SEOUL—North Korea's recent run of provocations appears to be bolstering the authority of its young leader, Kim Jong Eun, at home, while further eroding hopes outside the country that he would depart from the blueprint the country followed under his father.
A series of menacing actions has unsettled Western leaders and raised fears of fresh military conflicts on the Korean peninsula, while the heightened tensions feed the North's narrative of Mr. Kim as a strong leader defending a nation under threat.
And Mr. Kim's recent appearances at a spate of combat drills, ahead of an annual meeting of North Korea's rubber-stamp legislature on Monday, have helped reassure a new generation of military leaders that he is committed to a national policy that places military strength above all other priorities, experts say.
That North Korea again appears to be escalating threats to extract aid and other concessions from the U.S. and others have all but drowned any optimism from the early days of his reign that Mr. Kim might evolve into a more approachable figure than his father, whose confrontational behavior and ruthless control of the state made him an international pariah.
When the younger Mr. Kim took power upon the death of Kim Jong Il in late 2011, he presented himself as a more modern and down-to-earth leader than his father. His jovial style and appearance echoed his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, a widely respected figure in North Korea, helping to endear him to the North Korean people.
A series of appearances at amusement parks, a dolphinarium and a pop concert with a fashionable wife carrying a designer handbag mesmerized outsiders. Optimism also spread that Mr. Kim might loosen the government's grip on farming and manufacturing in some parts of the country. Some experts said Mr. Kim's time as a student in Switzerland might have taught him the benefits of a more open economy, while some North Koreans in South Korea began to hear from relatives and associates in the North that changes were coming.
But most of those hopes have evaporated. While U.S. basketball star Dennis Rodman reported after a visit to North Korea in February that Mr. Kim called for dialogue with U.S. President Barack Obama, analysts note that such a message fits the pattern of behavior that Kim Jong Il was highly accomplished at: Escalate the threat, then offer talks to seek concessions such as food aid.
Many experts are even concluding that Mr. Kim, who is believed to be 30 years old, could prove more unpredictable than his father, especially after North Korea's Feb. 12 nuclear test.
Kim Jong Eun "is following his father's footsteps, but doubling down," said Ralph Cossa, president of the Pacific Forum CSIS, a Honolulu think tank.
The April 1 gathering of North Korea's Supreme People's Assembly is largely expected to approve routine budget and personnel decisions. Some observers, though, have speculated about a new policy announcement after North Korea said recently a meeting of the central committee of the Workers' Party, which makes preparations for the assembly, would decide on an "important issue."
That could well be a relatively mundane matter: At two meetings last year, the assembly added a year to the country's education requirements and handed Mr. Kim the last of several titles that legitimized his succession.
Some observers anticipate the assembly meeting will simply be used to amplify North Korea's increasingly confrontational stance against the U.S. and South Korea following sanctions imposed on it for its recent nuclear test. Pyongyang has repeatedly threatened to attack both the U.S. and South Korea, including a nuclear strike on Washington, although it isn't thought to be capable of following through on the latter.
"The 'important' decision could be related to their recent moves to withdraw from the Korean War armistice agreement and nonaggression treaty with South Korea," said Koh Yu-hun, a professor of North Korean Studies at Dongguk University in Seoul. North Korea unilaterally declared invalid the 1953 armistice that ended the Korean War earlier this month, though experts have questioned its legal standing to do so.
Either way, North Korea's focus in recent weeks has been on projecting military strength as the regime, consistent with its pattern, seeks concessions in return for dialing down its threats of conflict. At a live fire drill near the South Korean island of Baengnyong on March 11, North Korean media reported that Mr. Kim told troops: "Once an order is issued, you should break the waists of the crazy enemies, totally cut their windpipes and thus clearly show them what a real war is like."
Mr. Kim, who has no military experience, has used the multiple trips to military facilities to boost his standing with a younger generation of leaders, experts say.
"It's a consolidation of power; there is a certain amount of cementing his role," said Michael Madden, editor of the website North Korea Leadership Watch.
Mr. Kim has also removed several military leaders, most notably top general Ri Yong Ho in July last year. Some analysts believe the purges were intended to reduce the military's role in the economy, which could help Mr. Kim introduce economic reforms more easily. But there have been no indications that such steps are in the pipeline. A recent speech on light industry suggested Mr. Kim's regime remains stuck in old ways of economic thinking.
"He said what the Soviet government leaders used to say in the 60s and 70s—'we have problems with light industry. It's because you didn't study great [socialist] ideas hard enough. Because we don't control people well enough,'" noted Andrei Lankov, an expert on North Korea at Kookmin University in Seoul. "It was a very bad sign."
While his outgoing nature has helped Mr. Kim build trust among the North Korean people, he is also widely believed to exercise the kind of ruthless streak that ensured his father, Kim Jong Il, remained in power for almost two decades until his death in 2011. Since the younger Mr. Kim took power, the number of North Koreans coming to South Korea has fallen sharply due to tightened border controls.
