"....the new leader must approach the final tasks in his grandfather’s to-do list, as impossible as they may seem from an outsider’s perspective: drastic economic growth and national reunification. Perhaps we can discount the rumor — reported in 2010 — that internal Workers’ Party memorandums have described unification as a requisite for prosperity, because in the latest official New Year’s editorial, at least, reunification is thought possible in the near future only if the enemy “dares to infringe upon our dignity and sovereignty.”
Even so, there is no reason to assume that the government’s interest in economic matters will reduce tension on the peninsula. Judging from the stale voluntarism espoused in North Korea this month — the same old calls to emulate this or that heroic factory, to make better use of available resources and so on — Kim Jong-un will not be advocating any significant reforms. Whether North Korea continues muddling along on Chinese life support, or grows fast enough to start resembling South Korea circa 1980, the military-first government must still justify its separate existence alongside the rival state.
How can it do this, except through more displays of military strength and superiority? When the new leadership vaunts its adherence to the old leadership’s policies, it is merely trying to make a virtue out of necessity."
