Why is Kim Jong-un “taking the opportunity” to fire his missiles?

For fourteen days, the eyes of the whole world have been riveted on Ukraine. The conflict between Kiev and Moscow is making international headlines and occupies most of the days of our Western leaders. When you are at the head of a communist regime of the Stalinist type operating on a totalitarian logic, the absence of a look at your internal grub can sometimes give you ideas. Since January 27, Kim Jong-un, the self-proclaimed leader of North Korea has brought out his heavy artillery. To date, the “supreme leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea”, celebrates his 9th ballistic test since the beginning of the beginning of the year and the second since the beginning of the war. So Kim Jong-un, too megalomaniac not to make the front page or just too clever not to be there?

First of all, “we must remember that since 2011 there have been hundreds of ballistic tests in North Korea”, contextualizes Antoine Bondaz, French researcher and director of the North Korea program at the Foundation for Strategic Research (FRS) . If, since 2017, none of these missiles has had an intercontinental range, “since the beginning of 2022, the objective of these tests is to test the telemetry, i.e. the equipment which makes it possible to study the trajectory and the behavior of missiles,” adds the researcher.

The official purpose of these 2.0 weapons is space launch: “Kim Jong-un wants to put a satellite in orbit”, specifies to 20 Minutes Antoine Bondaz. But unofficially, there are two purposes for these ballistic tests, one military and the other political. “The first aims to deter or even impress countries like South Korea or the United States. The second, which echoes more the very personality of Kim Jong-un, to legitimize him within his own country”. Food shortage, housing crisis, fear of Covid-19, etc., it must be said that the leader is not frankly what is called a “winner” for ten years and these missiles are one of his rare successes .

A leader in disarray

For Leif-Eric Easley, professor at Ewha University in Seoul, “the strength and legitimacy of Kim Jong-un’s regime now depend on ever better missile tests”. In other words, the leader of Pyongyang intends to establish his legitimacy through the prism of a techno-nationalist state, ie technological development at the service of state security.

[ ???????? CORÉE DU NORD ]

???? North Korea just fired an unidentified projectile into the Sea of ​​Japan. pic.twitter.com/qcP289gba2

— (Little) Think Tank (@L_ThinkTank) March 5, 2022

And in this context, “North Korea was not going to please anyone by remaining quiet while the rest of the world deals with Russia’s aggression against Ukraine”, asserts Leif-Eric Easley. If the resumption of these tests after a truce during the Beijing Olympics owes nothing to chance, it does not seem to be the result of the somewhat megalomaniacal personality of the man who also calls himself “professor of the ‘Humanity as a whole’. According to Shin Beom-chul, a researcher at the Research Institute for Economy and Society, Kim Jong-un is simply restarting the machine. “While the interest of the United States has turned to Europe with the crisis in Ukraine and the Security Council proves incapable of functioning, Pyongyang has seized the opportunity”, explains the analyst.

A solid strategy

“North Korea is not trying to get attention. It is the absence of attention on North Korea, in this context of war, which pushes Kim Jong-un to carry out these tests. It’s different,” says Antoine Bondaz. “By acting both during a global conflict and during presidential elections in South Korea, it drastically limits the attention paid to it by international leaders,” adds the researcher.

If we know too little about the personality of the North Korean leader to judge the probability of a potential ego trip on these trials, history proves one thing to us, according to Antoine Bondaz: Kim Jong-un has only one make people talk about him in Washington, Beijing or Paris. “What he wants is the survival of the regime, the legitimacy of his country but above all to dissuade the rest of the world from coming to upset him. »