In the past few weeks, a number of people have been asking “where is Kim Jong Un.” But we shouldn’t be surprised that he’s not always out and about. Remember, there’s a reason that Korea was called the Hermit Kingdom. For centuries the Joseon Dynasty dealt only with China—occasionally with Japan. Toward the end of the 18th and early 19th centuries when Westerners began to trade with China, Korea kept its borders tightly closed, hence the name Hermit Kingdom. However, Japan forced a series of trade agreements on Korea and in 1910, Tokyo simply annexed it, and held it until the end of World War II.

Thousands of Koreans fled the Japanese, including the family of Kim Song Ju. Born on April 15, 1912, he and his family moved to Manchuria in the early 1920s. After high school, he joined a communist youth group and ended up in jail. Released in 1930 he joined a resistance group that was fighting the Japanese in Korea and took the name of one of his hero’s, Kim Il Sung. He caught the eyes of the Soviets who sent him to the USSR for proper military and political instruction. At that point he joined the Communist Party. During World War II, Kim, then a major with the Korean contingent in the Soviet Army, attacked the Japanese who were still holding parts of Korea in August 1945. After the war, with Soviet backing, Kim became the Premier of the People’s Republic of Korea in 1948, and Chairman of the Korean Worker’s Party in 1949.

Only a year later, in an effort to unify North and South Korea, Kim, also known as the Great Leader, sent his army barreling into South Korea. It stunned both South Korea, the United States, and United Nations! From June 1950 until the armistice at Panmunjom in June 1953 North Korea, with massive assistance from China, fought the US and members of the UN to a stalemate. At the same time, Kim began setting up a command economy with collective agriculture even more totalitarian than Stalin’s!! He also started the first of numerous massive purges and develop his own cult of personality. There was virtually no contact with the West or Asian nation—sounded eerily like a new Hermit Kingdom.

In 1980, in a startling break from the actions of other socialist countries, Kim announced that his son, Kim Jong Il would succeed him. By 1991 his son was in charge of the National Defence Committee and Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army (1993). North Korea’s Great Leader died from a heart attack on July 8, 1994. After a 10-day mourning period and a massive funeral in Pyongyang on the 17th, Kim Il Sung was placed for viewing at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, similar to Lenin’s tomb at the Kremlin.

Born on February 6, 1941, Kim Jong Il graduated from Kim Il Song University in 1963. He held a number of high level jobs—one of the first of them was helping his father during the 1967 purge. In the early 1990s he joined the Central Committee and developed the new Propaganda and Agitation Committee. He, too, developed his own cult of personality, being called, another things, the Fearless Leader. With the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, North Korea lost its one real trading partner. Then came the floods of 1995 and 1996, and the terrible drought of 1997, all leading to massive famine. In order to maintain control, Kim developed the Military First campaign—all food went to the military. The little that was left could go to the rest of the country. Starvation was rampant, but the military remained loyal to their Dear Leader.

By the time that Kim Jong Il came to power, it was clear that North Korea needed assistance desperately—particularly food and electrical power. For years they had relied on “Juehe,” self-reliance—an updated version of the Hermit Kingdom. Yet rather than try to develop more normal relations with nations that might help, Kim preferred threats, particularly nuclear weapons. Since 1994 North Korea would brandishes it’s current nuclear testing and/or weapons. The West would start a new round of discussions, and both parties would come to a agreement. That would last until the North needed something else, and it was back to the drawing board.

After his stroke in 2008, Kim Jong Il announced that his second son, Kim Jong Un, would succeed him. Three years later, Dear Leader died of a heart attack aboard a train on December 17, 2011. Even less is known about Kim Jong Un than was known of his father. His friend Dennis Rodman says his birthday is January 8, 1983, and that seems to be the case. He went to school in Switzerland, and returned to North Korea to graduate from Kim Il Sung University.

He quickly became Commander of the Korean People’s Army, head of the Workers Party and maintains the family’s cult of personality. Purges continued, now with more horrifying methods like flamethrowers. Hundreds of thousands of people are in penal colonies where torture, rape, and starvation are the norm. The situation became so egregious that in 2014 the United Nations began discussions on North Korean crimes against humanity. Two years later the US placed personal sanctions against Kim for human rights violations, though they were equally concerned with continued nuclear testing. That continued with significant underground testing in 2013, 2016 and 2017, and developing the Hwasong-15 missile.

It was interesting that in early 2018 North Korea opened discussions with the South and actually joined with South Korea for the Winter Olympics in Seoul. Later that year, Kim visited China for the first time (by train—the family seems to hate planes😖) and during the Singapore Summit in June 2018 he was the first North Korean leader to met a sitting US President. The two men signed a declaration, but the devil was in the details and little came of it. Since then, the two have met again and President Trump actually crossed the DMZ. Yet North Korea continues both its massive human rights violations and its nuclear weapons systems and launches, causing grave concern.

A few weeks ago, people who pay attention to North Korea realized that they hadn’t seen Kim recently. Everyone was talking. Was he dead? Had he had an operation that went wrong? Was he at his resort in Wonson avoiding the Covid-19 virus? Well, he’s just appeared at the launch of a fertilizer factors…🤷‍♀️ Stay tuned for the continued saga of the Kim Family.