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At the age of just four years old, children in North Korea bow before giant portraits depicting the three supreme leaders of the Kim dynasty -- a ritualistic display of obedience that embodies Kim Jong Un's strategy to maintain his unquestioned grip on power, a former North Korean diplomat told US lawmakers on Wednesday.
Kim Jong Un, his father Kim Jong Il and grandfather Kim Il Sung have carefully cultivated the perception that they are divine rulers and consolidated power by sheltering the North Korean population from the outside world and manipulating the country's welfare system. "Until now, the North Korean system has prevailed through an effective and credible reign of terror and by almost perfectly preventing the free-flow of outside information," according to Thae Yong-ho, a former high-ranking North Korean official who defected to South Korea. Thae was number two in the North Korean embassy in London before he escaped with his wife and two sons, arriving in South Korea in 2016. "As long as Kim Jong Un is in power, there'll be no chance for the world to improve the human rights issue" or to cancel "the nuclear program," he told CNN in January.
But while Kim has leaned on decades of brainwashing tactics to elevate himself as a "god," a growing curiosity about foreign culture and the increasing penetration of free-market capitalism have begun to pose an internal threat to his domestic system of control in recent years, Thae told lawmakers on the House Foreign Affairs Committee. "There are great and unexpected changes taking place within North Korea. Contrary to the official policy and wish of the regime, the free markets are flourishing ... the citizens do not care about state propaganda but increasingly watch illegally imported South Korean movies and dramas," he said. Kim has tried to quell the demand for outside information by opening his father's archive of foreign films -- most of which were produced in the former Soviet Union or other socialist nations, Thae said. But the North Korean government has also made select western media content available including movies like "The Lion King," "Beauty and the Beast" and the cartoon "Tom and Jerry," he said, a sign that the ever-building flow of unsanctioned information into the "Hermit Kingdom" is a concern. And that concern is rooted in the fact that Kim has not experienced the same detached and sheltered lifestyle of those he rules over -- a reality that if internalized by the general population could ultimately jeopardize his standing as a deity, Thae added. Regime survival
While the US has tried to ramp up diplomatic and economic pressure on the North Korean leadership through additional sanctions and tough rhetoric, those efforts have done little to slow Kim's march toward developing a reliable nuclear-tipped long range ballistic missile. And while China and Russia have both recently supported additional United Nations sanctions on North Korea, their willingness to use their influence over the regime to increase pressure remains in doubt. Two senior administration officials insisted Tuesday that the Trump administration is still engaged in ramping up pressure on the North Korean government through diplomacy, despite Trump's tweet earlier this month that his secretary of state was "wasting his time trying to negotiate" with Kim.
Defense Secretary James Mattis said on Saturday that Washington "does not accept a nuclear North Korea" and said "any use of nuclear weapons by the North will be met with a massive military response, effective and overwhelming." Kim has made it clear that he is willing to develop a long-range nuclear weapon at any cost and he views achieving that capability as the key to ensuring regime survival. North Korean military officers have been trained to unleash a massive artillery strike on the South Korean capital of Seoul without hesitation at the first signs of an attack by the US, Thae said, noting that a retaliatory strike would result in massive casualties.
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