@article{ART003330140},
author={KIMYUNHEE},
title={Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being},
journal={Asia Review},
issn={2234-0386},
year={2026},
volume={16},
number={1},
pages={43-103}
TY - JOUR
AU - KIMYUNHEE
TI - Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being
JO - Asia Review
PY - 2026
VL - 16
IS - 1
PB - 아시아연구소
SP - 43
EP - 103
SN - 2234-0386
AB - This study redefines Kim Jong-un's tears—which the media has highlighted and consumed, yet academia has either dismissed or failed to establish as an independent object of analysis—as an independent governing signifier, and comprehensively examines both the leader's existential crisis and the structural suffering of the community. Just as the saying goes, ‘the entire universe is reflected in a single drop of water,’ the researcher discovers the mechanism of the “solitary self” and suffocation (apsal 壓殺) in Kim Jong-un's tears. This study reinterprets Kim Jong-un's tears not as a deliberate power strategy or an expression of narcissism, but as an existential symptom erupting at the threshold of solitude and crisis, and introduces the concept of the "solitary self" as an analytical framework for understanding this phenomenon. Furthermore, it defines suffocation (apsal 壓殺) as the essence of structural violence that penetrates Kim Jong-un's solitude and tears, and the tears of the people that resonate with them.
Kim Jong-un's “solitary self” is shaped through the interaction of multiple structural, political, and biographical factors. First, his concealed birth and absence of peer relationships resulted in relational poverty and deformed socialization. Second, the vulnerability of his maternal bloodline and the absence of legitimacy as ‘an existence unknown to Kim Il-sung’ inscribed the structural fragility of the Paektu bloodline hereditary system and led to obsessive authority-seeking. Third, the deification process within the Suryeong dictatorship system replaced the human Kim Jong-un with the dictator Kim Jong-un, causing personality alienation. Fourth, the destruction of human bonds through purges paradoxically transformed family into his sole emotional refuge, functioning as the mechanism of family politics. Fifth, as international sanctions and isolation caused the simultaneous collapse of survival foundations for both state and people, the community faced suffocation (apsal 壓殺). Suffocation is a form of structural violence in which external suffocation (‘drying to death’) through international sanctions and isolation and internal suffocation (‘crushing to death’) through surveillance, control, oppression, and fear operate simultaneously within the structure of the division system, driving the entire community into a state of total withering (gosa 枯死). This structurally deepened Kim Jong-un's solitude.
Kim Jong-un's tears signify both a moment of human rupture at the limits of structural isolation and a new mode of affective politics through which a regime that has lost the universal material redistribution function of the Kim Il-sung era seeks emotional resonance with the populace. Tears shed by the leader in official settings instantly become collective lamentation, reverberating as a shared communal pain, through which individual suffering under international isolation and systemic oppression is sublimated into a national narrative. In this sense, the leader's tears function as a sacred seal bestowed upon the people's harsh time of survival, and as the culmination of a collective ritual through which the community confirms that its sacrifices have not been in vain. This study defines the resonance of tears between leader and people as both an affective energy that sustains the regime in place of bankrupt ideology, and as North Korea's distinctive tragic mechanism of restoration that fills the regime's material limits with psychological solidarity.
This study treats the dictator not as an object of moral condemnation but of analytical understanding. His contradiction-being compelled to forfeit his humanity through deification-exposes the mechanism by which political systems consume the individual. In this sense, the question is not merely how humans wield power, but how power alienates the human subject.
KW - Solitary Self;Suffocation(Apsal 壓殺);Isolation;Division;Suryeong Dictatorship;Purge;Tears;Affective Politics.
DO -
UR -
ER -
KIMYUNHEE. (2026). Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being. Asia Review, 16(1), 43-103.
KIMYUNHEE. 2026, "Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being", Asia Review, vol.16, no.1 pp.43-103.
KIMYUNHEE "Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being" Asia Review 16.1 pp.43-103 (2026) : 43.
KIMYUNHEE. Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being. 2026; 16(1), 43-103.
KIMYUNHEE. "Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being" Asia Review 16, no.1 (2026) : 43-103.
KIMYUNHEE. Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being. Asia Review, 16(1), 43-103.
KIMYUNHEE. Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being. Asia Review. 2026; 16(1) 43-103.
KIMYUNHEE. Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being. 2026; 16(1), 43-103.
KIMYUNHEE. "Why Does Absolute Ruler Kim Jong-un Cry So Often?: Existential Crisis and Emotional Dynamics of an Isolated Being" Asia Review 16, no.1 (2026) : 43-103.
