New Year, Same Old Fog

The endless analysis of the first televised New Year's address by Kim Jong-un means that whoever wrote it achieved his or her aim. Here's some more. The take away: 

Scholars such as Patrick McEachern, the author of Inside the Red Box: North Korea’s Post-Totalitarian Politics, are right to assume that much about North Korea has rusted heavily since the 1970s when, as Suh notes, Kim Il-sung fully consolidated what could legitimately be called his totalitarian rule over North Korea. However, arguably less has changed than many scholars seem keen to believe, and this is why all it takes is a KCNA article to send US policymakers to the bar, and a rhetorically fluffy New Year’s address to get every journalist from London to Lima reaching for the reset button just 19 days after the launch of Gwangmyungsung-3.