When the leather-jacket-clad Kim Jong Un opened the 8^th Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea in January 2021, he sat firmly entrenched as the unquestioned authority in North Korea, just as his father and grandfather had before him.

One decade into his rule, Kim’s power is absolute. But when his father, Kim Jong Il, died in December 2011, few knew what to expect from the Swiss-educated NBA fan who had been designated as the “Great Successor” in the last days of his father’s rule.

Some thought that Kim Jong Un’s western education might lead him to reform the decaying isolationist country that he was to inherit.