When Kim Jong-un came to power over North Korea in December 2011, no one knew the direction in which he would take the secretive rogue state. Locked in a high-stakes nuclear stand-off with South Korea and the United States, would the supreme leader return to negotiations about denuclearisation of the Korean peninsula which his father had abandoned in 2009? So far the answer has been an unequivocal “no”. In less than six years, Kim Jong-un has tested more missiles than his late father and grandfather combined, and doubled the number of nuclear bomb tests. Since taking power after his father Kim Jong-il’s death in December 2011, Kim Jong-un has overseen a rapid escalation in missile testing, and on July 4 the country celebrated its first…

Source: The Times July 28, 2017 12:56 UTC