How North Korea won: The strange triumph of Kim Jong Un

The 75th anniversary of the Korean Workers Party in October 2020 was not the festive affair that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un wanted it to be. Despite the fireworks, military flyover and procession of new intercontinental missiles, Kim appeared to wipe away tears when he approached the lectern and apologized to the crowd: “My efforts and sincerity have not been sufficient enough to rid our people of the difficulties in their lives.” The COVID-19 pandemic had been tough for most countries, but it seemed especially portentous for North Korea, which was largely food-insecure, home to a notoriously dilapidated public healthcare system and struggling with a battered economy. Kim himself was humiliated and isolated, both domestically and internationally, after failing to deliver much-needed sanctions relief in some heady high-profile summitry with the leaders of the United States, South Korea, China, and Russia. It was arguably the lowest moment in the Democratic People’s Republic of North Korea’s 78-year history.

And yet, just five years later, in September 2025, Kim was beaming at a different military parade—in Beijing, where he stood with Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian leader Vladimir Putin. North Korean soldiers were now fighting alongside Russian troops in Ukraine, North Korean trade with China had reached healthy pre-pandemic levels, and Kim had been welcomed into a unified cohort of leaders countering U.S. and Western influence. In a stunning reversal of fortune, North Korea today is ascendant in ways not even the most imaginative analyst could have predicted. Kim, whose grip on power has never been stronger, has transformed himself from a global pariah into a global power player in record time.

This metamorphosis is the product of both circumstance and skill. The dawn of a new era of great-power competition has been an unwelcome development for many small countries and middle powers, but North Korea has fared better than most by leveraging its nuclear arsenal to avoid getting trampled by bigger players. Kim has also proved uniquely adept at exploiting the opportunities and navigating the currents of this new geopolitics. In approaching relations with China and Russia, he has taken surprising risks, such as fighting a war in Europe and escalating nuclear weapons development, that have paid off.

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