million by 2049. Basic economics tells us that maintaining steady GDP growth with fewer workers requires extracting more value-added from each one, meaning that productivity growth is vital. But with China now drawing more support from low-productivity state-owned enterprises, and with the higher-productivity private sector remaining under intense regulatory pressure, the prospects for an acceleration of productivity growth appear dim."
Jan 28th 2024
EXTRACT: "When Chamberlain negotiated the notorious Munich agreement with Hitler in September 1938, The Times did not oppose the transfer of the Sudetenland to Germany without Czech consent. Instead, Britain’s most prestigious establishment broadsheet declared that: “The volume of applause for Mr Chamberlain, which continues to grow throughout the globe, registers a popular judgement that neither politicians nor historians are likely to reverse.” "
Jan 4th 2024
EXTRACTS: "Another Trump presidency, however, represents the greatest threat to global stability, because the fate of liberal democracy would be entrusted to a leader who attacks its fundamental principles." ------"While European countries have relied too heavily on US security guarantees, America has been the greatest beneficiary of the post-war political and economic order. By persuading much of the world to embrace the principles of liberal democracy (at least rhetorically), the US expanded its global influence and established itself as the world’s “shining city on a hill.” Given China and Russia’s growing assertiveness, it is not an exaggeration to say that the rules-based international order might not survive a second Trump term."
Dec 28th 2023
EXTRACT: "For the most vulnerable countries, we must create conditions that enable them to finance their climate-change mitigation" ........ "The results are already there: in two years, following the initiative we took in Paris in the spring of 2021, we have released over $100 billion in special drawing rights (SDRs, the International Monetary Fund’s reserve asset) for vulnerable countries.By activating this “dormant asset,” we are extending 20-year loans at near-zero interest rates to finance climate action and pandemic preparedness in the poorest countries. We have begun to change debt rules to suspend payments for such countries, should a climate shock occur. And we have changed the mandate of multilateral development banks, such as the World Bank, so that they take more risks and mobilize more private money."
Dec 27th 2023
EXTRACT: "....if AI causes truly catastrophic increases in inequality – say, if the top 1% were to receive all pretax income – there might be limits to what tax reforms could accomplish. Consider a country where the top 1% earns 20% of pretax income – roughly the current world average. If, owing to AI, this group eventually received all pretax income, it would need to be taxed at a rate of 80%, with the revenue redistributed as tax credits to the 99%, just to achieve today’s pretax income distribution; funding the government and achieving today’s post-tax income distribution would require an even higher rate. Given that such high rates could discourage work, we would likely have to settle for partial inequality insurance, analogous to having a deductible on a conventional insurance policy to reduce moral hazard."
Dec 21st 2023
EXTRACT: "Shocks are here to stay, and our task is not to predict the next one – although someone always does – but to sharpen our focus on resilience. Staying the course of politically mandated policies while minimizing the inevitable dislocations is easier said than done. But that is no excuse to fall for the myth of being victimized by the unprecedented."
Dec 21st 2023
EXTRACTS: "A new world is indeed emerging. It will be characterized not only by more interdependencies, but also by more insecurity, danger, and war. Stability in international relations will become a foreign concept from a bygone age – one that we did not fully appreciate until it was gone."
Dec 14th 2023
EXTRACT: "Yet one must never forget that Putin is first and foremost an intelligence officer whose dominant trait is suspicion."
Dec 2nd 2023
EXTRACTS: "In a recent commentary for the Financial Times, Martin Wolf trots out the specter of a 'public-debt disaster,' that recurrent staple of bond-market chatter. The essence of his argument is that since debt-to-GDP ratios are high, and eminent authorities are alarmed, 'fiscal crises' in the form of debt defaults or inflation “loom. And that means something must be done.' ----- "If, as Wolf fears, 'real interest rates might be permanently higher than they used to be,' the culprit is monetary policy, and the real risk is not rich-country public-debt defaults or inflation. It is recession, bankruptcies, and unemployment, along with inflation." ---- "Wolf surely knows that the proper remedy is for rich-country central banks to bring interest rates back down. Yet he doesn’t want to say it. He seems to be caught up, possibly against his better judgment, in bond vigilantes’ evergreen campaign against the remnants of the welfare state."
Nov 27th 2023
EXTRACT: "The first Russia, comprising those living in Russia’s two biggest cities, Moscow and Saint Petersburg, can pretend there is no war at all." ---- "Then there is the other Russia, the one you find in small towns and villages scattered across the country’s massive territory. Here, the Ukraine war is a source of patriotic pride,"