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| North Korean leader Kim Jong-un |
By John Power
A new report attempts to gauge what North Koreans actually think of their leader.
In the popular image of North Korea, its citizens are either brainwashed or terrorized into adulating their leader Kim Jong-un. But what if they are genuinely supportive of the dictator?
That’s the possibility raised by a report released late last month by the Institute of Peace and Unification Studies, a think tank affiliated with Seoul National University.
In surveys taken during the last five years and collated in the report, 63 percent of North Korean defectors perceived Kim to have majority support from people within the country. The respondents all fled North Korea between 2010 and last year, while Kim took power in 2011, after the death of his father Kim Jong-il.
At least some outsider observers see the findings as credible. North Korea scholar Andrei Lankov, for instance, believes that modest economic growth during Kim’s tenure has boosted his popularity compared to his father, who presided over a catastrophic famine in the 1990s. In a light nudge away from the state-led model championed by his father and grandfather, Kim has introduced some limited economic reforms, such as allowing farmers to keep a portion of their harvest. While difficult to gauge, these reforms seem to have raised the living standards of at least some North Koreans.
Read the full story at The Diplomat