SEOUL, South Korea — Make that Dr. Kim Jong-un.

North Korea has long been known for its love of titles for its leaders. Mr. Kim’s grandfather, the nation’s founder, was known as the Great Leader; his son, the Dear Leader. The country seems not yet to have decided on the same kind of moniker for Mr. Kim — settling for workaday titles like marshal of the military. But now a university in Malaysia has bestowed upon the 30-year-old leader an honorary doctorate that allows him to spruce up his title count.

If the North Korean state news agency has it right, the particular doctorate is perhaps as much of a surprise for those outside the isolated nation as the honor itself. Dr. Kim, it says, is now a doctor of economics. The news report does not mention that he oversees one of the world’s poorest and most dysfunctional economies.

The university that did the honors, a private school known by the acronym HELP, took the action as a way of “building a bridge to reach the people” of North Korea, according to the president of the university, Paul Chan. He has since come under an onslaught of criticism online for honoring a man who Western and South Korean intelligence officials say appears comfortable as the ruler of the brutal police state he inherited, and who continually defies the world’s calls to dismantle his country’s nuclear arsenal. (An announcement on the school’s Facebook page does not specify what doctorate the North Korean leader was awarded.)

The university, whose initials stand for Higher Education Learning Philosophy, elevated Mr. Kim to Dr. Kim during “a simple ceremony” in the North Korean Embassy in Kuala Lumpur this month, according to the statement by Mr. Chan on Facebook.