Kim Jong Un has no desire to let his country rejoin the world

livemint.com:

entered North Korea in nearly three and a half years were the Chinese ambassador and a handful of his staff. In recent weeks speculation has grown that seclusion may at last be easing. The rumours have been fuelled by Chinese customs statistics, satellite imagery and reports from the border that suggest a modest rise in trade between China and North Korea.

On July 25th and 26th Chinese and Russian delegations travelled to North Korea for a military parade to mark the armistice that ended the Korean War. Yet expectations that the regime has any serious plans for a wider opening are probably misguided. Being locked down and shut off from the world for years has been painful for ordinary North Koreans, many of whom depend on informal trade for their livelihoods.

Mr Kim, by contrast, has thrived. Pandemic-era controls have allowed him to extend his power over party and people. They have also helped him advance the country’s nuclear programme far from the prying eyes of the world, distracted by the war in Ukraine and America’s tetchy relationship with China.

He will probably attempt to hang on to some form of that control for as long as he can. Germophobic and xenophobic, Mr Kim handled the pandemic with a paranoid vigilance. The new threat of the virus and the old one of perceived enemies, notably “imperialist" America and its “puppets" in South Korea, commingled.

Kim Yo Jong, the dictator’s trusted sister, accused the South of spreading the virus via balloons released by local activists to carry anti-regime leaflets across the border. She threatened to respond “not only by exterminating the virus but also by wiping out the South Korean authorities". Three and a half years after the pandemic began, there are few credible