What Does North Korea Leader Kim Jong-Un Want?

Kim Jong-un, center, before a nuclear test at an undisclosed location, according to the North’s state-run news agency. Credit KCNA

New York Times: Motives of North Korea’s Leader Baffle Americans and Allies

TOKYO — What does Kim Jong-un want?

That remains far harder to answer than the technical questions about Mr. Kim’s bombs and the reach of his missiles that have preoccupied American, Japanese and South Korean intelligence officials for years.

After North Korea’s underground test on Sunday, more is now known about the power of his nuclear arsenal, even if mystery remains about the veracity of the North’s claim that it detonated a hydrogen bomb.

Yet six years after Mr. Kim took power and began executing those who challenged his rule — sometimes with an antiaircraft gun — there is no issue that confounds analysts more than the motives of a 33-year-old dictator whose every move seems one part canny strategy, one part self-preservation, and one part nuclear narcissism.

The conventional wisdom has always been that Mr. Kim, like his father and grandfather before him, is mostly motivated by a deep desire to preserve the family business — a small country that is an improbable, walled-off survivor of Cold War.

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WNU Editor: Kim Jong-Un's specific motives are still not known, but the motives of his grandfather and father were always consistent .... the unification of the Korean peninsula with the Communist Party in charge. But if I was to hazard a guess .... I would say that Kim Jong-Un harbors the same ambitions, and now sees his nuclear arsenal as a means to achieve his objectives while threatening anyone who may try to block him. My prediction .... expect more missile tests and maybe another nuclear test in the next few months .... and after assembling a meaningful arsenal expect the demands from Pyongyang to start coming in.