When North Korea prompts another standoff with the South or executes an official, most of the world unites in its condemnation of Kim Jong Un’s government.

Whatever one thinks of the moral dimensions of the Supreme Leader’s actions, though, observers offering policy advice on how to deal with the regime must ask whether or not said actions have a logic. As has been said many, many times, Kim Jong Un is young, with little political experience prior to his father’s death. His actions, whether raising tensions after South Korea inaugurated President Park Geun-hye in early 2013, to purging his uncle later that year, are consistently portrayed as meant to solidify his rule.