![]() ![]() ![]() The title was meant to suggest that North Korea is just the opposite of what Westerners are familiar with. ![]() Back in the year 2000 I co-authored a book with my research partner, Ralph Hassig, titled North Korea through the Looking Glass. I have been studying North Korea for over three decades. Once again we can turn to Assad, whose wife was raised and educated in England but has not had an appreciable influence on the political attitudes of her husband. Kim’s father, who had at least one wife and numerous mistresses, never appeared in public with any of them, and North Koreans knew better than to ask whether their leader was married. Again I was asked if this was a sign of change. Not long after Kim Jong-un came to power, he was frequently seen in public with a woman who turned out to be his wife. My favorite cautionary example was the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad of Syria, whose four years of post-graduate school in London failed to turn him into a political reformer when he took over from his father. The reformation of North Korea would make a great story for the media, but most of life is humdrum and repetitive rather than newsworthy and so I did not expect anything new from the young Kim. Interestingly, this is what many people said about Kim Jong-il when he took over after his father’s death. He might, in short, reveal himself to be a reformer. Moreover, as a relatively young leader, he might favor new ways of doing things. Journalists pointed out that Kim Jong-un had received several years of education in Switzerland, where he could savor prosperity and freedom. When the third son of dying leader Kim Jong-il was designated as the successor of his ailing father in December 2011, the media asked me to comment on the young (28 or 29) Kim’s inclination to reform North Korea’s politics and economy. Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared in the March 2013 issue of the Foreign Policy Research Institute’s E-Notes bulletin. ![]()
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