How long can North Korea ‘muddle through’ its sanctions-related economic woes?
- Dealing with a falling, China-reliant economy is believed to be weighing heavily on North Korean leader Kim Jong-un
- Hanoi summit’s collapse hurt Kim’s hopes of getting sanctions lifted
As Kim Jong-un rode his armoured train back to Pyongyang from Hanoi last month, the North Korean leader reportedly grumbled to his top diplomatic aide, Choe Son-hui: “Is there any need for us to make this kind of trip again?”
Kim’s summit with US President Donald Trump had collapsed, international sanctions against the North were still in place and there was no sign of progress on the horizon.
For many in the West, the complaint, relayed by Choe at a Pyongyang news conference last week, suggested that the days of engagement were over and Kim was preparing to resume the nuclear brinkmanship of the past.
But others said it could point to a bigger preoccupation for the 35-year-old leader – lost hopes for a beleaguered economy that could threaten his regime. After failing to get Trump to agree to drop US economic sanctions, Kim may simply have been expressing despair over his inability to turn around a system that remains heavily dependent on China and could undermine his own legitimacy, they said.
Kim is under intense pressure to deliver on the economy. He may be lauded in state media as the “supreme leader who makes no mistakes and never fails”, but Kim has tied the future of his administration to economic growth.
In April last year he announced that Pyongyang was moving away from its twin-track byungjin policy of developing nuclear weapons and the economy simultaneously to focus exclusively on rebuilding the economy.