Kim Jong-un

Biography

Kim Jong Un is the third member of the Kim family to rule North Korea, succeeding his father Kim Jong Il after the latter's death in December 2011. North Korean sources give his birth date as 8 January 1982, while South Korean and US sources point to 1983 or 1984. He spent part of his youth at schools near Bern in Switzerland under assumed names, then studied at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang from about 2002 to 2007 and also took an officer's degree at Kim Il Sung Military University.

Groomed as successor from 2009, he was made a four-star general and vice chairman of the party's Central Military Commission in September 2010. After his father died he was named supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, and in April 2012 he became First Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and First Chairman of the National Defence Commission; he was promoted to marshal that July. His titles were later reshaped: party chairman in 2016, chairman of the new State Affairs Commission from June 2016, and general secretary of the party from January 2021.

His rule has preserved the family personality cult and a repressive one-party state. His uncle Jang Song Thaek was executed in 2013, and his half-brother Kim Jong Nam was killed in Malaysia in 2017 in an attack attributed to North Korean agents. Pursuing parallel development of nuclear weapons and the economy, he oversaw several nuclear tests and the country's first intercontinental ballistic missile, along with limited economic management reforms and a building programme in Pyongyang.

Tensions with the United States and South Korea peaked in the 2017-2018 crisis, followed in 2018 and 2019 by summits with Moon Jae-in, Xi Jinping and Donald Trump, the first meetings between a North Korean leader and a sitting US president. The talks ended without a nuclear agreement. He has since drawn closer to Russia, meeting Vladimir Putin in 2019 and 2023 and signing a strategic partnership treaty in 2024, and in December 2023 declared that North Korea had abandoned the goal of reunification.