The Ultimate National Hero

"[North Korean scientists and workers would continue manufacturing] more latest weapons and equipment [to] bolster up the nuclear force in quality and quantity."
"[Medals awarded to] those in the field of defense science who most faithfully and perfectly carried out the Party’s plan for building strategic nuclear force, successfully test-fired ICBM Hwasong-15 and thus demonstrated the dignity and might of our powerful state all over the world once again."
North Korean Leader Kim Jong Un 

"He solemnly declared that the development of new strategic weapon systems including A-bomb, H-bomb and ICBM Hwasong-15 with indigenous efforts and technology and the realization of the great cause of completing the state nuclear force serve as a great historic victory of our Party and people of the country."
North Korean state media 

"We have never heard of him killing scientists. He is someone who understands that trial and error are part of doing science."
Choi Hyunkyoo, senior researcher, NK Tech, South Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un claps during a celebration for nuclear scientists and engineers who contributed to a hydrogen bomb test. North Korea/Korean Central News Agency KCNA Photo: Reuters

If any group within North Korea can be viewed as hugely privileged, beside the military elite who humble themselves urgently before the imperial orders of His Royal Eminence Kim, it appears to be the very industrious, skilled scientific engineers and technicians of the country whose exploits in swiftly refining and perfecting advanced rocketry and miniaturizing nuclear devices have amazed the outside world.

This select group of the blessed within the hermit kingdom are known by such sobriquets as "nuclear duo"  and "missile quartet", identifying their specific specialties, having succeeded in building an intercontinental ballistic missile that seems able to strike any city in the United States. An achievement of which the Kim regime is extraordinarily proud, enhancing its agenda to awe and threaten.

World-class threat to the world order as he is, Kim Jong Un has shocked the international community on many counts, not the least of which is the startlingly unexpected capacity of his scientists to excel in short order in the level of advanced technology they appear to have mastered. He has also shocked the global community by his penchant of casually ordering the gruesome murders of those who have displeased him, irrespective of how secure they might seem to be in the regime's elite order.

The mastermind behind North Korea's missile program has been revealed as middle-aged scientist Kim Jong-sik

The ruthless dictator has reserved a special place for scientists, honouring and presenting them as national heroes. Their engineering and physics breakthroughs represent startling feats of accomplishment that outsiders find it difficult to credit, yet the proof is there, in every advanced rocket blast and nuclear test, each of which demonstrates the North's capacity to forge ahead, disturbingly and with bellicose emphasis.

For a country viewed as impoverished with the spectre of yet more famines looming over the populace, imprisoned in a country that values its ability to extort and threaten other nations, each new exploit accompanied by photographs exhibiting their celebrity and celebratory value to a 33-year-old man whose behaviour seems more indicative of that of a mentally maladjusted teen with unimaginable state power, propels the North deeper into its agenda and the world into a perpetual state of bated breath.

Posters are placed everywhere showing the state's rockets as they soar into the atmosphere to crash into Washington. Ri Hong-sop, director of North Korea's Nuclear Weapons Institute, is on the United Nations blacklist and alongside him in the "nuclear duo" is the former chief engineer of the Yongbyon complex, site of the nuclear weapons program. As for the "missile quartet", the president of the Academy of National Defense Science and a former air force commander serving as first deputy director of the ruling Workers' Party Munitions industry department are two of the four.

Each of the scientists in the North's double program of rocketry and nuclear device is seen as indispensable to the nation, heroes extraordinaire. And their official status as valuable, protected and promoted has the deep gratitude and favour of their leader. They are, however, wholly subservient to Kim, surrendering credit for whatever it is they advance in technology to Kim's credit; their successful achievements are his, entirely, as the star of the North's nuclear weapons program.