KIM Jong-un, the third hereditary ruler of North Korea, gets a really bad press. He is widely seen as a capricious, overweight youngster, fond of executing his generals and threatening the world with war; ruler of an impoverished country ever on the brink of famine but equipped with nuclear weapons. There is some truth in this description but it does not represent the whole story. He may have a penchant for executions, but Kim is also the first ruler of the dynasty to implement market-oriented reforms. The oft-repeated cliché of North Korea as a “starving Stalinist country” is outdated — it is neither starving nor Stalinist. Experts agree that over the past decade the country has not only...
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