Buttoned Up
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un taunted U.S. President Trump by announcing that his nuclear force was operational and that the button was on his desk at all times. President Trump tweeted back that his button was bigger (I am thinking that button size is somehow related to hand size). But the pudgy dictator may not be the madman that many in the US think he is (the CIA recently noted that Kim is a “rational actor”).
Kim has observed that President Trump is easily provoked and has used this character trait to create a media diversion that disguises his true intent. In this sense he is more like a stage magician that is distracting his audience in order to create an illusion. The illusion is that the Kim regime is on the verge of war with the United States. To divine what Kim’s true intentions are, we need some historical context.
The Kim dynasty has been a regional problem since the end of World War II. The end of the war left Korea divided between a north backed by the Soviet Union and a south backed by the United States. Kim Il-Sung, grandfather of the current Kim, started as a resistance leader during the Japanese occupation of Korea and became a major in the Soviet Army during the war. After the war, he worked with the Soviet sponsored provisional government rising to be its premier and head of the Workers Party.
Supported by Stalin’s material backing and intelligence, Kim invaded the south and almost drove the South Koreans and the Americans into the sea. An amphibious landing at Incheon outflanked the North Koreans and the allies drove them back to the Yalu River, which is Korea’s border with China. The Chinese People's Liberation Army intervened and drove the allies back south. The war ended in a stalemate and the two sides agreed to an armistice separating two armies that are still technically at war.
Kim Il-Sung propounded an ideology unique to Korea, called Juche (self-reliance), that is a type of communism that emphasizes Korean nationalism and extreme economic independence (a form of autarky). Kim kept his distance from both Mao and Khrushchev isolating his country even