From Infallibility to Managed Fallibility: Natural Disasters as a Turning Point in Authoritarian North Korea

This article examines how natural disaster management has become a key site of authoritarian adaptation in North Korea under Kim Jong-un. Natural disasters generate immediate and visible damage that is difficult to conceal and politically costly to ignore. Under these conditions, the long-standing doctrine of the supreme leader's infallibility has become increasingly difficult to sustain. Since 2020, Kim Jong-un has adopted an approach to crisis management by selectively acknowledging disasters, ranging from flooding to the COVID-19 outbreak, while portraying himself as a decisive and compassionate problem-solver. These acknowledgments are carefully staged and accompanied by state-based remedies and controlled narratives. Using the concept of controlled transparency, this article argues that North Korea is experimenting with a hybrid governance model that conditionally incorporates elements of spin dictatorship within a highly repressive political system. Based on qualitative analysis of North Korean state media, leadership texts, and historical materials, this study shows that the strategy is neither a departure from authoritarian control nor a continuation of past practices. Instead, it reflects a calibrated adaptation to structural pressures, including heightened climate vulnerability, expanding information flows, and changing constraints on regime legitimacy. Natural disasters emerge as a distinctive policy domain in which limited acknowledgment becomes manageable, allowing the regime to convert fallibility into demonstrations of leadership competence. By situating North Korea's disaster governance within debates on authoritarian resilience and narrative control, this article contributes to comparative discussions of how authoritarian regimes manage visibility, vulnerability, and legitimacy when sustained denial is no longer viable.