North Korea bomb test: Kim Jong-Un is riding a tiger he dares not dismount

North Korea’s claimed success in testing a hydrogen bomb – a thermonuclear weapon significantly more powerful than an atomic bomb – has set the world on edge.

Any testing of a nuclear weapon by a non-signatory to the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty, especially a rogue state such as North Korea, is cause for concern.

That such a weapon has been tested by a political leader seemingly as, if not more, unhinged than his father is especially worrying. On the positive side, however, there is real doubt as to whether the weapon tested was an H-bomb.

More importantly, any genuine threat of North Korea using such a weapon is remote. This is because, even in the bizarre world occupied by North Korea’s leadership, there is an overwhelming understanding that any offensive use of such a weapon would result in the immediate retaliatory destruction of the entire North Korean state.

There is, however, a twisted logic to North Korea’s belligerent affront to world opinion and the bellicose triumphalism of its announcement of the test.

North Korea is facing two inter-related problems. The first problem concerns the maintenance of a totalitarian state that privileges a small elite, and the management of divisions within that elite. The second problem concerns North Korea’s diplomatic and economic isolation and its deep, widespread and debilitating poverty.
There is no reliable information on the extent of poverty inside North Korea, given the extremely high level of government censorship and restrictive limitations on outside visits. However, such information that has been able to be retrieved strongly suggests chronic hunger and occasional mass famine for much of its population.

One tried and true method of bonding even a subjugated population to a political cause, however, is to identify the cause of such hardship as coming from outside and even greater threats of attack. North Korean media regularly lambasts South Korea, Japan and the United States in terms that seem to imply that it is only North Korea’s assertive military readiness that stops these countries from starving or attacking it.

Claims of having a powerful new weapon, then, play directly to countering this supposed ‘threat’ and to reinforcing the necessity of the North Korean people’s unity.

As a result of its military belligerence, North Korea has laboured under various economic sanctions for decades. These had some negative impact on its people. And since it embarked on a nuclear armament campaign, these sanctions have been significantly increased and have for more than a decade imposed real hardship on the country.

While there have been some moves, from time to time, towards easing such sanctions, delays in the progress of talks has regularly resulted in North Korea engaging in a military provocation. The logic appears to be that, if reciprocal countries do not act far or fast enough, North Korea will threaten them with precisely the types of actions that led to sanctions in the first place.

Within North Korea’s shadowy leadership, there also appears to be factional divisions, based on those who prefer a more confrontational and a more conciliatory approach to the rest of the world. The confrontationalists established an upper hand during the reign of Kim Il-Sung.

Since Kim Jong-Un’s ascension to leadership in 2011, he has confirmed himself within the confrontationalist ranks. Not to do so, especially for a young and previously unproven leader, might have seen him vulnerable to a hardliner’s coup.

Recent missile firing and now this supposed H-bomb test are consistent, therefore, with Kim Jong-Un confirming his confrontationalist credentials, as well as attempting to bond the North Korean people.

While the world has every reason to be concerned that bellicose rhetoric and belligerent behaviour might tip over into active aggression, such a course appears unlikely. Kim Jong-Un wants, primarily, for the world to come begging for him not to unleash his threatened ‘sea of fire’ and to withdraw its sanctions in supplication, despite the country’s actions producing the opposite outcome.

But, at least as importantly, in a country where hard-line, vested generals appear to hold much real power, Kim Jong-Un is also riding a tiger, paraphrasing Winston Churchill, daring not to dismount for fear of being eaten.