The Unfunny Dictator
On 14 October 2024, the President of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, announced in his address the de facto involvement of North Korea in the war against Ukraine on the side of the Russian Federation. The fact that the Russian occupation army has been actively using ammunition supplied by North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un to Russian dictator Putin for some time now is no secret to anyone. North Korean missiles are striking not only the front lines but also Ukrainian cities in the rear, and despite their poor assembly quality, they still damage Ukrainian infrastructure and cause civilian casualties. Now, it seems, parts of the Ukrainian Armed Forces (UAF) will have to face not only North Korean weapons but also live forces, which neither Kim Jong Un nor, indeed, Putin will spare in their pursuit of criminal goals.
As Volodymyr Zelensky pointed out in his statement: "Among the main issues was an intelligence report from the Foreign Intelligence Service and the Defence Intelligence of Ukraine regarding Russian plans for the autumn and winter. Everything was quite detailed. The de facto inclusion of North Korea in the war. Also, Russia's relations with certain other countries that, unfortunately, are investing in prolonging the war."
Earlier, ISW analysts reported that several thousand soldiers from North Korea were being trained in Russia and might be used on the front lines against Ukraine. In early October, following a missile strike by the Ukrainian Armed Forces on the outskirts of temporarily occupied Donetsk, it was revealed that among the 20 Russian military personnel killed, six were North Korean officers.
All this is directly related to the results of the first visit in 24 years of Putin's rule to North Korea, which took place in June 2024, during which Putin and Kim Jong Un signed a treaty on "comprehensive strategic partnership" between Moscow and Pyongyang (the bill for the ratification of this treaty was submitted to the State Duma by Putin on 14 October 2024). Later, the war criminal Vladimir Putin himself stated that the treaty provides for mutual assistance in the event of aggression against one of the parties. Kim Jong Un noted that the treaty is "peaceful and defensive" and involves cooperation in the fields of economics, politics, and military affairs.
No one in the world should harbour illusions about the "peacefulness" of Kim Jong Un, the leader of North Korea, which acts as a Chinese proxy regime to destabilise the region, fulfilling essentially the same functions as Putin in Eastern Europe or Hezbollah for Iran.
According to the head of the Centre for Countering Disinformation under the National Security and Defence Council (NSDC), Lieutenant Andriy Kovalenko, if North Korea fully enters the war on the side of the Russian fascist regime, NATO's eastern borders, particularly the Baltic states, could face the threat of invasion:
"If democracies turn a blind eye to North Korea's potential full-scale entry into the war on Russia's side, Moscow will begin preparing and accumulating resources for an attack on NATO countries in the next 4-6 years," warned the head of the NSDC.
South Korea is also under threat, as tensions between the countries continue to rise: on 15 October, North Korea blew up sections of inter-Korean road and rail lines on its side of the border. This step underscores the growing tension between the North and South, which has escalated amid accusations that North Korea violated airspace with drones and sent troops to Russia's army.
And while the leaders of NATO countries take the threat seriously, ordinary European and American citizens view the North Korean regime through the lens of pop culture, with its characteristic irony and the dilution of the image of a bloodthirsty psychopathic dictator into a comical figure in memes and funny social media reels.
"Doughnut," "Pudgy," and "Kimchi" – these are some of the cute nicknames given to the North Korean dictator by internet users. However, it's not just them who tend to make light of Moscow and Beijing's deadly ally. Donald Trump, during his presidency, called him "Rocket Man" in 2017 – for obvious reasons. Kim's aggressive militaristic rhetoric towards his sworn enemies, South Korea, as well as Japan and the USA, mirrors Putin's rhetoric, another Chinese vassal, and is built on constant nuclear escalation threats and endless ballistic missile tests, with which North Korea tries to intimidate its neighbours in the Asia-Pacific region. However, the social media response to Trump's pun was predictably flippant. The height of reflection by Western citizens came in the form of Elton John's track "Rocket Man," paired with a video montage of photos and clips of the North Korean "doughnut."
Like other dictators before him, from Saddam Hussein ("Hot Shots") to Adolf Hitler ("The Great Dictator," "Jojo Rabbit"), Kim Jong Un has been the subject of satire and ridicule. However, the fundamental principle of such films is not comedic – if you're laughing at evil, it means it's powerless and defeated. In the case of Kim, the situation is somewhat different – few in Europe and the USA (except for paranoid conspiracy theorist Elon Musk) are seriously frightened by the nuclear threats of the North Korean leader – instead of a dangerous maniac with a nuclear club, everyone sees a comical fat man with a ridiculous haircut and an ill-fitting suit. This lack of seriousness towards Kim is confirmed by his popularity on TikTok, where videos of North Korean newsreels from KCNA with funny voiceovers are just as numerous as those featuring pets or cooking tutorials.
And in late spring 2024, after Kim Jong Un declared that the North would no longer seek reunification with the South, which had now become "enemy number one" (rumours suggest that Pyongyang even dismantled the Arch of Reunification, which symbolised the shared past of the two Koreas), the North Korean propaganda track in the synth-pop genre titled Benevolent Father took TikTok by storm. Dedicated, of course, to Comrade Kim. This track, one of hundreds of totalitarian "hits" released in North Korea over the past half-century, gained popularity on social media thanks to its upbeat and catchy melody. Naturally, none of the listeners paid any attention to the song's lyrics, let alone its political context. However, experts on North Korea noted an important and troubling shift in the narratives of Korean songs, which, like any other form of art in North Korea, serve as a vehicle for state ideology.
According to Alexandra Leonzini, a Cambridge scholar studying North Korean music, subtle yet significant changes in meaning, important to Asian culture but unnoticed by Western eyes, occurred in the lyrics that call for "praising the great leader and benevolent father." Kim Jong Un, previously referred to as the "Great Successor," is now called the "Great Father"—the popular title of his late grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the first ruler of North Korea. This reflects the strengthening image of the supreme leader, bolstered by his increasingly hostile rhetoric towards the outside world, the buildup of military capabilities, and the formation of military alliances with other global dictatorships.
"Songs are used to mark the direction in which the state is moving, to highlight important moments and significant events in politics," says Alexandra Leonzini.
Following a similar path in creating propagandist chauvinistic "hits" is Putin's Russia, where the singer Shaman has become the main voice of ideology in pop culture with his song I Am Russian and other "masterpieces" that in both visuals and lyrics mimic the aesthetics of the Third Reich.
It's also worth noting that the North Korean communist propaganda hit about the "benevolent father" went viral on a Chinese app, which American lawmakers are still struggling to block. Another worrying signal amid the growing confrontation between the coalition of the new "Axis of Evil" and the democratic world.
Another fact characterising the "benevolent father" and the "funny doughnut" Kim Jong Un is the story of the creation and release of the 2014 American comedy The Interview by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg. The film tells the story of a talk show host and his producer who discover that the leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un, is a fan of their show and decide to interview him. The CIA gets involved, wanting to use the showmen to assassinate the North Korean dictator with a ricin patch during a handshake. The plot unfolds in a classic Seth Rogen style with a series of gags and absurd situations with homoerotic undertones.
However, the film itself isn't particularly interesting, as it fails to deliver not only as political satire but also as absurdist humour, unlike the previously mentioned Hot Shots by Abrahams and the Zucker brothers. What's intriguing are its consequences for the producer, Sony Pictures Entertainment, which, after the film's release and protests from North Korean diplomats, suffered a powerful hacker attack that brought down the company's entire network, leading to mass file deletions and the erasure of source codes. This sparked significant debate in Hollywood circles about censorship, freedom of speech, and the dictatorship of totalitarianism. However, the fact remains that the future "benevolent father" likely watched The Interview and found it offensive. Given that dictators' appetite for violence and aggression grows each year, it's unlikely that Western audiences will see another satirical film, even one as weak and toothless as Rogen and Goldberg's The Interview, anytime soon. Kim Jong Un is no longer a caricatured dictator—he is now, albeit indirectly, through Putin, starting a real war, flexing his muscles and preparing for the next round of his own "special military operation" on the Korean Peninsula.
Israeli military analyst Yigal Levin believes that from President Zelensky's statement, we can start the countdown to a new stage of the Ukrainian war, now against two nuclear powers—Russia and North Korea, as well as Iran, which supplies missiles and "Shahed" drones, and by extension, China, which stands behind all its proxy regimes. "Is this still a Russia-Ukraine war, or is the broader outline of this conflict increasingly taking the shape of a world war? Or not?" Levin asks.
The analyst believes that how this war is recorded in history depends on its outcome, as we know the victors write history. It could either be remembered as David's struggle against a multi-headed nuclear Goliath, should the war end in Ukraine's favour, or as a local "internal Russian civil conflict" if fascist Russia succeeds. Therefore, the primary task of any citizen of the free democratic world must be to provide comprehensive support and assistance to Ukraine, which is fighting an unequal battle against dictatorships emboldened by impunity, to ensure that modern history is not written within the framework of the monstrous distorted reality of Moscow, Beijing, Pyongyang, and Tehran.