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Kim Jong Un takes power

2011

When Kim Jong Il died in December 2011, his young son Kim Jong Un became North Korea's supreme leader, the third generation of the Kim family to rule. He purged rivals and sped up the nuclear and missile programs.

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The story

Kim Jong Il died on December 17, 2011, and within two weeks his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, was named supreme commander of the armed forces; party and state titles followed in 2012. Believed to be in his late twenties, he had been publicly introduced only in 2010. Many outside observers expected a weak figurehead, but he quickly consolidated control, purging senior generals and, in December 2013, executing his own uncle, Jang Song Thaek, once seen as the regime's second most powerful man. In 2017 his elder half brother, Kim Jong Nam, was killed with VX nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur airport.

Kim Jong Un's power rested on the hereditary system his grandfather built under Juche and on the nuclear program his father had started. He accelerated missile and nuclear testing, and in 2017 North Korea launched an intercontinental missile, the Hwasong-15, able to reach the U.S. mainland. He then met President Donald Trump in Singapore in 2018 and Hanoi in 2019, the first meetings between a sitting U.S. president and a North Korean leader, though talks produced no lasting deal. In 2024 he sent troops to help Russia in its war against Ukraine.

Why it mattered

North Korea became a declared nuclear power with missiles that can reach the United States.
The first U.S.-North Korea summits took place in 2018 and 2019.
A military alliance with Russia brought North Korean troops into a European war for the first time.

Sources

Kim Jong-Un Britannica
History of North Korea Britannica

Drafted by AI (Claude) from the sources above and checked against them by AI; no historian has reviewed this page. Spot a mistake? Suggest a correction. How pages are made

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At a glance

When: December 2011
Where: Pyongyang, North Korea
Key people: Kim Jong Un (supreme leader of North Korea)
Kim Jong Il (his father, died 2011)
Jang Song Thaek (uncle, executed 2013)
Donald Trump (U.S. president who met Kim in 2018 and 2019)

3rdgeneration of the Kim family to rule

2017first ICBM able to reach the whole U.S. mainland

436earlier events it rests on

0later events that depend on it

Couldn't have happened without

Kim Il Sung's rule and the Juche ideology1955

EssentialThe Kim cult made the leadership hereditary, so the succession passed by blood to Kim Jong Un.

North Korea's first nuclear test2006

ImportantHe inherited a working nuclear program and made expanding it the core of his rule.

Led to

Nothing on this timeline builds on it directly yet.

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