How Kim Jong-un’s childhood left North Korea leader a prisoner in his OWN dictatorship

The ex-Foreign Secretary said the young dictator’s rise to power means he will refuse to give up Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons.

Kim, 33, initially struggled to cement his authority after replacing his late father Kim Jong-il as North Korea‘s Supreme Leader in 2011.

And he is now terrified that “dismantling” the brutal regime could see him assassinated or tried for crimes against humanity, Lord Hague warned.

The Tory peer said: “Born the third son of Kim Jong-il, he has always faced a choice of getting absolute power for himself or facing the dire consequences of not doing so. 

“He had to manoeuvre to ensure he was preferred by his father to the eldest son, and then, on his father’s death, consolidate his initially shaky authority. 

“Had he failed to do either of these things, he could easily have faced the same grisly end he meted out to much of his family, anywhere in the world – his half-brother was killed by his agents in Malaysia earlier this year.”

Writing in the Telegraph, Lord Hague added: “Having seized absolute power, he is, like many dictators, a prisoner of it. 

“If he relaxed his grip domestically, he could easily be assassinated, particularly given his apparent taste for executing people with flamethrowers or hungry dogs. 

“Abroad, a UN inquiry recommended he be held accountable for crimes against humanity. 

“The option of ‘doing a Gorbachev’ and dismantling a totalitarian system to international applause is not available to him if he wants to be anywhere other than in a prison or a grave.

“Now in his mid-30s, he wants a long life and staying in power for decades will seem the only way of achieving that.”

Lord Hague also suggested the tyrant could spark a devastating nuclear war if tensions between Pyongyang and the US keep rising.

He said: “There are no sanctions that will deter him… necessary as they are to demonstrate international disapproval.

“Nor will threatening ‘fire and fury’ or saying ‘talking is not the answer’ as President Trump did, because Kim will calculate that the US will not start a war that could be so catastrophic all round and the stronger he gets the less likely they will be to do so.”

“It would be worth the White House asking China if they are doing everything possible, with their vast intelligence-gathering power in the Asia Pacific region, to find any network helping North Korea to defy the rest of the planet.

“In the absence of that, or some other initiative from Beijing to stop the progress of Kim’s plans, the world will need to move from preventing his nuclear aspirations to containing them.”

“That it will have come to this, opening up a new cold war in the East, will hold lessons for everyone… For the UK, that giving up our nuclear deterrent when proliferation happens so quickly would be utter madness.

“For the United States, that it is indeed correct to threaten massive retaliation as a deterrent.

“But in addition, that ruling out diplomacy would be a mistake when a paranoid young dictator is getting close to converting a yearning for his own security into a fact.”

Earlier today, South Korean warships conducted live-fire exercises at sea in a display of military might.

South Korean officials also said Washington and Seoul had agreed to remove warhead restrictions on South Korean missiles.

The move would allow the South to develop more powerful weapons that would boost its pre-emptive strike capabilities against the North.

Pyongyang’s hydrogen bomb test on Sunday, its largest test to date, triggered a 6.3-magnitude earthquake in the rogue state.