What Do North Koreans Think About Kim Jong Un?

Kim Jong-un will only visit places to close to Pyongyang that have been heavily vetted in advance of the leader's arrival

Washington Post: What do North Koreans think about Kim Jong Un? This survey tries to find out.

TOKYO — What do North Koreans think about their leaders? It’s an impossible question to answer, given that North Korea is a totalitarian state where professing anything other than wholehearted adulation for the Kim regime could land a person in a political prison camp — or worse.

For years, researchers in Seoul have been trying to collect data on North Korean thought by conducting surveys of people who have escaped from the police state and made it to safety in South Korea.

But now a new project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, is trying to poll North Koreans who still live in North Korea.

“This gives us a window into what the average North Korean citizen is thinking,” said Victor D. Cha, chair of Korea studies at CSIS, who runs the “Beyond Parallel” project dedicated to Korean unification. “This is the first time we’re hearing directly from people inside the country.”

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WNU Editor: The sample size is only 36 people.

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