North Korea is an intensifying menace Kim Jong Un’s dictatorship is becoming even more repressive and threatening

Illustration: Israel G. Vargas / Getty images

T he mood music is building to a crescendo. This week Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator, spoke to his rubber-stamp parliament about his “fond memories” of meeting Donald Trump, with whom he held three inconclusive summits during Mr Trump’s first term as America’s president. Two days later South Korea’s new left-wing president, Lee Jae Myung, laid out a vision of “peaceful coexistence” with the North at the United Nations. Mr Trump, too, has been airing magnanimous thoughts about the Koreas. “I have a great relationship with Kim Jong Un,” he boasted while hosting Mr Lee at the White House last month. “I’d like to meet him this year.”

Chart: The Economist

But if the overtures sound similar to those of Mr Trump’s first term, the circumstances have changed dramatically. Since the last round of negotiations, Mr Kim has steadily expanded his nuclear arsenal and ramped up his missile testing. He has also further entrenched his regime, making the state even more repressive, closed and controlling of the economy than it was before. Internationally, a new partnership with Russia has also strengthened Mr Kim’s hand. He has supported Russia’s war against Ukraine with ammunition and troops, and in return gained food, fuel, technology and the ability to play Russia off against China, North Korea’s other main patron.

Kith and Kim

In early September Mr Kim hobnobbed with Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, his Chinese and Russian counterparts, at an event in Beijing. Whereas seven years ago the young autocrat signalled his openness to the West by clapping along to a performance by K -pop stars in the North’s capital, Pyongyang, this summer he underlined his country’s new alignment by presiding over a gig by Shaman, a Russian pop star. As the singer roused the crowd with patriotic ballads about heroic soldiers, a North Korean and a Russian flag in either hand, Mr Kim looked on regally, cigarette in hand. Should talks between America and the North resume, his enhanced sense of security will presumably make him less susceptible than ever to Mr Trump’s baubles and blandishments.

Sokeel Park of Liberty in North Korea, a non-profit organisation, calls the regime’s recent overhaul the “North Korea-fication of North Korea”. It began in the wake of the failed talks with Mr Trump and accelerated during the covid-19 pandemic. Like much of the world, North Korea imposed a strict lockdown. Unlike the rest of the world, it has never really lifted it.