WHEN the young Kim Jong-un had his uncle murdered in 2013, his message was simple enough: I’m in charge.
The 29-year-old tyrant’s execution of powerful relative Jang Song-thaek was part of a purge of 340 key people during the first five years of his rule.
His mission was to achieve the absolute power enjoyed by his late father, and this week Kim reaches his milestone tenth anniversary as Supreme Leader of North Korea.
Kim Jong-il’s death in 2011 plunged the country into mourning and, while his second child was declared the “Great Successor” even before his passing, few international observers knew how the 27-year-old would respond.
He had no military or political experience of note, yet was now head of party, army and state.
Mercifully for him, North Koreans had myths drummed into them that the Kims are a semi-divine dynasty with a close affinity with the near-sacred Mount Paektu.
The young oppressor and third generation ruler, endowed by birth-given qualities, showed the vicious pragmatism required to take on the mantle of Supreme Leader.
He also raised hopes in his early days that he could improve the economy and the lives of citizens, many of which look forlorn today.
Most read in The Irish Sun
Over the next decade, Kim has displayed many faces to the world while building an arsenal of nuclear weapons that has made his country a very real global threat.
One was as a cyber attacker, with US President Barack Obama blaming Kim in 2014 for an assault on Sony Pictures, which pulled a satirical movie The Interview following anonymous threats.
But it was as “Rocketman” that he has made his greatest mark.
Six nuclear tests have taken place on his watch, while North Korea might also have successfully trialled a hydrogen bomb with long distance capabilities.
Last year he claimed to have developed a submarine-launched missile which was “the most dangerous in the world”.
CULT OF PERSONALITY
His arms race has left the country at the mercy of international sanctions, and North Korea suffers greatly as a result.
At home he was merciless, axing five defence ministers and it’s believed had his half-brother murdered in Kuala Lumpur airport.
He developed a cult of personality in keeping with his family, touring factories — where he was famously snapped laughing hysterically at lubricant during one tour in 2014 — while also overseeing egg and cosmetic production.
Citizens would regularly be photographed weeping in his presence. In a bizarre twist, the Chicago Bulls fan who avoided Westerners during his time at a Swiss university invited Dennis Rodman to Pyongyang in 2013, the ex-Bull telling him he had a “friend for life”.
Kim had kept his socialising while in Europe to the North Korean ambassador, thereby avoiding any Western influences, before going on to military school as it became increasingly clear he was going to take over his dad’s mantle.
US RELATIONS
In 2014 Rodman sang Happy Birthday to the despot on another of his visits, appearing to bow at Kim, before playing a major role in the release of US missionary Kenneth Bae, who had spent two years in a North Korean jail.
US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Kim in 2018 was an historic first, the pair building a bizarre personal relationship that eventually led to a summit in Singapore.
Rodman — who previously gifted Kim a copy of Trump’s Art of the Deal book — was there too in an unofficial capacity.
It was the test-firing of missiles in 2017 that attracted Trump’s fury and sparked a bitter war of words. Trump branded Kim a “rocketman on a suicide mission” and Kim hit back by branding Trump a “mentally deranged US dotard”.
However, in the diplomatic frenzy which followed, Kim’s train journey to Beijing was his first outside of North Korea and came before he sat down with the “dotard” for talks aimed at slowing down his nuclear march.
IRELAND STIR
In 2019, the two men met again, this time with the South Korean president, in the demilitarised zone between North and South before relations inevitably soured again.
In 2017, Ireland became part of the story when then junior ministers John Halligan and Finian McGrath and their senior ministerial colleague Shane Ross created a stir when they proposed a peace mission to the secretive state.
The proposal, which came before Trump’s high profile Singapore summit, was misunderstood from the start, according to Halligan.
He told the Irish Sun: “It was blown out of all proportion that we wanted to meet your man to tell him to stop threatening America.
“The idea was if you look at the history, Ceoltoiri na hEireann had gone to Korea, members of government parties had gone over a period of time.
“In the 1980s there were cultural relations between NK and Ireland.
‘MISSED OPPORTUNITY’
“The idea was to try build up relations again on a cultural basis. If there was any hope of anyone talking to the Koreans, why not talk to their cultural attachés? That’s what we were doing.”
The Independent Alliance trio never went, and Halligan feels it was a missed opportunity.
He said: “We hadn’t much support as people had the idea it was a laugh and a joke, which isn’t right when you think about it.
“It’s OK to have a bit of fun but at the end of the day America are now talking to the Taliban. Can you imagine I had said that? A minister in the Irish government said let’s talk to the Taliban four years ago, you’d be f***ing ate alive.
“I think that in all conflict situations — it’s a dictatorship, no doubt about that, that treat citizens quite badly — but at the end of the day it’s about trying to talk to people. If you can’t talk to their leadership try talk to their people. That was the idea.”
RUMOURS OF DEATH
In 2020 with the Covid-19 pandemic raging, rumours persisted that the dictator was seriously ill or dead, until he reappeared 20 days after he was last seen during one of his famous factory tours.
South Korean politician Ji Seong-ho was forced to apologise after saying he was 99 per cent certain that Kim had died after undergoing cardiovascular surgery.
But despite speculation over heart issues and a previous spell on the sidelines in 2014, it was never confirmed what kept him away from his grandfather’s anniversary event in particular.
After a decade in power, North Korea is more cut off from the world than it ever was, depending almost entirely on China for exports.
The economy is in tatters, millions live in dire poverty, Covid-19 is used as a means of tightening control further, and the country is still at loggerheads with its neighbours to the south and the US.
But under Kim’s watchful eye, it is also armed like it has never been armed before, which offers him the protection he needs — but also a potential way out of the sanctions that are crippling his people.
