Though Kim Jong Il had pledged to abide by the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty NPT signed in , in the early s reports began to surface of underground nuclear facilities and ongoing research into the production of highly enriched uranium. By , North Korea had withdrawn from the NPT, expelled international weapons inspectors and resumed nuclear research at a facility in Yongbyon.
After Kim Jong Il died after a heart attack in December , the job of supreme leader went to the second youngest of his seven children, thenyear-old Kim Jong Un. Fashioning himself as a modern version of his legendary grandfather, Kim Jong Un took steps to consolidate power, ordering the execution of his own uncle and other political and military rivals.
Over the course of , tensions between North Korea and the United States reached an unprecedented level. North Korea launched its first intercontinental ballistic missile with the strength to reach the mainland United States, threatened to launch missiles near the U. Such actions prompted even harsher sanctions by the UN Security Council and an aggressive response from U.
President Donald Trump , leaving the global community fearing the possibility of nuclear war. North Korea. Korea, Asia for Educators. Columbia University. North Korea country profile. BBC News. Radio and TV sets in North Korea are pre-tuned to government stations that pump out a steady stream of propaganda. The press and broadcasters - all of them under direct state control - serve up a menu of flattering reports about North Korea's leader.
Economic hardship and famines are not reported. North Korea is one of the hardest countries for foreign media to cover. Some key dates in North Korea's history:. North Korean government. Using control over North Korean state media and his ties to the internal security agencies, Kim Jong-il effectively sidelined his step-mother and half-siblings.
In the s, Kim Jong-il purged dozens of senior officers during the early s, giving him control over the military. After the death of Kim Il-sung in and because of the wider social impact of the North Korean famine, known as The Arduous March, the Party became somewhat moribund. Its Central Committee did not hold a meeting, one they publicised anyway, from until Key vacancies remain unfilled.
It still had administrative duties but as a political entity it was diminished. But in , Kim Jong-il revived the party as a political institution to cope with his declining health and to boost the succession of his son Kim Jong-un. Under Kim Jong-un, the party has thrived as a political institution.
He has been involved in the party's revival since , and as supreme leader, like his grandfather, he has used the party's Political Bureau to publicly dismiss wayward officials as he did with former military chief of staff Ri Yong-ho and even his own uncle Jang Song-thaek. He is also building his power base through the party's Central Military Commission. He is very much continuing the family legacy of keeping it in the party. North Korea country profile.
N Korea nuclear reactor 'in operation'. A teenager with an idea. Kim Il-sung still remains the very centre of North Korean propaganda. The making of a leader. Racism plus hypermilitarism looks a lot more like fascism than communism. Notably, when I was in North Korea, my minders used a lot of this sort of language. As one of them put it, 'no mixing' ie. Doves here , here , here , the South Korean left, Korean college students.
If the above interpretations are all congenial to conservatives and hawks, here is perhaps the one I encounter most from the left. The idea here is that North Korea is more Korean than socialist or fascist, and that if we look at Korean history, we can see where it came from. For example, the North Korea monarchy is not a transplant of Stalinism but a reversion to Korea's earlier Confucian political form, a point evidenced by the inclusion of a Confucian writing brush in the party symbol, and in the DPRK's insistence that it is a modern version of Koguryeo , a much earlier Korean kingdom.
If the US had not been so brutal, the logic goes, the North Korea would have been more like North Vietnam or East Germany, instead of the Orwellian tyranny we know today.
The policy extension of this view is that North Korea must be brought in from the cold by outreach such as the Sunshine policy. No clear school me , Alastair Gale , Josh Stanton.
An Inter-Korean federation that effectively subsidises North Korea permanently. This is perhaps close to the neoconservative interpretation. The more I study North Korea, the more the gangsterism strikes me. North Korea is indeed a trouble-making rogue. North Korea is not in fact suicidal, nor is it likely trying to bring down South Korea, invade it, or otherwise achieve Northern-led unification.
This is all out of its reach, and there's no way China, Japan or the US would stand by if these eventualities actually began to play out.
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