Also, I know he was Western-educated. Is the plan to send her to school in Europe?
You can send your children abroad if you have never released pictures publicly. His daughter has been in the media so much that it is now impossible for her to be sent abroad discreetely.
In his book Dictator's Handbook [1], de Mesquita explains that transitions from one leader to another is risky because the folks that help keep the leaders in power (e.g., military, and specific persons there-in) may not know if they'll be kept around by the new leader. The new leader may wish to bring in their own people who would be more 'grateful' to them for raising their position.
By indicating things early, everyone can build a 'rapport' with her, and everyone becomes comfortable that the status quo (which everyone at the top is benefiting from) will continue.
That makes it a tricky question because it leaves the definition of dictator up to our interpretation. However, there have been female dictators in history that were dictators with less ambiguity.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wu_Zetian
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catherine_the_Great
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isabel_Perón
The question of communism is also largely one of interpretation. If you ask someone who sees communism in a good light, there has never been a true communist state. If you ask anyone else, there isn’t a distinction between communism and repressive dictatorship.
This can't be the standard for whether we call someone a dictator. Similarly Stalin held no government title through the 1930s. Would you say it's hard to say whether he was a dictator because he was officially just a party secretary?
Check out the three dictators I linked. That’s interesting!
I think requiring the title of dictator is not how the term is being used these days, on our side of the late Roman republic. It's more of a duck-typing situation now.
I think it's safe to assume the original comment meant it that way.
Warning: this is in my mental list of "things to good to check" so it may or may not be true.
Whether if this is true or not, this speculation isn't "news" unless it is 100% confirmed through various sources. The fact that the South Korea spy agency is the only (unconfirmed) source; there is only quite weak evidence to go with and it remains to be only rumors at this point.
In general, It is completely off-topic here as per the guidelines from [0]
> Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, or celebrities, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon. Videos of pratfalls or disasters, or cute animal pictures. If they'd cover it on TV news, it's probably off-topic.
Since it's the worst dictatorship with nuclear weapons, I guess it's going to take centuries if ever for them to fall
So much suffering there, the stories they get out are absolutely insane
And of course the nighttime lighting sat view says it all about the people vs their oligarchs
Only a couple, they've just been "executed" several times.
jihadjihad•56m ago
Man, I had forgotten all about Rodman and his North Korean antics.