The most recent reports on North Korea are remarkable. Not only does the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea appear to be dismantling one of its main missile sites, but it has officially declared that it seeks an end to the Korean War with both South Korea and the United States.

That leads me to a theory about Kim Jong Un I have been fleshing out for awhile, and which I have briefly alluded to in the past. I have been predicting for some time now, even before the Singapore Summit, that Kim Jong Un wants to be the DPRK’s Deng Xiaoping. Here are some preliminary thoughts.

I have followed North Korea for years. I have been intensely fascinated with it. Kim Jong Un was educated virtually entirely in the West. He grew up in the era of the internet and the smartphone (which neither his father nor grandfather did). He also grew up in a world where virtually his whole life, there was no Soviet Union.

His Ideological Impulses

Thus, he simply doesn’t have the ideological impulses that informed his grandfather and father. He has already implemented some “free market” reforms in North Korea — very small by our standards, but very substantial by North Korean standards.

Essentially, he allowed various state-owned enterprises (SOEs) to solicit investment both inside and outside of North Korea. He also allowed them to manage their production schedules according to supply and demand rather than state quotas. Again, small by our standard, but huge for the DPRK. With the sanctions in place, the DPRK hasn’t been able to benefit from this change as much as it otherwise would.

As for his having various folks executed or assassinated: my impression is that most of these guys were old-timers. I don’t simply mean they were older (though most were), but they were the equivalent of the Russian hardliners who attempted a coup in 1991.

That was always an element in the Soviet Union, one which reared its ugly head during the Cuban Missile Crisis. President Kennedy and his administration had to determine whether Khrushchev was really in control, or whether he had been co-opted, or even removed from power, by Soviet hardliners who wanted a nuclear exchange with the United States, or at least a more bellicose posture.

This is a common feature of dictatorial regimes. While power seems secure, it really isn’t.

Testing an Assumption

Now, assume for a moment that Kim Jong Un intends to change the situation of the DPRK. While we may think (naively) that he can just do it, he actually can’t. As I said, dictators are rarely as secure as they want people to think they are.

He would need to deal with the various power-centers in North Korea — the military chief among them. And sure enough, the people he had executed, even family members, were part of the old guard, and had been around for decades. In other words, it is quite likely that they were wedded to the ideological goals of his grandfather’s and father’s generation.

Thus, it would make sense to me if he would eliminate various hardliners, or potential tools of hardliners, in order to open the DPRK to the outside world. For example, many assumed that he had his brother assassinated in Malaysia for pure hatred. I don’t think so. If hardliners within the DPRK sought to replace Kim, having one of his male brothers on hand would be extraordinarily useful. They could substitute one Kim for another, hence maintaining the dynasty.

Old Creature, New Creature

Kim Jong Un is a creature of the world he was born into, and he has to play by its rules. There is a certain logic to the world of the DPRK. Unless some sort of cataclysm occurs, that logic will work itself out on its own terms. Those terms aren’t pretty, and they aren’t moral. But they are what they are. That’s the real world.

I am not claiming any of this is moral, ethical or acceptable. It isn’t. Kim remains a bloodthirsty dictator. But, as we have seen in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and other places, tyrannical countries can often gradually become slightly more free and liberalized. They do so according to the rules of their own machines — and those often involve violence and intrigue to a degree that is very foreign to Westerners.

A Remarkable Story

Dennis Rodman has been a personal friend of Kim Jong Un for a number of years. He recently shared a story that, if true, would seem to confirm my theory.

While enjoying a private party with various family members and party officials on a North Korean island retreat, Rodman says he raised his glass for a toast in which he openly chastised Kim’s father and grandfather for doing “a lot of messed up stuff.” (He didn’t say “messed up,” and he didn’t say “stuff”) He continued: “But you’re trying to change things, and that’s a great, great thing.” Kim Jong Un, far from being offended, stood up and clapped in response.

If true, this story is truly remarkable, and could be the best indicator yet that my theory is correct.

I could be wrong on all of this. We’ll see what happens. But that premise certainly does seem to explain a lot of what we are not only seeing now, but have seen ever since he came to power.

Even if I am right, I do not predict that Kim will ever be a full-fledged, Western-style leader, with totally open and fair elections, etc. I don’t think that will ever happen for him, just like it didn’t happen for Deng Xiaoping, and other Chinese leaders who, nonetheless, opened and liberalized China, equipping it to operate in a new, post-Communist world.