No matter who ultimately succeeds Kim Jong-un, North Korea is a threat that demands robust pressure from the U.S.
No matter who ultimately succeeds Kim Jong-un, North Korea is a threat that demands robust pressure from the U.S.
K ing Louis XIV is said to have declared: “L’État, c’est moi,” or “I am the state.” Whether or not the French monarch uttered the exact phrase, absolute monarchies and dynastic succession were the order of the day in the 17th century. Four centuries later, it is rare to see both still alive and well, but they are in a remote corner of Asia.
Enter the Kim dynasty in North Korea. Widely known as “The Hermit Kingdom” for its regime’s reclusiveness and opacity, it has also been billed by experts the only country in the world today that has successfully “smuggled monarchy through the front door of its communist system.” Louis the XIV, meet Joseph Stalin.
Kim Jong-un is the current ruler of the Hermit Kingdom and is the third successive Kim throne-holder. According to South Korean intelligence, he has recently decided to anoint his own successor — his 13-year daughter Kim Ju-ae. That is, unless the precocious and virtually publicly unseen teenager can fend off competition from her own relatives in North Korea’s version of the Game of Thrones. After all, during his own succession struggle, her father executed his uncle Jang Song-thaek in December 2013 for “treachery” and “counterrevolutionary activities.” (According to Bob Woodward’s book Rage, Kim Jong-un later told President Donald Trump that he displayed the unfortunate Jang’s headless body to senior North Korean officials as a deterrent mechanism.)
The third dynastic Kim succession was to be unveiled at the 9th Party Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea in late February, but there was no sign of Kim Ju-ae at the proceedings. Instead, Kim Jong-un elevated the 13-year-old to be the head of North Korea’s missile forces. But even though Kim Jong-un did not announce the formal succession, the repressive neo-Stalinist regime his grandfather Kim Il-sung built remains unchanged. This is bad news not only for North Korea’s own long-suffering population, but for the United States and our allies as well.
After assuming the reins in 2011, Kim Jong-un has been laser-focused on the long-term survival of the Kim dynasty. He has done so — as his father Kim Jong-il before him — through the continued development of nuclear weapons, as well as the technical means to deliver them. Today, North Korea is estimated to have produced enough fissile material for up to 90 warheads and may have already assembled about 50 of them.
We don’t know the exact extent of North Korea’s nuclear program because Pyongyang has not let in international inspectors since 2009. Attempts to negotiate with the regime since have failed repeatedly. Last year, Kim Jong-un pledged his country would “make a radical and swift change in the existing military theory and practice and rapid expansion of nuclearization”(sic). To prove the point, Pyongyang has conducted more than 90 missile tests between 2022 and 2024 — more tests than occurred in the preceding decade.
After Russia’s Vladimir Putin made the fateful decision to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago, Kim Jong-un quickly embraced the opportunity and built an alliance with Moscow that is now arguably stronger than Soviet–North Korean ties during the Cold War. North Korea supports Russia’s war machine with thousands of men and other war materiel, while Moscow reciprocates with technical assistance for Pyongyang’s missile program, food assistance, and the construction of key infrastructure. In addition, Russian veto at the U.N. Security Council has systematically dismantled the international sanctions regime against North Korea.
This changed geopolitical landscape bodes ill for disarming the Kim regime, which is still technically the goal of U.S. policy. The policy of “complete, verifiable, and irreversible dismantlement” of Pyongyang’s nuclear program is enshrined into U.S. law, notably in the landmark North Korea Sanctions and Policy Enhancement Act of 2016 and subsequent efforts.
While the second Trump administration has placed North Korea on a policy back burner, Congress should step up and exercise additional scrutiny. It should demand more U.S. economic pressure against Pyongyang, additional military deterrence activities against North Korea, and well as increased targeted sanctions aimed at Pyongyang’s atrocious human rights record, including up to 120,000 political prisoners that are still languishing in North Korean gulags.
Louis XIV inherited the French throne at age four in 1643 and ruled for 72 years, the longest reign in European history. Whether Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter one day assumes the throne of the Hermit Kingdom is irrelevant to the fundamental nature of the Kim regime. The free world is wasting valuable time to prevent the catastrophic outcome of a neo-Stalinist monarchy armed to the teeth with the world’s most dangerous weapons, which will be aimed squarely at the United States and our allies.