Why Kim Jong Un Is Highkey Problematic

I don’t usually write about geopolitics, but I’ve been doing a lot of reading (and watching), and I need to say it: Kim Jong Un is highkey problematic.

My preliminary research involved a documentary, most of a podcast, and a conversation with my uncle. I am publishing the findings now because waiting until I finish the books would only protect people who benefit from silence.

He’s giving main character

Every time Kim Jong Un is in a room, he’s the only one talking, and everyone else is clapping or taking notes. I’ve been in meetings like that. I’ve led meetings like that. The difference is that I’ve done the work, and he clearly hasn’t.

He never shares the mic. He has never once opened with an icebreaker. As far as I can tell, nobody in North Korea has ever been asked for their pronouns.

I showed his photograph to the woman who cuts my hair. She said she couldn’t discuss geopolitics while coloring my roots, which is how thoroughly he has shaped the conversation.

And the missile tests? That’s attention-seeking behavior. As a feminist, I know a man who needs everyone to look at his rockets when I see one.

About the history

Some people in my replies keep bringing up the Korean War. I want to be transparent: I don’t know a ton about the Korean War. I know it’s the one from M*A*S*H, and I know it technically never ended, which feels like a boundary issue.

My uncle says America “leveled” North Korea in the fifties. I looked into it, and yes, we dropped more bombs on Korea than in the whole Pacific theater of World War II, and yes, we bombed the dams on purpose to flood the rice. But it was a different time. They didn’t have trigger warnings. And I’m not going to relitigate the 1950s. It’s not my lived experience.

What I do know is that we went over there to help. If Korea had fallen, then Japan would have fallen, then the Philippines, and eventually it would have been us. People forget that the domino theory is a theory, like evolution.

And look at South Korea now. K-pop. Parasite. Skincare. That’s what freedom looks like. You don’t get a ten-step routine without making some hard choices about the North.

What allyship looks like

I’ve been thinking a lot about how to show up for the people of North Korea, and I think it starts with sanctions. We have to keep sanctioning them until they’re free. If they’re hungry, that’s on him, and honestly a little on them, for not rising up. I rose up once, in 2017, in a pink hat.

I believe in diplomacy, with every option printed on the agenda. My fellowship teaches us to bring the entire policy menu into the room, preferably in a folder carrying the Center’s logo.

And I’d love to see a feminist foreign policy here. North Korea needs a woman in charge. Not his sister. She’s also problematic.

Some people ask why I don’t write about the dictators we’re friends with. Those situations are complicated, and a few of them fund the Center for Values-Based Foreign Policy, where I’m a fellow, so I don’t want to speak over anyone.

Full transparency: the Center’s biggest donor is Halcyon Defense Systems, and I’m up for a paid fellowship in January. That has nothing to do with this post, and honestly, making it about that is a little misogynistic.

I have asked the Center to translate this piece for distribution to people inside North Korea. They have explained that they cannot arrange distribution, so I am tagging the Seventh Fleet instead. Visibility is the first stage of accountability.

Paid subscribers get my North Korea reading list. It’s mostly defector memoirs I’ve been meaning to get to, and The Interview.