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Kcna / AFP - Getty Images
North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, left, and right-hand man Jang Song Taek inspect Mt. Ryongak Recreation Grounds in Pyongyang in this undated photo from the official Korea Central News Agency.
Many things about North Korea are a mystery, but this much is clear: The country’s heir-apparent -- 27-year-old Kim Jong Un -- lacks the job experience to run a nuclear-armed nation of 23 million people. But his elevation to "great successor" was only part of a transfer of power that left other key allies of his father, Kim Jong Il, in key positions around him.
For many Korea watchers, the most likely power behind the young leader is his uncle, Jang Song Taek, 65. Jang, who married into power by tying the knot with Kim Jong Il’s sister, survived 30 years of political ups and downs before emerging as right-hand man to Kim Jong Il.
“My sense of Jang is that he is a really capable guy,” said Marcus Noland, an Asia expert and senior fellow for the Peterson Institute, a think tank in Washington, D.C. “He may have bad ideas or bad motives, but if you look at his career, it’s clear that he has some kind of capability.”
Kim Jong Un has spent most of his time in North Korea, but he did study for a few years in an international school in Switzerland in the mid-1990s. Since being identified as successor in 2009, Jong Un's status has been plumped up through public appearances with his father, receiving the rank of general and having military orders issued in his name.
"Kim Jong Il picked the apple that didn't fall far from the tree," said a senior U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. "He didn't select a successor who he believed would radically depart from his vision for North Korea."
Jang has credentials as a political survivor, observers say. He’s been exiled from the inner circle of power at least twice. The first occurred when he sought to marry Kim Kyung Hee, the younger sister of Kim Jong Il, over the opposition of Kim Il Sung — the "great leader" who died in 1994; he also disappeared from sight from about 2003-2006, purged for allegedly creating factions and maneuvering to seize power, according to GlobalSecurity.org, a website for military policy research.
Ultimately, however, Jang married Kyung Hee and eventually was elevated to be vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, a position that second in power behind the country’s supreme leader, now Kim Jong Un. He is also director of the State Development Bank. Some South Korean scholars believe that he was de facto leader during Kim Jong Il’s illness.
“In a way (Jang’s) biography reminds me of Deng Xiaoping’s,” said Noland, referring to the Chinese leader who became the de facto head of state after suffering multiple purges. “They keep throwing him to the countryside and he keeps coming back."
Kns / AFP - Getty Images
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's younger sister Kim Kyong Hee, left, attends the Conference of the Workers' Party of Korea in Pyongyang, in Sept. 2010. Kim Kyong Hee and her husband Jang Song Taek are considered influential players in the aftermath of Kim Jong Il''s death.
Jang's relationship with Kyung Hee, Kim Jong Il's only living full sibling, is important. Kim Jong Il also has one half-sister and two half-brothers, born to his father’s second wife. But when he took the reins from his father, he evidently regarded these younger relations as a threat and dispatched them to obscure diplomatic outposts.
Kyung Hee, 65, despite a reputation for bullying everyone -- including Kim Jong Il -- has been visibly at his side several years, holding key positions in the Communist Party and the government. In September 2010 she and her nephew Jong Un both were given the rank of general in the military, confirming their status in the inner circle.
Whether Jang will pursue the path of protector, puppet master or rival remains to be seen. In the totalitarian system that has survived nearly 60 years in North Korea, the official version has little to do with reality.
"A lot depends on whether the power centers of the regime coalesce around Kim Jong Un, or see this period of uncertainty as an opportunity to change the balance of power internally," a U.S. official told NBC on background. "Those are very tricky calculations to make in an authoritarian society like North Korea."
Besides Jang, there are other players who could pose a challenge to Jong Un’s rule, most notably in the military.
There are other wild cards, such as Kim Jong Il’s former secretary and live-in girlfriend in his last years — 47-year-old Kim Ok — who some refer to as North Korea’s “first lady.”
Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, born to the second of Kim Jong Il's three wives, was assumed to be heir to the "dear leader" at one point, but lost favor when he was arrested in Japan traveling on a false passport while trying to go to Disneyland with his son. He has been watching events in his home country from Macau.
“It’s like watching a family crime syndicate, like the Sopranos,” said Noland. “It’s a combination of brutality and dysfunctionality.”
“The problem is for (outsiders) is that it would be very hard to distinguish between a North Korea that Jong Un is ruling or one where he is just reigning,” he said. “It may be a few years before we have a clear picture.”
Robert Windrem, NBC News investigative producer for special projects, contributed to this report.
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
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Let us hope the son will at least be an enlightened despot!
everything is possible
I will admit that the Great Succulent is much better looking than the Great Deceased.
Fat kid's a glutton with his food; he'll be a glutton with his power.
The problem is his kid is far worse than his father in terms of radical and militia thinking. You thought his father was an antagonist? Wait until you see this fat turd.
communist + enlightened = oxymoron
The weather is several degrees warmer today because they turned up the flames in Hell to welcome Kim Jong Il.
The people in North Korea are suffering terribly because its extremely hard to fake crying and tears when you just want to pump your fist in the air and say "YESSSSSSS!!!!!!!!!!"
they are suffering terribly and crying because they are suffering and crying you dumb a.s.s.
How can a country of such insignificant international relevance get those shills going? Having watched this country be sold, Vietnam, Iraq I, Afghanistan, and Iraq II--what are these sleaze bags up to? Creating the boogie man is their business.
The aunt and uncle better tread lightly or they may find themselves purged permanently. Kim Jong Un comes off as very full of himself and is not likely to tolerate anyone trying to tell him what to do. The kid is either going to rule with total control or wind up dead, I do not see any in between. The personality that he appears to have is not one that would allow for him to be used as anyone's puppet. He may very well purge some of the old guard and bring in new people that he knows will be loyal to him. There is likely to be some turmoil, at least in the short term, and things could get very dicey until Kim Jong Un solidifies his position. Let's just pray that they keep solid control over their nuclear weapons.
The same can be said about capitalists, where the only way to get ahead is to already be ahead and the mandate is to exploit the weaknesses of others for personal gain.
Regardless of the ruling model of North Korea, it has been under the control of leadership with personal motives and a mean streak. That isn't the fault of the structure, that is the fault of the leaders.
What does his weight have to do with the article or his ability to lead? For the record, William Howard Taft, the American president, weighed 350 pounds. Let's at least have relevant and productive discussion here.
JoeM (1.6) is exactly right... all of those 'grieving mourners' were staged! Nothing more than paid puppets for the government!
If you were starving and asked to put on such a show for a guy you hated.... it would be an easy decision... especially if you didn't want to suffer the consequences of refusing such an order!
I'm afraid the new 'leader' won't be any better than his father! Bad news for their citizens and the rest of the world!
The aunt and uncle will be of no significance, China pulls the strings in North Korea.
Dec. 29, 2011 - Kim Jong Un's 'TO DO' List the day after they bury the Old F***!:
1. Vacation for Unkie and Aunty - check to see if the 2006 nuclear blast site still has rooms underground available.
2. Prepare Generals Retirement (X) list based on loyalty tests of last 15 months.
3. Arrange 1st foreign trip to Bejing - ten days, (preceded by a 5 day stop at the resort on Hainan Island and 5 days at Hong Kong for rest and shopping).
4. Workers have 20 days while I'm away to gut and refinish Ding-Dong-Dads house into a proper palace for me to entertain my new friends from China, especially those 'Chinese Hotties', YES!.
5. Note to self - Self, it's GOOD to be KING!
@Alan Pugh- Ok I'll bite. Please tell me of just one communist country that did not have dictatorship as it form of government. I'll give you some time to think about it. Let me guese you could not come up with one, that is because it is the structure of the system that makes dictatorship enevitable. It hapened in the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, Vietnam, Cuba and in every East Europen nation where it was enstalled by the Soviet Army. Communism is a system that has been shown to be a failure in EVERY case it was tried, main result being millions dead and total economic collaps. I always wonder at the fact that we, rightly, take offence at any one praising the far right or wearing swasticas, but we do not bat an eye when we see some one praising far left or wear soviet symbols. Both systems killed millions and caused tremendous damage to dozens of nations around the world. Why do we deffend one and condem the other. Just because the idea of communist utopia is appealing does not mean we should ignore the horror that its implementation has caused to millions.
Ilya, again... leaders, not systems, caused "tremendous damage." Also, I believe you're conflating Communism with socialism based on your comments though they're not synonyms. Regardless of that, I'll take a few moments to respond. First, however, realize that I never stated anywhere in my post that I supported Communism, only that the same statements could be made against capitalism and neither system would have made Kim Jong-il a "nicer" dictator. Keep that in mind as we go forward.
Communism requires a fully altruistic population or, at the very least, exertion of enough state control to mandate a forced altruism to the point where full communal ownership does not create greed-based conflict. The biggest reason we have seen several failures of Communist-style governments is due to the state control required when non-altruistic people act to weaken or exploit the system for their own personal gain. In other words, fledgling capitalism from within the system is detrimental to the way Communism is supposed to operate. When this happens, central planners must move to block the exploitation and, over time, this makes a populace less and less free. A fully altruistic population doesn't exist, obviously, so we don't need to discuss that possibility.
Capitalism, of course, depends explicitly on exploitation of labor to amass wealth. It is competition-based and the natural endgame is Ayn Rand style Objectivism, which is the self-obsessed greed that results in the sort of dystopian economy we see in America right now. Like within Communism, personal greed and a broken moral compass is the destroyer within capitalism as well.
Socialism as proscribed by Abraham Lincoln (and indeed socialism was the foundation of the creation of the Republican party in Lincoln's day and Lincoln considered Marx a genius) combines aspects of free markets and state control to deliver an ideal combination of providing all basic services and infrastructure and assuring needs are met while allowing competition to create innovation and reduce the workload of the labor force in such ways that all people are able to lead lives that are both productive and fulfilling.
In Communism, success is measured by consistency.. in capitalism, by the rich. In a combined modern socialist society such as the thriving Scandinavian region, success is measured from the bottom up and by the ability of the working class to have a fulfilling life beyond work.
So, to recap all that: I don't support Communism. I don't support capitalism. I am a moderate Marxist, which places me in the centrist category through much of the world and an "extreme leftist" in the United States.
Food for thought, though: Articles 14 through 17 of North Korean Labor Law stipulate the rights of mothers and pregnant women, including seventy-seven days of maternity leave with full pay, paid baby-feeding breaks during work, a prohibition against overtime or night work for pregnant or nursing women, and the transfer of pregnant women to easier work with equal pay.
The United States is the only country in the world, including North Korea, Sudan, Iran, and Cuba, that does not provide paid maternity leave.
Remember... with politics and economics it's never just black and white and we can always stand to learn a little something from everyone, even the perceived enemy.
Ilya --- ha thats funny....So when we die, we are all going to be apart of the great communist regime in the sky too, arn't we? or would you prefer the burning communist regime beneath the earth? Unless of course your of another religion that does not believe either. IMO...No political system is perfect, all were created to control the massess by the few.
SOUTH KOREA ;
Now is the time to sucker punch the NK Commies.
Do something ... It's payback time for shelling the islands and sinking your ships.
Do something ... to throw them into a coup mode. What old NK general would want
to take orders from this punk, give them a reason?
The South Koreans couldn't care less about those attacks, Tommy.
Ah--the "nuke em" guy has arrived. What a breath of fresh air.
No, AA, I just read books that don't require crayons.
You want to go fight an die, go volunteer for them. I'm sure they'd love to have you on the DMZ.
Why doesn't China just throw them some Walmart Manufacturing Jobs to kinda ease the Tension there?
Let em turn the Lights on at night for once.
The Satellite Photos at Night show a Dark and Stark picture of North Korea.
I suspect China likes North Koreas lights off at night.
An intentional buffer zone from the Capitalist South I suspect?
"An intentional buffer zone from the Capitalist South I suspect?"...Don't know much about China huh? That's what i thought...
What are you trying to say, fedup? Are you trying to pretend that China has not embraced capitalism?
Great day! Glad he's dead!
What America should do tomorrow is parachute in 30 million Ak-47's into North Korea with anti-Communist slogans encouraging the locals to rise up and shoot local officials.
There should be a rain of parachuted boxes dropping all over, city, country, forest, mountain.
Give the people a chance at re-unification and freedom.
Given that they wrote communism out of their constitution years ago, I doubt the slogans will make any difference. And the people there are so fanatical that they'd probably take the guns to their local militia leader to donate.
AA, do you have anything better to do than follow every post I make and troll it?
ChestyPuller wrote:
Um, why? It's time to stop trying to "fix" things everywhere. It usually doesn't accomplish much, anyway, as new "bad guys" enter the picture to replace the old ones. In any event, the money spent for those 30 million AK-47s would be far better spent here. We can't keep borrowing money to change things in other countries, forever.
Toasty is correct, and it's EXTREMELY common knowledge that the early NK constitution contained plenty of direct references to Marxism, AA. It is also common knowledge that they have long-since been removed. Also, mind your CoH when you're coming up with parody usernames to insult another 'Viner. Not appropriate.
What nonsense...drop boxes full of weapons? Then what? You now have 25 million North Koreans who are not only brainwashed, but also armed. Just like you've been told your whole life that nascar is "cool", these people have been told their entire life that the US and South Korea are bad and mean them harm.
The difference is you have the opportunity and choice to educate yourself, which you obviously don't feel a need for, while they have no choice in which message they will hear day in day out.
Great plain you got there. Maybe you should be promoted to Honorary General too.
No, what we need to do is carpet-bomb the North with Brookstone, Harry & David and Victoria's Secret Christmas catalogs. There'll be riots in the streets within a week.
I doubt it. These poor people are so brainwashed into thinking anything not North Korean is evil and should be shunned at all costs that anything we (as a collective world) would do for them would be looked upon as evil, corrupt and not good enough for them. I really believe that even if we carpet bombed them with food and water to supply the entire nation for a year or two that they still would believe that we were "out to get them." Sh*t it is possible they would reject the food and water for fear of poisoning because their "government" has them so damn brainwashed. These poor folks believe that Kim Jong Il is some kind of God to them. They have photos up of him all over their homes and place worship shrines around the photos. That expose done by Lisa Ling was startling and very eye-opening.
The question is who cares ? All this time going out to honor a country that hates us ? All this time talking about some fat scum bag ? And his fat scum bag son ? Useless !
20% of your income is going to go to Kim's income.
Which orifice did you pull that number out of?
If Kim Jong Un is to be the sucessor to the family throne and Jang Song is actually the real decision maker and brains behind North Koreas government I guess Americans can compare it to Dick Cheney who was the real "commander in chief" the whole time George Bush was in office...
Lights going out over North Korea shows that the power struggle has already begun. Because humanities actions aren't dictated by logic, I know that humanity will die because of our faults. No reason to bring any Gods into this.
Lights going out over North Korea just means it's seven o'clock.
Khan
In 1914, Lord Grey remarked, during the crisis that resulted in World War I, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our time."
What's my point? Just this: In Europe, in 1914, "the masses" could turn off the lights. In North Korea, in 2011, "the masses" (those who, by Communist doctrine, should benefit from Communism, especially after 60 years of it) don't have that option--the lights are never on.
North Korea exemplifies what happens when thugs run countries: only the thugs prosper. When they are also xenophobic thugs, so far gone in fantasy that they believe their own propaganda, it spells trouble.
Did you not read the article? The lights have been out since 1992 what would this have to do with their leader that just died?
Looks like Kim jong was ill
And his successor is number Un. Hopefully he won't speak Il of his daddy.
Leads me to my life long question, 'If A Kim Jong died in a country no one cared about...was it at least painful?"
We have a rare chance here. Instead of this constant flurry of insults to North Korea, we should be thinking of diplomatic things. Free food to them to start with. No strings. Invite the kid to DC and show him what money can buy. Let him see how powerful we really are. Why we have to display so much hate to somone who is dead is beyond me. America seems to live for the next war. Like they are a damn football game. War is hell, real hell.
What money can buy? DUDE that kid has probably had whatever he wanted shoved up his butt his entire life. I seriously doubt that our money is going to impress him.
Hey, I know, show him some American women. When he see's women that actually have some bootie.........that's all it'll take!!! ;-)
Don't you get it? The only poor people in North Korea are the ones that are NOT in power...the leaders there have everything that could ever want. We should not invite any of their leadership to this country...dangerous invite. They hate us with a passion and want to destroy us. What part of that don't you understand?
rusty, Here's an idea, instead of sending no-strings food to a country that hates us, why don't we try to pay down our debt so my great grandchildren will not have to pay for our mistakes. Google homeless vets. There are PLENTY of people right here we can send food to.
The little ill will start a war watch and see.
With his arrogance and his big mouth. They've already come razor close just recently shelling that fishing village.
We ought to clean there plow.
My mom told me to never say anything about the dead unless it was good. Well, he's (KJI) dead.
Fun thread starter of the day:
What's less genuine than North Koreans' tears over the death of their "Dear" Leader Kim Jong IL?
First suggestion: Jerry's final thought on the Springer show?
I heard that they fired a test missle in his honor. They know how much he loved pissing Obama off. AWE, how sweet!!!
Ok so we have an idiot, then the old guy who is dead and gone, we have an Uncle who understands, a kid living in china and an old GF wildcard out there.
Make a deal or whack them all, sounds like old Brooklyn Mafia. Find the smartest one and walkoff on the rest off the idiots. I vote for he old uncle.
If that doesn't work send in the curise missles. A few days of that we might be buying realestate in NK
These nut bags sink a South Korean naval vessel just to celebrate the fact that it's Wednesday. If they decide to use force to determine who will lead the country, it could get very ugly very quickly. Let's hope the Chinese have the sense to keep this thing contained.
It wouldn't surprise me if NK popped a nuke in the next 2 weeks.
Let's see---what if we sent all our useless politicians to the boondocks? They wouldn't be the boondocks any more, would they?
All we need to do is talk them into franchising American fast food. In a year they wil be too fat to fight and all die of a heart attack. Look how good its working in a another Asian country very close to them. ;)
Wanted to make a sarcastic remark about loving all of the designer eyewear but it's difficult to even do that knowing how little the citizens of that country have for themselves. All I can think about is what would the price of those glasses provided and to how many???
This little fat pig has no power except the power to eat his way to an early grave I hope.
I'm sure there are a few hungry people that would have a feast off this blubber king.
Mind you they risk getting tyrant food poisoning.
This young man might be more compatible to the modern world
So why are the aunt and uncle be pupprt masters, some one explain that to me, sound's stupid, but would love some feed back
the "little general" is my idol. Literally. He looks bad-ass, and is in charge of the most militaristic country in the world. A dream come true. haha. RULE WITH AN IRON FIST!!!