Kim Jong-un, the 33-year-old third-generation heir to North Korea’s Kim Dynasty, has formally ascended to power during the just-started Seventh (North) Korean Workers’ Party Congress. It was 36 years ago, in 1980, when his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, held the sixth party convention, leaving in his will that no convention would be held until the lives of the North Korean people improved to the point where they would enjoy three square meals of rice and meat every day.
Under Kim Jong-il, the late successor and father of the current leader, the North had suffered from a malfunctioning economy, worsened by chronic famines, and he failed to hold the congress.
The situation has not improved under the third Kim, either. Rather, his confrontational attitude has further relegated the nation to pariah status, with its only benefactors, China and Iran ― one of the few former collaborators in the pursuit of nuclear weapons and long-range missiles ― keeping the North at arm’s length. In other words, the young dictator is holding the congress virtually in violation of his grandfather’s will as the nation is sliding into an abysmal downward spiral.
Despite the grim circumstances surrounding his ascension to power, Kim, as well as the world, should find ways of putting this new start of the falling dynasty to its best use.
For Kim, now more securely in power, it is time to ponder how to better feed and clothe his people. His pursuit of weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) is surely not the answer. His fourth nuclear detonation and intercontinental ballistic missile test early this year brought on the toughest-ever international sanctions, also backed by China. The result is a virtual blockade by sea and land that will only get tougher if Kim does not give up his strategy of blackmail and extortion. Besides, he should think that his missiles are unreliable, as shown by three recent failed Musudan intermediate missile tests, and he should realize that nuclear weapons are even harder to harness. His impoverished nation may well go under, overstretching itself financing its efforts to make these weapons work.
The sooner he realizes that the missiles and nukes cannot replace the fare of rice and meat for his people nor guarantee his regime’s security, the better chance he has of survival.
From the international community ― South Korea, the United States and China, particularly, it is time for a cool-headed approach ― strategic rigidity can be replaced by a sense of flexibility.
It may be tempting to continue pressuring the communist state in the hope it will either give up its belligerent position or collapse. And it is true that its forceful tactics may just work. History has shown time and again Pyongyang’s resilience ― surviving prevalent predictions of demise in the 1990s and remaining committed to its independence at whatever cost.
Besides, the alternative of implosion should be carefully weighed ― one being a crisis in which hundreds of thousands of North Koreans embark on an uncontrolled migration into the South and north to China and by boat to Japan. What about its WMDs ending up in the wrong hands?
It is true that the Kim regime is an evil empire but the world also needs to be realistic enough to see that it sometimes is necessary to cut the deal with the lesser of two evils ― the unexpected being the rise out of nowhere of a general with a bigger case of megalomania, with a suicidal tendency. We need to remind ourselves that time is with us, not with the North, so we can afford to wait it out.