The Education of Kim Jong-un
WHEN NORTH KOREAN STATE MEDIA reported in December 2011 that leader Kim Jong-il had died at the age of 70 of a heart attack from overwork, I was a relatively new analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. Everyone knew that Kim had heart issueshe had suffered a stroke in 2008and that the day would probably come when his familys history of heart disease and his smoking, drinking, and partying would catch up with him. His father and founder of the country Kim Il-sung had also died of a heart attack in 1994. Still, the death was jarring.
While North Koreans wept, fainted, and convulsed with grief, feigned or not, Kim Jong-un, the twenty-something-year-old son of Kim Jong-il, reportedly closed the countrys borders and declared a state of emergency. News of these events began to filter out to the international media through cell phones that had been smuggled in before Kim Jong-ils death.
There had been signs before 2011 that Kim was grooming his son for the succession: he began to accompany his father on publicized inspections of military units, his birth home was designated a historical site, and he began to assume leadership titles and roles in the military, party, and security apparatus, including as a four-star general in 2010.
In response to the death, South Korea convened a National Security Council meeting as the country put its military and civil defense on high alert, Japan set up a crisis management team, and the White House issued a statement saying that it was in close touch with our allies in South Korea and Japan. Back in Langley, I remember being watchful for any indications of instability, as I began to develop my thinking on what was happening and where North Korea might be headed under the newly named leader. Immediately after Kim Jong-ils death was announced, the North Korean state media made it clear that Jong-un was the successor: At the forefront of our revolution, there is our comrade Kim Jong-un standing as the great successor...
What sort of person was Kim Jong-un? Would he even want the burden of being North Koreas leader? And if so, how would he govern and conduct foreign affairs? What would be his approach to the nuclear weapons program that he inherited? Would the elites accept Kim? Or would there be instability, mass defections, a flood of refugees, bloody purges, a military coup?
Predictions about Kims imminent fall, overthrow, or demise were rife among North Korea and Asia watchers. Surely, someone in his mid-20s with no leadership experience would be quickly overwhelmed and usurped by his elders. There was no way North Koreans would stand for a second dynastic succession, unheard of in communism, not to mention that his youth was a critical demerit in a society that prizes the wisdom that comes with age and maturity. And if Kim Jong-un were to hold onto his position, what would happen to his country? North Korea was poor and backward, isolated, unable to feed its people, while clinging to its nuclear and missile programs for legitimacy and prestige. Under Kim Jong-un, the collapse of North Korea seemed more likely than ever.
That was then.
In the six years since, Kim has collected a number of honorifics, cementing his position as North Koreas leader. Kim has carried out four of North Koreas six nuclear tests, including the biggest one, in September 2017, with an estimated yield between 100150 kilotons (the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan during World War II was an estimated 15 kilotons). He has also tested nearly 90 ballistic missiles, three times more than his father and grandfather combined. North Korea now has between 20 and 60 nuclear weapons and has demonstrated ICBMs that appear to be capable of hitting the continental United States. It could also be on track to have up to 100 nuclear weapons and a variety of missileslong-range, road-mobile, and submarine-launchedthat could be operational as early as 2020. Under Kim, North Korea has conducted major cyberattacks and reportedly used a chemical nerve agent to kill Kims half-brother at an international airport.
The last six years have also seen Kim dotting the North Korean landscape with ski resorts, water parks, and high-end restaurants to showcase the countrys modernity and prosperity to internal and external audiences. They are also meant to deliver on his promise to improve the peoples livesas part of his byungjin policy of developing both the economy and nuclear weapons capabilitiesand to attract foreign tourists.
Yet even as he is modernizing his country at a furious pace, Kim has deepened North Koreas isolation. Having rebuffed U.S., South Korean, and Chinese attempts to reengage, he has refused to meet with any foreign head of state, and so far as is known, since becoming leader his significant foreign contacts have been limited to Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese sushi chef whom he knew in his youth and whom he invited to Pyongyang in 2012, and Dennis Rodman, an American basketball player, who has visited North Korea five times since 2013.
Kim Jong-un is here to stay.
The Ten-Foot-Tall Baby
North Korea is what we at the CIA called the hardest of the hard targets. A former CIA analyst once said that trying to understand North Korea is like working on a jigsaw puzzle when you have a mere handful of pieces and your opponent is purposely throwing pieces from other puzzles into the box. The North Korean regimes opaqueness, self-imposed isolation, robust counterintelligence practices, and culture of fear and paranoia provided at best fragmentary information.
Intelligence analysis is difficult, and not intuitive. The analyst has to be comfortable with ambiguity and contradictions, constantly training her mind to question assumptions, consider alternative hypotheses and scenarios, and make the call in the absence of sufficient information, often in high-stakes situations. To cultivate these habits of mind, we were required to take courses to improve our thinking. Walk into any current or former CIA analysts office, and you will find a slim, purple book by Richards Heuer with the title Psychology of Intelligence Analysis. This is required reading for CIA analysts. It was presented to us during our initial education as new CIA officers and often referred to in subsequent training. It still sits on my shelf at Brookings, within arms reach. When I happen to glance at the purple book, I am reminded about how humility is inherent in intelligence analysisespecially in studying a target like North Koreasince it forces me to confront my doubts, remind myself about how I know what I know and what I dont know, confront my confidence level in my assessments, and evaluate how those unknowns might change my perspective.
Heuer, who worked at the CIA for 45 years in both operations and analysis, focused his book on how intelligence analysts can overcome, or at least recognize and manage, the weaknesses and biases in our thinking processes. One of his key points was that we tend to perceive what we expect to perceive, and that patterns of expectations tell analysts, subconsciously, what to look for, what is important, and how to interpret what is seen. The analysts established mindset predisposes her to think in certain ways and affects the way she incorporates new information.
What, then, are the expectations and perceptions that we need to overcome to form an accurate assessment of Kim Jong-un and his regime? Given the over-the-top rhetoric from North Koreas state media, Kims own often outrageous statements, and the hyperbolic imagery and boastful platitudes perpetuated by the ubiquitous socialist realism art, it has been only too easy to reduce Kim to caricature. That is a mistake.
