Kim Jong-un: NORTH KOREA Military Leader Kim Jong-un became the leader of North Korea in 2011, having inherited his position from his father Kim Jong-il. Much of the early life of Kim Jong-un is unknown to Western media. Presumably born in North Korea, Kim Jong-un is the son of Ko Young-hee, an opera singer, and Kim Jong-il, who was the militaryoriented leader of the country for over a decade until his death in 2011. Kim Jong-un has continued the country’s nuclear testing and what is believed to be the development of missile technology despite international disapproval. He has pledged to focus on educational and economic reforms and is more mediagenic in his approach to leadership than his father. Limited Information on Early Life The birthdate and early childhood of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is shrouded in mystery. It is known that he is the youngest son of Korean military leader Kim Jong Il (also written Jong-il), who, under the communist Worker's Party, had ruled North Korea since 1994; and the grandson of Kim Il-sung, his father's predecessor. Kim Jong Il began to prepare Kim Jong-un for succession to leadership in 2010. Upon his father's death in December 2011, Kim Jong-un assumed power. It is believed that he was in his late 20s at the time. He reportedly counts among his close allies his uncle, Jang Sung-taek, and army political bureau chief Choe Ryong Hae. Kim Jong-un's mother was opera singer Ko Young-hee, who had two other children and is thought to have campaigned for Kim Jong-un to be his father's successor before her death in 2004. It has been reported that Kim Jong Il indeed took a liking to Kim Jong-un, noting that he saw in the youth a temperament similar to himself. It is also thought that Kim Jongun may have been educated abroad in Switzerland before attending the Kim Il-sung Military University (named after his grandfather) in the capital of Pyongyang in the mid-2000s. Suspected Weapons Testing Under Kim Jong-un's authority, North Korea has continued what are believed to be weapons-testing programs. Though agreeing in February 2012 to halt nuclear testing and to a cessation on long-range missile launching, in April 2012, the country launched a satellite that failed shortly after takeoff. Then, in December of the same year, the

government launched a long-range rocket that put a satellite in orbit. The U.S. government believes that these launches are meant to cover up work and testing on ballistic missile technology. In February 2013, North Korea held its third underground nuclear test. The act has been roundly condemned by the international community, including the United States, Russia, Japan and China. In the face of further sanctions, analysts have stated that Kim's continued focus on armament while calling for U.S. peace talks is a strategy of positioning North Korea as a formidable entity and cementing his standing as a regional leader. © 2014 Bio and the Bio logo are registered trademarks of A&E Television Networks, LLC.

Why Kim Jong-un May Be the Scariest Thing About North Korea Military analysis. March 13 2013 6:07 PM

Who’s Afraid of Kim Jong-un? Maybe we should be. What we don’t know about North Korea’s young leader may be the scariest thing of all. By Fred Kaplan If North Korea were a normal country, even a normal dictatorship, there would be nothing at all worrisome about the threats and bombast billowing forth from its ludicrous leader, Kim Jong-un. But by design, it is not a normal country. Its power stems almost entirely from its unpredictability; its diplomacy consists of careening in and out of well-marked lanes; its harsh domestic controls are legitimized by a constant state of emergency. Add to this a small nuclear arsenal, an opaque political facade, and a very young new lord whose only claim to the throne is dynastic inheritance—and it’s no wonder that a crisis erupts now and then. But the latest eruption is rattling nerves more than usual. It’s not because of Kim Jong-un’s histrionics about transforming Seoul into a “sea of fire”; that’s a perennial in the Kim dynasty’s phrasebook of dire threats. Nor is it because he declared the 1953 armistice, which ended the Korean War, “null and void”; his father and grandfather, Kim Jong-il and Kim Il-sung, the only other past leaders of North Korea, did that a few times as well. Nor is it because he has mobilized the military or ordered the people to prepare for evacuations; this too is par for the totalitarian course. No, what’s causing many officials and observers to gulp a bit is all that, plus the fact that Kim Jong-un—about 29 and in power for barely a year—is still an unknown quantity. His father, Kim Jong-il, was 52 when he succeeded his father; he’d spent a quarter-century preparing for the ascension in several senior party positions. Kim Jong-un had no political or military experience before taking putative control of the army, the party, and the nation. Kim Jong-il learned the subtleties of managing power, domestically and internationally, from a wily master; scholars and diplomats who study the regime saw continuity in the two leaders’ patterns; Bill Clinton’s secretary of state, Madeleine Albright, held lengthy negotiations with him in 2000 about a possible missile ban,

and, according to her aides, who sat in the same room, he had a clear command of the issues. By contrast, Kim Jong-un had little time to learn anything; his behavior is at best hard to read, and at times bewildering. Advertisement For example, on Feb. 29, 2012, in part as a test of the new leader’s intentions, President Obama agreed to provide the North Koreans with 240,000 tons of food aid if they suspended all missile and nuclear tests. On April 13, before the food began to be shipped, North Korea launched a missile test. Obama canceled the aid and pushed a resolution through the U.N. Security Council, denouncing the launch as a “serious violation” of international law. Kim responded with a public speech, heralding the missile launch as a display of North Korea’s “military superiority” and vowing to resist imperial pressure. Since then, Kim has launched another satellite into space (successfully) and conducted two underground tests of atomic bombs—prompting more condemnations from the Security Council. In one sense, this too is nothing new. The elder Kims also defied the U.N. and other outsiders when it served their interest, in part because they knew they could count on neighboring China to keep trade and aid flowing. (Beijing’s leaders have recently wagged their fingers at Pyongyang’s transgressions, but little more.) The elders, though, would shrewdly manipulate the enemy’s anxieties. They would make a threat, and wait for the enemy (the United States, South Korea, the U.N., or some combination of the above) to offer a bribe in exchange for their forbearance. They would take the bribe—and they’d forbear. But this new Kim took the promise of a bribe —then went ahead and carried out the threat anyway, even before the payment, in this case desperately needed food, came through. What the hell? This is the question that officials and analysts are asking: Does Kim Jong-un know how to play his family’s game? It’s always been an odious game, but in the old days, when the father and grandfather were around, it would end with peace, at least for a while, if the west played along. American diplomats learned how to play the game, though testily, during the presidencies of George H.W. Bush and Bill Clinton; some of them finally got the hang of it (though way too late) in the last two years of George W. Bush. But now, the rules of the game, even the contours of the game board, are unclear. Does Kim Jong-un believe his ridiculous rhetoric? Or is he playing it as a tactic, like his elders did, though quite a lot more bunglingly? In either case, he seems to be overplaying his hand. He seems to be miscalculating. (Could he really have believed that engaging with Dennis Rodman might endear him to America’s No. 1 basketball fan? He might have!) And miscalculations, as much history tells us, can lead to war. Slate is published by The Slate Group, a Graham Holdings Company. All contents © 2014 The Slate Group LLC. All rights reserved.