What's Kim Jong-un been up to?

Smile for the dictator: North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, poses with children at a factory kindergarten as part of a recent publicity tour. Picture: Supplied to AFP. Source: AFP

SINCE attempting to bring the planet to the brink of World War III in March, the world's favourite mad man North Korea's Kim Jong-un has been mostly missing from international headlines.

Until this week, when Jong-un made news with reports he had been handing out Adolf Hitler's rambling biography Mein Kampf, to his senior advisers.

And then followed it up with a threat to kill the "despicable human scum" who had reported the Hitler story.

Has Jong-un been staying deliberately quiet since his fiery threats of pre-emptive nuclear strikes against the United States and South Korea?
Nothing could be further from the truth.

North Korea's favourite son has been working on his image. Truly.

Here's what he has been busy doing:

1. Face lift: the North Korean administration has fiercely denied the rumours, but it has been widely reported the chubby-cheeked Jong-un has undergone plastic surgery to improve his resemblance to his grandfather Kim Il-Sung, first ruler of North Korea and a man so revered he is still called The Eternal President 20 years after his death.

2. Importing dolphin water: a fan of funfairs and theme parks, Jong-un recently arranged the importation of salt water for a new attraction so the dolphins could frolic more freely. His own people may be suffering from a lack of access to fresh drinking water, but dolphins have the sort of universal appeal Jong-un craves.

3. Sentenced a US citizen to 15 years' hard labour: this won't win him friends in the west, but Jong-un was sending a message to his loyal citizens when devoted Christian Kenneth Bae was sentenced to 15 years hard labour in a North Korean prison for committing "hostile acts" against the state. Bae received the longest sentence given to a US citizen for possessing photographs which allegedly showed Bae's desire to overthrow the Jong-un regime.

4. Visiting his own military bases : reportedly still unsure he has unilateral backing from the ageing leaders of North Korea's military, Jong-un has been going from base to base to win their loyalty and firm up support.

5. Firing missiles: just in case anyone thinks it's empty rhetoric, last month Jong-un ordered three short-range guided missiles be fired into the sea as a protest against South Korean and US military drills in the region.

6. Photo opps: to please the domestic front, and in an apparent bid to "ease tensions on the Korean peninsula", Jong-un has been engaged in a flurry of photo opportunities, often with the first lady, Ri Sol-ju. He has visited a glass factory (pictured above in the AFP photograph), machine plant, several civil construction projects, attended a musical performance, posed with kindergarten kids and toured a museum.

7. Statues and badges: there may be a few problems with the economy but, hey, why not spend millions on elevating the personality cult of your own family. Since allocating more than $100 million last year, Jong-un's regime has rolled out a series of statues and badges featuring the late Kim Jong-il and 3200 so-called Towers of Eternal Life monuments at all major crossroads nationwide, as well as mosaics depicting his father and grandfather.

9. Training the Ugandan police force: homeland of a late dictator who made his name torturing and killing his citizens (Idi Amin), Uganda has successfully competed for the attention of both North and South Korea, with the North giving direct training and guidance to the Ugandan Police Force, and the South praising Kampala for recent successes in improving domestic security.

10. Mein Kampf: maybe it's because he flunked German at high school, but Jong-un was reported as spruiking the infamously racist Hitler manifesto "and asking that the Third Reich be studied in depth". This was followed up yesterday with a directive from North Korea saying whoever had published the report was "sordid human scum [who] will never be able to look up to the sky nor be able to find an inch of land to be buried after their death".