Kim Jong-un: Education, Leadership Style, and Evolution of North Korea

Kim Jong-un's rise to power in North Korea following the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, marked a pivotal moment for the isolated nation. Inheriting a country grappling with poverty, isolation, and a burgeoning nuclear program, Kim Jong-un's leadership has been a complex mix of continuity and change. This article explores Kim Jong-un's education, his evolving leadership style, and the significant shifts he has brought to North Korea's domestic and international policies.

Succession and Early Predictions

In December 2011, when North Korean state media announced the death of Kim Jong-il, the world watched with bated breath. Kim Jong-il reportedly died at the age of 70 of a heart attack from “overwork”. Kim Jong-un, his twenty-something-year-old son, was immediately declared the successor. While North Koreans wept, fainted, and convulsed with grief, feigned or not, Kim Jong-un reportedly closed the country’s borders and declared a state of emergency.

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.”

Predictions about Kim’s imminent fall, overthrow, or demise were rife among North Korea and Asia watchers. Many believed that 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.

Early Life and Education

Kim Jong Un[b] (born 8 January 1983 or 1984)[c] attended the Liebefeld Steinhölzli state school in Köniz, near Bern, under the name "Pak-un" or "Un-pak" from 1998 until 2000 as the son of an employee of the North Korean embassy in Bern. Kim first attended a special class for foreign-language children and later attended the regular classes of the 6th, 7th, 8th and part of the final 9th year, leaving the school abruptly in the autumn of 2000. He was described as a well-integrated and ambitious student who liked to play basketball. Kim's academic shortcomings were so severe that they may have informed his future style of ruthless leadership.

The second of three children of Kim Jong Il and his mistress Ko Yong Hui, Kim also studied at the International School of Berne in Switzerland before attending Kim Il Sung University between 2002 and 2007.

His childhood was marked by luxury and leisure: vast estates with horses, swimming pools, bowling alleys, summers at the family’s private resort, luxury vehicles adapted so that he could drive when he was 7 years old. For Kim, skiing in the Swiss Alps and swimming in the French Riviera must have seemed part of his birthright.

Fujimoto, the sushi chef, has described Jong-un’s mother as not very strict about education and says that he was never forced to study. His friend and classmate in Switzerland said of Kim: “We weren’t the dimmest kids in the class but neither were we the cleverest. We were always in the second tier … The teachers would see him struggling ashamedly and then move on. They left him in peace.” Jong-un was apparently unbothered by his less-than stellar scores; as his classmate noted, “He left without getting any exam results at all.

Consolidating Power

Despite initial skepticism, Kim Jong-un quickly consolidated his power. He assumed various leadership posts and also became member of the Presidium of the WPK Politburo, the highest decision-making body in the country. Kim has made it clear that he will not tolerate any potential challengers.

One of the most visible demonstrations of his authority was the purge and execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, in December 2013. Jang was labeled “human scum” and “worse than a dog” and then reportedly executed by an anti-aircraft gun for allegedly undermining the “unitary leadership of the party” and “anti-party and counterrevolutionary factional acts.” Kim probably also ordered the deadly attack by the application of a VX nerve agent - one of the most toxic of the chemical warfare agents - against Jong-nam, his half-brother and erstwhile competitor for the position of supreme leader of North Korea. Captured on camera, the attack occurred in Malaysia’s airport, and images of Jong-nam’s gruesome death were circulated around the world.

Kim has carried out four of North Korea’s six nuclear tests, including the biggest one, in September 2017, with an estimated yield between 100-150 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 missiles-long-range, road-mobile, and submarine-launched-that could be operational as early as 2020.

Evolving Leadership Style

Kim Jong Un's leadership style represents a departure from his father's, marked by a blend of calculated transparency and strategic modernization. He has adopted the mantle of the mythical, godlike leadership role that grandfather and country founder Kim Il-sung and his father Kim Jong-il held and continue to hold in their death. But he seems determined to chart his own path. In short, this is not your grandfather’s dictatorship.

Public Image and Accessibility

Kim has allowed himself to seem more transparent and accessible than his father. He appears in public with his pretty and fashionable young wife, Ri Sol-ju (with whom he has at least one child, and possibly three). He hugs, holds hands, and links arms with men, women, and children, seeming comfortable with both young and old. That transparency has been extended to the government. When one of its satellite launches failed in April 2012, the regime admitted the failure publicly, the first time it had ever done so.

During his frequent public appearances, Jong-un can be seen giving guidance at various economic, military, and social and cultural venues, as his father and grandfather did, but he is also shown pulling weeds, riding roller coasters, navigating a tank, and galloping on a horse. He is comfortable with technology in the form of cell phones and laptops, and is also portrayed speaking earnestly with nuclear scientists and overseeing scores of missile tests.

Kim appears to want to reinforce the impression that he is young, vigorous, on the move - qualities that he attributes to his country as well. Speaking directly to the people in April 2012 in that first public speech he gave as their leader, he confidently promised that North Koreans would no longer have to tighten their belts. Later he announced his byungjin policy: that North Korea can have both its nuclear weapons and prosperity.

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Economic Policies and Modernization

Kim Jong Un has been promoting a policy of byungjin (병진), similar to his grandfather Kim Il Sung's policies from the 1960s, developing the national economy in parallel with the country's nuclear weapons program. A set of comprehensive economic measures, the "Socialist Corporate Responsible Management System [ko]", were introduced in 2013. The measures increase the autonomy of enterprises by granting them "certain rights to engage in business activities autonomously and elevate the will to labor through appropriately implementing the socialist distribution system".

Another priority of economic policies that year was agriculture, where the pojon (vegetable garden) responsibility system was implemented. North Korean media described the economy as a "flexible collectivist system" where enterprises were applying "active and evolutionary actions" to achieve economic development. These reports reflect Kim's general economic policy of reforming management, increasing the autonomy and incentives for economic actors. This set of reforms known as the "May 30th measures" reaffirms both socialist ownership and "objective economic laws in guidance and management" to improve living standards. There has been a construction boom in Pyongyang, bringing color and creative architectural styles to the city.

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 country’s modernity and prosperity to internal and external audiences.

Juche and Supreme Leadership

So, while small armies of teachers, tutors, cooks, assigned playmates, bodyguards, relatives, and chauffeurs developed Kim’s sense of entitlement and shielded him from the realities of North Korea and the world beyond when he was a child, the concept of juche (self-reliance) and suryong (Supreme Leader) would provide the ideological and existential justification for his rule when it came time for him to assume the mantle of leadership.

Kim has adopted the mantle of the mythical, godlike leadership role that grandfather and country founder Kim Il-sung and his father Kim Jong-il held and continue to hold in their death. He is however harnessing the nostalgia for his grandfather’s era, before the 1990s famine and the collapse of the Soviet Union and the resulting termination of aid. With his uncanny likeness to his grandfather in both appearance and demeanor, he has skillfully exploited the country’s adulation of its founder.

Nuclear Ambitions and International Relations

In October 2006, when Kim Jong-un was in his early twenties and two months away from his graduation from Kim Il-Sung Military University (which he had reportedly attended since 2002), North Korea conducted its first nuclear test, providing the Kim dynasty with yet another layer of protection, further steeping the nation in the Kim family mythology of supreme power, and further warping the young Jong-un’s sense of reality and expectations. That nuclear test, and his grandfather’s and father’s commitment to nuclear weapons, would also, however, narrow his choices once he took power, boxing him into the conviction that the fate of the nation and its 25 million people rested on his carrying forward this legacy.

Kim Jong Un's ideology departed from his father's military-first Songun policy, professing a "people-first policy" and renewed commitment to communism. Kim revived the Kim Il Sung-era pyŏngjin policy, of parallel development of the country's economy and military, focusing on its nuclear weapons program.

Relations with China initially deteriorated under Kim due to his nuclear weapons program. In September, Kim held another summit with Moon Jae-in in Pyongyang. Kim agreed to dismantle North Korea's nuclear weapons facilities if the United States took reciprocal action. In February 2019, Kim held another summit with Trump in Hanoi, Vietnam, which Trump cut short on the second day without an agreement. The Trump administration said that the North Koreans wanted complete sanctions relief, while the North Koreans said that they were only asking for partial sanctions relief. On 30 June 2019, in the Korean DMZ, Kim again met with Trump, shaking hands warmly and expressing hope for peace.

Domestic Policies and Social Control

Once Kim did become the leader, and as such the personification of North Korea’s national interest, he was endowed with all the tools of political repression that had consolidated his father’s and grandfather’s supremacy. These tools allowed him to validate his persecution of any real or suspected dissenters, and to maintain a horrific network of prison camps in which torture, rape, beatings, and a variety of other human rights violations continue to take place to this day, as they have done for many decades.

Even as tension with the United States went into overdrive after a sixth nuclear test and the launch of numerous ballistic missiles during the summer and fall of 2017, state media showed Kim and his wife touring a North Korean cosmetics factory. He reportedly urged the industry to be “world competitive,” praised the factory for helping women realize their dream of being beautiful, and offered his own comments on the packaging.

Of course, Kim still has enormous power and, like his father and grandfather, the willingness to hold onto it through extreme brutality. He maintains control through purges and executions - punishments and acts of revenge he appears to inflict with relish. In the six years of his reign the regime has purged, demoted, “reeducated,” and shuffled scores of senior leaders.

Recent Developments

In December 2023, Kim declared that North Korea formally abandoned efforts to reunify Korea and symbolically demolished the Arch of Reunification. In June 2024, Kim signed a security and defense treaty with Russia, while supplying Russia with materiel for the Russo-Ukrainian war.

Under Kim, North Korea has changed the names of several offices and institutions in what has been named by Yonhap News Agency as an effort to present itself as a "normal state". The Ministry of People's Armed Forces was renamed to the Ministry of Defence in January 2021, while state media began referring to Kim as "President of the State Affairs" rather than "chairman" in English language articles starting from February 2021. In November 2021, the South Korean NIS reported that the North Korean government has begun using the term Kimjongunism, in an effort to establish an independent ideological system centered on Kim.

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