Most Americans – including me – know little about North Korea. Still, some of us know that in contrast to South Korea, which is staunchly capitalist, North Korea is stalwartly communist. Some of us know that while North Korea remains poor the economy is measurably more robust than it was five years ago. Some of us know that despite weak-kneed interventions of several American presidents, North Korea has developed an impressive nuclear arsenal. And some of us know that leadership in North Korea is dynastic – and totalitarian.
A recent report from Freedom House reads in part: North Korea is a one-party state led by a dynastic totalitarian dictatorship that regularly engages in grave human rights abuses. Surveillance is pervasive, arbitrary, arrests and detentions are common, and punishments for political offense are severe. The state runs all media outlets, and freedom of assembly is not recognized. The state maintains a system of camps for political prisoners where torture, forced labor, starvation, and other atrocities take place.
Because we’re largely ignorant of North Korea, and because what we do know we generally detest, we tend either to ignore or dismiss it. Mistakes. North Korea must be reckoned with. First, it, like China, testifies to how dictatorships can, in critical ways, succeed. Second, while America’s alliances have frayed, North Korea’s have not. Quite the contrary. Among its greatest recent achievements have been strengthening its relationships with both Russia and China.
The course of North Korea is charted by its Supreme Leader, Kim Jong Un. Since its inception in 1948 the country has had just three men at the helm, each a son of the previous one. Kim Il Sung (1948 to 1994); Kim Jung Il (1994 to 2011; and Kim Jong Un (2011to the present).
It was the founding father, Kim Il Sung, who first sowed, and then secured what became an intensely secretive and totally controlling quasi-religious, quasi-political cult. According to his recent biographer, Jonathan Cheng, Kim Il Sung forced North Koreans into “what would become the largest and most all-encompassing religious society in history.” His childhood was rewritten to make him a “precocious deity from birth,” His teenaged years were extolled for their great revolutionary accomplishments. And as Kim Il Sung became the Great Leader, rituals of devotion dedicated only to him were threaded through the lives of every North Korean.
Kim Jong Un is in this tradition. Though less obsessed than his grandfather with religion, he too is determinedly dictatorial. In a recent article in Foreign Affairs, Jung H. Pak writes that when Kim first came to power he “came out swinging.” He promptly conducted purges to guarantee absolute loyalty and, to publicly prove his absolute power, went so far as to kill his influential uncle and assassinate his half-brother.
Kim Jong Un is a heinous tyrant. But we in the West must accept that tyranny and efficiency are not mutually exclusive. Kim Jong Un has tightened even further his grip on power. But under his leadership North Korea’s economy has measurably improved. And under his leadership North Korea has started to play an important role in the changing world order. Kim has used his nuclear power to avoid being bullied by his far more powerful neighbors. And he has used his personal power to ingratiate himself with like-minded dictators, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
Not half bad for a bad leader. For a leader who, however hideously unethical, has been highly effective.
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*Korean Messiah (Knopf, 2026).