Kim Jong Un’s handwriting style

“New history begins now. Standing at starting point of the era and history of peace. Kim Jong Un. April 27, 2018”

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un left this handwritten note on the visitor’s book, with South Korean President Moon Jae-in looking on, at the Peace House in the truce village of Panmunjom ahead of the inter-Korean summit on Friday. His handwriting style was characterized by the typical Korean typeface of characters rising up towards the right. Compared with his handwritings of characters that were seen escalating by as much as 45 degrees towards the right, which were made public whenever he ordered nuclear and missile tests in 2016 and 2017, the angle of his handwritten Korean characters decreased somewhat to 20 to 30 degrees this time. Another characteristic in his handwriting style was the way he wrote number “7” (marked with a cross line on it) to help prevent its confusion with number “1.”

In North Korea, they call Kim Il Sung’s handwriting the “Typeface of the Sun” and Kim Jong Il’s handwriting the “Typeface of Mount Baekdu.” The North’s monthly magazine “Korean Arts” once reported that Kim Jong Un made a lot of efforts to benchmark his father Kim Jong Un’s handwriting style in 2014. Kim Yo Jong, his younger sister and first deputy chief of the North Korean Workers’ Party Central Committee, also left a memo using her own unique typeface when she visited the South Korean presidential office in February.

Lawyer Gu Bon-jin, a handwriting style expert, paid attention to the fact Kim Jong Un’s handwriting features longer lines across characters, which is different the past. “Lines across characters symbolize patience, and his lines seem to have been lengthened from the past. It seems that Kim Jong Un’s patience has increased,” he said.


Go-Ya Choi best@donga.com · Won-Joo Lee takeoff@donga.com