PROFILE: Kim Jong Un, stage manager of the apocalypse — the man who makes war a national holiday

Introduction: June 25, the date he waits for all year

Seventy-six years after the war that never truly ended

Some dates in North Korea are never mere commemorations. June 25 is one of them. It marks the 76th anniversary of the outbreak of the Korean War of 1950–1953 — a conflict that Pyongyang presents as an "American war of aggression" heroically repelled, whose 1953 armistice was never followed by a peace treaty. For Kim Jong Un, this date is not an occasion for mourning or reflection: it is a stage. And he is its absolute director.

On June 25, 2026, true to this tradition, the North Korean leader traveled to a weapons test site to personally oversee a series of tests of key weapons systems. The official state news agency KCNA reported the results the following day, releasing carefully selected photographs showing Kim Jong Un flanked by senior officers, surrounded by columns of smoke, missiles in flight, and artillery in action. This staging is codified. It is calculated. It is formidable in its symbolic precision.

The weapons of June 25: a revealing inventory

The systems tested on June 25, 2026 were carefully chosen for both their symbolic and operational value. According to KCNA, relayed by Reuters and South Korean Yonhap Agency, the tests covered: an upgraded 24-tube 240mm multiple rocket launcher equipped with an autonomous precision guidance system and a range extended to 90 kilometers; tactical ballistic missiles fitted with a "special mission" warhead; and a 155mm self-propelled howitzer with extended-range shells reaching 65 kilometers.

These three systems target a specific set of capabilities: the upgraded 240mm launcher is designed to saturate corps-level objectives — air bases, logistics nodes, troop concentrations — across the territory of South Korea. The "special mission" warhead of the tactical ballistic missile is explicitly described by KCNA as designed to "inflict lethal damage on major targets including airdromes, ports, and power supply installations of the enemy" — the enemy being, without any ambiguity, South Korea and the American forces stationed there.

Who is Kim Jong Un in 2026: thirty years of power shaped by fear

An heir become absolute sovereign

Kim Jong Un was born in 1984, according to the most widely accepted estimates — his exact birth year has never been officially confirmed. He assumed power in December 2011, at approximately 27 years old, following the death of his father Kim Jong Il. Early on, some Western observers had hoped he might prove a reformer: he had studied in Switzerland, he seemed less rigid than his father, he had married a young, educated woman. Those hopes have since been permanently buried.

In fifteen years of rule, Kim Jong Un has carried out massive purges within the North Korean elite — including the execution of his own uncle Jang Song-thaek in 2013, who had been one of the pillars of the regime. He has dramatically accelerated North Korea's nuclear and ballistic program, progressing from regionally capable missiles to intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) theoretically capable of reaching the American mainland. He has consolidated personal command of the military, transforming generals into executors rather than decision-makers.

Physical presence as an instrument of power

What distinguishes Kim Jong Un from many authoritarian leaders is his insistence on being personally present at weapons tests and military exercises. Unlike his grandfather Kim Il-sung or even his father, who sometimes reviewed tests through documents or reports, Kim Jong Un has physically attended launch sites, posed next to missiles, and observed explosions from observation posts. This presence is not merely symbolic: it embodies a conception of power in which the leader and military force are inseparable.

The Associated Press reported on June 26, 2026 that KCNA cited Kim Jong Un calling for strengthening the "deadly and destructive offensive posture" of the North Korean army — a formulation that deserves to be read without filter. "Making the enemies feel constant unease and fear is an important aspect of exercising war deterrence," said Kim Jong Un. That statement is not ordinary domestic propaganda: it is military doctrine articulated in plain terms.

North Korea's military modernization: a race nobody took seriously

From ballistic craftsmanship to automated precision systems

What emerges from the June 25, 2026 tests is the specific nature of the improvements made to conventional systems. The older 240mm rocket launcher was already a formidable system in terms of raw range and area saturation. The new version adds two transformative capabilities: an autonomous precision guidance system and a range extended to 90 km, meaning that from positions close to the North Korean border, these rockets can reach virtually all of the Seoul metropolitan area and its surroundings of more than 25 million inhabitants.

Chosun Biz of Seoul reported that KCNA described the system as "fully automated, with an autonomous precision guidance system introduced" — a statement that, if accurate, means North Korea now masters conventional weapons systems that integrate artificial intelligence for guidance precision. That would represent a significant qualitative leap from prior capabilities.

The "special mission" warhead: a weapon targeting American bases

The phrase "special mission warhead" used by KCNA to describe the military tip of the tactical ballistic missile tested on June 25 deserves careful decoding. In North Korean military parlance, this terminology generally designates warheads designed for specific effects: reinforced bunker penetration, radar system destruction, or in certain contexts, maximized area effects against concentrations of troops and equipment. The explicit description of airdromes, ports, and electrical installations as priority targets is aimed directly at the 28,500 American soldiers stationed in South Korea and their support infrastructure.

In May 2026, North Korea had already announced tests of a mix of tactical ballistic missiles, artillery rockets, and AI-guided cruise missiles for "modern warfare." The progression between those May tests and those of June 25 reveals a remarkably rapid pace of military innovation for a country under international sanctions specifically designed to limit its technological capabilities.

The strategic meaning of June 25: the calendar as message

The war's anniversary as a ritual of legitimization

To understand why Kim Jong Un chose June 25 for his 2026 tests, you need to understand the symbolic function of the Korean War in the regime's mythology. The official North Korean version — instilled in every citizen from childhood — presents this conflict as an American war of aggression repelled by the military genius of founder Kim Il-sung and the heroic bravery of the North Korean people. This narrative of victory against American power is the very foundational identity of the regime.

By staging major weapons tests on the anniversary of that conflict's outbreak, Kim Jong Un accomplishes several symbolic acts simultaneously: he positions himself in the continuity of his forebears (Kim Il-sung "defeated" the Americans; he surpasses them technologically); he reminds South Korea and the United States that the war of 1950 is not over in anyone's mind; and he offers the North Korean population, living under severe economic deprivation, a spectacle of national strength designed to feed a surrogate pride.

The message to Seoul: from symbolism to concrete threat

South Korea understood the message. On that same June 25, 2026, Seoul announced a significant increase in its drone warfare capabilities — a direct and calculated response to the North Korean demonstration. The South Korean army, one of the most modern in Asia, monitors North Korean tests with an attentiveness that blends professional analysis and institutional concern.

South Korean military officials detected the June 25 launches and confirmed the information published by KCNA — the North Korean transparency about its own tests is, in fact, one characteristic of this regime: Pyongyang wants its adversaries to know exactly what it is capable of. This is not gratuitous arrogance: it is a deliberate deterrence strategy. If the enemy knows precisely what awaits it in the event of a conflict, it is less likely to start one.

Kim Jong Un and Putin: an alliance of the apocalypse

North Korean ammunition deliveries and their technological counterpart

To analyze the portrait of Kim Jong Un in 2026, his strategic partnership with Vladimir Putin's Russia cannot be ignored. North Korea has supplied, according to Western intelligence estimates, millions of artillery shells and short-range ballistic missiles to Russia to fuel its offensive in Ukraine. These deliveries have significantly contributed to Russia's ability to maintain an intensive strike tempo against Ukrainian defenses.

In exchange, Russia has provided North Korea with technology transfers in the areas of inertial navigation, missile engines, and military satellite technology — information drawn from American and South Korean intelligence assessments. The ISW and other institutions have documented how this cooperation has helped accelerate the modernization of North Korean ballistic capabilities. The autonomous precision guidance systems touted by KCNA on June 25 may partially benefit from these transfers.

North Korea-Russia-Iran: the triangle of outlier states

Beyond the Pyongyang-Moscow axis, North Korea fits within a broader network of states that Western democracies call "rogue states" — a term I prefer to replace with "states that reject the norms of the liberal international order." This network — North Korea, Russia, Iran, China to a different degree — constitutes a disruptive force against the world order that operates with increasing coherence.

The Iranian Shahed drones, mass-produced for Russia and then deployed against Ukraine, and the North Korean ammunition feeding the same offensive, illustrate a form of military division of labor among these regimes. For Kim Jong Un, this alliance is not ideological in the strict sense — he has no affinity with Tehran's Islamism or Putin's Russian nationalism. What unites them is a functional opposition to the Western order and the conviction that their survival depends on collective resistance to American pressure.

The actual state of North Korea's military: power and limits

A mass army with massive conventional capabilities

With an active army of 1.28 million soldiers and reserves estimated at several million more, North Korea maintains one of the largest armies in the world by headcount. This force is massively deployed along the border with South Korea — more than 70 percent of ground forces are stationed within the 120 km south of Pyongyang, according to U.S. Defense Department estimates. This concentration represents an immediate conventional threat to Seoul, which is only 55 km from the border.

The weapons tested on June 25 — notably the 240mm launcher with a 90 km range — are designed to saturate Seoul's defenses and its industrial periphery in the first hours of a hypothetical conflict, before American forces can massively deploy from their bases in Japan and Guam. This "zero-hour blitz" doctrine has been at the heart of North Korean military thinking for decades.

The hidden flaws: the economy that can't keep up

But the portrait of Kim Jong Un would be incomplete without its vulnerabilities. The North Korean economy, after years of sanctions, isolation, and absolute priority given to military spending over civilian development, remains profoundly deficient. Recurring famines, chronic energy shortages, the dilapidated state of civilian infrastructure — all of this stands in brutal contrast to the shining missiles displayed at military ceremonies.

Arms deliveries to Russia have admittedly brought hard currency revenues and technology transfers, but they have also drawn down artillery stocks that have not always been replenished quickly. North Korea's capacity to sustain a prolonged conventional war against South Korea and the United States — beyond the first weeks of a conflict — remains fundamentally limited by a structurally weak economic and logistical base.

The staging of power: the regime's press as a distorting mirror

KCNA and the construction of a living legend

The official news agency KCNA is one of Kim Jong Un's most essential instruments of power. Every weapons test, every inspection visit, every leader's statement passes through this carefully controlled filter before being released to the world. The photographs published on June 26, 2026 showing Kim Jong Un during the previous day's tests were chosen to maximize the impression of mastery and authority: the leader surrounded by attentive officers, the launches captured from multiple angles, the columns of fire and smoke forming a dramatic backdrop.

This staging has been elaborated over years by a team of professional propagandists whose mission is to construct the image of an omniscient, omnipotent, and militarily invincible sovereign. The images are distributed not only for the domestic North Korean audience but also — and perhaps above all — for foreign media that reproduce them and inadvertently amplify them. Kim Jong Un understands perfectly that democracies have free press outlets that will republish his images without him having to pay for their distribution.

The personification of the state in a human body

What is striking in the coverage of the June 25 tests is KCNA's insistence on Kim Jong Un's personal emotional reactions: "He expressed satisfaction with the test results"; "he said the tests served to prove and confirm significant technological progress." This lexicon of personal satisfaction is not incidental — it personalizes the weapons program as an individual achievement of the leader, thereby reinforcing the idea that his very existence guarantees national security.

In North Korea in 2026, Kim Jong Un is not merely the head of state: he is the state. His achievements are the nation's achievements; his moods are the moods of the heavens. This total personification of power, inherited from his grandfather and taken to an absolute degree under his rule, creates a structural fragility: should Kim Jong Un disappear — through illness, accident, or assassination — the power structure he has built around his person would have no clear, accepted succession mechanism.

The international response: ineffective but unavoidable

Sanctions as a worn tool with no alternative

The international response to North Korean tests has followed a predictable pattern for years: condemnation at the UN Security Council (when China and Russia allow it), tightening of existing sanctions (when they can be adopted), declarations of firmness from regional allies. This pattern has not prevented North Korea from developing a proven nuclear capability, nor from continuously improving its conventional systems.

The fundamental reason for this failure is simple: China, which accounts for more than 90 percent of North Korea's foreign trade, has no interest in letting the regime collapse, which would produce either a Korean reunification under American leadership at its border, or a chaotic failed state with unsecured nuclear weapons and massive refugee flows. The minimal but vital support Beijing provides to Pyongyang neutralizes most of the effectiveness of sanctions.

South Korea and Japan: managing the unacceptable daily

For South Korea and Japan, the two countries most directly exposed to North Korean capabilities, managing this threat is a permanent exercise in balancing deterrence and de-escalation. Seoul announced on June 25, 2026 massive investments in its drone warfare capabilities — a direct adaptive response to North Korean systems. Japan maintains its PAC-3 anti-missile systems and continues developing deep-strike capabilities.

Neither country can afford to let the North Korean threat destabilize their societies — nor can they trigger a conflict that would destroy cities of millions of inhabitants and risk nuclear escalation. This impossible strategic geometry partly explains the frustration of American allies in the region and their sometimes reluctant support for diplomatic approaches that seem systematically to reach dead ends.

Kim Jong Un before history: the legacy of a man who bets on fear

The doctrine of "permanent fear" as state policy

Kim Jong Un's statement of June 25, 2026 — "Making the enemies feel constant unease and fear is an important aspect of exercising war deterrence" — may be the most direct and honest formulation he has ever offered of his strategic doctrine. This doctrine rests on an economy-of-violence logic: by investing in the capacity to cause massive destruction, one reduces the likelihood of ever having to exercise it.

This logic is that of nuclear deterrence in its classic form — the very logic that, literally, prevented a third world war between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War. What Kim Jong Un does is transpose that logic into his specific context and extend it to conventional precision weapons. If Seoul and Washington know that an attack on North Korea will immediately translate into massive destruction of South Korean and American targets, then the cost of any preventive or preemptive action becomes unacceptable.

The paradox of modernization in isolation

The fundamental paradox of Kim Jong Un's weapons program is this: the more he succeeds in developing advanced military capabilities, the less likely it is that an outside actor will attempt to remove him by force — which, in the short term, strengthens the security of his regime. But at the same time, the more his military capabilities advance, the more democracies develop their own regional defense and deterrence systems, and the faster the regional arms race accelerates.

South Korea's June 25, 2026 decision to invest massively in drones — announced on exactly the same day as the North Korean tests — illustrates this dynamic. Every test from Pyongyang feeds a cycle of military investment among its neighbors that, over time, increases the risks of miscalculation and accidental escalation. Kim Jong Un wins the tactical battle of deterrence while contributing to an increasingly fragile regional security architecture.

The images of June 25: a carefully constructed aesthetic of destruction

Military photography as an instrument of state propaganda

The photographs released by KCNA on June 26, 2026 showing Kim Jong Un during the previous day's tests are subject to systematic analysis by intelligence services worldwide. Every detail matters: the direction of Kim's gaze, the uniforms of the officers beside him, the type of equipment visible in the background, the insignia and decorations worn by participants. These images are at once propaganda for a domestic audience and coded messages aimed at external interlocutors.

What stands out in the June 25 series is the emphasis on the diversity of weapons systems tested — three distinct types of conventional armaments, covering different ranges and types of targets. It was not a single system that Pyongyang wanted to show, but a range — a demonstration of the depth and versatility of its arsenal. The message: we are not advancing on a single innovation; we are progressing on all fronts simultaneously.

Internal mobilization: a people imprisoned in its own propaganda

Beyond foreign policy, the June 25 tests serve an essential function domestically. In a country where economic deprivation is real and freedom of expression is entirely absent, military demonstrations serve as a substitute for prosperity and freedom. The manufactured national pride of the regime — "our leader has built missiles that the Americans fear" — is a powerful tool of social control that partially compensates for the absence of freedom and material well-being.

This instrumentalization of military pride for domestic control purposes is one of the most cynical elements of the Kim system. Ordinary North Koreans — those who lack electricity in winter, who cannot travel freely, who are sentenced to the gulag for watching South Korean dramas — derive no real benefit from these missiles. But they are encouraged to see them as their own collective achievement, as proof of their national worth.

Kim Jong Un and arms diplomacy: selling fear to buy survival

A state commerce built on information asymmetry

North Korea's arms diplomacy rests on a fundamental paradox: selling military capabilities to regimes that have no other supplier willing to do so. North Korea has built a monopolist position in certain niches of conventional armament — artillery shells, short-range ballistic missiles — for clients like Russia, Iran, and certain proxies who cannot buy from the West.

According to data compiled by Western intelligence services, North Korea has supplied Russia with millions of artillery shells since the start of the war in Ukraine. These transfers have allowed Moscow to maintain its firing rate despite the progressive depletion of its own stocks. For Kim Jong Un, it is a demonstration that his weapons program has strategic value that sanctions have failed to eliminate.

The prices and terms of these exchanges

The details of Iranian-North Korean and Russian-North Korean transactions remain largely opaque. According to available analyses, the terms of these exchanges include combinations of cash in currencies that bypass the SWIFT system, technical assistance, and possibly grain or energy within transactions that do not involve the U.S. dollar.

What Kim Jong Un most wants in return is what Russia can offer him: atmospheric re-entry technologies for his missiles, and nuclear-powered submarine technologies. Reports indicate that these technology transfers are taking place. If this equation is confirmed, Kim is buying with shells a substantial improvement of his strategic nuclear posture.

The tactical nuclear program: an immediate regional threat

Beyond ICBMs: nuclear miniaturization

Beyond the intercontinental missiles that threaten the United States, North Korea's tactical nuclear program represents a more immediate threat to the Korean Peninsula. Kim Jong Un has publicly declared that North Korea possesses miniaturized tactical nuclear weapons — warheads small enough to be mounted on short-range missiles or artillery systems. If this capability is real, it fundamentally changes the regional security equation.

South Korea has responded to this threat by strengthening its deterrence capabilities and deepening its security agreements with the United States and Japan. The deployment of THAAD systems on South Korean soil and the integration of American nuclear planning into bilateral agreements aim to offset this threat. But these measures carry a diplomatic cost: China views them as an encroachment of American power at its borders.

The American nuclear trilemma facing Pyongyang

The United States faces the "North Korean trilemma": deter Pyongyang from using its weapons, prevent their proliferation, and avoid a war that would devastate Seoul. These three objectives are in permanent tension. Any overly aggressive action risks provoking the very nuclear response it seeks to prevent. Any passivity risks signaling that proliferation is acceptable.

The axis of cooperation between Russia, Iran, and North Korea represents a structural threat to the international security order. If Russia transfers missile technologies to North Korea in exchange for shells, and if Iran benefits from North Korean technologies in exchange for drones, we are witnessing a circular proliferation architecture that circumvents Western control mechanisms.

Sanctions: a regime that erodes without ever bending Pyongyang

Two decades of sanctions — to what result?

The international sanctions regime against North Korea is one of the most extensive in the world. UN Security Council resolutions, American, European, and Japanese sanctions targeting the nuclear program — all of this has been in place for more than two decades. Yet North Korea has not only maintained but considerably expanded its weapons programs during this period.

This paradox is explained partly by China, North Korea's indispensable trading partner, which has always applied sanctions with strategic selectivity. Beijing does not want to see a North Korean regime collapse and create a crisis at its border. This implicit protection has provided Pyongyang with a buffer against the most devastating effects of the sanctions.

Russia blocks international monitoring

Increased cooperation with Russia since 2022 has provided Pyongyang with a new sanctions evasion channel. Russia blocked in 2024 the renewal of the UN panel of experts tasked with monitoring the implementation of North Korean sanctions. Without this oversight mechanism, sanctions violations become even harder to document and counter.

The North Korean regime has developed remarkable expertise in sanctions evasion: financial transactions through shell company networks in opaque jurisdictions, technology transfers via intermediaries, barter exchanges that bypass the international banking system. These mechanisms are documented by experts but difficult to completely dismantle.

The ordinary North Korean: a population held hostage to a dynastic regime

Twenty-five million people under the most total of dictatorships

Behind the geopolitical analyses and strategic calculations, there are 25 million North Koreans living under one of the most hermetic and brutal dictatorships in modern history. Kim Jong Un's regime maintains its population in near-total ignorance of global reality, using forced labor camps, public executions, and pervasive surveillance to crush any dissent.

Testimonies from defectors — those who have managed to flee North Korea — describe a system where simply possessing a USB drive with foreign content can lead to the camps. Where the entire family of a dissident can be imprisoned. Where millions of people suffer from chronic malnutrition while the regime invests colossal resources in its nuclear and ballistic programs.

The moral question the West avoids

There is a question that strategic analyses often avoid addressing directly: in the name of regional stability, the West has tacitly accepted leaving 25 million North Koreans in the grip of a criminal regime. Regime change attempts are deemed too risky. Sanctions penalize the population as much as the regime. Diplomacy has produced no results on human rights.

This uncomfortable moral equation deserves to be named. Kim Jong Un is not only a strategic threat — he is the jailer of millions of people who have asked nothing of anyone. Every policy toward Pyongyang should integrate this human dimension, even if the tools to address it are limited. International indifference to North Korean living conditions is also a form of complicity.

Conclusion: A chiaroscuro portrait of a real threat

What June 25, 2026 tells us about the man and his ambitions

The June 25, 2026 tests are, in their way, a complete summary of Kim Jong Un's political project. A project resting on three pillars: destructive capacity as a survival guarantee; the permanent staging of that capacity as a deterrence and legitimization tool; and the use of the memory of war as ideological fuel to keep an entire nation in a state of perpetual mobilization. These three pillars reinforce each other and constitute a power architecture that has demonstrated, over fifteen years, a remarkable resilience.

Kim Jong Un is not mad. He is not irrational in the sense of acting against his own survival interests. He is, however, profoundly dangerous — precisely because he calculates coldly, understands the logic of deterrence, and is prepared to impose on millions of people — his own and his neighbors' — the cost of that strategy. It is a chiaroscuro portrait, and the shadow far outweighs the light.

The world's responsibility in the face of this reality

The challenge that Kim Jong Un poses for the international community has no easy or quick solution. It requires a combination of credible deterrence maintained by regional allies and the United States, diplomatic channels kept open even in the absence of any immediate hope of progress, support for North Korean populations through information flows and humanitarian aid where possible, and analytical vigilance that refuses to treat Pyongyang as a folkloristic geopolitical curiosity. Kim Jong Un is a serious actor in a serious world — and ignoring him or caricaturing him are luxuries that democracies cannot afford.

Signed Maxime Marquette, columnist

Columnist's transparency box

My biases and my perspective

This profile is built from open sources: dispatches from Reuters, Yonhap Agency, the Associated Press, Chosun Biz, and ISW reports. I do not have access to classified intelligence on North Korea — nobody outside a small number of governments does. My analysis is therefore necessarily partial, constructed from what the regime chooses to show and the inferences that can be drawn from it.

My declared bias: I consider the North Korean regime one of the most brutal forms of tyranny in the contemporary world, depriving an entire population of fundamental freedoms while devoting immense resources to a weapons program serving the ruling family's interests. This bias does not prevent me from analyzing the strategic logic of this regime with objectivity — understanding is not approving. What I refuse is to reduce Kim Jong Un to a comic caricature, because caricatured threats do not generate appropriate policy responses.

What I don't know

I don't know with certainty what real technical capabilities the systems tested on June 25, 2026 actually represent — KCNA declarations are not independently verifiable and may contain exaggerations. I don't know whether the Russian-North Korean technology transfers have genuinely produced the guidance improvements claimed. I don't know what Kim Jong Un genuinely thinks of his alliance with Putin, nor what its real limits are. These uncertainties are inherent in any attempt to analyze the most closed state in the world.

My method: cross-referencing available open sources, identifying convergences between accounts from different sources, explicitly flagging when I am advancing a hypothesis rather than an established fact, and refusing to invent facts to fill the gaps left by North Korean opacity. If information in this profile proves inaccurate, I will correct it publicly.

Sources

Primary sources

US News/Reuters — North Korean Leader Kim Oversees Weapons Tests, KCNA Reports — June 25, 2026

Associated Press — North Korea's Kim calls for 'deadly and destructive' military posture — June 26, 2026

Chosun Biz — Kim Jong-un marks June 25 with tests, orders rapid upgrade of strike systems — June 26, 2026

Yonhap News — N. Korea tests key weapons seen as aimed at S. Korea — June 25, 2026

Secondary sources

YouTube/Reuters — Kim Jong Un Oversees Weapons Tests on Korean War Anniversary — June 26, 2026

ISW — Russian Offensive Campaign Assessment, June 23, 2026 (North Korea-Russia context) — June 23, 2026

Al Jazeera — Regional context and Iran-Russia-North Korea axis — June 24, 2026