North Korea: where is Kim Jong-un heading after a decade in power?

* Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, February 9-25, 2018, touted as the “Peace Games” by Moon Jae-in. ** Between 2011 and 2021, North Korea carried out a long series of missile launches of various ranges, including three intercontinental or ICBM, in 2017 in particular. *** Four atomic tests in 2013, 2016 and 2017 (a priori, the test of September 2017 was a thermonuclear bomb). **** As well as Moscow, to a lesser extent however.

Having spent part of his young years in Switzerland, the heir to the Kimist dynasty did not immerse himself too much in the notions of peace, neutrality and peaceful coexistence dear to his Swiss hosts. Quite the contrary. It is certainly true that Kim Jong-un authorized North Korean athletes to participate in 2018 in the XXIII Winter Olympiad * organized at the southern neighbor and sent Kim Yo-jong, his younger sister, main advisor and personal emissary, to the site, to represent North Korea at the opening ceremony. But the Olympic spirit did not work its magic on the young thirty-something. The mistrust, the provocation and the bellicose tone towards the White House as well as the Blue House in Seoul, ballistic ** and nuclear *** adventurisms, have further marked out Pyongyang’s roadmap in recent years. An aggressive posture, but skilfully calibrated, working not to exceed a certain measure, adopted by Kim Jong-un, exhausting in the passing the South Korean President Moon Jae-in and his aspirations for North-South relaxation, embarrassing by his irredentism the former chief of the American executive, in a way indisposing Beijing, strategic ally, privileged commercial partner and diplomatic lightning rod **** of Pyongyang. –