All hope has now evaporated that the
32-year-old Kim, who assumed office on the death of his father in 2011, would
adopt a more enlightened attitude towards international relations than had existed
under his father and grandfather since the end of the Korean War in 1953.
Instead the situation has got steadily worse.
Kim has actively pursued his country’s bid for
nuclear weapons, and analysts agree that North Korea now has a fully-fledged
nuclear program. Earlier this month there was a significant development with
the reported firing from a submarine of a missile capable of carrying a nuclear
weapon.
The United States has since dismissed this as
a stunt, although there is general agreement that the incident was a test of
the missile firing system itself. Even this is a clear indication of North
Korea’s intention to develop such a capacity, although military experts say, the
actual launch of a nuclear missile is still some years away.
Coupled with Kim’s recent actions, there is
good reason for serious concern about the future for peace in northern Asia.
The Supreme Leader is beginning to adopt some of the worst excesses of the
Roman emperors (Caligula instantly springs to mind) with his extermination of
family members and other senior advisers from his father’s regime.
Most recently was the bizarre execution of his
Defence Minister, Hyon Yong-choi, blown to bits by an anti-aircraft missile in
front of hundreds of spectators, apparently for the crime of dozing off during
a meeting that Kim was attending.
South Korean analysts say this brings to 16
the number of senior officials who have been killed this year for real or apparent
slights against the Supreme Leader.
While the ‘dozing off’ charge provided a ready
excuse for dispatching Hyon it may well be that the Defence Chief had dared to
reason with Kim over his obsession with nuclear weapons which, if ever used,
could lead only to the destruction of his country.
One of the
world's foremost North Korea analysts, Andrei Lankov, says that compared with
his father and grandfather, Kim has become dangerously trigger-happy.
He points
out that Kim is young and inexperienced and may initially have been regarded as
a lightweight by the officials in the regime he had inherited.
“This likely explains the near-continuous series
of high-level purges since Kim came into power, including that of his own uncle
last year,” Lankov says.
He believes there is at present no danger of an
external initiative to remove Kim from power and absolutely no chance of a
popular uprising from the country’s cowed and demoralised population.
The only possibility is a palace revolution
among officials and advisers close to Kim. As the Defence Chief, in charge of
the country’s 1.2 million-strong army, Hyon would present a particular threat.
But as the fate of Caligula attests, incessant
purges of those around Kim will only make the survivors and successors more
nervous. How this may play out over the weeks and months ahead will be watched
very carefully in Seoul, Tokyo and Washington. 
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