There is grim method in the apparent madness of the dynastic Kim family leadership

How has the North Korean regime survived for so long? It is one of the most enduring puzzles in international relations. By rights this predatory, merciless dictatorship, established by Kim Il-sung at the end of the Second World War, when the Korean peninsula was divided into two, should have been consigned to history years ago, an unlamented casualty of the Cold War. Yet the hermit kingdom seems to carry on regardless. Now yet another American president, Donald Trump, is trying to swat this nuclear-tipped fly. And like all his predecessors, he is learning fast that this particular issue defies all the normal conventions of foreign affairs.

After all, the country of the Kims shares most of the characteristics of Ceausescu’s Romania, Mobutu’s Congo (or Zaire) and Hoxha’s Albania, to name but a few. These despotisms are all long gone – yet the same ruling family still lords it over North Korea. In more recent times corrupt and bloody dictatorships have been brought low in Tunisia, Egypt and Libya; even in Myanmar the generals have (half-)packed it in. Kim Jong-il, the “Dear Leader”, father of the current president Kim Jong-un, was at least as weird as Gaddafi and as corrupt as Mubarak, yet when he died at the end of 2012 many North Koreans seemed genuinely tearful. The succession to his obscure, pimply son, who looked as if he had spent most of his brief life preparing for his new role in a burger bar, was perfectly smooth and orderly.