“Whatever you make of his grotesque politics, his execrable human rights record and his lamentable physical condition, Kim Jong Un is one of the most brilliantly successful national leaders in the world,” said Richard Lloyd Parry in The Times . When he succeeded his late father as head of the hermit kingdom in 2011, plenty of people wrote the young leader off as a weak and “callow fattie” who’d be gone within months.

Since then, Kim has purged his potential domestic challengers (including, allegedly, ordering the killing of an elder sibling with a nerve agent ); established his own powerful cult of personality in North Korea; and built up a nuclear arsenal that has significantly strengthened his standing on the world stage .

‘Diplomatic victory’

That rise in influence reached it

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