People-First Politics in Kim Jong-un's Speeches: A Focus on Strategies of Legitimation in discourse

This study employs Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate the evolution of discursive patterns in Kim Jong Un's speeches, with a particular focus on the rhetorical strategies utilized to legitimate his “people-first politics.” The research begins by compiling a decade of Kim Jong Un’s speeches, delivering a systematic analysis of the evolution and shifts in this rhetoric in alignment with the trajectory of his political consolidation. Subsequently, it investigates the strategies deployed to legitimize this rhetoric, drawing on the theoretical frameworks of van Leeuwen (2007) and Reyes (2011). The analysis identifies four key strategies: ‘binary conceptualization through emotion,’ ‘moral evaluation,’ ‘rationalization,’ and ‘altruistic narratives.’ These rhetorical devices are instrumental in reinforcing Kim Jong Un's authority and legitimizing his regime, thereby ensuring its long-term stability. This research illuminates the discursive characteristics underlying the promotion of “people-first politics” and provides both theoretical and empirical contributions to the study of political legitimization through discourse analysis.