How Has the Kim Family Held on to Power So Long?
The following content is adapted from North Korea 101, LiNK’s FREE online course that explains what's happening in North Korea beyond the headlines. Start learning today.
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“This question is fundamental. To understand where we are and where we might be heading, we have to understand where we’ve come from.” – Sokeel Park, LiNK CSO
The North Korean regime is the world’s worst dictatorship, an extreme remnant of 20th century authoritarianism that has stretched across eight decades and three generations of the ruling Kim family. The regime’s all-encompassing system of control constrains the North Korean people’s agency and potential, resulting in an enforced poverty which includes physiological, material, social, informational, and cultural deprivations.
It is not easy for dictators to maintain power for long. During the Kim family’s rule, the world has seen the rise and fall of dozens of other dictatorships. Through many periods of global change and internal instability, they’ve managed to maintain power not by sheer force or luck, but through an array of adaptive strategies. But when the media portrays Kim Jong Un as crazy or irrational, it undermines our understanding and approaches to try to undermine that dictatorship.
There is a formula to their approach, and if we can understand it, then we can counteract it.
The Four Ways Dictators Lose Power
Historically, the fall of dictators can be attributed to four factors. By looking at each of them, we can see how the ruling Kim family has strategically avoided these fates.
1. Military Defeat/International Intervention
An external country or force intervening and overthrowing a dictator through military defeat.
2. Elite Challenges
An internal challenge emerging from within the country’s top political or military circles, forcibly removing the current dictator by assasination or a coup d'état,
3. Popular Uprising
An internal challenge from below, where a mass movement forces a change in leadership. In some cases, parts of the elite may join the side of the masses.
4. Death in Office
The death of the current leader, opening up an opportunity for someone else to assume control and end the dictatorship or make significant changes.
Threat #1: Preventing Military Overthrow
To prevent an external power from overthrowing their dictatorship, the Kim family first needs a strong deterrent against military force. The vast majority of mainstream news coverage of North Korea focuses on one thing: nuclear weapons. Having nuclear weapons and being seen as potentially willing and able to use them is arguably the most effective way to deter a military intervention from the outside.
Second, the Kim family has strategically managed their relations with countries like the Soviet Union / Russia, China, the United States, and South Korea. They go back and forth between periods of warmer and colder relations, effectively balancing opportunities and risks to gain support while preventing too much external influence. It’s unlikely that the Kim family has ever really trusted any of these external powers, even those that are sometimes labelled as “allies”.
Threat #2: Preventing Elite Challenges
Historically, the position of dictator can be very tempting to others within the leadership’s orbit, from competing family members to senior politicians or military leaders. To prevent anyone from building too much power and becoming a threat, the ruling Kim family carefully manages elite politics, alternating between demoting, promoting, and purging top officials.
On top of that, cross-layered surveillance between different institutions also keeps potential challengers under surveillance and in check, and prevents any one person or group of people from launching a challenge for power.
Threat #3: Preventing Popular Uprisings
The next scenario that the regime must prevent is a popular uprising.
A common conception of North Korea is that if the people wanted to rise up and revolt, they would have, and so they must be brainwashed or bought into the regime’s ideologies. While the latter may be true to some degree, it's difficult to fully grasp the extent to which the government’s system of control deprives people of their agency and potential and prevents them from challenging dictatorial rule.
North Korea is the most closed country in the world. The regime has forcibly cut off North Koreans from the rest of humanity, which serves as the baseline for their control. This centers everything—social structure, daily life, resources, information—around the regime, and eliminates sources that could undermine or threaten their authoritarian rule.
Laying the Foundation: Kim Il Sung’s Half-Century in Power
Kim Il Sung was 33 years old when he was installed into power by the Soviet Union—very young in global politics at the time, when most leaders were in their 50s and 60s. This historical happenstance has ended up being a key factor in the longevity of the Kim family’s control.
From his rise to power in 1945 to his death in 1994 at the age of 82, Kim Il Sung had 49 years to mold North Korea’s politics and systems in his image. During this time, he laid the foundation for hereditary succession by:
- Centralizing power around this dictatorship.
- Building a cult of personality around himself and his direct lineage: propaganda and myth-making that legitimized the Kim family as the only North Koreans worthy to lead the country.
- Purging anyone who could have been an alternative leader.
When it came time for Kim Jong Il to assume power, and the Kim Jong Un after that, decades of preparation smoothened the transition.
Now, after three generations of the Kim family, it would be very difficult for anyone else, even among the upper elite, to try and take power. Even if someone did manage to depose the current dictator, they would have to contend with not just managing the power vacuum, but the ideological void left by decades of propaganda and mythmaking that surrounded the Kim family.
Without the legitimacy that had been set up by the Kims, a new leader would likely find it difficult to maintain power for long. This is something that North Korean elites understand, which further discourages any rival officials from challenging the current regime.
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A North Korean Father Risks Everything for Family | Doohyun’s Story
I lived in North Korea for over 20 years, and for much of that time, I believed my life was normal. I grew up in a big city by the river. When the wind blew, I could smell the water on the breeze, and on holidays, I played along the banks with my friends.
The river ran along the border between North Korea and China. I could see across the water into a different world–one where cars lined the streets, and buildings stretched high into the sky.
But I didn’t realize that life should be different, until the day they took my father away.
My father was a great businessman. He provided for our family despite being forcibly discharged from the military when his Minister of Defense was executed by Kim Il Sung. Labeled as a “traitor,” he was banned from decent jobs and opportunities.
Still, my father was a clever man and found success within the private market system that many North Koreans rely on to survive. Until one day, the police came to investigate him.
Without reason or warning, my father was arrested and imprisoned. They tortured him for a year. When he was released, my father weighed only 66 pounds.
Even after surviving the unimaginable, he was defiant. He wrote 20 pages of complaints to the Central Party about the human rights abuses he endured. My family was terrified of the consequences, but we couldn’t stop him. He fought for his voice to be heard.
On a warm Spring day, a Mercedes-Benz, license plate number 216, arrived at our home. February 16th was Kim Jong Il’s birthday, and cars with this number were only given to his closest aides. My father spoke with the man for hours about his letter. The man apologized and promised something like this wouldn’t happen again. This gave us a bit of hope for the future – for the possibility of change.
But the man left for Pyongyang. And then the police returned. I never saw my father again.
For two years, my family and I lived in unknowing agony, receiving no news on my father. Eventually, we heard from my father’s friend, who was a police officer, that he had passed away in prison.
At the very least, we wanted to send him off properly, so we asked that same friend how we could get my father’s body. Three days later, he returned. He told us they would not return my father’s body. My father had been sentenced to eight years in prison. He’d passed away after two. He still had six more years to serve – as a dead body. As a corpse.
For the first time I wondered whether this was the way normal people lived.
In 2009 I decided to escape from North Korea. Life had become near impossible for me after my father’s death, and I continued to face discrimination due to our family’s status in society.
By then, I had been married to my wife, Jiyeon, for two years. Most of our relationship before marriage was through the phone, because we lived far apart, and traveling in North Korea is difficult. So we called each other every night and talked for hours.
Now, I didn’t know if I was going somewhere she would never be able to reach. I told her it was a business trip. Two weeks. I’ll just be gone for two weeks.
She still cried at the train station, thinking about those two weeks. I couldn’t cry with her because then she would know the truth. So I boarded the train without a word, and watched it take me away from her.
From the moment I escaped North Korea, it felt like I was being chased by a grim reaper. There were multiple close-calls where I felt death breathing down my neck.
I was once hiding in a corn field near the Chinese border. Lying on my stomach, I watched soldiers patrol the area when suddenly, one of them walked towards me. It was too late to run or hide.
I had brought poison with me in case something like this happened - I knew it would be better to kill myself rather than be captured. But as I prepared to take the poison, I thought of my wife. I thought about how she would never know what happened to me.
In that moment of sheer terror, I heard the sound of water. The soldier stood right beside me but he hadn’t seen me. He had only walked over to relieve himself. For the next few minutes, I couldn’t move. The soldier had left, but my body held onto the terror of that moment. I remained hunched and hurried for the rest of the journey.
Eventually, I made it safely to South Korea. I started working as soon as possible – 12 hour days to pay back the broker fee, and save up money for my wife’s escape. My schedule was just working and sleeping, working and sleeping. It was hard, but for the first time in a long time, I had hope.
I was able to find a broker who put me in contact with my wife. It had been ten months since I’d defected at that point – ten months of her not knowing whether I was dead or alive. The call couldn’t be made in the city because the signal could be intercepted, so my wife and the broker hiked to the top of a mountain.
When we heard each other’s voices again, all we could do was cry. But we didn’t have much time, and so I asked her, you’re coming, right?
She said she was.
On December 27th, 2011, Jiyeon crossed the river to escape North Korea on the same route that I took.
As soon as my wife arrived in South Korea, I went to meet her. I was so excited. I couldn’t stop crying. When my wife came into the room, she was crying too – but do you know what’s the first thing she did when she saw me?
She punched me – crying, calling me a liar. And I deserved it.
We live in Utah now with our two beautiful sons. We go fishing, camping, and enjoy the outdoors together. Every time I see them, I realize I’m living in a different world, one where we can finally dream and decide our own future.
This is the life I’ve made for my children. This is the life my father envisioned for me and for all North Koreans when he made his act of defiance. My father died fighting for his voice to be heard – and now, finally, he’ll be heard by the world.
Doohyun risked everything to create a future where his family could live together in freedom. Their story isn’t unique - there are many more North Koreans waiting and hoping for the day when they can reunite with loved ones. Help make freedom part of every North Korean’s story.
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Since resettling in the United States, Doohyun has completed his undergraduate studies and now works for a North Korean human rights organization. He considers helping the North Korean people to be his life’s mission, continuing his father’s legacy.
