Foreign Policy
July 26, 2012
With each news cycle, North Korea's young dictator appears a bit more huggable. In late July, we learned that Kim Jong Un had married Comrade Ri Sol Ju, playing a poised Kate Middleton to his porcine Prince William. Together on television, we can watch the chosen couple smile, interact with happy children, and perform a lengthy inspection of an Oz-like kindergarten.
Thanks to North Korean state media, we know, too, that Kim is flirting with something that might possibly be construed as reform. He seems to have sacked a hard-line general. He could be rolling back the privileges of the army. When a missile launched fizzled, he didn't lie about it. In April, four months after his father died, he delivered a speech that suggested economic change could solve food shortages. He didn't dwell on details, but his government seems to have dispatched 200 officials to study Chinese-style capitalism. He has reportedly sent about 40,000 technicians, seamstresses, and mechanics to work in China on industrial training visas.
For a 20-something supreme leader, Kim's feel for small-ball symbolism seems unusually shrewd -- and seductive to Westerners. He allowed women to wear pants at public events. In the company of the smartly dressed woman we now know to be his wife, he enjoyed a live Mickey Mouse performance and gave a thumbs-up to a concert rendition of the theme from "Rocky."
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