North Korea Cannot Change: From Cluster Munitions to Female Succession

The same symbolic and developmental structures that shape the regime’s use of force also limit its capacity to transform from within.

[AI translation in Hebrew and Portuguese at nancyharteveltkobrin. substack 21.04.26]

Recent reports that North Korea has again tested ballistic missiles equipped with cluster-munition warheads—designed to disperse multiple submunitions across a wide area—are not merely technical events. They are reminders of the kind of system we are dealing with: one in which the organization of force, authority, and control is tightly fused and resistant to transformation.

It is this development that turns attention, once again, to North Korea—not only as a military actor, but as a psychological and symbolic system. The question is not simply what the regime does, but how it is structured to reproduce itself.

In this context, Mitch Shin’s insightful essay, North Korea not ready for a female successor, argues that North Korea is not structurally ready for a female successor, despite the growing visibility of Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae—a name that connotes “beloved” or “cherished.” He is right to emphasise the institutional, cultural and elite constraints that would make such a transition difficult. As he notes, the system itself “was never built to receive her.” Yet these constraints can also be understood at a deeper level.

North Korea can be situated along a broader spectrum of honour–shame systems in which authority is closely tied to masculine embodiment, lineage and control. In such systems, gender is not merely a social role but a symbolic structure. Authority is associated with the paternal, while the maternal—though foundational—is minimised in public representation. North Korea represents an intensified form of this pattern.

What is often described as “cultural” is, at a deeper level, symbolic—rooted in early developmental structures that culture later expresses but does not fully explain.

This creates a deeper tension. Leadership in North Korea is not only political; it is also symbolic. Authority is embodied. It is performed through continuity with a paternal line that confers legitimacy. The question, therefore, is not simply whether elites would accept a woman, but whether the symbolic order of the regime can sustain authority in a form that departs from this deeply embedded pattern.

What appears as patriarchy in North Korea is not merely a social or institutional preference for male leadership. It is the outward expression of a deeper symbolic order in which authority is tied to paternal continuity and cannot easily be transferred into a different form.

At the same time, a striking feature of the current succession imagery is the configuration itself: the repeated public pairing of father and daughter. The mother is notably absent. This is not a trivial omission. The maternal, which is central in early development, is displaced at the level of representation and replaced by a direct symbolic link between paternal authority and the child. The result is a closed circuit of power in which the maternal function is structurally excluded rather than integrated.

At this point, a developmental perspective becomes relevant. The earliest bond between infant and caregiver—typically the mother—is the period in which the foundations of mental life are established. During the first years of life, the brain is effectively being “built,” not unlike the motherboard of a computer on which all later processing depends. As Paul Holinger, M.D., has observed, the child must integrate three systems of information processing: feelings, cognition (thinking) and language. These are inherently uneven—“messy”—processes.

When this integration is successful, emotional experience can be thought about, named and communicated. When it is not, the result may be mistranslation—feelings that are intense but poorly understood or insufficiently linked to thought and language. Such conditions can give rise to heightened sensitivity to threat, rigidity and a preference for highly controlled forms of authority.

It is striking how often political analysis ignores this formative period. Perhaps this is because it is so closely tied to the maternal, which can evoke conflicting unconscious feelings of dependency and vulnerability, and is therefore frequently minimised in public discourse despite its central role in shaping the mind. Yet even the most powerful leaders were once infants formed within these early relational environments.

These dynamics are not unique to North Korea. Variations can be observed across a range of societies. What differs is the degree of intensity. North Korea represents an extreme case in which symbolic, familial and political authority are tightly fused.

A Korean proverb holds that “a child who is raised with care will repay it a hundredfold.” The insight is simple but profound: early formation shapes later conduct.

In this context, the emergence of a potential female successor introduces more than a question of gender representation. It raises the issue of whether authority can be embodied differently without destabilising the symbolic foundations of the regime.

If Kim Jong-un intends to advance his daughter as a successor, these tensions cannot be resolved through symbolic gestures alone.

The form of the weapon is also revealing. Cluster munitions are designed to disperse—to fragment a single strike into many smaller impacts across a wide area. They multiply effects, extend reach, and blur boundaries. This is not a comparison to individual acts of violence, but it does point to a shared logic: aggression organized in dispersed form rather than contained and integrated.

The same principle appears within the regime itself. What cannot be integrated is projected outward.

Shin’s analysis rightly identifies the structural barriers to a female successor. Extending that analysis to include the symbolic and developmental dimensions clarifies why those barriers persist. North Korea does not simply resist change. It is organized against it.

The maternal is not absent. It is excluded.