A reporter asked me to speculate on what Kim Jong Un would like for his birthday (January 8).

North Korea’s leader certainly doesn’t need any more palaces; he’s got all the cognac he needs; he’s said to have many obedient dogs; and he even has his own basketball team.

Then what does Kim Jong Un need? For my answer I think of the end of the Happy Birthday song, when we noisily add: “AND MANY MORE..!”

What is most precious to dictators is another year–another year of staying alive, and keeping their loved ones alive. Another year of not being strung up on the gallows (Saddam Hussein); beaten, sodomized, and shot (Muammar al-Gaddafi); assassinated over dinner by your own head of security (Park Chung-hee); or gunned down and left in a ditch (Nicolae Ceaușescu).

On how the Kim family has so far kept off that gallows and out of that ditch, see my 2010 article with Daniel Byman in International Security. As you’re reading it, please don’t raise your glass to the birthday boy, who presides over some of the most grievous human rights violations in world history.