What its warship failure teaches us about Kim Jong Un’s regime

When a new warship in North Korea turned at sea during its launch last month, the headlines of international newspapers were topped. News organizations have followed every development, from re -success to this Last Friday’s re -launch.

But why is this interest, given the absence of losses, and it seems that the damage to a relatively simple body?

The plots are less important to the same failure and more with how Kim Jong Un react was.

Kim immediately Failure As a “criminal act” that cannot be tolerated, “saying that it is the” dignity “of the country. He ordered the ship to restore immediately, and officials are punished. Four party officials were arrested later.

This angry explosion teaches us, followed by a fast ship, a lot about the North Korean regime, which is often difficult to move.

First, it reveals the danger of North Korea in building a nuclear armed navy.

Although there is a nuclear arsenal, which grows in size and development, and a huge army, the navy in North Korea is lower than its enemies – South Korea, Japan and the United States – who have some of the world’s most powerful sea fleets.

“Kim Jong Un believes that nuclear weapons are the only way to protect his country, however all he has in the sea is an old submarine and some small support ships,” said Choi El Il, retired Navy captain.

Therefore, since the beginning of his reign, Kim gave priority to building a strong and strong navy, equipped with nuclear weapons.

This warship is a major first step towards this goal. It is one of the two destroyers that were built North Korea over the past year, the first of which was successful in April. It weighs 5,000 tons, as it is the largest warship that North Korea has, and in theory, it is theoretically capable of launching short -range nuclear missiles.

According to Mr. Choi, who is now chairing the South Korean submarine research institute, it is extremely rare for this group to be destroyed while building and launching, given the advanced technology required for one building.

Therefore, he said that this was a “very embarrassing accident” by Kim Jong Un, because it “highlights the construction of shipbuilding in North Korea.”

Worse, this main project failed in front of his eyes. Kim was attending the ship’s launch ceremony, along with his daughter and a crowd of spectators.

“North Korea is obsessed with appearing. I imagine that they were planning a full series of shows, so of course Kim could not be angry.”

But North Korea’s propaganda experts believe that there is much more than Kim Jong Un.

They say that the choice of spreading the coup in the way he did was a deliberate political strategy, and it shows that Kim is away from the system of the regime to hide unpleasant facts.

Rachel Minung Li of the Washington -based Reesison Center, which analyzed North Korean propaganda for decades, explained how this became a basic pillar of the propaganda strategy in Kim.

Before Kim reaches power, and even in the early years of his rule, the system hides anything negative as a way to control the narration.

But since the information began to spread more freely in North Korea, it has become difficult to cover up such major incidents.

“The leadership decided that it was almost absurd to try to hide what people already know, and more effective to show the people who were dealing with them for problems,” said Lady.

“Now, when there is a problem, you publish it, and you invite those officials, and show people that if you do not do your job, you will be responsible. Thus, everyone tells that the government and leadership performs their functions well.”

In the case of the warship, this strategy appears to have worked significantly. The reforms were completed before the specified date, within a little more than three weeks, and the expectations of naval experts were challenged.

“It shows rapid restarting how it can even fail into political success,” said Kim Dong Yob, an assistant professor at North Korea studies in Seoul.

But others say that Kim has used this incident not only to show success but also to strengthen people’s loyalty to the regime and its ideology – another consistent feature in his rule.

The ship turned as it was fired side by the dock to the sea – a complex marine maneuver – and part of the bow stuck on the slope road. But instead of presenting this as a technical failure, Kim Jong Un claimed that the accident was caused by “absolute neglect and lack of responsibility.”

On the other hand, he praised a worker who died during the construction of the ship, due to the “blood and ethnic place” in the project.

“They turned his death into a symbol of dedication, to reinforce people’s loyalty,” said Professor Kim Dong Youb.

He said that instead of introducing Kim Jong Un as an infallible deity, as was the case for his father and grandfather, they raised the loyal factor. “This is a major transformation in North Korea management technology and shows Kim Jong Un’s amazing ability to adapt and control the narration.”

The biggest fast food for Lady Lee, an expert on advertising, is that “the North Koreans achieve everything they started to do.”

“They have set this goal of the presence of nuclear navy, and now they show that they are on their way to this.”

No one believed that they could build destroyers for a little more than a year, or to fix this damage in less than a month, but they did, as Mrs. Li added, as she did with their nuclear and missile program despite the initial doubts in the world.

Retired naval captain, Mr. Choi, agreed. “People may look at this episode, laugh, and think,” Oh, North Korea is very late, “he said, but they are making great progress.

The most anxiety, as he and others say, is that Kim Jong Un says that the navy is limited to those that are limited to the patrols of its sailors in one that will be able to sail in the world’s oceans and release pre -emptive nuclear strikes.

“We must be vigilant and prepare accordingly,” he said.

Additional reports by Hosu Lee and Leehyun Choi.